My final two days of Rogue brought me to a variety of shows including spoken word, theatre, music, and guesting in a fabulously fun Improv show with Brian's Beard as well making a flyingly fun turn as a luna moth in the prior praised Wikipedilove . Below are my final reviews of Rogue 2026! Dysfunction I had the pleasure of seeing Ke’Lea Flowers’ full-length premiere of the song cycle, Dysfunction , a few seasons back at Selma Arts Center; I found it powerfully composed, stage

Day 3 of Rogue gave me two shows and they are two shows I'm so glad I had the time and ability to see! Erika MacDonald: TeaTIME (show #936) Just from the title I was intrigued, and from MacDonald’s two-minute teaser at the Teaser event, it became a can’t-miss. I was right. Erika MacDonald’s TeaTIME is an exquisitely paced and well-suited show for rewarding patience in a world that demands more and wants it yesterday. The very nature of the show matches the beautiful process o

Day 2 of the Rogue Festival brought me to six very different performances across three different venues. Below are my thoughts! Rooted, Reaching: We Carry Each Other Aleno Dance Project brings a most-impressive feat of a show to the Hart’s Haven venue, and by that I mean the entire venue. Audiences will be treated to a six-part dance show that begins in the front of the bookstore, makes its way through the bookstore proper, has a couple of acts in the performance space, a pi

Friday night lights: Rogue-style brought me to three very different shows and my first guest spot for the Festival! Cassini LIVE (#933) Rogue 2026 kicked off, for me, with the newly award-winning Cassini LIVE, an operatic-cinematic theatrical piece that is sure to give you awe and pause. Led by live organist Tony Imperatice and singer Bernadette LaMontagne-Schenek, this show delivers an appreciation, if not a wholly engaging celestial lesson, on the Cassini mission to Saturn

For the 25th time, we can say that the Rogue Festival is upon us! This year’s Festival is bringing locals and out-of-towners, clowns, magicians, singers, actors, dancers, and artists of all kinds to the Tower District for you, yes you , to enjoy! As we gear up for two weekends packed with shows, I wanted to give focus to the spaces these performers get to flex their artistry at: the Venues. Many of the Festival venues are local businesses, available to the public throughout t

There’s a daunting thrill when sitting down for a solo show. The comfort in knowing that one actor has decided to dedicate time for immense preparation, nuance, and allure to carry a whole show, perform a whole script, take up the entire stage, is one that comes from trust in the earliest moments of the play. The first time a solo performer takes on the mannerisms, or voice, or characteristics of the next character is when that trust is either earned or broken. Thankfully, Vi

I find the stage adaptation of Mary Poppins to be an absolute delight by being one of the stronger screen-to-stage adaptations in the Disney canon. The songs and plot hold true when done right in front of you, and the added plots and tunes service the whimsy of Poppins and Bert while supporting the lessons learned for the Banks family. Good Company Players is tapping away with a marvelous production of this classic, making this the very spoonful of musical theatre sugar you’l

Kicking off the 2026 Good Company Players’ 2nd Space season is David MacGregor’s Sherlock Holmes and the Adventure of the Elusive Ear. This cozy, crafty mystery is helmed by Denise Graziani, who lets the comedy breathe and expositional reveals intrigue. The structure of a Sherlock Holmes tale is a time-tested source for entertainment, whether on the page, stage, or screen, and Graziani’s staging of the stellar cast fits this production perfectly. Gordon Moore takes on the tit

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...