The musical Gypsy, now on stage at North Coast Repertory Theatre in Eureka, is the story of Rose, often called the “ultimate stage mother,” and her daughters, June and Louise. Rose sets her sights on making June a child star in vaudeville during its waning days in the 1920s and ’30s, and when June rebels, […]
William S. Kowinski
Posted inArts + Scene
Gaia in Turmoil: Climate Change, Biodepletion, and Earth Ethics in an Age of Crisis
In his new book, Eaarth, Bill McKibben notes that one reason we have trouble facing the future being created by the climate crisis is that, “We lack the vocabulary and the metaphors we need for life on a different scale.” He offers his “candidates for words that may help us think usefully about the future.” […]
Posted inArts + Scene
Doom Boom
Pig Tree, a post-apocalyptic comedy in two acts, played last weekend at the Arcata Playhouse — or rather, outside of it. Theatergoers were led from the Playhouse lobby into the cold night, to bleachers facing a set (a bench, steel desk and a few other pieces), in front of a few stylized bare trees and […]
Posted inArts + Scene
Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet
The planet Earth as it was when those famous photos were taken from the moon, doesn’t exist anymore. It has begun devastating changes, and it’s not changing back for thousands of years. It’s so different that Bill McKibben gives it a new name. He calls it Eaarth. “… it won’t be anything like the planet […]
Posted inArts + Scene
All’s Wells
Lynne Wells plays Florence Foster Jenkins, the operatic singer who was so bad she was great, in Glorious!, the comedy that inaugurates Redwood Curtain’s new theatre in Eureka. Jenkins, who died in 1944, was a real if forgotten footnote to the New York City musical and society scene, until she became the subject of three […]
Posted inArts + Scene
Art of the Impossible
If ever a role and a North Coast performer seemed made for each other, it’s Don Quixote in the musical Man of La Mancha, and Brad Curtis. In the current Ferndale Repertory Theatre production, that dream is not impossible — it’s fulfilled. The frequent star of Humboldt Light Opera, North Coast Rep and Ferndale Rep […]
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About Doubt
Live theatre happens in a particular time in the real world. No one associated with the North Coast Repertory Theatre production of Doubt: A Parable — a 2004 play that concerns allegations of a priest’s sexual misconduct — could have known that it would open as the Catholic Church is facing new revelations concerning its […]
Posted inMusic
Doctor Who: The Complete Specials
Though the series continues with a new creative team and a new Doctor in April, these five stories constitute the last year of the new Doctor Who as created by writer-showrunner Russell T. Davies. They’re also the last starring David Tennant, whose four years as the Doctor turned the series into a major hit for […]
Posted inArts + Scene
Down to the Wire: Confronting Climate Collapse
Because environmental studies professor David Orr’s book is gracefully written, with a lucid and comprehensive vision, it is easy to read. However, because of its subject and its messages, it is very difficult to read. For all of those reasons, it is important that everyone reads it, because it is about our future, which is […]
Posted inArts + Scene
Tim Rollins and the K.O.S.: A History
In 1981 a young artist and teacher named Tim Rollins ventured into the rotting rubble of the South Bronx, and began his first art class for at-risk middle school students with these words: "Today we are going to make art, and we are also going to make history." Through thick (lionized by the New York […]
Posted inArts + Scene
Choice Voices
According to renowned early 20th century Italian actor Tomasso Salvini, the three most potent elements of acting are: "Voice! Voice! Voice!" You might expect that sentiment from an old-school actor like Salvini, or even actor and director John Gielgud, who suggested that while attention is often lavished on other aspects of performance, how the words […]
Posted inArts + Scene
Everything You Know about Indians Is Wrong
Paul Chaat Smith is an enrolled Comanche, veteran of the American Indian Movement in the ’60s and ’70s, and now an associate curator at the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington. His main interest is contemporary artists, and many of the essays in this volume were originally linked to particular exhibitions — though […]