Every year, many people post their end-of-year highlights. I’ve done this same thing, in various forms, over the years, dating back to the Tumblr days. However, this past year I’ve read less, I’ve watched less, and I’ve listened to less. But not in a bad way. My high school theatre program is busier and more bustling than ever; I started my graduate work in pursuit of my MFA in Playwriting; and I–in partnership with my incredible wife, known in my writing as The Mrs.–have kep

Oscar Wilde’s Salome is a story that adapts the story of John the Baptist with message-and-moral-driven faithfulness, but set in more urgent, contemporary language. Princess Salome utilizes the power of allure and gift for discerning Herod’s weakness allows her to achieve a most dastardly, self-serving deed, and one that seems to not pay off how she had hoped. Summer Session-Plevney has helmed a sturdy, riveting production at Fresno City College's Theatre department by settin

A vibrant, poignant, and thoroughly entertaining production of Godspell is blessing the Fresno State University Theatre stage. John Michael Tebelak and Stephen Schwartz's parables set to music invites audiences to experience Jesus’ teachings while enjoying skit-style scenes and songs which take a vibe, a verse, or a plot point and give its musical due. Director J. Daniel Herring, in choreographic collaboration with Kenneth Balint and the cast, is delivering a superb, smart, a

Good Company Players is currently running an absolutely loverly production of the Lerner and Loewe classic, My Fair Lady . The story, on paper, is nearly outdated in its acceptance of gender and class roles; specifically how it assumes the higher position of privilege at the expense and degradation of those in the lower. But, when helmed by a director with a sharp eye for when those in power can be laughed at  rather than with , audiences are in for a treat as entertaining as

Masquerade (#926) Thanks to the graciousness of my wife, I was able to finagle a trip in time to see the closing of The Phantom of the Opera  before it left The Majestic Theatre a few years back. I was transfixed by the stage craft, engulfed in the story, and swept up by hearing the score and seeing the company deliver an iconic piece of mega commercial theatre. When I saw Masquerade , a currently running immersive iteration of … Phantom …, my guest and I had just one comment

While many Golden Age musicals are reaching the end of their mainstream relevancy, The Sound of Music  only grows in its urgency while...

Bram Stoker created one of the most riveting, terrifying, and dramatically sound characters when he wrote Dracula. Gordon Greenberg and...

Disney’s Frozen  is making its Central Valley premiere at Good Company Players, and this production serves as a frozen respite from the...

When looking up the term Cohort, Merriam-Webster’s expert definitions provide the following:  Companion, colleague. “A few of their…...

An article was posted earlier this week for those of us in the Central Valley community. It infuriated me. I couldn't understand exactly why, so I took my time to process. A colleague of mine, Julie Lucido (if you're Facebook friends with her, go check out her thoughts, because I agree with them), inspired me to finally focus on exactly what has me feeling how I feel. This article was ill-fated from the moment “loophole" was used to describe the salaries, instead of consisten

My first trip to Minnesota afforded me the pleasure in seeing The Guthrie Theater’s currently running production of Cabaret , a musical...

Selma Arts Center has launched into its final weekend of Jonathan Larson’s opus, Rent. The unfinished reality of the show–Larson passed...

Just a year shy of this nation’s semi-quincentennial is a new production of 1776 playing at Roger Rocka’s Dinner Theater. Easier to say...

One of Shakespeare’s most beloved comedies, where gender roles and rivalrous dynamics are at the crux of the plot, The Taming of the Shrew...

Just closed at American Conservatory Theatre was a world premiere hip-hop musical, Co-Founders; a very energetic, hometown hype of a...

TheatreWorks Silicon Valley is premiering a new musical adaptation, Come Back to the 5 and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean: A New Musical. ...

Seeing a show like Luigi: the Musical affords audience members to curb a sadistic appetite for seeing how a fastidiously written show can...

Leave it to Lauren Gunderson to bring out the romance in science. Often known for her feminine-forward storytelling, with focus given to...

It’s a bold move to trim a Shakespearean History-Tragedy down to where most of the “history” elements are removed in service of the...

"Oh, the thinks you can think!" This oft-repeated phrase in Seussical: the Musical  is a motivating, inspiring message that securely...