My guests on the second of two 10/01/26 “Theatre Thursday” segments on The Drive on 95.5 FM were Emily Hansen and Haley Ayyad from the Santa Rosa Junior College Theatre Arts production of Emilia. T…

My guests on the first of two 10/01/26 “Theatre Thursday” segments on The Drive on 95.5 FM were Drew Bolander and Laura Downing-Lee from the 6th Street Playhouse production of George Bernard Shaw&#…

by Cari Lynn Pace * Death of a Salesman, Arthur Miller’s powerful drama about a man spiraling into oblivion, is the latest triumph for Ross Valley Players at The Barn Theater above the Marin Art &a…

To many, Death of a Salesman is the classic American play. From its Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award-winning Broadway debut in 1949 through multiple revivals, theatre companies return again and again …

by Cari Lynn Pace * Spreckels Theatre Company opens their 2026/27 season with the North Bay premiere of the contemporary musical Dear Evan Hansen. Written by Steven Levenson, with music and lyrics …

by Cari Lynn Pace * Welcome to Putnam County, where a middle school spelling bee championship takes place with a ragtag collection of juveniles and two clearly biased judges. William Finn wrote the…

My guests on the 09/24/26 “Theatre Thursday” segment on The Drive on 95.5 FM were director Kim Bromley and lead actor Addison Brown from the Spreckels Theater Company’s production of De…

by Harry Duke * Musical theatre is an art form that rarely comes with a trigger warning. One wouldn’t think that a show as innocuous as The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee would need an aler…

by Barry Willis * Theatergoers have a few more days to see CenterREP’s bold reimagining of the Tennessee Williams classic The Glass Menagerie. Performed by an all-Equity cast on a shabby-elegant mu…

by Cari Lynn Pace * Cinnabar Theater opens its 54th season with the nostalgia-filled musical Bye Bye Birdie, now running in the Warren Auditorium at Sonoma State University through Oct. 4. The Broa…

My guests on the 09/17/26 “Theatre Thursday” segment on The Drive on 95.5 FM were cast members Noah Evans and Molly Larsen-Shine from the Cinnabar Theater production of Bye Bye Birdie. The cl…

by Harry Duke * The age-old art versus commerce debate takes center stage in The 222’s production of John Logan’s Red. Amy Kossow directs the factually-based but fictionally woven two-hander about …

by Cari Lynn Pace * Don’t hate me, but I have never been much of a fan of Stephen Sondheim musicals (except for West Side Story.) Sondheim’s Follies, now being presented by Sonoma Arts Live t…

by Barry Willis * Decades of Cuba’s revolution unfold in the microcosm of an elaborate kitchen in a stately old home in Eduardo Machado’s The Cook, at Berkeley Rep’s Peet’s Theatre through October …

by Cari Lynn Pace * Lucky Penny Productions really delivers on Freaky Friday, the Musical, a hilarious stage musical based on Mary Rodgers novel and the two Disney movies from 1976 and 2003. This h…

My guest on the 09/10/26 “Theatre Thursday” segment on The Drive on 95.5 FM was director Michael Tabib from the Curtain Call Theatre production of Ronald Harwood’s Quartet. The comedy a…

by Cari Lynn Pace * I was hesitant to invite my friend to join me for Marin Theatre’s Bay Area premiere of The White Chip, now running in Mill Valley through Sep. 20. This semi-autobiographical com…

by Barry Willis * The black-box Condiotti Theatre at Spreckels Performing Arts Center morphs into Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre, a 17th-century courtroom, a torture chamber, an execution site, and mo…

by Cari Lynn Pace * Mercury Theater has done a masterful job presenting the hopes and dreams of a hardworking, self-sustaining seamstress in Intimate Apparel. This award-winning story by Lynn Notta…

Beulah Vega guest hosted the 09/03/26 “Theatre Thursday” segment on The Drive on 95.5 FM and interviewed cast member Mercedes Murphy and director Leontyne Mbele-Mbong from the Mercury Theater produ…

by Barry Willis * Playwright Lynn Nottage is a national treasure. Her plays such as Sweat, Clyde’s, Crumbs from the Table of Joy, and The Secret Life of Bees are always popular, always entertaining…

by Harry Duke * We live in a time when the need to attract an ever-dwindling audience to live theatre often leads to a company programming the latest Hollywood-style spectacle or musical adaptation…

My guests on the 08/27/26 “Theatre Thursday” segment on The Drive on 95.5 FM were cast members Jeff Coté and Jereme Anglin from the Spreckels Theatre Company production of Equivocation. The politic…

by Cari Lynn Pace * Rodgers & Hammerstein’s South Pacific, now running at 6th Street Playhouse in Santa Rosa through Sep. 20, debuted 75 years ago. Even though it harkens back to a simple…

by Cari Lynn Pace * I took my English friend with me to Marin Shakespeare Company’s current production of Julius Caesar in the Forest Meadows Amphitheatre at Dominican University (now running throu…

by Cari Lynn Pace Who should control – and profit from – a cure for all diseases in the world? Does the creation of such potential benefit belong in the hands of a joint venture firm who developed …

My guests on the second of two 08/20/26 “Theatre Thursday” segments on The Drive on 95.5 FM were director/choreographer Malia Abayon and assistant director/choreographer HarriettePearl Fugitt from …

The cast of Transcendence Theatre Company’s Mamma Mia! Several Broadway stars escaped New York’s scorching heat to join a sensational cast of 24 and show up on the bucolic Sonoma stage under …

My guests on the first of two 08/20/26 “Theatre Thursday” segments on The Drive on 95.5 FM were Jeff Coté and playwright Joseph Rodota for a discussion about 6th Street Playhouse’s Live Readi…

Transcendence Theatre Company closes out their 2026 Broadway Under the Stars series with the popular ABBA jukebox musical Mamma Mia! It’s the show’s first Sonoma County appearance after a couple of…

by Barry Willis * San Francisco Playhouse has launched another incisive play from the talented Aaron Loeb, whose dark comedy Ideation went from a much-praised local phenomenon to a weeks-long run o…

by Harry Duke * With summer drawing to close, local theatre companies are prepping their houses for a robust 2026/27 season. Live theatre productions in Northern Sonoma County will include the usua…

My guests on the 08/14/26 “Theatre Thursday” segment on The Drive on 95.5 FM were Nathan Cummings and Daphne Cummings from the Cinnabar Theater for Young Audiences production of If You Give a Mouse…

by Harry Duke * With summer drawing to close, local theatre companies are prepping their houses for a robust 2026/27 season. Live theatre productions in Marin will include the usual mixture of the …

by Harry Duke * With summer drawing to close, North Bay theatre companies are prepping their houses for a robust 2026 – 2027 season. Live theatre productions in Sonoma and Napa counties will …

by Cari Lynn Pace * Ray of Light Theatre’s Urinetown: The Musical opened on July 31 in San Francisco and has been filling The Barbary Stage with wildly enthusiastic audiences ever since. This…

by Harry Duke * Fans of Paul Verhoeven’s 1990 sci-fi thriller Total Recall (starring Arnold Schwarzenegger) or, for the real cinephile, John Frankenheimer’s underrated 1966 sci-fi thril…

My guest on the 08/06/26 “Theatre Thursday” segment on The Drive on 95.5 FM was Lori Haley Fox from the upcoming Transcendence Theatre Company presentation of Mamma Mia! Lori appeared in the origin…

by Harry Duke * Sandy Rustin’s The Cottage, now running at the Cloverdale Performing Arts Center through August 16, has all the hallmarks of a classic Noël Coward comedy: an early 20th-century sett…

by Barry Willis * San Francisco’s Ray of Light Theatre is giving Urinetown, the Musical a lot of love. Both a spoof of its own musical genre and an exploration of persistent social and enviro…

My guests on the 07/30/26 “Theatre Thursday” segment on The Drive on 95.5 FM were Nicola Vann and Josh Wolonick from the Los Angeles-based Bardfly Theatre Co. for a chat about their production of S…

by Cari Lynn Pace * It’s no secret that many actors, singers, and performers are the “working poor” in our arts culture. Rarely can they sustain their livelihood if they don’t have a backup job, pa…

My guests on the 07/23/26 “Theatre Thursday” segment on The Drive on 95.5 FM were Lukas Raphael and Amanda Vitiello from the Jacobethan Theatre Workshop to talk about their season of “Shakesp…

by Cari Lynn Pace * Sonoma Arts Live’s season-closing Once Upon a Mattress holds plenty of delights. This Tony-award nominated 1959 musical with a book by Jay Thompson, Dean Fulller, and Mars…

by Cari Lynn Pace * Hairspray is the Tony Award-winning, Broadway-busting musical based on the same-titled 1988 movie by John Waters now running at San Francisco Playhouse. With a book by Mark O’Do…

My guest on the 07/09/26 “Theatre Thursday” segment on The Drive on 95.5 FM was Michael Gene Sullivan, writer of and performer in the San Francisco Mime Troupe’s latest theatrical poke in the…

My guests on the second of two 07/02/26 “Theatre Thursday” segments on The Drive on 95.5 FM were writer/director Maureen O’Neill and performer Gregory Bailey from the 6th Street Playhouse wor…

My guests on the first of two 07/02/26 “Theatre Thursday” segments on The Drive on 95.5 FM were Aaron LaVigne and Jenna Rubaii from the Transcendence Theatre Company presentation of Radio Recall: T…

Cites “the cumulative effect of years of cuts, instability, neglect, and diminishing support”. by Harry Duke Santa Rosa High School’s award-winning ArtQuest Theatre program has lo…