Squiddily Diddling

Squiddily Diddling

Playwright Steve Yockey has had plays produced locally by Magic Theatre, Climate Theater and Marin Theatre Company, but it’s good to see that he keeps coming back to Impact Theatre, the pizza-parlor basement company that introduced him to the Bay Area with 2007’s Cartoon. The Fisherman’s Wife, which opened last weekend, is Yockey’s fifth production and third world premiere with Impact.

Read more

High School Confrontational

High School Confrontational

THEATER REVIEW: BERKELEY

Show #109: The Chalk Boy, Impact Theatre, November 5.

Read more

I’ll Fly Away

I’ll Fly Away

Sleepwalkers Theatre’s entire current season is devoted to 28-year-old playwright J.C. Lee’s This World and After trilogy, which got off to an intriguing start with This World Is Good back in August. The current production, Into the Clear Blue Sky, doesn’t have any of the same characters, but it shares many themes and other elements with the first play. There’s talk of apocalyptic events, which in This World were speculation about the future and in Clear Blue Sky are a vaguely defined status quo—and a completely different doomsday scenario than the one outlined in the previous play in any case.  Both plays are very much about the relationship between a brother and a sister, one of whom leaves the other behind in a dramatic fashion, and in both cases there’s a brooding mom who communicates mostly in monologues through letters read aloud (this time it’s not her fault because she’s the one left behind).

Read more