What the Constitution Means to Me, now playing at the 5th and D Street Theatre, connects the Constitution of the United States, a cryptic, venerated document, to our everyday lives. Playwright Heidi Schreck (portrayed by Natasha Samuelsen in this autobiographical show) recounts her experience to the audience as a teenager traveling the country to earn […]
William English III
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What the Constitution Means to Redwood Curtain Theatre
In the 5th and D Street Theatre, Natasha Samuelsen stands in the spotlight explaining the tenets of the 14th Amendment to the five people sitting in the dark during dress rehearsal. As the main character in Heidi Schreck’s What the Constitution Means to Me, she enthuses over the enshrining of naturalized citizenship with the hard […]
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Local Filmmaker Griffin Loch’s The Distilled Screens at Ferndale Rep
He’s already scared the pants off you at the Ferndale Scaregrounds and the Scream-a-Torium Haunted House. Now Griffin Loch is bottling up the terror for the big screen. The Undistilled, Loch’s fourth feature film, pours out Sunday, Aug. 31, at 6 p.m. at the historic Ferndale Repertory Theatre ($15). Filmed in Humboldt County (with plenty […]
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Patrons in the Arts
As Leo Tolstoy once said, “All happy families resemble one another; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” Every member of the MacTwatt Clan’s 10-year family reunion reveals unique unhappiness as they meet again after years apart in the Logger Legends, Liars and Lookers, the third in the Logger Bar-located series of plays written and directed […]
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Kinky Boots Walks Tall at FRT
The musical Kinky Boots, written by Harvey Fierstein (music and lyrics by Cyndi Lauper), is about the journey of self-expression fraught with internal and external barriers. And, yes, it’s about boots. The 2005 British movie from which the musical is adapted is inspired by the real-life story of a declining family-owned shoe business that makes […]
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Time is Many Notes,All Played at Once
Just as time is a somewhat fluid concept in James Joyce’s Ulysses, so it is in Steven Dietz’s hauntingly moving 2015 play Bloomsday, now in production at Redwood Curtain Theatre. Bloomsday is celebrated in Dublin every year on June 16 — the day on which Leopold Bloom, the central character in Ulysses, wanders the streets […]
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Who Wants to be 15 Again?
Playwright John Patrick Shanley describes 15 as a “special, beautiful room. In hell,” in Prodigal Son, now playing at Redwood Curtain Theatre. The play sets a teenage boy’s search for identity against a background of the complex mores and philosophies in a small private Catholic preparatory school. The result is a multifaceted coming-of-age story in […]
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Epic Battles
Ripcord David Lindsay-Abaire’s Ripcord, the current production at Redwood Curtain, reunites three local favorites, director Cassandra Hesseltine and lead players Peggy Metzger and Susan Abbey, who teamed up for Lindsay-Abaire’s excellent Good People at Redwood Curtain earlier this year. It’s a dream team that’s clearly at home with the touching and humorous perspective on life […]
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In the Prime of (Artificial) Life
Anyone who’s spent any time online in the last few years has undoubtedly encountered a chatbot — that helpful cyber-entity that’s always ready to (try to) answer your questions. Now imagine that chatbot — and its self-limiting conversational skills — has left cyberspace and moved in with you, taking on the holographic form of a […]
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A Microcosm of Life on Avenue Q
Avenue Q is a puppet show with humans. Or a human show with puppets. Whichever way you look at it, Robert Lopez and Jeff Marx’s musical, now playing at Humboldt State University, is a smart blend of youthful angst and mature topics that brings to all-too-realistic life that treacherous bridge from student to responsible adult. […]