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"content": "\u003cp>After lightening her complexion and bleaching her hair to replicate Hollywood’s sex symbols and after bronzing her face to play generic Hispanics, Rita Moreno, after more than 70 years in show business, is exposing her “life without makeup.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There aren’t many octogenarians who can command the room and charm the hell out of it with stories, songs, dance and four or five costume changes six nights a week.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Life Without Makeup\u003c/b>, which just had its world premiere at the Berkeley Repertory Theater, is the kind of play that very few stars could pull off. It is self-celebratory but not self-congratulatory.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Written by Tony Taccone, the theater’s artistic director, and based on many hours of interviews with the actress, the play is more than a tribute to a living legend. It’s an immigrant’s story, a story of Making It in America, and Making It in Hollywood — and also not quite making it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s also a mambo down memory lane with a playlist from a bygone era. And although there are gaps where there should be details and details where there should be gaps, Moreno is so personable, it’s a treat just to hear her gab and dish and to sit in awe of her energy and elegance.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the play, Moreno (nee Rosita Dolores Alverio) recalls the stormy sea voyage from Puerto Rico to New York with her mother when she was five. She describes the apartment they shared with three other families, the star-filled sky that she gazed upon from her cherished fire-escape. (Stars above the Bronx? Some of this is clearly embellished.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Moreno tells of sweatshops, dance classes and the fruit-decorated hat her mother made for her performances, at age 9, as a miniature version of Carmen Miranda. With her easy-going, playful discourse, Moreno recounts how she longed to trade up — from mini-Miranda to a Betty Grable or a Lana Turner. Eventually she was signed to MGM, after Louis B. Mayer envisioned her as “a Spanish Elizabeth Taylor.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Nonetheless, Moreno kept getting cast in film roles she considered degrading. She played a mute runaway Indian slave, a Polynesian in a sarong, an Arab in a turban… For these, she perfected what she calls the “Universal Ethnic Accent.” \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Throughout Moreno’s narrative of hopes raised and dashed, big breaks, bouts of depression and bad breakups (starring Marlon Brando), \u003cb>Life Without Makeup\u003c/b> is illustrated with archival photographs and film clips. We see Elizabeth “the human hourglass” Taylor, Marilyn Monroe, and other sirens of the Hollywood studio system. In film clips, we also see Moreno playing various bit parts as the studio’s “resident utility ethnic.” Even after her heralded success in \u003cb>West Side Story\u003c/b>, she was offered mostly roles as gangland girlfriends, mothers of gang members, or whorehouse madams.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Even though she has won all the major entertainment awards (she’s one of only ten performers with an EGOT — an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony) Moreno describes how her career trajectory sputtered forward in a Hollywood (and a country) permeated with racism and sexism. She blends humor with frustration, caustic resignation with genuine sadness. She also explains how her Puerto Rican heritage provided her with the survival skills necessary to push on.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She details the comically overwrought nature of the Puerto Rican character, exclaiming, cursing, worrying and overreacting in high-strung Spanish. She humorously mimics her mother’s seductions, schemes, plans and dreams for success in America.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003ccenter>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"//u.s.kqed.org/2011/09/12/moreno.jpg\" style=\"margin-bottom:10px;\" alt=\"\">\u003c/center>\n\u003cp>Moreno mingles the personal and confessional with show biz and slapstick. Bookended by hunky Latin dancers, (Ray Garcia, and Salvatore Vassallo), she sings and dances to several numbers including “Broadway Melody,” “Everything’s Coming Up Roses (a comic rendition as her character \u003ca href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xBr2mR91RbQ/\">Googie Gomez, her Tony winning role in \u003cb>The Ritz,\u003c/b>\u003c/a>) and \u003ca href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qy6wo2wpT2k/\">“America”\u003c/a>, the number that her audience is most eagerly awaiting.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On opening night, Moreno took a long gulp of water after one dance and used the occasion to coax even more applause out of her audience. At eighty, following a recent knee-replacement surgery that came on the heels of her husband’s death, Moreno is still working hard and is very comfortable in her own body.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“People say that when you get to a certain age you start to mellow. I have no idea what these people are talking about,” Moreno says at the close of the show. “Mellowing has never done much for me… You need to keep moving… I figure if I keep my spirit in shape, the bones will take care of themselves.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Life Without Makeup\u003c/b> runs through October 30, 2011 at the Roda Theatre in Berkeley. For \u003ca href=\"http://www.berkeleyrep.org/season/1112/5334.asp\">tickets and information\u003c/a> visit berkeleyrep.org.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>All photos: Kevin Berne.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the play, Moreno (nee Rosita Dolores Alverio) recalls the stormy sea voyage from Puerto Rico to New York with her mother when she was five. She describes the apartment they shared with three other families, the star-filled sky that she gazed upon from her cherished fire-escape. (Stars above the Bronx? Some of this is clearly embellished.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Moreno tells of sweatshops, dance classes and the fruit-decorated hat her mother made for her performances, at age 9, as a miniature version of Carmen Miranda. With her easy-going, playful discourse, Moreno recounts how she longed to trade up — from mini-Miranda to a Betty Grable or a Lana Turner. Eventually she was signed to MGM, after Louis B. Mayer envisioned her as “a Spanish Elizabeth Taylor.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Nonetheless, Moreno kept getting cast in film roles she considered degrading. She played a mute runaway Indian slave, a Polynesian in a sarong, an Arab in a turban… For these, she perfected what she calls the “Universal Ethnic Accent.” \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Throughout Moreno’s narrative of hopes raised and dashed, big breaks, bouts of depression and bad breakups (starring Marlon Brando), \u003cb>Life Without Makeup\u003c/b> is illustrated with archival photographs and film clips. We see Elizabeth “the human hourglass” Taylor, Marilyn Monroe, and other sirens of the Hollywood studio system. In film clips, we also see Moreno playing various bit parts as the studio’s “resident utility ethnic.” Even after her heralded success in \u003cb>West Side Story\u003c/b>, she was offered mostly roles as gangland girlfriends, mothers of gang members, or whorehouse madams.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Even though she has won all the major entertainment awards (she’s one of only ten performers with an EGOT — an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony) Moreno describes how her career trajectory sputtered forward in a Hollywood (and a country) permeated with racism and sexism. She blends humor with frustration, caustic resignation with genuine sadness. She also explains how her Puerto Rican heritage provided her with the survival skills necessary to push on.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She details the comically overwrought nature of the Puerto Rican character, exclaiming, cursing, worrying and overreacting in high-strung Spanish. She humorously mimics her mother’s seductions, schemes, plans and dreams for success in America.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003ccenter>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"//u.s.kqed.org/2011/09/12/moreno.jpg\" style=\"margin-bottom:10px;\" alt=\"\">\u003c/center>\n\u003cp>Moreno mingles the personal and confessional with show biz and slapstick. Bookended by hunky Latin dancers, (Ray Garcia, and Salvatore Vassallo), she sings and dances to several numbers including “Broadway Melody,” “Everything’s Coming Up Roses (a comic rendition as her character \u003ca href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xBr2mR91RbQ/\">Googie Gomez, her Tony winning role in \u003cb>The Ritz,\u003c/b>\u003c/a>) and \u003ca href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qy6wo2wpT2k/\">“America”\u003c/a>, the number that her audience is most eagerly awaiting.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On opening night, Moreno took a long gulp of water after one dance and used the occasion to coax even more applause out of her audience. At eighty, following a recent knee-replacement surgery that came on the heels of her husband’s death, Moreno is still working hard and is very comfortable in her own body.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“People say that when you get to a certain age you start to mellow. I have no idea what these people are talking about,” Moreno says at the close of the show. “Mellowing has never done much for me… You need to keep moving… I figure if I keep my spirit in shape, the bones will take care of themselves.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Life Without Makeup\u003c/b> runs through October 30, 2011 at the Roda Theatre in Berkeley. For \u003ca href=\"http://www.berkeleyrep.org/season/1112/5334.asp\">tickets and information\u003c/a> visit berkeleyrep.org.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>All photos: Kevin Berne.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "Oh, Naughty Muppets. What Would Jim Henson Think of You Now?",
"headTitle": "Oh, Naughty Muppets. What Would Jim Henson Think of You Now? | KQED",
"content": "\u003cp>Three things that may make many a theater lover run for the hills:\u003cbr> 1. Puppeteers\u003cbr>2. Improv\u003cbr>3. Audience Participation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If you feel otherwise, you might want to Run! Not Walk! to \u003ca href=\"http://www.stuffedandunstrung.com/\">\u003cb>Stuffed and Unstrung.\u003c/b>\u003c/a> If you like puppets, but are lukewarm about the other two items, you might want to dawdle over there.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I am of the latter camp. I am particularly fond of puppets, both in children’s entertainment and as integrated — in a non-gratuitous manner — into theater for adults. (See: my reviews of \u003ca href=\"http://www.kqed.org/arts/performance/article.jsp?essid=44215/\">\u003cb>Avenue Q\u003c/b>\u003c/a> and \u003ca href=\"http://www.kqed.org/arts/performance/article.jsp?essid=34010/\">\u003cb>Compulsion\u003c/b>\u003c/a>.) But I find that improv is often a party trick and audience participation is fun for the participant. Ticket holders should stay seated and the talent should write their own material. \u003cb>Stuffed and Unstrung\u003c/b>, an adult puppet show from \u003ca href=\"http://henson.com/alternative.php/\">Henson Alternative\u003c/a>, is not built upon these principles.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It would seem to be born of the same zeitgeist that brought us \u003cb>Avenue Q\u003c/b>; our desire to titter at the incongruity of naughty and innocent. Perhaps it’s particularly satisfying to see our childhood icons brought down to our flawed (or dirty-minded) level. The corruption of innocence and the tweaking of sacred cows (or frogs, monsters, pigs..) is taboo, hence irresistible. Sexed up Muppets and Barbie dolls appeal to ironic hipsters who have grown up and now know better than to believe in make believe.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And realists/nihilists love to shove sad realities down Pollyanna throats. In the Gen- X film \u003cb>Reality Bites\u003c/b>, Winona Ryder asks “Why can’t things just work out okay, like at the end of a \u003cb>Brady Bunch\u003c/b> episode?” And realist/nihilist Ethan Hawke snarks back: “Because Mr. Brady died of AIDS.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Or, to a less tragic effect, \u003cb>Avenue Q\u003c/b>‘s orange-skinned muppet sings “What Do You Do with a B.A. in English?” Ah, little puppet of my childhood! We sigh. You too have problems.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Plus, cheery outlooks are annoying. I’m tempted to go onto You Tube right now to provide some examples of NC-17-rated parodies of G-rated iconography, but I know that will take all day.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And yes, who doesn’t like to imagine Barbie and Ken getting it on. (“Nice As–cott,” Barbie tells Ken in \u003cb>Toy Story 3\u003c/b>, Pixar’s wink-wink to knowing grown-ups.) Or Ken and G.I. Joe? Or Peppermint Patty and Marci. Which brings us to Bert and Ernie.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Rumors of Bert and Ernie’s longtime romance and domestic partnership have prevailed for so long in popular culture (mostly as irreverent jokes) that some gay rights proponents think it’s only fair for them to marry. You may have heard of \u003ca href=\"http://www.change.org/petitions/let-bert-ernie-get-married-on-sesame-street\">the petition\u003c/a>. \u003ca href=\"http://www.sesameworkshop.org/\">Sesame Workshop\u003c/a> issued a statement saying that the pair “remain puppets, and do not have a sexual orientation.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Avenue Q\u003c/b> does attempt to redress the dearth of gay, felt, hand puppets in society, both with raunch and sincerity. While it depicts porn-loving monsters, sluts and gays, \u003cb>Stuffed and Unstrung\u003c/b>, is not a satire of The Children’s Television workshop but something of an homage to puppet visionary Jim Henson. Created by Henson’s son, Brian, the show features The Jim Henson Company’s wonderful puppet characters (80 of them) and the company’s talented puppeteers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a99I7Vsh6dI&w=480&h=390]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Yes, the show invites call outs from audience members who suggest adult situations for the puppeteers to improvise. Yes, naughtiness happens. And yes most of it is more puerile than witty. But, at its best, \u003cb>Stuffed\u003c/b> is interesting because it reveals the strings of puppeteering or, the hand up the bottom (as host Patrick Bristow says) of a muppet in action. Henson, the puppeteers and a few computer geeks take pains to show us how human movements and technical wizardry became fanciful puppet play. We watch the performers carefully maneuvering the puppets in front of cameras and green screens and we can see the large screens where the magic happens.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The show incorporates archival footage and live action “recreations” of some of the simple puppet films that Jim Henson made in his 20s in the 1950s and that Frank Oz made in his 20s in the 60s. These scenes are lovely and very simple in their gentle humor and quiet choreography. While Brian Henson is paying tribute to his father’s craft, \u003cb>Stuffed\u003c/b> also shows that dirty words, digital enhancements and game show antics don’t really improve upon this craft.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Meanwhile, I am eagerly awaiting the big screen reboot of \u003ca href=\"http://disney.go.com/muppets/\">\u003cb>The Muppets\u003c/b> \u003c/a>, the first new Muppet feature in 12 years! It stars my old friends, Kermit and Miss Piggy, and while I can witness their obvious chemistry, I really would rather not hear about what they do behind closed doors.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Stuffed and Unstrung\u003c/b> runs through August 27, 2011 at the Curran Theatre, 445 Geary Street in San Francisco. For \u003ca href=\"http://www.shnsf.com/\">tickets and information\u003c/a> visit shnsf.com.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Three things that may make many a theater lover run for the hills:\u003cbr> 1. Puppeteers\u003cbr>2. Improv\u003cbr>3. Audience Participation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If you feel otherwise, you might want to Run! Not Walk! to \u003ca href=\"http://www.stuffedandunstrung.com/\">\u003cb>Stuffed and Unstrung.\u003c/b>\u003c/a> If you like puppets, but are lukewarm about the other two items, you might want to dawdle over there.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I am of the latter camp. I am particularly fond of puppets, both in children’s entertainment and as integrated — in a non-gratuitous manner — into theater for adults. (See: my reviews of \u003ca href=\"http://www.kqed.org/arts/performance/article.jsp?essid=44215/\">\u003cb>Avenue Q\u003c/b>\u003c/a> and \u003ca href=\"http://www.kqed.org/arts/performance/article.jsp?essid=34010/\">\u003cb>Compulsion\u003c/b>\u003c/a>.) But I find that improv is often a party trick and audience participation is fun for the participant. Ticket holders should stay seated and the talent should write their own material. \u003cb>Stuffed and Unstrung\u003c/b>, an adult puppet show from \u003ca href=\"http://henson.com/alternative.php/\">Henson Alternative\u003c/a>, is not built upon these principles.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It would seem to be born of the same zeitgeist that brought us \u003cb>Avenue Q\u003c/b>; our desire to titter at the incongruity of naughty and innocent. Perhaps it’s particularly satisfying to see our childhood icons brought down to our flawed (or dirty-minded) level. The corruption of innocence and the tweaking of sacred cows (or frogs, monsters, pigs..) is taboo, hence irresistible. Sexed up Muppets and Barbie dolls appeal to ironic hipsters who have grown up and now know better than to believe in make believe.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And realists/nihilists love to shove sad realities down Pollyanna throats. In the Gen- X film \u003cb>Reality Bites\u003c/b>, Winona Ryder asks “Why can’t things just work out okay, like at the end of a \u003cb>Brady Bunch\u003c/b> episode?” And realist/nihilist Ethan Hawke snarks back: “Because Mr. Brady died of AIDS.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Or, to a less tragic effect, \u003cb>Avenue Q\u003c/b>‘s orange-skinned muppet sings “What Do You Do with a B.A. in English?” Ah, little puppet of my childhood! We sigh. You too have problems.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Plus, cheery outlooks are annoying. I’m tempted to go onto You Tube right now to provide some examples of NC-17-rated parodies of G-rated iconography, but I know that will take all day.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And yes, who doesn’t like to imagine Barbie and Ken getting it on. (“Nice As–cott,” Barbie tells Ken in \u003cb>Toy Story 3\u003c/b>, Pixar’s wink-wink to knowing grown-ups.) Or Ken and G.I. Joe? Or Peppermint Patty and Marci. Which brings us to Bert and Ernie.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Rumors of Bert and Ernie’s longtime romance and domestic partnership have prevailed for so long in popular culture (mostly as irreverent jokes) that some gay rights proponents think it’s only fair for them to marry. You may have heard of \u003ca href=\"http://www.change.org/petitions/let-bert-ernie-get-married-on-sesame-street\">the petition\u003c/a>. \u003ca href=\"http://www.sesameworkshop.org/\">Sesame Workshop\u003c/a> issued a statement saying that the pair “remain puppets, and do not have a sexual orientation.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Avenue Q\u003c/b> does attempt to redress the dearth of gay, felt, hand puppets in society, both with raunch and sincerity. While it depicts porn-loving monsters, sluts and gays, \u003cb>Stuffed and Unstrung\u003c/b>, is not a satire of The Children’s Television workshop but something of an homage to puppet visionary Jim Henson. Created by Henson’s son, Brian, the show features The Jim Henson Company’s wonderful puppet characters (80 of them) and the company’s talented puppeteers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/a99I7Vsh6dI'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/a99I7Vsh6dI'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Yes, the show invites call outs from audience members who suggest adult situations for the puppeteers to improvise. Yes, naughtiness happens. And yes most of it is more puerile than witty. But, at its best, \u003cb>Stuffed\u003c/b> is interesting because it reveals the strings of puppeteering or, the hand up the bottom (as host Patrick Bristow says) of a muppet in action. Henson, the puppeteers and a few computer geeks take pains to show us how human movements and technical wizardry became fanciful puppet play. We watch the performers carefully maneuvering the puppets in front of cameras and green screens and we can see the large screens where the magic happens.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The show incorporates archival footage and live action “recreations” of some of the simple puppet films that Jim Henson made in his 20s in the 1950s and that Frank Oz made in his 20s in the 60s. These scenes are lovely and very simple in their gentle humor and quiet choreography. While Brian Henson is paying tribute to his father’s craft, \u003cb>Stuffed\u003c/b> also shows that dirty words, digital enhancements and game show antics don’t really improve upon this craft.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Meanwhile, I am eagerly awaiting the big screen reboot of \u003ca href=\"http://disney.go.com/muppets/\">\u003cb>The Muppets\u003c/b> \u003c/a>, the first new Muppet feature in 12 years! It stars my old friends, Kermit and Miss Piggy, and while I can witness their obvious chemistry, I really would rather not hear about what they do behind closed doors.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Stuffed and Unstrung\u003c/b> runs through August 27, 2011 at the Curran Theatre, 445 Geary Street in San Francisco. For \u003ca href=\"http://www.shnsf.com/\">tickets and information\u003c/a> visit shnsf.com.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cp>“Let me down easy,” is a phrase that comforted Joel Siegel, the ABC film critic who died of cancer in 2007. “I see a hand, carrying me to the ground, gently,” he told Anna Deavere Smith before his death.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In her new show, \u003cb>Let Me Down Easy\u003c/b>, Smith once again employs her craft as a human tape-recorder to invite us to meditate on the themes of death and dying, illness, resilience and care giving.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the early nineties, Anna Devere Smith was credited with creating a new form of theater. It is theater-as-journalism or anthropologic performance. But it is language that Smith is really after. Smith’s performances consist of the verbatim reiteration of transcribed interviews. She captures cadence, dialect, the music of language as she embodies the characters she recreates.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In 1992, Smith staged \u003cb>Fires in the Mirror: Crown Heights, Brooklyn, and Other Identities\u003c/b>. The following year, she staged \u003cb>Twilight: Los Angeles\u003c/b>. Both plays concerned specific clashes of races that had recently erupted into urban violence.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>With uncannily deft dialects, Smith voiced the views of blacks, whites, Jews, Latinos and Asians. The presence of one person communicating such a cacophony conveys, on a purely impressionistic level, our shared humanity. She emerged as a pioneering cultural historian cum performance artist.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" style=\"margin-bottom: 10px;\" alt=\"\" src=\"http://a.s.kqed.net/img/arts/blog/letmedown-1.jpg\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In her newest performance piece, \u003cb>Let Me Down Easy\u003c/b>, Smith does not build her play around a specific event or place; at its core it is a philosophic piece that transcends place and culture. Smith travels from Washington to New Haven to Texas to South Africa to New Orleans to talk to people about the human body, its unyielding physical capacity and its ultimate mortality.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She interviews doctors, patients, academics, supermodels, theologians, elite athletes and politicians and finds — not surprisingly — that there are many different philosophies and approaches to dying, terminal illness and patient care. To the extent that the show is political, there is pretty much a consensus that quality health care is something available to the rich and denied to the poor.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" style=\"margin-bottom: 10px;\" alt=\"\" src=\"http://a.s.kqed.net/img/arts/blog/letmedown-2.jpg\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And perhaps the most powerful segment of the performance speaks — eloquently — to this subject. Smith channels Kiersta Kurtz-Burke, a physician who worked at Charity Hospital during the six 100 degree days when the New Orleans hospital was left with no electricity, food or water after Katrina. Kurtz-Burke describes her initial certainty that the government would help, and her growing realization that the patients, and the black nurses she worked with, were correct in their understanding that, in fact, they had been abandoned. The doctor’s words are heartbreaking as she comes to grasp the experience of the poor, underserved population. Help is not coming and the system is not there — and has never been there — to assist this community.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There are other amazing moments that reveal courage in the face of exceedingly painful intimacy with tragic death. Smith’s portrayal of Trudy Howell, who cares for AIDS orphans in South Africa is equally wrenching. Howell’s impossible task is to bring comfort and a sort of preparation to parentless children who will die very soon.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For those who have seen Smith’s previous work, \u003cb>Let Me Down Easy\u003c/b> is not the stunning revelation of Smith’s brilliant technique that it was the first time around. The first or second or third time you see Smith work her magic it really feels like the channeling of persons both renowned and voiceless; the power of the performance will take your breath away. Here, the technical skill is still impressive, if somewhat less awe inspiring.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Whether or not Smith’s magic is novel and whether these characters are as compelling as those in other shows (some are indeed not), Smith’s most significant accomplishment is in revealing the impact of the spontaneously spoken word. As she lets her subjects talk and think and hesitate and talk some more, what emerges is often quite magnificent. And we are struck with the spontaneously spoken word’s ability to communicate surprising truths.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Let Me Down Easy\u003c/b> runs through July 10, 2011 at Berkeley Repertory Theater. For \u003ca href=\"http://www.berkeleyrep.org/season/1011/4556.asp\">tickets and information\u003c/a> visit berkeleyrep.org.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>All photos: Joan Marcus.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>“Let me down easy,” is a phrase that comforted Joel Siegel, the ABC film critic who died of cancer in 2007. “I see a hand, carrying me to the ground, gently,” he told Anna Deavere Smith before his death.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In her new show, \u003cb>Let Me Down Easy\u003c/b>, Smith once again employs her craft as a human tape-recorder to invite us to meditate on the themes of death and dying, illness, resilience and care giving.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the early nineties, Anna Devere Smith was credited with creating a new form of theater. It is theater-as-journalism or anthropologic performance. But it is language that Smith is really after. Smith’s performances consist of the verbatim reiteration of transcribed interviews. She captures cadence, dialect, the music of language as she embodies the characters she recreates.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In 1992, Smith staged \u003cb>Fires in the Mirror: Crown Heights, Brooklyn, and Other Identities\u003c/b>. The following year, she staged \u003cb>Twilight: Los Angeles\u003c/b>. Both plays concerned specific clashes of races that had recently erupted into urban violence.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>With uncannily deft dialects, Smith voiced the views of blacks, whites, Jews, Latinos and Asians. The presence of one person communicating such a cacophony conveys, on a purely impressionistic level, our shared humanity. She emerged as a pioneering cultural historian cum performance artist.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" style=\"margin-bottom: 10px;\" alt=\"\" src=\"http://a.s.kqed.net/img/arts/blog/letmedown-1.jpg\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In her newest performance piece, \u003cb>Let Me Down Easy\u003c/b>, Smith does not build her play around a specific event or place; at its core it is a philosophic piece that transcends place and culture. Smith travels from Washington to New Haven to Texas to South Africa to New Orleans to talk to people about the human body, its unyielding physical capacity and its ultimate mortality.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She interviews doctors, patients, academics, supermodels, theologians, elite athletes and politicians and finds — not surprisingly — that there are many different philosophies and approaches to dying, terminal illness and patient care. To the extent that the show is political, there is pretty much a consensus that quality health care is something available to the rich and denied to the poor.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" style=\"margin-bottom: 10px;\" alt=\"\" src=\"http://a.s.kqed.net/img/arts/blog/letmedown-2.jpg\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And perhaps the most powerful segment of the performance speaks — eloquently — to this subject. Smith channels Kiersta Kurtz-Burke, a physician who worked at Charity Hospital during the six 100 degree days when the New Orleans hospital was left with no electricity, food or water after Katrina. Kurtz-Burke describes her initial certainty that the government would help, and her growing realization that the patients, and the black nurses she worked with, were correct in their understanding that, in fact, they had been abandoned. The doctor’s words are heartbreaking as she comes to grasp the experience of the poor, underserved population. Help is not coming and the system is not there — and has never been there — to assist this community.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There are other amazing moments that reveal courage in the face of exceedingly painful intimacy with tragic death. Smith’s portrayal of Trudy Howell, who cares for AIDS orphans in South Africa is equally wrenching. Howell’s impossible task is to bring comfort and a sort of preparation to parentless children who will die very soon.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For those who have seen Smith’s previous work, \u003cb>Let Me Down Easy\u003c/b> is not the stunning revelation of Smith’s brilliant technique that it was the first time around. The first or second or third time you see Smith work her magic it really feels like the channeling of persons both renowned and voiceless; the power of the performance will take your breath away. Here, the technical skill is still impressive, if somewhat less awe inspiring.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Whether or not Smith’s magic is novel and whether these characters are as compelling as those in other shows (some are indeed not), Smith’s most significant accomplishment is in revealing the impact of the spontaneously spoken word. As she lets her subjects talk and think and hesitate and talk some more, what emerges is often quite magnificent. And we are struck with the spontaneously spoken word’s ability to communicate surprising truths.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Let Me Down Easy\u003c/b> runs through July 10, 2011 at Berkeley Repertory Theater. For \u003ca href=\"http://www.berkeleyrep.org/season/1011/4556.asp\">tickets and information\u003c/a> visit berkeleyrep.org.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>All photos: Joan Marcus.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "They Can't Go On. But They Go On And On.",
"headTitle": "They Can’t Go On. But They Go On And On. | KQED",
"content": "\u003cp>“I can’t go on, I’ll go on,” wrote Samuel Beckett in a line that would come to crystallize much of his work. Beckett’s epigrammatic oxymoron describes the experience of many of Anton Chekhov’s characters, some 75 years before that. Long before Vladimir and Estragon waited and waited for Godot, Olga, Masha and Irina waited and dreamed and planned and never actually got to Moscow.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Chekhovian inertia and ultimately inescapable ennui, is in full bloom in Berkeley Rep’s \u003cb>The Three Sisters\u003c/b>. This is the West coast premiere of Sarah Ruhl’s new version of the 1901 play. In the Berkeley-to-Broadway \u003cb>In the Next Room (or the vibrator play)\u003c/b>, Ruhl showed us that the desperation in the constricted lives of Victorian women could be comedic gold. But her take on Chekhov is much more sober.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Chekhov himself described \u003cb>Three Sisters\u003c/b> as a “comedy” and indeed the self-pitying iterations and reiterations and resolutions (followed by stasis) is an absurd state of affairs. Chekhov went on to deem this play “vaudeville” and while I have never seen it performed that way, it has been demonstrated that Chekhov was a pioneer of black comedy. But what is one person’s tragi-comedy is director Les Waters’s idea of strum und drang.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://a.s.kqed.net/img/arts/blog/three-sisters-1.jpg\" style=\"margin-bottom: 10px\">\u003cbr>Emily Kitchens, Wendy Rich Stetson and Heather Wood\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In Waters’s capable production of Ruhl’s straight-forward script, we pity these daughters of the evaporating aristocracy. They see themselves as in exile, helpless to do anything but long for their past. In this production, we take them for their word when they tell us that they are trapped by their circumstances. If they have said the same thing 20 times by ACT II, if they imagine escape but never pursue it, woe is them. But their treadmill angst could also be perceived as pathetic and comic.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While tedium is critical to the characters’ condition, some of it wafts audience-ward too. The interminable contemplation of life and death and the meaning of it all grows wearisome over the play’s three hours.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://a.s.kqed.net/img/arts/blog/three-sisters-3.jpg\" style=\"margin-bottom: 10px\">\u003cbr>James Carpenter, Thomas Jay Ryan, Heather Wood and Bruce McKenzie \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Each time the women bemoan their lives it’s as if they have never said it before. They wallow in their misery with little self-awareness. Wan and winsome, Heather Wood plays the youngest sister, Irina whose youth is fading along with her vitality and hope; Wendy Rich Stetson plays the stoic Olga, the eldest sister, who eventually takes the headmistress position she swore she would never accept. Dressed in black and cloaked in gloom, Natalia Payne plays Masha, the married sister who can barely swallow down her bitterness. Throughout it all, the three comfort each other that next year they will move to Moscow.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Perhaps the nuanced performances of sad heroines who are tragic, pitiable \u003ci>and\u003c/i> funnily so, isn’t successful here. But there is comedy in more conventional places. The characters who have married into the family are blathering, clueless clowns who annoy the sisters and provide great comic relief.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://a.s.kqed.net/img/arts/blog/three-sisters-2.jpg\" style=\"margin-bottom: 10px\">\u003cbr>Natalia Payne and Keith Reddin\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Keith Reddin is perfectly imbecilic and unctuous as Masha’s husband Kulygin. He is a self-important school-teacher with the irritating (amusing) affectation of declining Latin nouns incessantly and grading people’s behavior. Reddin’s character is a classic cuckold. He’s a buffoon who is oblivious to Masha’s contempt — or her affair with Colonel Vershinin (Bruce McKenzie.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Also very entertaining is the utterly obnoxious Natasha, who becomes the wife of Andrei, (Alex Moggridge as the chronically unhappy brother of the Prozorova sisters.) With a veneer of sweetness, she confuses haughtiness with gentility. A layer of mean hides her desperate insecurity and Emily Kitchens brings a necessary energy to her role as the comic villainess.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>These two are buffoons who are puffed up imitations of nobility. But the family’s relationship with their social class is more complicated. Written at the brink of the Russian Revolution, Chekhov’s sisters wax nostalgic for the halcyon days of Russian aristocracy, culture and refinement. Yet they are equally idealistic about a bold, bright future for their generation. Irina, in particular, believes she admires and craves the life of laborers and those who work for a living. She complains about being “a young woman who wakes at twelve o’clock, then has coffee in bed, then spends two hours dressing. . . Oh, how awful that is!” After several jobs as a menial laborer, she’s soon complaining again.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As is their wont.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>“I can’t go on, I’ll go on,” wrote Samuel Beckett in a line that would come to crystallize much of his work. Beckett’s epigrammatic oxymoron describes the experience of many of Anton Chekhov’s characters, some 75 years before that. Long before Vladimir and Estragon waited and waited for Godot, Olga, Masha and Irina waited and dreamed and planned and never actually got to Moscow.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Chekhovian inertia and ultimately inescapable ennui, is in full bloom in Berkeley Rep’s \u003cb>The Three Sisters\u003c/b>. This is the West coast premiere of Sarah Ruhl’s new version of the 1901 play. In the Berkeley-to-Broadway \u003cb>In the Next Room (or the vibrator play)\u003c/b>, Ruhl showed us that the desperation in the constricted lives of Victorian women could be comedic gold. But her take on Chekhov is much more sober.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Chekhov himself described \u003cb>Three Sisters\u003c/b> as a “comedy” and indeed the self-pitying iterations and reiterations and resolutions (followed by stasis) is an absurd state of affairs. Chekhov went on to deem this play “vaudeville” and while I have never seen it performed that way, it has been demonstrated that Chekhov was a pioneer of black comedy. But what is one person’s tragi-comedy is director Les Waters’s idea of strum und drang.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://a.s.kqed.net/img/arts/blog/three-sisters-1.jpg\" style=\"margin-bottom: 10px\">\u003cbr>Emily Kitchens, Wendy Rich Stetson and Heather Wood\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In Waters’s capable production of Ruhl’s straight-forward script, we pity these daughters of the evaporating aristocracy. They see themselves as in exile, helpless to do anything but long for their past. In this production, we take them for their word when they tell us that they are trapped by their circumstances. If they have said the same thing 20 times by ACT II, if they imagine escape but never pursue it, woe is them. But their treadmill angst could also be perceived as pathetic and comic.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While tedium is critical to the characters’ condition, some of it wafts audience-ward too. The interminable contemplation of life and death and the meaning of it all grows wearisome over the play’s three hours.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://a.s.kqed.net/img/arts/blog/three-sisters-3.jpg\" style=\"margin-bottom: 10px\">\u003cbr>James Carpenter, Thomas Jay Ryan, Heather Wood and Bruce McKenzie \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Each time the women bemoan their lives it’s as if they have never said it before. They wallow in their misery with little self-awareness. Wan and winsome, Heather Wood plays the youngest sister, Irina whose youth is fading along with her vitality and hope; Wendy Rich Stetson plays the stoic Olga, the eldest sister, who eventually takes the headmistress position she swore she would never accept. Dressed in black and cloaked in gloom, Natalia Payne plays Masha, the married sister who can barely swallow down her bitterness. Throughout it all, the three comfort each other that next year they will move to Moscow.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Perhaps the nuanced performances of sad heroines who are tragic, pitiable \u003ci>and\u003c/i> funnily so, isn’t successful here. But there is comedy in more conventional places. The characters who have married into the family are blathering, clueless clowns who annoy the sisters and provide great comic relief.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://a.s.kqed.net/img/arts/blog/three-sisters-2.jpg\" style=\"margin-bottom: 10px\">\u003cbr>Natalia Payne and Keith Reddin\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Keith Reddin is perfectly imbecilic and unctuous as Masha’s husband Kulygin. He is a self-important school-teacher with the irritating (amusing) affectation of declining Latin nouns incessantly and grading people’s behavior. Reddin’s character is a classic cuckold. He’s a buffoon who is oblivious to Masha’s contempt — or her affair with Colonel Vershinin (Bruce McKenzie.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Also very entertaining is the utterly obnoxious Natasha, who becomes the wife of Andrei, (Alex Moggridge as the chronically unhappy brother of the Prozorova sisters.) With a veneer of sweetness, she confuses haughtiness with gentility. A layer of mean hides her desperate insecurity and Emily Kitchens brings a necessary energy to her role as the comic villainess.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>These two are buffoons who are puffed up imitations of nobility. But the family’s relationship with their social class is more complicated. Written at the brink of the Russian Revolution, Chekhov’s sisters wax nostalgic for the halcyon days of Russian aristocracy, culture and refinement. Yet they are equally idealistic about a bold, bright future for their generation. Irina, in particular, believes she admires and craves the life of laborers and those who work for a living. She complains about being “a young woman who wakes at twelve o’clock, then has coffee in bed, then spends two hours dressing. . . Oh, how awful that is!” After several jobs as a menial laborer, she’s soon complaining again.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As is their wont.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cp>The people on line down the block on Valencia Street on Friday were seniors, older adults and mostly non-hipster types. Certainly not the usual Mission crowd. These were ticket holders lining up at The Marsh, to see Geoff Hoyle’s \u003ca href=\"http://www.themarsh.org/geoff_Hoyle.html\">\u003cb>Geezer\u003c/b>\u003c/a>, a one man show, ostensibly about geezer-hood.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But Geoff Hoyle, a master clown, mime and physical comedian, was there less to ruminate about aging than to showcase his talent and take us on a walk down his memory lane.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>His skill is impressive. His walk down memory lane — less so.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Hoyle takes us back to his childhood in a working class family in Northern England, to his youth when his less-than-erudite dad saw his son’s theatrical spark and gave him a volume of Shakespeare; he takes us back to his naughty (theatrical) disruptions in Latin class; to his first audition… to a host of other moments — sprinkled with pantomime and sentimentality — that launched Hoyle’s career.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Hoyle trained as a mime in France, with Marcel Marceau’s teacher and went on to \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pickle_Family_Circus\">Pickle Family Circus\u003c/a> renown and became part of the new vaudeville, a genre popularized by Bill Irwin. He made a terrific red-billed Hornbill (Zazu) in the Broadway production of \u003cb>The Lion King\u003c/b>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>His comic turns in Berkeley Rep productions and ACT plays (often as Commedia dell’Arte manservents and wise fools) often provided memorable moments of comedy. But his ventures into the solo form have fared less well. \u003cb>A Feast of Fool\u003c/b> was a fragmentary medley of Hoyle’s funniest feats. \u003cb>The First Hundred Years\u003c/b> was full of prop-heavy sight-gags and mediocre mirth-making.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Hoyle’s routines are mostly old school and often old hat. He is technically marvelous, but his original material is wanting.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Hoyle begins with a geezer-pleaser — a terrific and terrifically grody pantomime of all the new and long hairs growing in all the wrong places — he pulls foot-long hairs from his ears and nose and tells us about other icky bodily changes that are assaulting his aging body.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Interspersed with vaudeville and British Music Hall antics are scenes and interchanges that tell Hoyle’s story. There are moments of impressive clowning — in one striking feat, Hoyle brings an overcoat to life, giving it a will of its own. In between shtick, he provides reenactments of pivotal conversations in his life, embodying teachers, parents, and employers. At his father’s deathbed, Hoyle imparts that he has made good and is now playing the West End. It’s a slushy “Papa, Can You Hear Me?” moment.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Charlie Chaplin could bring wistfulness to his clowning. But even he never attempted an autobiographical one-man show — or talking. And some of the most dazzling moments in Hoyle’s shows are the wordless ones. Still, after 40 years of clowning around, even a mime is wont to wax nostalgic.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Geezer\u003c/b> runs through May 29, 2011 at The Marsh in San Francisco. For \u003ca href=\"http://www.themarsh.org/geoff_Hoyle.html\">tickets and information\u003c/a> visit themarsh.org or call 800-838-3006.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>The people on line down the block on Valencia Street on Friday were seniors, older adults and mostly non-hipster types. Certainly not the usual Mission crowd. These were ticket holders lining up at The Marsh, to see Geoff Hoyle’s \u003ca href=\"http://www.themarsh.org/geoff_Hoyle.html\">\u003cb>Geezer\u003c/b>\u003c/a>, a one man show, ostensibly about geezer-hood.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But Geoff Hoyle, a master clown, mime and physical comedian, was there less to ruminate about aging than to showcase his talent and take us on a walk down his memory lane.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>His skill is impressive. His walk down memory lane — less so.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Hoyle takes us back to his childhood in a working class family in Northern England, to his youth when his less-than-erudite dad saw his son’s theatrical spark and gave him a volume of Shakespeare; he takes us back to his naughty (theatrical) disruptions in Latin class; to his first audition… to a host of other moments — sprinkled with pantomime and sentimentality — that launched Hoyle’s career.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Hoyle trained as a mime in France, with Marcel Marceau’s teacher and went on to \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pickle_Family_Circus\">Pickle Family Circus\u003c/a> renown and became part of the new vaudeville, a genre popularized by Bill Irwin. He made a terrific red-billed Hornbill (Zazu) in the Broadway production of \u003cb>The Lion King\u003c/b>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>His comic turns in Berkeley Rep productions and ACT plays (often as Commedia dell’Arte manservents and wise fools) often provided memorable moments of comedy. But his ventures into the solo form have fared less well. \u003cb>A Feast of Fool\u003c/b> was a fragmentary medley of Hoyle’s funniest feats. \u003cb>The First Hundred Years\u003c/b> was full of prop-heavy sight-gags and mediocre mirth-making.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Hoyle’s routines are mostly old school and often old hat. He is technically marvelous, but his original material is wanting.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Hoyle begins with a geezer-pleaser — a terrific and terrifically grody pantomime of all the new and long hairs growing in all the wrong places — he pulls foot-long hairs from his ears and nose and tells us about other icky bodily changes that are assaulting his aging body.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Interspersed with vaudeville and British Music Hall antics are scenes and interchanges that tell Hoyle’s story. There are moments of impressive clowning — in one striking feat, Hoyle brings an overcoat to life, giving it a will of its own. In between shtick, he provides reenactments of pivotal conversations in his life, embodying teachers, parents, and employers. At his father’s deathbed, Hoyle imparts that he has made good and is now playing the West End. It’s a slushy “Papa, Can You Hear Me?” moment.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Charlie Chaplin could bring wistfulness to his clowning. But even he never attempted an autobiographical one-man show — or talking. And some of the most dazzling moments in Hoyle’s shows are the wordless ones. Still, after 40 years of clowning around, even a mime is wont to wax nostalgic.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Geezer\u003c/b> runs through May 29, 2011 at The Marsh in San Francisco. For \u003ca href=\"http://www.themarsh.org/geoff_Hoyle.html\">tickets and information\u003c/a> visit themarsh.org or call 800-838-3006.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "Berkeley Rep's \"Ruined\" Is About Women's Bodies, the Battlefield of the War in the Congo",
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"content": "\u003cp>The Congo has been called “the rape capital of the world.” Sadistic systematic rape is part of everyday atrocities that continue in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, despite the fact that the war officially ended in 2002.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It is, to say the least, a challenging topic for theater. And yet Lynn Nottage’s play, \u003cb>Ruined\u003c/b>, won the Pulitzer Prize for drama, the Drama Desk Award, the Horton Foote Prize for Outstanding New American Play, the Lucille Lortel Award, the New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award, an Obie Award, and the Outer Critics Circle Award for Best Play.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ruined\u003c/b> opened at Berkeley Rep last week and it is a disturbing, beautifully acted and choreographed play. And anything but a good time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://a.s.kqed.net/img/arts/blog/ruined1.jpg\" style=\"margin-bottom: 10px\">\u003cbr>Wendell B. Franklin, Carla Duren, Zainab Jah and Tonye Patano\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If you’ve read about the ongoing mass rape of Congolese women, transpiring over the last decade, you are probably sick to your stomach.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Ruined” is the euphemistic term used to refer to a woman whose body has been savaged by rape. The particulars are mostly left to the imagination in the play. In many cases, Congolese women have been butchered by bayonets and assaulted with chunks of wood such that their reproductive and digestive systems are beyond repair. Some who have received treatment use colostomy bags because of internal damage.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While the details and the statistics are overwhelming, they are not unknown. Newspaper articles about the sexual violence and about the government and rebel armies are there to read. Nottage had a different approach. She went to East Africa in 2004 and interviewed Congolese women about their lives. An African American from Brooklyn, Nottage shaped these stories into a drama, a theatrical performance that, under Liesl Tommy’s solid direction, could let these women “speak for themselves.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://a.s.kqed.net/img/arts/blog/ruined2.jpg\" style=\"margin-bottom: 10px\">\u003cbr>Carla Duren is held back by Kola Ogundiran and Okierete Onaodowan \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And yet, while the subject matter is powerful, this composite biographical documentary approach doesn’t successfully employ the power of theater — as an art form.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Set in a deceptively appealing honky-tonk bar, each of the women in this play has a different back story, a different trauma they are running from, hiding from or recovering from. Tonye Patano plays Mama Nadi, the tough cookie queen bee who runs the bar and brothel. Patano, who played a likewise surly and charismatic part in the TV show \u003cb>Weeds\u003c/b> (as a pot-dealing mama) is terrific.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Like the war profiteering Mother Courage, Nadi is a commanding survivor. Like Brecht’s entrepreneur, she sells her wares, in this case women and whiskey, to an endless stream of soldiers. She doesn’t choose sides.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And so, Nottage presents her with compelling ambiguity. Is Nadi exploiting or protecting the girls she employs? Will she stand up to the thugs or give them free booze? It’s complicated.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The war in the Congo has been called “the African equivalent of Afghanistan,” because of the conflict’s enduring violence and complexity. Both the government army and the rebel soldiers are corrupt opportunists and ruthless rapists. There are no good guys, and so no one is safe.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://a.s.kqed.net/img/arts/blog/ruined4.jpg\" style=\"margin-bottom: 10px\">\u003cbr>Carla Duren and Pascale Armand\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Sophie, who cannot walk straight (one can readily imagine why) is a newcomer to Nadi’s quasi-sanctuary. Carla Duren plays the terrified and traumatized girl, who is, unluckily for her, the pretty one. And although Nadi has designated Sophie “off bounds” to the groping men, protection only goes so far in this climate of lawlessness and self-preservation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s Sophie who gets to sing with the band, rather than serve whiskey and sex. She sings melodious, mellow songs with a vitalizing African rhythm. And it’s the music in \u003cb>Ruined\u003c/b> that gives the audience some reprieve and, with Sophie and the other women up on stage, some hope that happiness can still exist.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And there are other moments of warmth. Oberon K.A. Adjepong is charming as Christian, the voice of male decency and moral outrage. His humor and clowning brighten the bar and he seems to be one of the few there who refuses to give up on these women. Pascale Armand plays Salima, a wife and mother whose vivid account of the brutality she has survived is horrid and horrible to hear. Zainab Jah’s Josephine, the third woman working the bar, is another type; hardened and cynical. She has been there the longest.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Original music and sound design are from a musical collective called \u003ca href=\"http://www.brokenchordcollective.com/listen.html\">Broken Chord\u003c/a> (Daniel Baker and Aaron Meicht and rap lyricist Earl David). Their talents are immense, their contribution is invaluable.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://a.s.kqed.net/img/arts/blog/ruined3.jpg\" style=\"margin-bottom: 10px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While the onstage band alleviates the play’s tension, hip hop and rap introduce an unsettling, threatening male energy that feels like a battle cry. The soldiers, drunk, stoned and tweaked on testosterone, initiate an intimidating, muscular and fascinating dance sequence, taking turns peacocking, and center-staging. They mesmerize with an athletic sexuality that’s breathtaking and very frightening.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Rivetingly choreographed by Randy Duncan, this scene uses kinetic movement to communicate menace and control — it’s nearly an interpretive dance of the energy of gang rape. And the scene is one of the few times that \u003cb>Ruined\u003c/b> is truly theatrical. Here, the play uses the craft of theater, not transcripts, to show and not to tell.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ruined\u003c/b> runs through April 10, 2011 at Berkeley Repertory Theater. For \u003ca href=\"http://www.berkeleyrep.org/season/1011/4526.asp\">tickets and information\u003c/a> visit berkeleyrep.org or call 1-888-427–8849.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>The Congo has been called “the rape capital of the world.” Sadistic systematic rape is part of everyday atrocities that continue in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, despite the fact that the war officially ended in 2002.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It is, to say the least, a challenging topic for theater. And yet Lynn Nottage’s play, \u003cb>Ruined\u003c/b>, won the Pulitzer Prize for drama, the Drama Desk Award, the Horton Foote Prize for Outstanding New American Play, the Lucille Lortel Award, the New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award, an Obie Award, and the Outer Critics Circle Award for Best Play.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ruined\u003c/b> opened at Berkeley Rep last week and it is a disturbing, beautifully acted and choreographed play. And anything but a good time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://a.s.kqed.net/img/arts/blog/ruined1.jpg\" style=\"margin-bottom: 10px\">\u003cbr>Wendell B. Franklin, Carla Duren, Zainab Jah and Tonye Patano\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If you’ve read about the ongoing mass rape of Congolese women, transpiring over the last decade, you are probably sick to your stomach.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Ruined” is the euphemistic term used to refer to a woman whose body has been savaged by rape. The particulars are mostly left to the imagination in the play. In many cases, Congolese women have been butchered by bayonets and assaulted with chunks of wood such that their reproductive and digestive systems are beyond repair. Some who have received treatment use colostomy bags because of internal damage.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While the details and the statistics are overwhelming, they are not unknown. Newspaper articles about the sexual violence and about the government and rebel armies are there to read. Nottage had a different approach. She went to East Africa in 2004 and interviewed Congolese women about their lives. An African American from Brooklyn, Nottage shaped these stories into a drama, a theatrical performance that, under Liesl Tommy’s solid direction, could let these women “speak for themselves.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://a.s.kqed.net/img/arts/blog/ruined2.jpg\" style=\"margin-bottom: 10px\">\u003cbr>Carla Duren is held back by Kola Ogundiran and Okierete Onaodowan \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And yet, while the subject matter is powerful, this composite biographical documentary approach doesn’t successfully employ the power of theater — as an art form.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Set in a deceptively appealing honky-tonk bar, each of the women in this play has a different back story, a different trauma they are running from, hiding from or recovering from. Tonye Patano plays Mama Nadi, the tough cookie queen bee who runs the bar and brothel. Patano, who played a likewise surly and charismatic part in the TV show \u003cb>Weeds\u003c/b> (as a pot-dealing mama) is terrific.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Like the war profiteering Mother Courage, Nadi is a commanding survivor. Like Brecht’s entrepreneur, she sells her wares, in this case women and whiskey, to an endless stream of soldiers. She doesn’t choose sides.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And so, Nottage presents her with compelling ambiguity. Is Nadi exploiting or protecting the girls she employs? Will she stand up to the thugs or give them free booze? It’s complicated.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The war in the Congo has been called “the African equivalent of Afghanistan,” because of the conflict’s enduring violence and complexity. Both the government army and the rebel soldiers are corrupt opportunists and ruthless rapists. There are no good guys, and so no one is safe.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://a.s.kqed.net/img/arts/blog/ruined4.jpg\" style=\"margin-bottom: 10px\">\u003cbr>Carla Duren and Pascale Armand\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Sophie, who cannot walk straight (one can readily imagine why) is a newcomer to Nadi’s quasi-sanctuary. Carla Duren plays the terrified and traumatized girl, who is, unluckily for her, the pretty one. And although Nadi has designated Sophie “off bounds” to the groping men, protection only goes so far in this climate of lawlessness and self-preservation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s Sophie who gets to sing with the band, rather than serve whiskey and sex. She sings melodious, mellow songs with a vitalizing African rhythm. And it’s the music in \u003cb>Ruined\u003c/b> that gives the audience some reprieve and, with Sophie and the other women up on stage, some hope that happiness can still exist.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And there are other moments of warmth. Oberon K.A. Adjepong is charming as Christian, the voice of male decency and moral outrage. His humor and clowning brighten the bar and he seems to be one of the few there who refuses to give up on these women. Pascale Armand plays Salima, a wife and mother whose vivid account of the brutality she has survived is horrid and horrible to hear. Zainab Jah’s Josephine, the third woman working the bar, is another type; hardened and cynical. She has been there the longest.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Original music and sound design are from a musical collective called \u003ca href=\"http://www.brokenchordcollective.com/listen.html\">Broken Chord\u003c/a> (Daniel Baker and Aaron Meicht and rap lyricist Earl David). Their talents are immense, their contribution is invaluable.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://a.s.kqed.net/img/arts/blog/ruined3.jpg\" style=\"margin-bottom: 10px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While the onstage band alleviates the play’s tension, hip hop and rap introduce an unsettling, threatening male energy that feels like a battle cry. The soldiers, drunk, stoned and tweaked on testosterone, initiate an intimidating, muscular and fascinating dance sequence, taking turns peacocking, and center-staging. They mesmerize with an athletic sexuality that’s breathtaking and very frightening.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Rivetingly choreographed by Randy Duncan, this scene uses kinetic movement to communicate menace and control — it’s nearly an interpretive dance of the energy of gang rape. And the scene is one of the few times that \u003cb>Ruined\u003c/b> is truly theatrical. Here, the play uses the craft of theater, not transcripts, to show and not to tell.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ruined\u003c/b> runs through April 10, 2011 at Berkeley Repertory Theater. For \u003ca href=\"http://www.berkeleyrep.org/season/1011/4526.asp\">tickets and information\u003c/a> visit berkeleyrep.org or call 1-888-427–8849.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cp>A “homecoming” may invoke images of warmth and tears, a thanksgiving dinner perhaps, family members reunited after too, too much time. In Harold Pinter’s \u003cb>The Homecoming\u003c/b>, the title is facetious, as are any niceties that may be uttered by family members in this brutal nasty household.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Funny-peculiar — and moreover funny-spooky, surreal and unsettling, \u003cb>The Homecoming\u003c/b>, opened on Wednesday at the American Conservatory Theater. The production is riveting — even though the audience really didn’t know when to laugh; everything is funny. And nothing is.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>What makes Pinter’s play absurdist — and not tragic — is the way in which things slip from bad to worse, how plausible meanness slides into blasé bizarreness.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Nobody really rips one another to shreds; no one busts the fourth wall of decorum, verbal decorum that is. But when dear old dad reunites with his long absent son, when brothers gather together, the family kills with a menacing kindness. Even endearments — “dear dad” and “my son” are spoken with a dripping, hateful sarcasm.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Written in 1964, the play seems to mock domestic dramas where the past haunts the present, like \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_Day%27s_Journey_into_Night\">\u003cb>Long Day’s Journey in Night\u003c/b>\u003c/a>. It seems to parody the unexpected cruelty of a play like \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who%27s_Afraid_of_Virginia_Woolf%3F\">\u003cb>Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?\u003c/b>\u003c/a>, which was staged two years earlier. Indeed, Pinter’s Max and Lenny and Teddy and Joey make Albee’s George and Martha look like a happily married couple.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://a.s.kqed.net/img/arts/blog/homecoming-1.jpg\" style=\"margin-bottom: 10px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Jack Willis plays Max, a mean-spirited father of three grown sons, two of whom still live with him. His brother Sam, (Kenneth Welsh) lives with them too, in a house where harshness and bitterness are as thick as the cigar smoke.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Into this simmering swill walks the son who got away — Teddy, who arrives with his chilly wife, Ruth. Played with apt refined inertness by Anthony Fusco, Teddy is a success in America, a scholar, a father, a husband. But his wife isn’t really facilitating Teddy’s above-it-all superiority. René Augesen captivates as Ruth, a sphinxian minx who navigates — or does she steer? — the unexpected goings on as they warp from odd to psycho.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A British critic once wrote that all of Pinter’s scenes can be reduced to the question, “whose on top right now?” In \u003cb>The Homecoming\u003c/b>‘s masculine household, violence and menace are familiar weapons. But when a woman enters the house — her red dress an arresting contrast to the dull palate and grimy walls — sexuality is the sharpest tool in the arsenal.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Max is a butcher by trade, skilled with the meat cleaver. Youngest son Joey is something of a meat head, a boxer who works “in demolition.” (Adam O’Byrne plays the guileless pretty boy.) But it is the oily, unctuous Lenny, whose occupation is shadier, who is the best match for Ruth’s brand of stealth combat.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://a.s.kqed.net/img/arts/blog/homecoming-2.jpg\" style=\"margin-bottom: 10px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As Lenny, Andrew Polk is a threatening and electric creep. Early on, he and Ruth have a tense dance of words in which small talk and manners evolve into intimidation and challenge and a psychological poker game over a glass of water.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Under Carey Perloff’s effective direction, what’s uncomfortable becomes inappropriate and what’s inappropriate becomes twisted and nonsensical.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>What transpires is so enigmatic, I wouldn’t want to ruin the surprise. But for Pinter, it’s much more about the mood, the plot is just a vehicle. Pinter’s nightmare is not scary or even surprisingly awful. What is often most unsettling about a bad dream is that, within its own context, everything seems normal and it is difficult to identify how it is not. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s only the audience, (outside looking in), who sees that something is very, very wrong. Pinter is a master at drawing us into this twilight sleep.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>The Homecoming\u003c/b> runs through March 27, 2011 at the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco. For \u003ca href=\"http://www.act-sf.org/press/homecoming.html\">tickets and information\u003c/a> visit act-sf.org or call 415.749.2228.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>All photos: Kevin Berne.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>A “homecoming” may invoke images of warmth and tears, a thanksgiving dinner perhaps, family members reunited after too, too much time. In Harold Pinter’s \u003cb>The Homecoming\u003c/b>, the title is facetious, as are any niceties that may be uttered by family members in this brutal nasty household.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Funny-peculiar — and moreover funny-spooky, surreal and unsettling, \u003cb>The Homecoming\u003c/b>, opened on Wednesday at the American Conservatory Theater. The production is riveting — even though the audience really didn’t know when to laugh; everything is funny. And nothing is.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>What makes Pinter’s play absurdist — and not tragic — is the way in which things slip from bad to worse, how plausible meanness slides into blasé bizarreness.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Nobody really rips one another to shreds; no one busts the fourth wall of decorum, verbal decorum that is. But when dear old dad reunites with his long absent son, when brothers gather together, the family kills with a menacing kindness. Even endearments — “dear dad” and “my son” are spoken with a dripping, hateful sarcasm.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Written in 1964, the play seems to mock domestic dramas where the past haunts the present, like \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_Day%27s_Journey_into_Night\">\u003cb>Long Day’s Journey in Night\u003c/b>\u003c/a>. It seems to parody the unexpected cruelty of a play like \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who%27s_Afraid_of_Virginia_Woolf%3F\">\u003cb>Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?\u003c/b>\u003c/a>, which was staged two years earlier. Indeed, Pinter’s Max and Lenny and Teddy and Joey make Albee’s George and Martha look like a happily married couple.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://a.s.kqed.net/img/arts/blog/homecoming-1.jpg\" style=\"margin-bottom: 10px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Jack Willis plays Max, a mean-spirited father of three grown sons, two of whom still live with him. His brother Sam, (Kenneth Welsh) lives with them too, in a house where harshness and bitterness are as thick as the cigar smoke.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Into this simmering swill walks the son who got away — Teddy, who arrives with his chilly wife, Ruth. Played with apt refined inertness by Anthony Fusco, Teddy is a success in America, a scholar, a father, a husband. But his wife isn’t really facilitating Teddy’s above-it-all superiority. René Augesen captivates as Ruth, a sphinxian minx who navigates — or does she steer? — the unexpected goings on as they warp from odd to psycho.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A British critic once wrote that all of Pinter’s scenes can be reduced to the question, “whose on top right now?” In \u003cb>The Homecoming\u003c/b>‘s masculine household, violence and menace are familiar weapons. But when a woman enters the house — her red dress an arresting contrast to the dull palate and grimy walls — sexuality is the sharpest tool in the arsenal.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Max is a butcher by trade, skilled with the meat cleaver. Youngest son Joey is something of a meat head, a boxer who works “in demolition.” (Adam O’Byrne plays the guileless pretty boy.) But it is the oily, unctuous Lenny, whose occupation is shadier, who is the best match for Ruth’s brand of stealth combat.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://a.s.kqed.net/img/arts/blog/homecoming-2.jpg\" style=\"margin-bottom: 10px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As Lenny, Andrew Polk is a threatening and electric creep. Early on, he and Ruth have a tense dance of words in which small talk and manners evolve into intimidation and challenge and a psychological poker game over a glass of water.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Under Carey Perloff’s effective direction, what’s uncomfortable becomes inappropriate and what’s inappropriate becomes twisted and nonsensical.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>What transpires is so enigmatic, I wouldn’t want to ruin the surprise. But for Pinter, it’s much more about the mood, the plot is just a vehicle. Pinter’s nightmare is not scary or even surprisingly awful. What is often most unsettling about a bad dream is that, within its own context, everything seems normal and it is difficult to identify how it is not. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s only the audience, (outside looking in), who sees that something is very, very wrong. Pinter is a master at drawing us into this twilight sleep.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>The Homecoming\u003c/b> runs through March 27, 2011 at the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco. For \u003ca href=\"http://www.act-sf.org/press/homecoming.html\">tickets and information\u003c/a> visit act-sf.org or call 415.749.2228.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>All photos: Kevin Berne.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cp>The darling muppets, who loiter on the clean-scrubbed stoops of \u003cb>Sesame Street\u003c/b>, are beloved, it’s true. But like all things bright and shiny and incessantly innocent, it’s kinda tempting to sully them a bit.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Which is why shows like \u003ca href=\"http://www.avenueq.com/Avenue%20Q\">\u003cb>Avenue Q\u003c/b>\u003c/a> have had such success. What was once an Off-Broadway parody of \u003cb>Sesame Street\u003c/b> — featuring a porn-loving monster and hot felt-on-felt action — became a Broadway hit, spawning a Vegas show and a national touring company. Smirking at sanctity is no longer a fringe fetish. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The rumor that Bert and Ernie are boyfriend and boyfriend has been bandied about since the first \u003cb>Sesame Street\u003c/b> graduates hit puberty. There’s something inherently funny in thinking about wholesome children’s puppets in adult terms.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s funny because it’s perverse — the notion, that is, that these strictly waist-up lovable naifs have a life below the waist.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There’s a fine tradition of sullying G-rated iconography with our dirty little minds and revamping childhood staples with the not-so-sunny realities of life outside of PBS children’s programming.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Remember, if you will, the sublime \u003cb>SNL\u003c/b> parodies of \u003ca href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c2X1hf8w7qs\">\u003cb>Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood\u003c/b>\u003c/a>, with Eddie Murphy as a ghetto version of the friendly cardigan-wearing neighbor, “Can you say scumbucket?” he ask the camera after receiving an eviction notice from his landlord.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On Avenue Q, folks are more upstanding, but life is still disappointing. “What Do You Do with a B.A. in English?” sings Princeton, a recent college grad, (who happens to be an orange-skinned puppet). Scouting out a cheap apartment on a familiar-looking block of brownstones, Princeton encounters Gary Coleman, (queue the comedy of nostalgia) who, inexplicably, is the building’s super. The former child star turned sad sack is on hand to further illustrate that Avenue Q is the boulevard of broken dreams.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The promises of childhood (every one of us is worthy and special and respected, yada yada) turns out to be as flimsy as that charming brownstone facade.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It Sucks to Be Me” is Avenue Q’s musical retort to the ethos of Bob and Big Bird’s cloying “Aren’t You Glad You’re You?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And it’s the clash between TV idealism and “reality-based” reality that makes some of us want to pop their balloon. Most parents want to shoot Barney, don’t they?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There was the similar impetus at work in \u003cb>The Brady Bunch Movie\u003c/b>. It’s really satisfying (to those of us who had our face smooshed against the window of that split-level suburban home) when that bunch of Pollyannas gets real life thrown at them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>You actually don’t even have to leave the real PBS \u003cb>Sesame Street\u003c/b> to find that reality is getting in the way of old school happiness; These days the cookie monster advocates a balanced diet, loves his veggies and tells kids “A Cookie is a Sometimes Food” (Damn you Michelle Obama!)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While the Tony Award-winning \u003cb>Avenue Q\u003c/b> (conceived by Robert Lopez and Jeff Marx, who wrote the music and lyrics, book by Jeff Whitty) strives to be irreverent — some muppets are gay and some are porn addicts or sluts. Songs have titles “You Can Be as Loud as the Hell You Want (When You’re Makin’ Love),” “Everyone’s a Little Bit Racist” and “Schadenfreude.” But in the end, it’s really just another felt boy-meets-girl monster, felt boy-loses-girl monster story. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Avenue Q\u003c/b> runs through February 27, 2011 at The Orpheum Theatre in San Francisco. For \u003ca href=\"http://www.shnsf.com/\">tickets and information\u003c/a> visit shnsf.com or call 888-SHN-1799\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Remember, if you will, the sublime \u003cb>SNL\u003c/b> parodies of \u003ca href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c2X1hf8w7qs\">\u003cb>Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood\u003c/b>\u003c/a>, with Eddie Murphy as a ghetto version of the friendly cardigan-wearing neighbor, “Can you say scumbucket?” he ask the camera after receiving an eviction notice from his landlord.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On Avenue Q, folks are more upstanding, but life is still disappointing. “What Do You Do with a B.A. in English?” sings Princeton, a recent college grad, (who happens to be an orange-skinned puppet). Scouting out a cheap apartment on a familiar-looking block of brownstones, Princeton encounters Gary Coleman, (queue the comedy of nostalgia) who, inexplicably, is the building’s super. The former child star turned sad sack is on hand to further illustrate that Avenue Q is the boulevard of broken dreams.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The promises of childhood (every one of us is worthy and special and respected, yada yada) turns out to be as flimsy as that charming brownstone facade.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It Sucks to Be Me” is Avenue Q’s musical retort to the ethos of Bob and Big Bird’s cloying “Aren’t You Glad You’re You?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And it’s the clash between TV idealism and “reality-based” reality that makes some of us want to pop their balloon. Most parents want to shoot Barney, don’t they?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There was the similar impetus at work in \u003cb>The Brady Bunch Movie\u003c/b>. It’s really satisfying (to those of us who had our face smooshed against the window of that split-level suburban home) when that bunch of Pollyannas gets real life thrown at them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>You actually don’t even have to leave the real PBS \u003cb>Sesame Street\u003c/b> to find that reality is getting in the way of old school happiness; These days the cookie monster advocates a balanced diet, loves his veggies and tells kids “A Cookie is a Sometimes Food” (Damn you Michelle Obama!)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While the Tony Award-winning \u003cb>Avenue Q\u003c/b> (conceived by Robert Lopez and Jeff Marx, who wrote the music and lyrics, book by Jeff Whitty) strives to be irreverent — some muppets are gay and some are porn addicts or sluts. Songs have titles “You Can Be as Loud as the Hell You Want (When You’re Makin’ Love),” “Everyone’s a Little Bit Racist” and “Schadenfreude.” But in the end, it’s really just another felt boy-meets-girl monster, felt boy-loses-girl monster story. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Avenue Q\u003c/b> runs through February 27, 2011 at The Orpheum Theatre in San Francisco. For \u003ca href=\"http://www.shnsf.com/\">tickets and information\u003c/a> visit shnsf.com or call 888-SHN-1799\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cp>\u003cb>Next to Normal,\u003c/b> is a Broadway pop musical about Electroconvulsive Therapy and suicidal ideation. And you may ask: how in the world does one sing about psychopharmacology and major depressive disorder? With lyrics like this: “Zoloft and Paxil and Buspar and Xanex…These are a few of my favorite pills.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Which is to say, it’s not your daddy’s \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rodgers_and_Hammerstein\">Rodgers and Hammerstein\u003c/a> hoe-down. \u003cb>Next to Normal\u003c/b>, which opened on Broadway in 2009 and just arrived in San Francisco last week, uses sardonic wit and dark humor to lighten this heartbreaking story of a family desolated by mental illness.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At the center of this Pulitzer-Prize winning musical is Alice Ripley, who won a Tony for her performance as a wife and mother suffering from bi-polar disorder and psychotic delusions. Fortunately, Ripley has joined the touring cast of the show, because it’s hard to imagine anyone else in the role. For one thing, Ripley has an incredibly unique singing voice — low and throaty, which perfectly communicates her character Diana’s pain. It can sound a little bit like Marianne Faithful — just a few nerves away from a breakdown.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The musical numbers (Brian Yorkeyto won a Tony for the book and lyrics and Tom Kitt wrote the score) have a profundity and resonance that are startling in their plain truth.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://a.s.kqed.net/img/arts/blog/nexttonormal-3.jpg\" style=\"margin-bottom: 10px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As the revelations of the depth of Diana’s illness unfold, each member of her family expresses loss and longing. Many of the most affecting songs speak to each family member’s wish to be seen and acknowledged in a climate where reality sometimes takes a back seat. Songs like “Wish I Were Here” “He’s Not Here,” “I’m Alive” and “Superboy and the Invisible Girl” all achingly reflect a mother, father, sister and brother hungry to be present and known. It’s quite a feat of depth for musical theater to communicate a real understanding of the reverberations of mental illness within a family.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Emma Hunton plays Natalie, a hurt and angry teenager who sees herself as the “invisible girl” to her brother Gabe’s “superboy.” And Gabe (Kurt Hansen) does hold a unique power to capture his mother’s attention. As Gabe, Hansen is menacingly electric. Hunton is powerful as the strong but mortally wounded teen. Asa Somers is the dutiful husband, whose patience is waning, even while his devotion is undying. Somer’s Dan is something of a generic nice guy and a bit less defined.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://a.s.kqed.net/img/arts/blog/nexttonormal-2.jpg\" style=\"margin-bottom: 10px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The drama cannily illustrates the mixed-bag that is psychiatric health care. Jeremy Kushnier plays Diana’s psychiatrist, Dr. Fine, a name that is something of a misnomer; though he’s a quick draw with the prescription pad, he’s no Dr. Feelgood. In one of Ripley’s most haunting ballads, she sings of the downside to “feel better” drugs. In “I Miss the Mountains,” a particularly aching ballad, Diana pines for the time before her emotions were flattened by meds.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While there is much specificity in the drama, the set design is standard rock musical scenery — industrial hip scaffolding, blinding club lighting. Mark Wendland’s sets and Kevin Adams’ lighting give a chilly, rock and roll vibe to an otherwise engaging production.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://a.s.kqed.net/img/arts/blog/nexttonormal-1.jpg\" style=\"margin-bottom: 10px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While rock musicals like \u003cb>American Idiot\u003c/b> or \u003cb>Rent\u003c/b> revel in their hip flair and downtown (East Village) milieu, \u003cb>Next to Normal\u003c/b> is not anchored in its time period. Current rock musicals (Spring Awakening), as well as classics like \u003cb>Tommy\u003c/b> and Hair, focus on youth culture and youth alienation. \u003cb>Next to Normal\u003c/b> focuses on family suffering and brings into play a second generation of casualties, which ups the ante and makes it more maturel. The score — it’s more an Adult Contemporary genre — is well-matched to this grown-up drama.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Next to Normal\u003c/b> runs through February 20, 2011 at The Curran Theater in San Francisco. For \u003ca href=\"http://www.shnsf.com/shows/nexttonormal/\">tickets and information\u003c/a> visit shnsf.com or call 888-SHN-1799.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As the revelations of the depth of Diana’s illness unfold, each member of her family expresses loss and longing. Many of the most affecting songs speak to each family member’s wish to be seen and acknowledged in a climate where reality sometimes takes a back seat. Songs like “Wish I Were Here” “He’s Not Here,” “I’m Alive” and “Superboy and the Invisible Girl” all achingly reflect a mother, father, sister and brother hungry to be present and known. It’s quite a feat of depth for musical theater to communicate a real understanding of the reverberations of mental illness within a family.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Emma Hunton plays Natalie, a hurt and angry teenager who sees herself as the “invisible girl” to her brother Gabe’s “superboy.” And Gabe (Kurt Hansen) does hold a unique power to capture his mother’s attention. As Gabe, Hansen is menacingly electric. Hunton is powerful as the strong but mortally wounded teen. Asa Somers is the dutiful husband, whose patience is waning, even while his devotion is undying. Somer’s Dan is something of a generic nice guy and a bit less defined.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://a.s.kqed.net/img/arts/blog/nexttonormal-2.jpg\" style=\"margin-bottom: 10px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The drama cannily illustrates the mixed-bag that is psychiatric health care. Jeremy Kushnier plays Diana’s psychiatrist, Dr. Fine, a name that is something of a misnomer; though he’s a quick draw with the prescription pad, he’s no Dr. Feelgood. In one of Ripley’s most haunting ballads, she sings of the downside to “feel better” drugs. In “I Miss the Mountains,” a particularly aching ballad, Diana pines for the time before her emotions were flattened by meds.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While there is much specificity in the drama, the set design is standard rock musical scenery — industrial hip scaffolding, blinding club lighting. Mark Wendland’s sets and Kevin Adams’ lighting give a chilly, rock and roll vibe to an otherwise engaging production.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://a.s.kqed.net/img/arts/blog/nexttonormal-1.jpg\" style=\"margin-bottom: 10px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While rock musicals like \u003cb>American Idiot\u003c/b> or \u003cb>Rent\u003c/b> revel in their hip flair and downtown (East Village) milieu, \u003cb>Next to Normal\u003c/b> is not anchored in its time period. Current rock musicals (Spring Awakening), as well as classics like \u003cb>Tommy\u003c/b> and Hair, focus on youth culture and youth alienation. \u003cb>Next to Normal\u003c/b> focuses on family suffering and brings into play a second generation of casualties, which ups the ante and makes it more maturel. The score — it’s more an Adult Contemporary genre — is well-matched to this grown-up drama.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Next to Normal\u003c/b> runs through February 20, 2011 at The Curran Theater in San Francisco. For \u003ca href=\"http://www.shnsf.com/shows/nexttonormal/\">tickets and information\u003c/a> visit shnsf.com or call 888-SHN-1799.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cp>I can’t believe its been 20 years since Tony Kushner’s \u003cb>Angels in America\u003c/b> first premiered. Remember (or maybe you don’t, youthful blog reader) when Ronald Reagan was the worst thing that ever happened to us? \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For the uninitiated, \u003cb>Angels\u003c/b>, which was born at San Francisco’s Eureka Theater in 1991, evokes an America in which we are poised on the precipice of apocalyptic doom. Kushner’s vision of a morally bankrupt America is one in which the climate of the Reagan years is both the natural legacy of Joe McCarthy and Roy Cohn as well as the virulent seed of the modern-day plague — AIDS and its metaphors.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Years back, Kushner told a Berkeley crowd (in an absurdly modest statement), that he attributed some of the success of \u003cb>Angels in America\u003c/b> to timing. He noted that the Pulitzer- and Tony-winning play arrived on Broadway at the beginning of “Clinton’s 15 minutes. It’s a Reagan-hating play and that’s one of the things I like about it,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So, when Brad Rosenstein interviewed Kushner at the Herbst theater last weekend, I was hoping to hear what Kushner thought of \u003cb>Angels\u003c/b> in Obama’s 15 minutes. How does Kushner think his play fares in the yet more cataclysmic, even more morally bankrupt 2010?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But as the curator of the Museum of Performance & Design, Rosensten had other matters at hand. His interview marked the opening of the museum’s exhibit, \u003ca href=\"http://www.mpdsf.org/PAGES/EXHIBITION/SHOWS/angels.html\">\u003cb>More Life! “Angels in America” at Twenty\u003c/b>\u003c/a>. And so, he and Kushner talked stage design — how did different performances manage the angel wing mechanics, make a book burst into flames, a feather fall straight down.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And while some of us might have preferred to hear Kushner expound on politics, religion, history — or even talk more about \u003cb>Project Runway\u003c/b> (he’s a fan), one needs to give the feather its due: Over twenty years ago, as if he were night-visited by his very own angel, Tony Kushner saw the dramatic climax to his theatrical masterpiece in a dream. The image revealed to him was of an angel crashing through the ceiling of a man dying from AIDS. In waking life, Kushner connected the dream’s dots to form the play… the apocalyptic crash, the disease, the messianic wish fulfillment. And, the logical jump, when contemplating angels… whilst in America, is the Angel Moroni — and Mormonism — all key themes to the play.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And, apparently, the impetus for the museum exhibition was the appearance of angel wings. Sandra Woodall, who designed the costumes for the original Eureka production in 1991, had donated her collection to the museum. Rosenstein felt the wings needed to have more life.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Eureka’s original wings are accompanied by a pair from the Broadway production of \u003cb>Perestroika\u003c/b>, the second half of \u003cb>Angels\u003c/b>, ACT’s wings, and the pair — with the 12-foot wingspan — worn by Emma Thompson in the HBO movie version.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The museum exhibit, upstairs at the Herbst Theater, follows the play’s journey from Kushner’s notebooks and scripts to its various incarnations — the San Francisco premiere, the Broadway opening, the opera, the HBO film.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The exhibition is a treasure trove for Angels-heads; one can pause at a recreation of Kushner’s desk, where he wrote the play — there’s even a stash of Entenmanns’s donuts there, a recreation of the playwright’s sustenance. There are props, manuscripts, video clips, photos — including photography by Avedon and Leibovitz — and an amusing “Jew-fro” snap shot of the author as a young man. The exhibit showcases an array of original costumes and poster art from productions in Japan, Israel, Hungary and other unlikely countries.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The exhibition also features photographs from the current Signature Theatre Company revival in New York.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In March of 2011, The Signature Theatre, in conjunction with the Public Theater will stage the New York premiere of Tony Kushner’s latest play, \u003cb>The Intelligent Homosexual’s Guide to Capitalism and Socialism With a Key to the Scriptures\u003c/b>. The new play explores “revolution, radicalism, marriage, sex, prostitution, politics, real estate, unions of all kinds and debts both repaid and unpayable.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I can’t wait for 2030 to find out what kind of junk food sustained Kushner during this creation process.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>More Life! “Angels in America” at Twenty\u003c/b> runs through March 26, 2010 at the Museum of Performance & Design in San Francisco. For \u003ca href=\"http://www.mpdsf.org/\">more information\u003c/a> visit mpdsf.org.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And while some of us might have preferred to hear Kushner expound on politics, religion, history — or even talk more about \u003cb>Project Runway\u003c/b> (he’s a fan), one needs to give the feather its due: Over twenty years ago, as if he were night-visited by his very own angel, Tony Kushner saw the dramatic climax to his theatrical masterpiece in a dream. The image revealed to him was of an angel crashing through the ceiling of a man dying from AIDS. In waking life, Kushner connected the dream’s dots to form the play… the apocalyptic crash, the disease, the messianic wish fulfillment. And, the logical jump, when contemplating angels… whilst in America, is the Angel Moroni — and Mormonism — all key themes to the play.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And, apparently, the impetus for the museum exhibition was the appearance of angel wings. Sandra Woodall, who designed the costumes for the original Eureka production in 1991, had donated her collection to the museum. Rosenstein felt the wings needed to have more life.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Eureka’s original wings are accompanied by a pair from the Broadway production of \u003cb>Perestroika\u003c/b>, the second half of \u003cb>Angels\u003c/b>, ACT’s wings, and the pair — with the 12-foot wingspan — worn by Emma Thompson in the HBO movie version.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The museum exhibit, upstairs at the Herbst Theater, follows the play’s journey from Kushner’s notebooks and scripts to its various incarnations — the San Francisco premiere, the Broadway opening, the opera, the HBO film.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The exhibition is a treasure trove for Angels-heads; one can pause at a recreation of Kushner’s desk, where he wrote the play — there’s even a stash of Entenmanns’s donuts there, a recreation of the playwright’s sustenance. There are props, manuscripts, video clips, photos — including photography by Avedon and Leibovitz — and an amusing “Jew-fro” snap shot of the author as a young man. The exhibit showcases an array of original costumes and poster art from productions in Japan, Israel, Hungary and other unlikely countries.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The exhibition also features photographs from the current Signature Theatre Company revival in New York.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In March of 2011, The Signature Theatre, in conjunction with the Public Theater will stage the New York premiere of Tony Kushner’s latest play, \u003cb>The Intelligent Homosexual’s Guide to Capitalism and Socialism With a Key to the Scriptures\u003c/b>. The new play explores “revolution, radicalism, marriage, sex, prostitution, politics, real estate, unions of all kinds and debts both repaid and unpayable.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I can’t wait for 2030 to find out what kind of junk food sustained Kushner during this creation process.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>More Life! “Angels in America” at Twenty\u003c/b> runs through March 26, 2010 at the Museum of Performance & Design in San Francisco. For \u003ca href=\"http://www.mpdsf.org/\">more information\u003c/a> visit mpdsf.org.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cp>Sure, casting the lip-syncing gringa Natalie Wood as Maria, the Puerto Rican Juliet, in the 1961 movie \u003cb>West Side Story\u003c/b> was a woefully politically incorrect choice. (\u003ca href=\"http://www.tcm.com/video/videoPlayer/?cid=139054&titleId=23623\">Watch a short featurette\u003c/a> about Natalie Wood and the making of the 1961 movie musical \u003cb>West Side Story\u003c/b> on Turner Classic Movies.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Broadway’s new bilingual and Latino-centric \u003cb>West Side Story\u003c/b>, which just opened at the Orpheum, redresses Hollywood’s all-too-typical white-washing. But my (pre-theater) fear was that reparations might result in correctness for its own sake — and the buzz killing of a nearly perfect musical. Au contraire, me.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Spanish-ization of the 2009 revival, directed by Arthur Laurents, (who wrote the original script), is the production’s key selling point; it delivers an exciting perspective to a classic that is pretty much sacrosanct to some of us. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003ccenter>\u003cobject width=\"480\" height=\"295\">\u003cparam name=\"movie\" value=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/OHjjYAobr9A?fs=1&hl=en_US\">\u003cparam name=\"allowFullScreen\" value=\"true\">\u003cparam name=\"allowscriptaccess\" value=\"always\">\u003cembed src=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/OHjjYAobr9A?fs=1&hl=en_US\" type=\"application/x-shockwave-flash\" allowscriptaccess=\"always\" allowfullscreen=\"true\" width=\"480\" height=\"295\">\u003c/embed>\u003c/object>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/center>\n\u003cp>As someone who grew up tearing up at the opening strains of “Somewhere,” I didn’t think that it was possible to be touched by a new layer of emotionalism from the simple inclusion of bilingual duets. But this \u003cb>West Side Story\u003c/b>, for all its mediocrities, achieves this.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Set to a kick-ass score, the 1950s story was remarkably progressive for its day. With music by Leonard Bernstein and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, the play spoke of the realities of bigotry and the failed promise of Lady Liberty to her huddled masses.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While the 1953 play was more timid, the movie’s lyrics were right on: “Life is alright in America/If you’re all white in America/Here you are free and you have pride/Long as you stay on your own side/Free to be anything you choose/Free to wait tables and shine shoes.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But if the 1961 movie talked the talk, the 2009 revival really does walk the walk. With the Spanish speakers actually speaking Spanish, this modern revival allows us to see the conflict from the other side of the street; we see the Puerto Ricans from the inside, not just from the side of the Xenophobe.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003ccenter>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://a.s.kqed.net/img/arts/blog/wss3.jpg\" style=\"margin-bottom: 10px;\">\u003c/center>\n\u003cp>While much of the first half of the play suffers from unfavorable comparisons with the film, the bilingual approach begins to score some points in Act II. The audience bounces along on the bed with a gaggle of irreverent girls in “I Feel Pretty,” one of the play’s all-out best numbers. With its “oh no she di’int!” neck-rolling street-sass, the song, sung mostly in Spanish, now possesses a pajama party mood as Maria’s ga ga lovesickness is mocked by her friend’s playful teasing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003ccenter>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://a.s.kqed.net/img/arts/blog/wss4.jpg\" style=\"margin-bottom: 10px;\">\u003c/center>\n\u003cp>As Maria, Ali Ewoldt has a powerful, earthy voice — so different from Marni Nixon’s — the vocalist who sang Natalie Wood’s part in the film version. Both Nixon’s classical voice and Wood’s ingenue performance created an ethereal Maria, who, if we are to be honest, was kinda weak. Ewoldt’s Maria is a bit sexier; sweet but more substantial.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Kyle Harris’s Tony, however, is a little too flimsy. Harris has a terrific, beautiful voice, but as an actor — he’s a bit vacuous with his incessant pretty boy smile — like he still can’t believe he got the part.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Nonetheless, the two of them sound wonderful together and when they begin to sing a bilingual duet of “Somewhere,” it promises to be deeply moving. The integration of the Spanish and English languages — especially in this song, suggests a racial harmony that is so much less hokey than I could have imagined…\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But then, inexplicably, ‘Anybodys’ — that odd tomboy character — winds up singing most of the song. ‘Anybodys,’ played here by Alexandra Frohlinger, has always been a curious role; she’s that tag along would-be Jet, who is always being told to scram and to act like a girl. Face it; she is early Hollywood’s most iconic, most thinly disguised lesbian.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003ccenter>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://a.s.kqed.net/img/arts/blog/wss2.jpg\" style=\"margin-bottom: 10px;\">\u003c/center>\n\u003cp>In a balletic dream sequence in which Tony and Maria are free to love each other and Whites and Hispanics live in harmony, ‘Anybodys’ steps into this bright white, heavenly set, joins Tony and Maria’s hands and, although Frohlinger hardly has the vocal chops, she sings this iconic ballad.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It is at once a lousy and a daring choice. Laurents must be well aware that “Somewhere” has become a gay equality anthem of sorts in recent decades. By giving the song to the coded gay character, the message becomes political. It’s a bold choice, and the number is emotionally moving from a gay rights point of view. But it’s a wholly inorganic, anachronistic way to go with this song. By giving the song to a minor character with a disappointing voice, it robs this number of its potential to say what it should be saying. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Another number that has been updated — but remains true to its original meaning — is “Gee, Officer Krupke.” Led with off-color color by Drew Foster’s Action, The Jets deride the failed system of authority figures with much the same mischievousness as they did in earlier productions. But because it is 2010, the kids can deride the adults in an R-rated manner. The song is raunchy and edgy and while the antics are still full of ham, there’s a sense of queasy Brechtian over-kill to the vaudeville.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As I may have mentioned, some of us are fanatically devoted to the film version of \u003cb>West Side Story\u003c/b>. But, even Arthur Laurents acknowledged that the acting in the movie was “the worst in any musical film.” Still, I’d like to believe that he wasn’t including Rita Moreno when he made this statement. As the firebrand “a boy like that” Anita, the Piquant “Smoke on your pipe and put that in” Anita, Rita Moreno was the bee’s knees.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So it’s worth noting that Michelle Aravena holds her own as Anita in this production. She is full of energy and personality. German Santiago is also good as Bernardo, but his performance seems short on singing and dancing and longer on fighting.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003ccenter>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://a.s.kqed.net/img/arts/blog/wss1.jpg\" style=\"margin-bottom: 10px;\">\u003c/center>\n\u003cp>It seems that there’s not enough room for big scale leaping and Jerome Robbins-caliber dancing on the Orpheum stage. Or maybe it’s just that there’ll never be enough room to muscle out the movie in my mind.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>West Side Story\u003c/b> runs through November 28, 2010 at The Orpheum Theatre in San Francisco. For \u003ca href=\"http://www.shnsf.com/\">tickets and information\u003c/a> visit shnsf.com.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Sure, casting the lip-syncing gringa Natalie Wood as Maria, the Puerto Rican Juliet, in the 1961 movie \u003cb>West Side Story\u003c/b> was a woefully politically incorrect choice. (\u003ca href=\"http://www.tcm.com/video/videoPlayer/?cid=139054&titleId=23623\">Watch a short featurette\u003c/a> about Natalie Wood and the making of the 1961 movie musical \u003cb>West Side Story\u003c/b> on Turner Classic Movies.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Broadway’s new bilingual and Latino-centric \u003cb>West Side Story\u003c/b>, which just opened at the Orpheum, redresses Hollywood’s all-too-typical white-washing. But my (pre-theater) fear was that reparations might result in correctness for its own sake — and the buzz killing of a nearly perfect musical. Au contraire, me.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Spanish-ization of the 2009 revival, directed by Arthur Laurents, (who wrote the original script), is the production’s key selling point; it delivers an exciting perspective to a classic that is pretty much sacrosanct to some of us. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003ccenter>\u003cobject width=\"480\" height=\"295\">\u003cparam name=\"movie\" value=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/OHjjYAobr9A?fs=1&hl=en_US\">\u003cparam name=\"allowFullScreen\" value=\"true\">\u003cparam name=\"allowscriptaccess\" value=\"always\">\u003cembed src=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/OHjjYAobr9A?fs=1&hl=en_US\" type=\"application/x-shockwave-flash\" allowscriptaccess=\"always\" allowfullscreen=\"true\" width=\"480\" height=\"295\">\u003c/embed>\u003c/object>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/center>\n\u003cp>As someone who grew up tearing up at the opening strains of “Somewhere,” I didn’t think that it was possible to be touched by a new layer of emotionalism from the simple inclusion of bilingual duets. But this \u003cb>West Side Story\u003c/b>, for all its mediocrities, achieves this.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Set to a kick-ass score, the 1950s story was remarkably progressive for its day. With music by Leonard Bernstein and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, the play spoke of the realities of bigotry and the failed promise of Lady Liberty to her huddled masses.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While the 1953 play was more timid, the movie’s lyrics were right on: “Life is alright in America/If you’re all white in America/Here you are free and you have pride/Long as you stay on your own side/Free to be anything you choose/Free to wait tables and shine shoes.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But if the 1961 movie talked the talk, the 2009 revival really does walk the walk. With the Spanish speakers actually speaking Spanish, this modern revival allows us to see the conflict from the other side of the street; we see the Puerto Ricans from the inside, not just from the side of the Xenophobe.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003ccenter>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://a.s.kqed.net/img/arts/blog/wss3.jpg\" style=\"margin-bottom: 10px;\">\u003c/center>\n\u003cp>While much of the first half of the play suffers from unfavorable comparisons with the film, the bilingual approach begins to score some points in Act II. The audience bounces along on the bed with a gaggle of irreverent girls in “I Feel Pretty,” one of the play’s all-out best numbers. With its “oh no she di’int!” neck-rolling street-sass, the song, sung mostly in Spanish, now possesses a pajama party mood as Maria’s ga ga lovesickness is mocked by her friend’s playful teasing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003ccenter>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://a.s.kqed.net/img/arts/blog/wss4.jpg\" style=\"margin-bottom: 10px;\">\u003c/center>\n\u003cp>As Maria, Ali Ewoldt has a powerful, earthy voice — so different from Marni Nixon’s — the vocalist who sang Natalie Wood’s part in the film version. Both Nixon’s classical voice and Wood’s ingenue performance created an ethereal Maria, who, if we are to be honest, was kinda weak. Ewoldt’s Maria is a bit sexier; sweet but more substantial.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Kyle Harris’s Tony, however, is a little too flimsy. Harris has a terrific, beautiful voice, but as an actor — he’s a bit vacuous with his incessant pretty boy smile — like he still can’t believe he got the part.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Nonetheless, the two of them sound wonderful together and when they begin to sing a bilingual duet of “Somewhere,” it promises to be deeply moving. The integration of the Spanish and English languages — especially in this song, suggests a racial harmony that is so much less hokey than I could have imagined…\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But then, inexplicably, ‘Anybodys’ — that odd tomboy character — winds up singing most of the song. ‘Anybodys,’ played here by Alexandra Frohlinger, has always been a curious role; she’s that tag along would-be Jet, who is always being told to scram and to act like a girl. Face it; she is early Hollywood’s most iconic, most thinly disguised lesbian.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003ccenter>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://a.s.kqed.net/img/arts/blog/wss2.jpg\" style=\"margin-bottom: 10px;\">\u003c/center>\n\u003cp>In a balletic dream sequence in which Tony and Maria are free to love each other and Whites and Hispanics live in harmony, ‘Anybodys’ steps into this bright white, heavenly set, joins Tony and Maria’s hands and, although Frohlinger hardly has the vocal chops, she sings this iconic ballad.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It is at once a lousy and a daring choice. Laurents must be well aware that “Somewhere” has become a gay equality anthem of sorts in recent decades. By giving the song to the coded gay character, the message becomes political. It’s a bold choice, and the number is emotionally moving from a gay rights point of view. But it’s a wholly inorganic, anachronistic way to go with this song. By giving the song to a minor character with a disappointing voice, it robs this number of its potential to say what it should be saying. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Another number that has been updated — but remains true to its original meaning — is “Gee, Officer Krupke.” Led with off-color color by Drew Foster’s Action, The Jets deride the failed system of authority figures with much the same mischievousness as they did in earlier productions. But because it is 2010, the kids can deride the adults in an R-rated manner. The song is raunchy and edgy and while the antics are still full of ham, there’s a sense of queasy Brechtian over-kill to the vaudeville.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As I may have mentioned, some of us are fanatically devoted to the film version of \u003cb>West Side Story\u003c/b>. But, even Arthur Laurents acknowledged that the acting in the movie was “the worst in any musical film.” Still, I’d like to believe that he wasn’t including Rita Moreno when he made this statement. As the firebrand “a boy like that” Anita, the Piquant “Smoke on your pipe and put that in” Anita, Rita Moreno was the bee’s knees.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So it’s worth noting that Michelle Aravena holds her own as Anita in this production. She is full of energy and personality. German Santiago is also good as Bernardo, but his performance seems short on singing and dancing and longer on fighting.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003ccenter>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://a.s.kqed.net/img/arts/blog/wss1.jpg\" style=\"margin-bottom: 10px;\">\u003c/center>\n\u003cp>It seems that there’s not enough room for big scale leaping and Jerome Robbins-caliber dancing on the Orpheum stage. Or maybe it’s just that there’ll never be enough room to muscle out the movie in my mind.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>West Side Story\u003c/b> runs through November 28, 2010 at The Orpheum Theatre in San Francisco. For \u003ca href=\"http://www.shnsf.com/\">tickets and information\u003c/a> visit shnsf.com.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cp>I have always been confounded with Anne Frank’s incredibly optimistic words: “I still believe, in spite of everything, that people are truly good at heart.” If you look it up, Google will offer “\u003ci>in spite of everything anne frank.\u003c/i>” It’s the second suggested search item. Apparently I’m not the only one who wonders about that sentence.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Those who were entrusted to parse and to interpret Anne’s words, to protect them and/or edit them had the opportunity to use them to instruct and remind — or to heal, and even to profit. In the decade following the Second World War, the stewardship of Anne Frank’s words proved to be a bitter, even litigious, tug of war. And it became a personal quagmire for Meyer Levin, the man who dedicated his life to ministering to the literary life of \u003cb>The Diary of Anne Frank.\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Compulsion\u003c/b> is a riveting new play, premiering at Berkeley Rep, about Meyer Levin’s passionate convictions and tortured obsessions. In it, Mandy Patinkin gives an extraordinarily complex performance as Sid Silver — the Levin character. And a marionette gives a hauntingly stirring performance as the specter of Anne Frank. What actress could play the ghost of the sacrosanct Anne Frank? One cannot imagine her being inserted as a character in anyone else’s story. The use of a puppet — who holds the strings? — is a stroke of genius.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003ccenter>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://a.s.kqed.net/img/arts/blog/annefrank1.jpg\" style=\"margin-bottom: 10px;\">\u003c/center>\n\u003cp>In 1955, just 11 years after Anne wrote her final diary entry, the stage adaptation of \u003cb>The Diary of Anne Frank\u003c/b> opened on Broadway to colossal acclaim, a Tony, a Pulitzer, and to intense contempt and resentment from Myer Levin.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Compulsion,\u003c/b> Rinnie Groff’s profound work of historical fiction, shows how the concerns of the era — anti-Semitism, assimilation, Zionism, McCarthyism, as well as the intersection of business and art — all became factors in the adaptation of Anne Frank’s diary. At least these -isms were perceived to be major factors in the eyes of Sid Silver. Groff’s play seems to suggest that although Silver may have been paranoid, that doesn’t mean they weren’t out to get him.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003ccenter>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://a.s.kqed.net/img/arts/blog/annefrank2.jpg\" style=\"margin-bottom: 10px;\">\u003c/center>\n\u003cp>Director Oskar Eustis (who will bring the play to New York next) deftly chisels the social, political and psychological nuances. As Silver, Patinkin tightropes between acting out of moral compulsion and being a fanatical obsessive. For Silver, Anne Frank’s remaining words \u003ci>are\u003c/i> her remains. When he first brings Anne Frank’s diary to Doubleday, the publisher refers to it as the “adolescent diary by the Jewess.” In an era of gentlemen’s agreements and surnames that “pass,” Silver was protective of Anne Frank’s diary and wary of those who would touch it — be they Eleanor Roosevelt (who wrote the diary’s introduction) or Carson McCullers (who was asked to write the adaptation for the stage) or Lillian Hellman (whose politics may or may not have induced her to undermine Silver.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Silver seemed to think that if he could craft the play just so, American audiences would comprehend the Holocaust and the Jewish experience just so, too. But his version was too Jewish. Or he was too impossible to work with. In the end, \u003cb>The Diary of Anne Frank\u003c/b> was written by Albert Hackett and Frances Goodrich (who ironically, wrote the Christmas classic \u003cb>It’s a Wonderful Life\u003c/b>). In their version, human suffering is universal; this time around, it was the Jews’ turn. The original diary’s references to Jews as victims and Germans as killers were removed. Anne’s seemingly forgiving “I still believe…” gets the play’s final word. The play was reviewed as a “lovely, tender drama.” \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003ccenter>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://a.s.kqed.net/img/arts/blog/annefrank3.jpg\" style=\"margin-bottom: 10px;\">\u003c/center>\n\u003cp>Hannah Cabell plays Silver’s wife, a performance which grows in poignancy as the wife gradually watches her husband become unhinged from the ordeal. Silver spent his money on lawsuits; he squandered his credibility and talents and sacrificed his marriage, his family and his peace of mind. Cabell also plays Miss Mermin, the young publisher at Doubleday whose allegiance towards Silver is challenged by his monomania. Matte Osian plays several roles, including bottom-line oriented anti-Semites. In this three-actor play, the stage is also peopled by marionettes. Designed by Matt Acheson, the puppets include Anne and Otto Frank and seem to represent the ghosts of unnamed Holocaust victims.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the play’s most achingly intense scene, the puppet of Anne Frank appears in the Silvers’ bed. What begins as a familiar trope — the other woman between them — becomes a heartbreaking conversation between a mother and a dead child. As Anne describes her final days, and her father’s sorrow, the scene pierces with the truth of what was lost and what transpired in Bergen-Belsen. Here, and elsewhere, \u003cb>Compulsion\u003c/b> achieves the rawness and beauty that Hackett and Goodrich’s “lovely drama” did not. Even more, Mandy Patinkin distills this rawness and beauty to one throe of quiet sorrow as he sings, in a mournful countertenor, a Yiddish song, after rising from the bed where he channeled Anne Frank.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Compulsion\u003c/b> runs through October 31, 2010 at Berkeley Repertory Theater. For \u003ca href=\"http://www.berkeleyrep.org/tickets/index.asp\">tickets and information\u003c/a> visit berkeleyrep.org.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>I have always been confounded with Anne Frank’s incredibly optimistic words: “I still believe, in spite of everything, that people are truly good at heart.” If you look it up, Google will offer “\u003ci>in spite of everything anne frank.\u003c/i>” It’s the second suggested search item. Apparently I’m not the only one who wonders about that sentence.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Those who were entrusted to parse and to interpret Anne’s words, to protect them and/or edit them had the opportunity to use them to instruct and remind — or to heal, and even to profit. In the decade following the Second World War, the stewardship of Anne Frank’s words proved to be a bitter, even litigious, tug of war. And it became a personal quagmire for Meyer Levin, the man who dedicated his life to ministering to the literary life of \u003cb>The Diary of Anne Frank.\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Compulsion\u003c/b> is a riveting new play, premiering at Berkeley Rep, about Meyer Levin’s passionate convictions and tortured obsessions. In it, Mandy Patinkin gives an extraordinarily complex performance as Sid Silver — the Levin character. And a marionette gives a hauntingly stirring performance as the specter of Anne Frank. What actress could play the ghost of the sacrosanct Anne Frank? One cannot imagine her being inserted as a character in anyone else’s story. The use of a puppet — who holds the strings? — is a stroke of genius.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003ccenter>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://a.s.kqed.net/img/arts/blog/annefrank1.jpg\" style=\"margin-bottom: 10px;\">\u003c/center>\n\u003cp>In 1955, just 11 years after Anne wrote her final diary entry, the stage adaptation of \u003cb>The Diary of Anne Frank\u003c/b> opened on Broadway to colossal acclaim, a Tony, a Pulitzer, and to intense contempt and resentment from Myer Levin.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Compulsion,\u003c/b> Rinnie Groff’s profound work of historical fiction, shows how the concerns of the era — anti-Semitism, assimilation, Zionism, McCarthyism, as well as the intersection of business and art — all became factors in the adaptation of Anne Frank’s diary. At least these -isms were perceived to be major factors in the eyes of Sid Silver. Groff’s play seems to suggest that although Silver may have been paranoid, that doesn’t mean they weren’t out to get him.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003ccenter>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://a.s.kqed.net/img/arts/blog/annefrank2.jpg\" style=\"margin-bottom: 10px;\">\u003c/center>\n\u003cp>Director Oskar Eustis (who will bring the play to New York next) deftly chisels the social, political and psychological nuances. As Silver, Patinkin tightropes between acting out of moral compulsion and being a fanatical obsessive. For Silver, Anne Frank’s remaining words \u003ci>are\u003c/i> her remains. When he first brings Anne Frank’s diary to Doubleday, the publisher refers to it as the “adolescent diary by the Jewess.” In an era of gentlemen’s agreements and surnames that “pass,” Silver was protective of Anne Frank’s diary and wary of those who would touch it — be they Eleanor Roosevelt (who wrote the diary’s introduction) or Carson McCullers (who was asked to write the adaptation for the stage) or Lillian Hellman (whose politics may or may not have induced her to undermine Silver.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Silver seemed to think that if he could craft the play just so, American audiences would comprehend the Holocaust and the Jewish experience just so, too. But his version was too Jewish. Or he was too impossible to work with. In the end, \u003cb>The Diary of Anne Frank\u003c/b> was written by Albert Hackett and Frances Goodrich (who ironically, wrote the Christmas classic \u003cb>It’s a Wonderful Life\u003c/b>). In their version, human suffering is universal; this time around, it was the Jews’ turn. The original diary’s references to Jews as victims and Germans as killers were removed. Anne’s seemingly forgiving “I still believe…” gets the play’s final word. The play was reviewed as a “lovely, tender drama.” \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003ccenter>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://a.s.kqed.net/img/arts/blog/annefrank3.jpg\" style=\"margin-bottom: 10px;\">\u003c/center>\n\u003cp>Hannah Cabell plays Silver’s wife, a performance which grows in poignancy as the wife gradually watches her husband become unhinged from the ordeal. Silver spent his money on lawsuits; he squandered his credibility and talents and sacrificed his marriage, his family and his peace of mind. Cabell also plays Miss Mermin, the young publisher at Doubleday whose allegiance towards Silver is challenged by his monomania. Matte Osian plays several roles, including bottom-line oriented anti-Semites. In this three-actor play, the stage is also peopled by marionettes. Designed by Matt Acheson, the puppets include Anne and Otto Frank and seem to represent the ghosts of unnamed Holocaust victims.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the play’s most achingly intense scene, the puppet of Anne Frank appears in the Silvers’ bed. What begins as a familiar trope — the other woman between them — becomes a heartbreaking conversation between a mother and a dead child. As Anne describes her final days, and her father’s sorrow, the scene pierces with the truth of what was lost and what transpired in Bergen-Belsen. Here, and elsewhere, \u003cb>Compulsion\u003c/b> achieves the rawness and beauty that Hackett and Goodrich’s “lovely drama” did not. Even more, Mandy Patinkin distills this rawness and beauty to one throe of quiet sorrow as he sings, in a mournful countertenor, a Yiddish song, after rising from the bed where he channeled Anne Frank.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Compulsion\u003c/b> runs through October 31, 2010 at Berkeley Repertory Theater. For \u003ca href=\"http://www.berkeleyrep.org/tickets/index.asp\">tickets and information\u003c/a> visit berkeleyrep.org.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"info": "What kind of no sabo word is Hyphenación? For us, it’s about living within a hyphenation. Like being a third-gen Mexican-American from the Texas border now living that Bay Area Chicano life. Like Xorje! Each week we bring together a couple of hyphenated Latinos to talk all about personal life choices: family, careers, relationships, belonging … everything is on the table. ",
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"info": "Our flagship program, helmed by Kai Ryssdal, examines what the day in money delivered, through stories, conversations, newsworthy numbers and more. Updated Monday through Friday at about 3:30 p.m. PT.",
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"info": "The MindShift podcast explores the innovations in education that are shaping how kids learn. Hosts Ki Sung and Katrina Schwartz introduce listeners to educators, researchers, parents and students who are developing effective ways to improve how kids learn. We cover topics like how fed-up administrators are developing surprising tactics to deal with classroom disruptions; how listening to podcasts are helping kids develop reading skills; the consequences of overparenting; and why interdisciplinary learning can engage students on all ends of the traditional achievement spectrum. This podcast is part of the MindShift education site, a division of KQED News. KQED is an NPR/PBS member station based in San Francisco. You can also visit the MindShift website for episodes and supplemental blog posts or tweet us \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/MindShiftKQED\">@MindShiftKQED\u003c/a> or visit us at \u003ca href=\"/mindshift\">MindShift.KQED.org\u003c/a>",
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"info": "For decades, the process for how police police themselves has been inconsistent – if not opaque. In some states, like California, these proceedings were completely hidden. After a new police transparency law unsealed scores of internal affairs files, our reporters set out to examine these cases and the shadow world of police discipline. On Our Watch brings listeners into the rooms where officers are questioned and witnesses are interrogated to find out who this system is really protecting. Is it the officers, or the public they've sworn to serve?",
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"tagline": "Politics from a personal perspective",
"info": "Political Breakdown is a new series that explores the political intersection of California and the nation. Each week hosts Scott Shafer and Marisa Lagos are joined with a new special guest to unpack politics -- with personality — and offer an insider’s glimpse at how politics happens.",
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"possible": {
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"info": "Possible is hosted by entrepreneur Reid Hoffman and writer Aria Finger. Together in Possible, Hoffman and Finger lead enlightening discussions about building a brighter collective future. The show features interviews with visionary guests like Trevor Noah, Sam Altman and Janette Sadik-Khan. Possible paints an optimistic portrait of the world we can create through science, policy, business, art and our shared humanity. It asks: What if everything goes right for once? How can we get there? Each episode also includes a short fiction story generated by advanced AI GPT-4, serving as a thought-provoking springboard to speculate how humanity could leverage technology for good.",
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},
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"pri-the-world": {
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"title": "PRI's The World: Latest Edition",
"info": "Each weekday, host Marco Werman and his team of producers bring you the world's most interesting stories in an hour of radio that reminds us just how small our planet really is.",
"airtime": "MON-FRI 2pm-3pm",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/The-World-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
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},
"radiolab": {
"id": "radiolab",
"title": "Radiolab",
"info": "A two-time Peabody Award-winner, Radiolab is an investigation told through sounds and stories, and centered around one big idea. In the Radiolab world, information sounds like music and science and culture collide. Hosted by Jad Abumrad and Robert Krulwich, the show is designed for listeners who demand skepticism, but appreciate wonder. WNYC Studios is the producer of other leading podcasts including Freakonomics Radio, Death, Sex & Money, On the Media and many more.",
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},
"reveal": {
"id": "reveal",
"title": "Reveal",
"info": "Created by The Center for Investigative Reporting and PRX, Reveal is public radios first one-hour weekly radio show and podcast dedicated to investigative reporting. Credible, fact based and without a partisan agenda, Reveal combines the power and artistry of driveway moment storytelling with data-rich reporting on critically important issues. The result is stories that inform and inspire, arming our listeners with information to right injustices, hold the powerful accountable and improve lives.Reveal is hosted by Al Letson and showcases the award-winning work of CIR and newsrooms large and small across the nation. In a radio and podcast market crowded with choices, Reveal focuses on important and often surprising stories that illuminate the world for our listeners.",
"airtime": "SAT 4pm-5pm",
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"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.revealnews.org/episodes/",
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"link": "/radio/program/reveal",
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"rss": "http://feeds.revealradio.org/revealpodcast"
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},
"rightnowish": {
"id": "rightnowish",
"title": "Rightnowish",
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