I’ve written before about how the past is the ultimate foreign land, shrouded permanently by the forward nature of time in our particular dimension. We can read texts and compare accounts, study architectural systems — both physical and linguistic — all in the service of conjuring an image of a departed era. Things get even […]
Austin Maisler
Struggles of The Elephant Man at FRT
Ferndale Repertory Theatre set aside its regular spectacle of song and dance to produce a play that explores creativity and centers acting for its latest offering, The Elephant Man. The multi-award-winning script by Bernard Pomerance tells the story of John Merrick, who suffers from a rare medical condition that severely covers his body and face […]
Dreaming Big
From the moment Managing Art Director Calder Johnson took the opening night stage to introduce A Midsummer Night’s Dream at North Coast Repertory Theatre, clad in an outfit out of a Hunter S. Thompson book, I knew this production was going to be different. The first fully rehearsed production in more than two and a […]
Laughing in Shakespeare’s Shadow
It only took close to 500 years for a musical that enacts my unpopular opinion that Shakespeare has become a model of elite and pompous thespian culture in which good acting is determined by mere participation, historically documented BIPOC people of the period apparently didn’t exist (except for that one guy) and migraine-inducing word salads […]
