As I was listening to Chris Rock take it to the nervous white liberals of Hollywood at this year’s Oscars, my mind drifted for a moment. I wondered if I could remember the last time an Asian actor was nominated for an Academy Award?
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Rachel Bonds’ Swimmers, premiering at the Marin Theatre Company under Mike Donahue’s alert direction, is the best of a limited type of play. We might say that it springs from the genre of tiny hurts and humane gestures—the sweet spot between Chekhov and a Hallmark card.
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Sensation overcomes sense in ACT's The Unfortunates and that's a problem for our theater.
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The terror of the Berkeley Rep's production is that it is as aesthetically meaningless as Macbeth's rampage is savage.
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There are so many images of salvation in art that we forget just how difficult they are to achieve—as if giving meaning to suffering could ever be easy.
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Put a child in a production and all of sudden there are dangers we have only half imagined.
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This war is all about the dressing room and the dressing room is the staging ground for all manner of atrocities.
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Since the ancient Greeks knew everything, they were aware of the curse of immense talent; of the hubris that often accompanies it and the dangers of how it can tempt you to fly too close to the sun.
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Storytelling is an essential aspect of human consciousness. Without it we’d find ourselves trapped in the infinite daze of animal survival. With each new story, we evolve, often imperfectly, but sometimes with great hope.
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Every end-of-year-theater list is a lie and a dream. A lie because they’re always wrong, and a dream because you forget almost everything. What we’re left with are the shards and fragments of lasting feelings -- the stuff that you can’t shake months, years or even a lifetime later.
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