When I auditioned for a role in Hildegard von Bingen's musical drama Ordo Virtutum (Play of the Virtues) I thought I'd be lucky to get a small solo part. Somehow though, I was offered the key role of "The Soul" in the famous German abbess' 12th century morality play -- the oldest of its kind existent in the world today. Exciting news indeed for someone who's never sung a solo role in a public performance (unless you count playing Peter Pan in a musical at grade school) much less done so in plainchant.Chant, I'm discovering, has its own set of … [Read more...]

As the home of Incredibly Strange Wrestling and the Faux Drag Queen Pageant, San Francisco is a natural breeding ground for the estoric genre of Grand Guignol theatre. Thrillpeddlers, the city's very own permanant company devoted to recreating the works of the now long-defunct Parisian Grand Guignol theatre (and its much shorter-lived sister, the London Grand Guignol theatre) as well as staging new, original plays written in the Grand Guignol style, should become a regular stop on the San Francisco trail for locals and visitors looking to … [Read more...]

The last time I caught a screening of a San Francisco Opera production, I wasn't very impressed. I was present at the company's inaugural simulcast screening of Madama Butterfly a couple of years ago. It was a festive, atmospheric affair to be sure: While audiences watched the show from inside the War Memorial Opera House, 8,000 others gathered on a big, grassy plaza across the street to watch a live broadcast of the opera for free. Pretty red lanterns and a festival spirit complete with wine and picnics made for an enjoyable evening.But the … [Read more...]

It was a cashier at Trader Joe's by the name of Cuba who introduced me to the MTV series America's Next Best Dance Crew while ringing up my groceries. We'd somehow gotten into a conversation about baseball and then sports in general during which I admitted that I didn't really watch many games. When Cuba asked me what sports I followed, I sheepishly responded that I loved dance, even though many people don't consider it a sport. Cuba said: "Sure dance is a sport." "It's very athletic at any rate," I shrugged, ready to leave.But Cuba wasn't … [Read more...]

As predicted, I had no luck trying to buy Radiohead tickets via Ticketmaster at 10am this morning. The site had nothing available at all even right at 10am on the nose. I'm not normally given to venting conspiracy theories, but I can't help thinking that there's some kind of underhand business at work in the box office world for these kind of events. I mean, people were auctioning tickets on eBay for the concert at 9.45am and a few other ticket sites were hawking seats right in the back for $500 apiece.I'm beginning to doubt whether it's … [Read more...]

We thought we were being clever, opting to see the band in concert in the aging, conservative town of Santa Barbara rather than trying to catch them in San Francisco. We believed we would be at an advantage, living in California, in terms of getting our hands on tickets through a British website, given the time difference. Little did we know.Radiohead's website announced that tickets for the rock band's appearance in Santa Barbara on August 28 would be going on sale through the British website waste on April 9. With the U.K. being eight hours … [Read more...]

I didn't pay much attention to the broohaha surrounding the climaxing relationship between French president Nicolas Sarkozy and ex-supermodel / singer-songwriter Carla Bruni even though I was in the UK when France's first couple swung by for an official visit in March. The controversy on the eve of the visit concerning the publication by Christies auction house of a nude photograph of Bruni taken during her career as a supermodel and the media's special interest in Bruni's wardrobe (Christian Dior -- a diplomatic choice, being a French design … [Read more...]

Being a passionate devotee of Slings & Arrows, the brilliantly written and incandescently acted Canadian TV series about the inner workings of a big regional theatre company, I was excited to stumble across an article in yesterday's San Francisco Chronicle about a new video podcast series. The series concerns a group of young theatremakers as they journey towards putting on a black-box stage adaptation of Dostoyevsky's The Double in San Francisco.A collaboration between podcaster Bill Bowles, playwright Eric Henry Sanders, and a coterie of … [Read more...]

On Sunday, I attended an awards ceremony and party in honor of Dan Hoyle. A team of five local theatre critics (Rob Hurwitt of The San Francisco Chronicle, Karen D'Souza of The San Jose Mercury News, Chad Jones formerly of the Oakland Tribune, Rob Avila of The San Francisco Bay Guardian and yours truly) selected Hoyle as this year's recipient of The Glickman Award for Best New Play. Every year, The Glickman Award (named in memory of play- and screenwriter Will Glickman) honors any new play to have received its world premiere in the Bay Area. … [Read more...]

Whenever the topic of theatre and politics comes up in conversation, people tend to shuffle uncomfortably, snort disdainfully or cross their eyes. Mentioning the the two subjects in one sentence tends to illicit negative or nervous responses, even though many people working in the performing arts -- and outside of them -- believe that all art is political and that theatre, because of its reliance on metaphor and allegory and ability to fly under the radar, is the most political of all art forms. You only have to read Charles Isherwood's recent … [Read more...]