Podcast

Let’s talk about Jukebox Musicals.

That’s a slangy term describing a stage show that is built around an assortment of pre-existing, usually well-known songs, stuff you might have heard on the

It has been said that there is nothing less dramatic or more lacking in entertainment value than watching a writer write. In the clever comedy-drama ‘Seminar,’ presented at Wells Fargo

For those who prefer not to travel far for their onstage entertainment, and like to avoid any excursions into foreign territory, there are, fortunately, a tremendous number of nearby theater

This week, “Shone Grown,” SRJC’s Holiday on the Farm celebration, taking place at Shone Farm, where there will be activities for the entire family, tastings of the farm’s olio nuovo, cured

Two plays based on real happenings from the first half of the twentieth century have recently opened in the North Bay. One is new, the work of an up-and-coming young playwright

Wednesdays at Hospice – “Songs at the Bedside”
Hospice of Petaluma
Wednesday, June 12th, 2019 @ 5:30pm- 7:30pm

Wednesdays at Hospice is a free Community Education series running January to June

“Step into Your Brilliance”
Wednesdays at Hospice House
January 8, 2019 – Santa Rosa
January 15, 2019 – Petaluma

Our inner brilliance, passion, and life force

Victorian England produced some spectacularly bloody and murderous literature.

Some was written and published, some began as the stuff of urban legend before being translated for the stage or to the

“Thanksgiving” Food Drive Day
Sonoma County Fair
Saturday, August 12th, 2017 @ 11:00 am – 4:00 pm

The Sonoma County Fair proudly presents the “Thanksgiving” Food Drive – Saturday, August 12.

I am, in a moment, going to talk about spelling, as in spelling bees, as in ‘The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee,’ a musical that is currently running in two

When is a play not a play?

When it’s a concert.

Because concerts have no plots, and plays have plots
That’s the argument some have made against the recent rise of

Stephanie Rosenbaum talks about her delightful new work “The Astrology Cookbook” and Frederique Lavoipierre discusses the upcoming Insecta-palooza. Evangeline, a beautiful stick bug, bobs and sways through the entire show and

Two appetizingly notable stage plays, both currently running in the North Bay, feature the unpredictable combustible power of people related to one another, or about to be, sitting down to eat

Change is part of life.

Some changes are easy, others much less so.

And when cultures collide, change is often dangerous, violent, and destructive. From the opening scenes

One of the cool things about the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, the current season of which I have been reporting on lately, is the way it often programs shows that cleverly

1999 years ago, an unmarried teenage mother had a bad dream. The next morning, she decided to turn that dream into a short story. Over the next few months, that story

I saw an amazing performance last weekend, but I have no clue how to properly describe what I saw. I could start by talking about Wallace Shawn, the playwright of

Jack London.

One cannot grow up in Sonoma County, or even visit here for very long, without gaining at least some awareness of who Jack London was. Few local school-kids can’t

Money corrupts, as does Power, and they often work together, because of course, everywhere you go in this world, money is power.

In playwright Ayad Akhtar’s uneven but often gripping

A little emotion goes a long way. And music is one of the best communicators of emotion, as Beethoven, Mozart, Tchaikovsky, and Billy Joel can tell you.

The richer the

Summer Repertory Theater Festival, Santa Rosa’s acclaimed training program, has returned for its 45th year. Over the last four-and-a-half decades, Summer Rep has earned a reputation as one of the country’s

For twenty years, Mill Valley’s Curtain Theatre has treatedlocal audiences to admission-free, fully-produced Shakespeare plays performedin

It’s been twelve years since Stephen Walsh last played Tony the grape grower, in the classic Frank Loesser musical ‘The Most Happy Fella,’ at Cinnabar Theater. And to employ an over-picked

Making an audience laugh is not an easy task for any playwright, or for the actors indebted with bringing the author’s words to life on stage. Humor is primarily a

Invisibility.

It’s not just something that happens in fantasy books and science fiction movies. In the real world, there are invisible people, folks who, because of their social status or lifestyle,

Halloween is upon us, and to get us in the mood, two infamous supernatural sex-comedies are currently haunting 6th Street Playhouse. Both plays are crammed with witty retorts and sexual innuendo,

In Shakespeare’s “The Taming of the Shrew,” the indelible Kate and Petruchio—a feisty, ferocious fiancé and her would-be “tamer”—together discover something truly amazing and surprising. They discover that even after 400

Music has a way of reaching out like no other art form. In times of stress it calms our nerves. It gives us strength when we are struggling. Then again,

One of the ballot initiatives Sonoma County voters will decide on this November is Measure O. If passed it would provide mental health services to children, seniors, veterans and the homeless through a quarter-cent sales tax. The tax would generate approximately $25 million each year. KRCB's Sarah Bohannon recently spoke with Supervisor Shirlee Zane to learn more. 

 

  

 

 

Read arguments for and against Measure O: County of Sonoma, Mental Health, Addiction and Homeless Services Measure Transactions and Use Tax Ordinance 

The Threepenny Opera — Bertolt Brecht’s 1928 “play with music — is like an expensive desert that’s so complex and filled with flavor most people can’t quite figure out how to

War is not just about bombs and bullets and blood.

It’s also about politics and position and power.

Playwright Donald Margulies is not particularly interested in either the politics of war

First, let me tell you about a show I saw last week, then let me say a few words about where I saw it.

“Trailer Park Gods” is an

One recently-opened Bay Area stage show takes place under the Sea, where fish creatures dwell, another takes place on the Sea, where dangerous men scheme and battle for buried gold. One

A story is an illusion, a series of events that are not really taking place, presented in a way that fools its audience into believing, for a moment, that it is

There’s an old Latin saying.

“Aestivo Tempori est Shakespeare!”

Roughly translated: There’s no better time to watch Shakespeare than in the summertime!

I don’t know when summer

“Twelfth Night” is amongst Shakespeare’s most popular plays, in part because the story is so accessible, and the situations so universally funny. Typical of the Bard, humor and tragedy are

For several years, the lack of strong roles for women has been the talk of the theater world, lighting up blogs and theater-related websites. With the problem so prominently under discussion

The Documentary Two-Spirit Pow Wow is the first full-length film to give an inside look at an LGBT-hosted Native American Pow Wow.

In his film, Rick Bacigalupi follows the development

“Battle of the sexes.”

That phrase dates back to at least 1914, when the notorious filmmaker D.W. Griffith (he of “Birth of a Nation”) released a blatantly sexist film with

Something kinky has been taking place lately in the world of mainstream entertainment. Sadism and masochism are now to romantic comedy what romance and comedy use to be to romantic

Mouthful mixes things up, with guest host Barbara Iannoli – of the late and beloved North Light Books – and very special guest, Michele Anna Jordan. That’s right, Mouthful’s founder, producer

West Side Story—Sondheim, Bernstein and Laurents’ beloved 50s-era street-gang homage to Romeo and Juliet. Few American musicals are as widely loved and as over-performed.

Let’s face it, in America, it’s you

This month, it’s a news-worthy “What Are They Up To Now?” version of Word By Word, Conversations With Writers, as host Gil Mansergh reprises conversations with guests who are in the

There’s a line that comes about halfway through Edward Albee’s classic play “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” Unlike so much of the rest of Albee’s brutal and brilliant drama, it’s not

It’s a mystery, a challenge, a puzzle, a conundrum.

How do you keep theater alive and interesting, when the majority of your audience has proven their relative preference for

Playwright Clare Barron, a New York theater artist with a fast-rising reputation for crafting quirky comedy-dramas with the ring of truth and an affection for damaged people, is finally getting her

Jerry Anne Di Vecchio and Françoise Dudal Kirkman, author and illustrator
of “You’ve Got Recipes,” a cookbook for youngsters aged 7 to 14, discuss
their delightful cross-cultural (San Francisco &

Jerry Anne Di Vecchio and Françoise Dudal Kirkman, author and illustrator
of “You’ve Got Recipes,” a cookbook for youngsters aged 7 to 14, discuss
their delightful cross-cultural (San Francisco &

This is a once-in-a-decade, retrospective look back at the last 10 years of Word: Conversations With Writers broadcasts with host Gil Mansergh. The first half hour features clips by novelists and

This month’s Word By Word:Conversations With Writers is one of the show’s signature round-table discussions where four guests share microphones, and host Gil Mansergh tries to make sure listeners know