(June 27, 2024)
Our lives through these past pandemic years have been a little melodramatic — as well as lonely and heart-wrenching at times. It's also been a disappointing five years since...
(May 30, 2024)
As giggling teens heckled, "You're GAY. We're all GAY," from an open second-story window, echoing off the buildings of downtown Ferndale, and an unfortunate side street detour led us to...
(May 23, 2024)
Director, actor, choreographer and wicked talent Alex Blouin let the new Redwood Curtain production of A New Brain marinate for years. Her persistence and ambition in getting this charming musical...
(May 9, 2024)
I have never liked Edward Albee's The American Dream, not as a part of my script analysis classes, nor in the multiple productions that I've seen performed. I find it...
(April 4, 2024)
The sight of someone smoking a cigarette in costume is shocking to those of us who have been conditioned by every stage manager — some even threatening our lives should we...
(March 28, 2024)
Modern renditions of fairytales are simplistic, bland stories that encourage learned helplessness and non-consensual kissing — a far cry from the dark folk tales collected by the Brothers Grimm. The...
(February 15, 2024)
The journey to try to find the Exit Theatre (890 G St., Arcata) is guided by a mischievous Google Maps and skeptical townspeople convinced we bought tickets online to a...
(February 8, 2024)
A Gentleman's Guide to Love and Murder by Robet L. Freedman is a side-splittingly funny, dark-humored, self-aware and fast-paced romp of pure entertainment. The cast and crew at Ferndale Repertory...
(December 14, 2023)
The Little Match Girl: A Warm Tale on a Cold Night, written and directed by James Peck and Sarah Peters Gonzalez, is the annual holiday show at Arcata Playhouse. It...
(November 30, 2023)
I wish more than a handful of people could have seen Jessie Gelormino as one of the best Cosettes I've had the pleasure to witness in Les Misérables. Her performance was...
(November 9, 2023)
If one were to stage a Brechtian version of Forrest Gump, Tom Hanks would look directly into the camera and relinquish any evidence of his character to deliver the line,...
(October 19, 2023)
On the evening of the preview performance of Natural Shocks by Laura Gunderson, the lights went up on the small stage at Exit Theatre revealing semi-haphazardly strewn household miscellany —...
(August 31, 2023)
It's opening night of North Coast Repertory Theatre's sex comedy Lysistrata. The excitement is palpable with bouquets in the hands of proud parents eager to support their kids, actors' friends...
(August 24, 2023)
Joe Pintauro was an author, poet and prolific playwright in late 20th century New York. The eight plays in North Coast Repertory Theatre's Pintauro, A Night of One Acts...
(August 10, 2023)
Stephen Hillenburg attended what was then Humboldt State University in the early 1980s, about a decade before I did. He had a more impressive major than myself: natural resource planning...
(June 8, 2023)
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...
