Sam Shepard crowded into my fevered sleep in the dead of night. Just hours after seeing his two remarkable plays, The Unseen Hand and The Killer’s Head, at Odyssey Theatre, I started thinking about the shows in a half-conscious state and a memory struck me. It is the image of the actor/playwright striding away from … Continue reading “The Unseen Hand” and The Killer’s Head” at Odyssey Theatre Ensemble
“Volta” is the Italian word for “turn.” The French term, volte-face, is a turn in the opposite direction, so it is intriguing that the Cirque du Soleil touring show, Volta, according to the press release, “…is a story of transformation. It is about being true to oneself, fulfilling one’s true potential, and recognizing one’s own … Continue reading “Volta” at Cirque du Soleil
Jannica Olin’s one woman show, (IM)PERFEKT, is an exposé of the personal and professional angst engendered by the onset of the incurable condition, Alopecia, which is the sudden, progressive loss of hair leading, in some, to utter baldness. She is onstage when the audience enters. As the crowd settles in, she goes through a fetching … Continue reading “(IM)PERFEKT” at The Lounge Theatre
The award winning British playwright, Mike Bartlett (Cock, Bull, King Charles III), won an Olivier prize for his play, Earthquakes in London, in 2010. This prescient play is more meaningful now than when it was first produced. With the climate running rampant due to evermore vigorous human activity that shows no sign of slowing down, … Continue reading “Earthquakes in London” at Rogue Machine
Playwright Donja R. Love’s, Fireflies is the second of a three-play trilogy entitled “The Love Plays” that depicts the experiences of queer people of color during slavery (Sugar in Our Wounds), the Civil Rights Movement, and the Black Lives Matter Movement (In the Middle). Set “somewhere down South” in the Fall of 1963 just after … Continue reading “Fireflies” at South Coast Repertory
Attending a play in a large, Broadway-sized theatre, the Coronet (renamed the Eugene O’Neill) say, which has a capacity of 1047 seats, puts most of the audience at some remove from the onstage action. Good actors in the old days put their training to good use projecting their voices off the back wall of the … Continue reading “All My Sons” at Pacific Resident Theatre
In a fictional land of the future created by playwright Neil McGowan in his astonishing new play, Disposable Necessities, the wealthy can dispose of their bodies and occupy new ones through a company that has developed the ability to extract, at enormous cost, the conscious soul of a person and put it into whatever body … Continue reading “Disposable Necessities” at Rogue Machine
