Join in the Fever
One of the big questions I have about Sandbox Radio is: Why ever isn’t it broadcast by NPR? Although Leslie Law, the MC of this Seattle treasure, answered my question, I’m still in the dark!!!!!!
Read more →Join in the Fever
One of the big questions I have about Sandbox Radio is: Why ever isn’t it broadcast by NPR? Although Leslie Law, the MC of this Seattle treasure, answered my question, I’m still in the dark!!!!!!
Read more →Steve Martin misses the Big Bang at the Beginning of the 20th Century.
An art historian once said that the visual arts in any artistic movement are always connected to everything else that is going on in society, whether it is artistic, scientific or political. In the early 20th Century, these connections are particularly striking although one would not realize it from the play Steve Martin wrote, Einstein and Picasso at the Lapin Agile, currently at Delridge Cultural Center in West Seattle, produced by 12th Night Productions.
Read more →Round and Round the Sexual Merry-go-Round, circa 2015
An incredibly interesting engaging adaptation of Arthur Schnitzler’s La Ronde, called Sex’d opened at the LAB@INScape in the International District, produced by Handwritten Productions on Friday, April 10th.
Read more →Existence is too Serious to take Seriously
UMO Ensemble opened a performance featuring text from Samuel Beckett’s the Unnamable, physical theatre and music in the Eulalie Scandiuzzi Space at ACT theatre on April 9th.
Beckett is an extremely difficult author to stage because he writes non-linear confusing novels and plays whose humor that often gets lost because the subject matter deals with the most basic existential question: to go on living or not to go on living. As a result, it is often performed ponderously, tediously and at a snails pace so that the audience is never engaged.
Read more →To Be or Not to Be-that literally was the question.
LIVE! From the Last Night of My Life by Wayne Rawley, was not only the most amusing show I have seen in a long time but also the most profoundly tragic as it dealt with the very basic question of existence: should I keep living or should I put an end to everything. Both the Theatre 22’s production and the script itself were masterpieces which simultaneously served to enlighten the audience and provide the best psycho-therapy there is: laughter.
Read more →Culture War of 17th Century France
Knowing that the Archbishop of Paris threatened to excommunicate anyone who watched, performed in or even read the original version of Molière’s great masterpiece, should be recommendation enough for any one to rush out and buy tickets for Tartuffe. However, Seattle Shakespeare’s current production warrants immediate canonization for director Makaela Pollock.
Read more →Drama and Dreams in the Café
Dukesbay Productions, a wonderful Theatre company in Tacoma opened its fifth episode of an ongoing series, Java 5 Tacoma -Game of Scones, at the Merlino Arts Center in downtown Tacoma. Be prepared for an evening of laughter, irony and poking fun at just about everything fashionable in the Northwest; it is all there, jokes about how bad vegan cooking is, how detestable gluten-free baking is, online entrepreneurship, how nasty even local politics can be and some Monty Pythonish dream sequences.
Read more →Bureaucratic Vanity in Imperial Russia
For those of us who love 19th Russian literature, the last few months in Seattle have been a wet dream. The Seagull Project produced Chekhov’s The Three Sisters at ACT, Theatre Machine produced the seldom seen play The Lower Depths by Maxim Gorky and now Ghost Light Theatricals has thrust us all into the stratosphere of delight with stage adaptations of two short stories, The Nose and The Overcoat, by Gogol.
Read more →Superb Female Painter Reduced to a Victim
Blood/Water/Paint, by Joy McCullough-Carranza opened on Friday at Theater-off-Jackson. Produced by Live Girls!, a company dedicated to new works by women, it was didactically written with a supposedly feminist agenda. However, this story about Artemisia Gentileschi, did not seem to attempt to “empower” women but seemed to emphasize their victimhood.
Read more →Laughter Unlimited at the Schmee
One sign of mental health for both individuals and societies is the ability to laugh at themselves. It shows a healthy acceptance of one’s flaws and strengths as well as a healthy acceptance of reality. In Seattle, it helps all of us deal with the smugness, the Republican driven city council agenda disguised as bleeding heart liberalism, enlightened diet of the month, wacked-out theories of child-rearing, alternative this, alternative that and all the other agendas floating around Seattle.
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