Shameless Hussy Lynne Kaufman The Marsh Surrounded by the sounds of fog horn, crashing waves and terrifying thunder, a trembling eleven-year-old girl cries to her mother as the two leave her native France, bound for the U.S, "I am losing my country, my language, and my father". Her mother hands her a notebook and suggests she write in it letters to the father left … [Read more...] about Shameless Hussy
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Writing Fragments Home
Writing Fragments Home Jeffrey Lo Hillbarn Theatre & Conservatory Forty-year-old Jay awaits anxiously with luggage in hand for his mom to get home from work, nervously practicing various ways of saying, "Hi, Mom, it's good to see you/How was work?/I'm sorry ... can I move back home?" When Mary Beth walks in, her first reaction? "What's wrong?... What are you … [Read more...] about Writing Fragments Home
Zorro
Zorro Héctor Armienta (Music & Libretto) Opera San José A pulp fiction novel written in 1919 by John McCulley was so popular that he wrote dozens more short stories for decades about its hero. Within a year of McCulley's publication, Douglas Fairbanks starred in a swashbuckling silent film whose popularity helped spawn to-date more than 40 more films, ten TV … [Read more...] about Zorro
Nobody Loves You
Nobody Loves You Itamar Moses (Book); Gaby Alter (Music & Lyrics) American Conservatory Theater When reality TV with a "You're-off-the-island" edge merges with a bachelor/bachelorette dating show format that opens the floodgates for immediate social media inputs, memes, and votes for winners, then the result is a rom-com that is furiously fun from beginning to … [Read more...] about Nobody Loves You
Uncle Vanya
Uncle Vanya Anton Chekhov Adapted by Conor McPherson Berkeley Repertory Theatre, in Co-Production with Shakespeare Theatre Company In a co-production with Washington, D.C.'s Shakespeare Theatre Company, Berkeley Repertory Theatre opens a stunning, star-rich, spectacularly directed Uncle Vanya bursting with dark humor and laugh-out-loud wit, brimming with … [Read more...] about Uncle Vanya
An Enemy of the People
An Enemy of the People Henrik Ibsen Adaptation by Thomas Ostermeier & Florian Borchmeyer English-Language Version by Duncan Macmillan San Jose Stage Company "There are no moral billionaires. Not when millions are starving. And yet we revere them! We hope their electric cars will save the planet or, if not, that their rockets will get us to Mars. A … [Read more...] about An Enemy of the People
The Thing about Jellyfish
The Thing about Jellyfish Based on the Novel by Ali Benjamin Adapted for the Stage by Keith Bunin Berkeley Repertory Theatre A bright, curious, talk-a-mile-a-minute seventh-grade girl learns a life lesson that "sometimes things [even very bad things] just happen." To reach that important conclusion, Suzy must also ask herself, "What can jellyfish teach us about … [Read more...] about The Thing about Jellyfish
Daisy
Daisy Sean Devine Hillbarn Theatre & Conservatory A three-year-old, blonde girl stands in a meadow, holding a daisy and counting to ten in her sweet, high voice as she plucks off petals, charmingly making a few mistakes along the way. As she hesitates after nine, a booming male voice begins counting backwards from ten, much like heard in a rocket launch. Just as … [Read more...] about Daisy
Takes All Kinds
Takes All Kinds Dan Hoyle The Marsh In the fall of 2022, Dan Hoyle found himself at a “40s-something” party where during the chit-chat of chardonnay sipping, someone said to him, “So you do journalistic theatre? But aren’t they both kinda collapsing?” Given an insatiable drive to discover core truths about a community, culture, and/or even an entire country; a … [Read more...] about Takes All Kinds
Rachmaninoff and the Tsar
Rachmaninoff and the Tsar Hershey Felder (Book); Sergei Rachmaninoff (Music) TheatreWorks Silicon Valley Little doubt but that there is a very real love affair between the San Francisco Bay Area and Hershey Felder. This is particularly true for the audiences of TheatreWorks Silicon Valley who have reveled in so many of his past musical biographies of famed composers … [Read more...] about Rachmaninoff and the Tsar
Mother Road
Mother Road Octavio Solis Berkeley Repertory Theatre Seventy-plus years have passed since the Joad family of John Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath joined a parade of desperate migrant farmers, all leaving their starving lives in Dust-Bowl-ravaged Oklahoma of the 1930s while looking for the lush life they saw painted on fruit crates from California. Two Joads – a mother and … [Read more...] about Mother Road
Everybody’s Talking about Jamie
Everybody’s Talking about Jamie Dan Gillespie Sells (Score) & Tom MacRae (Book & Lyrics) Based Jamie: Drag Queen at 16, Directed by Jenny Popplewell Ray of Light Theatre What better way for a San Francisco audience to celebrate Pride Month than enjoying to the hilt a joyous, upbeat, and totally inspiring coming out story of a sixteen-year-old whose only dream … [Read more...] about Everybody’s Talking about Jamie
The Lehman Trilogy
The Lehman Trilogy Stefano Massini Adapted by Ben Power American Conservatory Theater It is a story whose ending we already too well know. The world’s fourth largest investment bank files for the biggest bankruptcy in American history, sending Wall Street into panic and initiating the 2008-09 global financial crisis and the collapse of numerous, other banking … [Read more...] about The Lehman Trilogy
Galileo
Galileo Danny Strong (Book); Michael Weiner & Zoe Sarnack (Music & Lyrics) Berkeley Repertory Theatre From one side we hear, “Science asks the questions; the Bible has the answers;” from the opposing view, “The Scriptures is a book about going to heaven; it is not a book about how the heavens go.” Sounds like countering arguments made in some current, state … [Read more...] about Galileo
The Glass Menagerie
The Glass Menagerie Tennessee Williams San Francisco Playhouse As we enter the theatre, we immediately notice at the stage’s corner a young man intently smoking, looking one moment longingly into a non-descript distance and writing the next with much intent into a small notebook clasped tightly in his hand. In between, he rummages through a collection of records, … [Read more...] about The Glass Menagerie
