Whale Songs
Central Works remakes Moby-Dick as a musical about radical conservationists in the 1970s.
Read my review in the Contra Costa Times and other Bay Area News Group papers. Read more
We’re Hir Because We’re Hir
It’s interesting that this past week Facebook finally allowed users to choose a gender identity other than simply male or female, because there’s been a little mini-trend of new plays in the Bay Area that directly confront the binary conception of gender identity. In October the Cutting Ball Theater premiered Basil Kreimendahl’s Sidewinders, an absurdist Western homage to Waiting for Godot fixated on androgynous anatomy and identity. Now Magic Theatre has premiered Taylor Mac’s pitch-black comedy Hir, featuring a transsexual character who, though born physically female and taking testosterone, identifies as a third gender entirely, using the pronouns “ze” and “hir.” It’s an encouraging trend, even if I don’t think much of the plays themselves.
What Are They Building in There
Aaron Loeb’s latest play in San Francisco Playhouse’s Sandbox Series of second-stage world premieres, Ideation is a suspenseful and hilarious business-world thriller. You can read my review on KQED Arts.
Social Class, Pursued by Abaire
David Lindsay-Abaire tackles the class divide in Good People at Marin Theatre Company, and if you get past the slow first act you’re in for a treat in the second. You can read my review in today’s Marin Independent Journal.
Antisocial Media
Facebook is the rabbit hole of the internet. If you’ve ever had an account (and most readers probably do), you have no doubt spent hours looking old acquaintances up, looking through their posted photos and little details of their lives, or just watched the feed scroll by of items posted by people you used to know in real life, or maybe even people you just felt like you ought to know.
