Forget the poinsettias and celebrate this holiday season with an Audrey II. Perennial stage favorite “Little Shop of Horrors” is blooming in the Bay Area for a second time this year (Another production was mounted at the Berkeley Playhouse in the spring) at TheatreWorks Silicon Valley), and for good reason. With its pop-culture savvy...
The Climate Crisis and Theater — A Playwright’s Perspective
Do we feel the environment breakdown in our gut? Will people looking back see art that conveyed the existential threat of the emergency? Back in 2005, author and environment activist Bill McKibben wrote a piece called “What the Warming World Needs Now is Art, Sweet Art” in which he wondered why the climate crisis...
It’s finally Oakland director Dawn Monique Williams’ moment, and it’s about time
At a recent “Two Trains Running” rehearsal at Marin Theatre Company, director Dawn Monique Williams led with conspiratorial joy. Oakland theater director Dawn Monique Williams has two tattoos taken from Shakespeare. One is the beloved “Twelfth Night” opening line: “If music be the food of love, play on.” Another is the motto from Shakespeare’s...
A haunting portrait of Emmett Till comes full circle in ‘Till Trilogy’ by Ifa Bayeza
Mosaic Theater Company stages all three of Ifa Bayeza’s history-based plays. The most intriguing is the second part, “Benevolence.” Review by Celia Wren for The Washington Post. In a chillingly lyrical moment in Ifa Bayeza’s play “Benevolence,” a guilty Mississippi woman sees a vision in a burning cloth. It’s 1955, and this White 20-something...