As the 2011-12 theatrical season ended in August, I took it as an opportunity to set aside the year’s musicals, contemporary comedies and clown shows for some different theatrical experiences. Unfortunately my travel budget doesn’t even extend to Oregon, so I must bring contrasting productions home, where I can travel in time as well […]
William S. Kowinski
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The Social Conquest of Earth
In examining the relationship of humans to the rest of nature as well as human nature itself, Edward O. Wilson has been a defining presence for some 40 years. He created the field of sociobiology in the 1970s. He won the Pulitzer Prize for On Human Nature in 1979, and with later titles (Consilience: […]
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George Harrison: Living in the Material World
Seen last year on pay cable, this Scorsese film on the life of George Harrison is now widely available on DVD. A fair amount of the footage here has been otherwise available, but there’s a lot that comes from Harrison’s “home movies” and photos. There are archival soundbites with Harrison, and new interviews with […]
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Does the Shoe Fit?
Cinderella is one of the world’s most popular stories, and among the oldest. It’s probably also the only one in which the climactic moment is somebody trying on a shoe. There are hundreds of versions from all over Asia as well as Europe (the idea that Cinderella’s beauty is proven by her small feet […]
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Is Texas Funny?
The Red Velvet Cake War is the summer comic confection now on stage at North Coast Repertory Theatre in Eureka. The Verdeen girls — Gaynelle (played by Jacqui Cain), Peaches (Denise Ryles) and Jimmie Wyvette (Gloria Montgomery) — live in the small Texas town of Sweetgum. They chafe under the domination of the family […]
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By Blood: A Novel
In 1974 San Francisco, a professor on leave rents an office in an old building to write, but finds himself separated by a paper-thin wall from a working psychiatrist. Most of her sessions are masked by a white-noise machine, but for one client she turns it off. That client’s plight becomes his obsession. So there […]
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Woody’s Cabaret
Fledgling American small town writer Cliff Bradshaw (played by Charlie Heinberg) comes to Berlin in 1929, and falls into a relationship with British singer Sally Bowles (Elena Tessler), first seen in the infamous cabaret, the Kit Kat Club, where the androgynous Emcee (Kelsey MacIlvaine) presides over a carnival of decadence. Meanwhile, Bradshaw’s landlady (played by […]
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Skios
On the stage, farce is about running in and out of doors, concealment and revelation, expectation and illusion, pretence and persuasion, need and want. Michael Frayn, who wrote what many regard as the best stage farce of the age (Noises Off) wondered if he could write farce as a novel, and this book is the […]
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Show and Tell
In Show People, the contemporary comedy now on stage at Redwood Curtain in Eureka, the middle-aged acting couple of Marnie and Jerry (played by Bonnie Halverson and Ron Halverson) begin their latest performance. But it’s not on stage, where they haven’t worked in a decade: it’s at a posh vacation home with an ocean view. […]
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Mary Jane: The Next Generation
Last summer’s Mary Jane: The Musical was a box office success that many more people wanted to see than could, so bringing it back this summer made sense — especially with recessionary blues still playing in the background. It was also an opportunity to shape a sharper evening, as well as add some new songs […]
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How to Build An Android: The True Story of Philip K. Dick’s Robotic Resurrection
Blade Runner has become an iconic film since its unsuccessful 1982 release. Its source was a novel by Philip K. Dick, a highly productive California-based science fiction writer from the 1950s until his death in 1982 who inspired generations of other writers, notably fellow West Coasters William Gibson, Ursula LeGuin and Kim Stanley Robinson. As […]
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The Etiquette of Freedom: Gary Snyder, Jim Harrison, and The Practice of the Wild
Poet and eco-elder Gary Snyder grew up on a farm in Washington state. When he was a boy he asked his Sunday school teacher if he would meet a beloved and recently dead heifer in heaven. The clergyman said no. “Then I don’t want to go there!” said novelist Jim Harrison from across the dinner […]