Tonight, the third of five pilot broadcasts of VoiceBox, my new public radio show about the art of singing on NPR affiliate KALW 91.7 FM, airs. At this just-over-halfway point in the series, I have to say that producing and presenting the show is one of the most satisfying experiences of my life to date.Here's what I'm diggin':1. Education. Broadening my knowledge of the vocal music landscape by listening to lots and lots of music and making the acquaintance of many great Bay Area, national and international vocal artists.2. Championing. Having … [Read more...]

It's easy to begrudge Robert Lepage's big budgets. After last night's performance of the Canadian theatrical auteur's production The Blue Dragon, staged at Zellerbach Playhouse under the auspices of Berkeley University's Cal Performances, I overheard a few audience members grumbling about Lepage's expensive-looking hydraulic scenery and stage gadgetry."Why does he spend all this money on tiny little details when he could suggest them just as easily without going to all the expense?" one theater-goer wondered. "I could have staged that scene as … [Read more...]

Even the most intelligent and bold stage auteurs can fall into the trap of cliche. Having caught the talented Bay Area writer-director Mark Jackson's expressionistic adaptation of Goethe's Faust at Shotgun Players at the weekend, I've come to the conclusion that the image of a young woman with red paint smeared below the waistline on the front of her dress may be in dire need of retirement.Often used to suggest insanity and/or loss of innocence, a bloodstain on the nether-regions of an actress' clothes seems to crop up time and time again in … [Read more...]

Dozens of journalists, including myself, gathered at San Quentin State Prison on Monday morning hoping to experience a highly anticipated performance of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream by inmates which was scheduled to take place at 10am in the maximum security facility.We had all gone through a a rigorous security clearance process and were about to enter the prison gates to see the show when a prison spokesperson explained that the performance had been canceled. Representing the Warden's Office, Samuel Robinson told the assembled … [Read more...]

San Francisco Opera mounted its annual simulcast of an opera production on Friday evening at AT&T ballpark. This year's event, which broadcast the company's production of Tosca starring Adrianne Pieczonka, Carlo Ventre and Lado Ataneli not only to patrons at the War Memorial opera house, but also to tens of thousands of people sitting under the stars at the San Francisco Giants' home across town, hit a home run as squarely as last year's production of Lucia di Lammermoor, starring Nathalie Dessay.Here's a link to my description of the 2008 … [Read more...]

A trip to see California Shakespeare Theater's production of Romeo and Julietdirected by Jonathan Moscone a couple of evenings ago prompted a conversation between myself and a friend about the challenges involved in scenes requiring theatre companies to create the illusion of crowds convincingly.It's very hard to give theatre-goers a real feeling of a packed and throbbing space when there are only a handful of actors on stage. Different directors approach the problem in a multitude of ways some more successful than others.The Cal Shakes cast … [Read more...]

I spent last Saturday morning exploring parts of Salem, Massachusetts' wonderful Peabody Essex Museum. The museum stands out in the twee, witch-and-warlock-ified town of Salem for the cool, modern sophistication of its architecture, its gobsmacking collection of artifacts brought back from the Far East during the great age of seafaring by mariners and offbeat special exhibits. It also happens to be America's oldest continuously operating museum and boasts the only complete Qing Dynasty house located outside China.The museum was full of … [Read more...]

I've lost count of the number of sub-par touring productions I've seen of classic plays by British theatre companies in the US over which American audiences go ga-ga irrespective of their quality.With the possible exception of Tim Supple's Indian A Midsummer Night's Dream and Cheek By Jowl's Twelfth Night, I can't think of any British production I've seen in recent years on US stages that have actually been worth the price of admission.Yet the adulation with which shows like Peter Hall's Theatre Royal, Bath production of As You Like It and -- … [Read more...]

Just read ArtsJournal colleague Jon Perreault's extensive and erudite blog entry about the Francis Bacon retrospective at The Metropolitan Museum of Art.The opening paragraph sums up Jon's thoughts about the artist:When it comes to Francis Bacon (1909-1992), less is more. The current "Centenary Retrospective" at the Metropolitan, on view through Aug. 16, is ample proof. One picture at a time can be quite effective, but seeing any Bacon that once might have taken your fancy (perhaps out of some deep-seated perversity) along with others of the … [Read more...]

When actor and performer Michael Laurence asked the Samuel Beckett Estate for the rights to include a passage from Krapp's Last Tape, in his own dramatic riff based on the Irish bard's 1958 bittersweet meditation on memory, he was, unsurprisingly turned down. The Beckett Estate basically doesn't allow anyone to do anything with Beckett's work except observe it to the letter. So a New York theatre-maker's desire to take the basic premise of Krapp -- a drama about a man who meticulously documents his life on tape and then goes back many years … [Read more...]