At the gym the other day, the instructor of a fitness class put a pop song on the stereo to which we were about to do some kind of painful chest routine with the dumbells."This track is weird. I think it's European," said the instructor as she brandished her weights."How do you know?" Someone asked. "Well, I'm only guessing," said the instructor. "Because it's got five beats to the bar." … [Read more...]

In advance of a class I'm teaching over the next couple of weeks about engaging with and responding to live performance through writing for California Shakespeare Theater's Summer School program, I'm trying out Twitter as a conduit for channeling thoughts about a performance.It's not easy.For what it's worth, here's my take, in 140 characters including spaces or less, of the production which my students are going to be writing full reviews about this week (and posting them on the CalShakes' blog):"Stephen Turner and Diana LaMar's lovebirds … [Read more...]

A message on Facebook from Bay Area playwright Trevor Allen alerted me to some sad news last night: Local actor Luis Saguar passed away on July 8 at the age of 52 of a terminal illness. Saguar was a founding member of the inventive, San Francisco-based theatre company Campo Santo, the resident theatre company at Intersection for the Arts. Over more than 15 years with the collective, he helped to bring to life new plays by the likes of Denis Johnson, Jessica Hagedorn and Octavio Solis. Saguar was instrumental in connecting diverse audiences with … [Read more...]

While some state funding of the arts is, to my mind, an important way to keep a country's culture alive and kicking, one negative thing about state-sponsored theatre companies is that traditionally, they've been able to keep running productions of plays for way too long past their sell-by dates. Mothballed sets, going-through-the-motions actors and stale direction become hallmarks of shows that continue playing on the national dime. The fact is that people tend to become lazy when their bills are all being paid, or when the entity that's paying … [Read more...]

Karen McKevitt started an interesting debate recently on Theatre Bay Area's Chatterbox blog about whether trade publications should publish "negative" articles about artists and and their work. Here's the gist of Karen's commentary:"The July/August issue of American Theatre hit my mailbox today, and I found an intriguing juxtaposition in its Letters section. I skimmed the page and saw Tony Taccone's name as one of the letter-writers, and I knew right away he was going to take exception to the feature [San Jose Mercury News critic] Karen D'Souza … [Read more...]

Visiting the Asian Art Museum's Lords of the Samurai exhibition the other day in San Francisco turned out to be marked by an unlikely interest in the finer things of life such as high fashion.Running till September 20, the exhibition focuses on daimyo -- the provincial lords of the warrior class in feudal Japan. The exhibition features more than 160 works from the Hosokawa family collection (the Hosokawa clan was a powerful family of military nobles with a 600-year-old lineage) from the Eisei-Bunko Museum in Tokyo, and from Kumamoto Castle and … [Read more...]

On July 4, as I was standing in a friend's back garden in San Francisco stuffing my face with hotdogs and burgers and watching trails of sparkly lights fizzle their way across the sky, I heard about an unusual experiment in fake firework art.A group of creative Welsh sheep farmers who call themselves the "Baaa-Studs", practice a form of "extreme sheepherding". Earlier this year, the shepherds took to the hills armed with several flocks of unsuspecting sheep, a truck-load of LEDs and a camera and proceeded to create a gobsmacking light display … [Read more...]

Edward Albee's At Home At the Zoo consists of two one-act plays. The first, "Homelife", was written in 2004 when Albee was 76 years old. The second, "Zoo Story", was composed when the author was just 30. Though the two plays complement each other in some ways, I'm not sure they should be produced together. More to the point, I'm not sure if "Homelife" should be produced at all.San Francisco's American Conservatory Theater does as fine a job with staging both plays as is conceivable. (In fact, the two Albee plays I've experienced at ACT have … [Read more...]

Until a few days ago, I was one of those people who turned their nose up at the social networking site, Facebook. With three blogs and a website to maintain myself, I was very much against the idea of being tied to my computer even more by upping my "online presence". And why would anyone in their right mind want periodic updates on my life along the lines of "Chloe is staring at a blank page on her laptop. Only 2,000 words to write before teatime" or "Chloe had soup for lunch"?I broke down last week however, when I heard that a large number of … [Read more...]

Marty Ronish, the co-creator of the excellent classical music radio blog, Scanning the Dial, asked me to contribute some thoughts about what it's like to be a rookie radio host. I recently launched my first radio series, VoiceBox, through NPR-affiliate KALW 91.7 FM San Francisco.Reading over my responses to the questions Marty asked makes me feel like a Muppet. Did I really equate hosting a classical music radio show with good sex? The mind boggles.In any case, click on this link to read my thoughts.And on a completely unrelated subject, check … [Read more...]