Stage Matters

One of the many essays that appeared after Peter Hall's recent death, written by younger theatre artists he mentored,   ended with tr...

T he most exciting evening I'd experienced as an audience member of professional theatre to that time, and really never to be surpass...

In addition to the much lauded local production of Arthur Miller's All My Sons , recently produced by Ferndale Rep and Arcata Playhous...

Only one more reason this country is going to miss this extraordinary President: "Mr. Obama’s long view of history and the optimism...

The so-called controversy over who wrote Shakespeare's plays has always been irritating, based mostly on the uninformed and class-ridd...

It's been more than a year now since I stopped writing Stage Matters, and about a year since I collected past columns and wrote retros...

In connection with the Humboldt State University production of Kiss Me, Kate (October 2015), I researched and wrote background stories th...

“In a way no other songs of the period quite did,” wrote journalist Walter Clemons, “Porter’s created a world.”  But the man who personi...

Patricia Morison in Hollywood What would a hit musical be without a Cinderella story? In this case it wasn’t in the plot but in the orig...

On Monday, the Yurok Tribe hosted a performance by Anna Deavere Smith in Klamath.  It was first of all, the best hosted event I can recall...

Broadway is Brit.  British productions all but swept the Tonys, and more are to come.  British productions and actors are also present if ...

Another post from elsewhere in my blogosphere that ought to be here as well, prompted by this recent New Yorker article by Oliver Sacks ...

I posted this review on another site some time ago.  As I wind down new posts on this site, I thought I'd bring it over here, where it...

American Masters series recently broadcast a 90 minute documentary on playwright August Wilson and his unsurpassed 10-play cycle about A...

Two crop circle investigators from England arrived in Arcata this week, but they weren’t on the lookout for bent corn.  "We've ...

Tom Stoppard is a very verbal playwright, especially his early work, so the plays read well.  But they are a challenge to act.  Here's ...

Among visitors to this site in the past month or so were these: Searchers from Burnham-on-Sea, Somerset, UK; St. Leonard, Maryland and C...

Here's a treat, though a long one.  Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart talk about important moments in their stage careers and their liv...

Leonard Nimoy started on the stage in Boston, and returned to the stage in the 1970s, appearing in Equus on Broadway.  His best-known ro...

There's a review in a right-wing magazine of a new book on American musicals that makes a couple of interesting factual assertions.  ...

Tom Stoppard, whose new play The Hard Problem is onstage at the National Theatre in London, made some waves by claiming in a public for...

Update: It's the final weekend (Feb. 12-14) for Los Pajaros .   With Mother Teresa as Harpo, Dick Nixon as Groucho, it's the Ma...