Put a Little Drama in your Life
KPBS AIRDATE: OCTOBER 27, 2000 It's World Peace Week, and the Internet is flooded with emails calling for women to come forward and assert their nonviolent natures to help resolve the conflict in the Middle East. There couldn't be a better time for "Lysistrata," the 2500 year-old comedy about women withholding sex until the their men end the Peloponnesian War. Read More →
KPBS AIRDATE: DECEMBER 22, 2000 Cue the Christmas bells. (SOUND) Cue the cowbell (SOUND). Cue the cow (SOUND). Another Christmas cash-cow sidles into the already crowded holiday field. Look! There's the Sugarplum Fairy, and Ebenezer Scrooge, and over there's the Grinch. And, demanding a significant piece of its own commercial real estate, Lamb's annual bovine contender, "Festival of Christmas." So what's wrong with Read More →
KPBS AIRDATE: FEBRUARY 16, 2001 Echoing from a deep cavern in my mind, I could hear the still, small voice of that budding writer, nipped in the bud -- Anne Frank. "I still believe," she said, "in spite of everything, that people are truly good at heart." But that mindset seemed to come from another time, another place, another planet, from the writings of Martin McDonagh and Read More →
KPBS AIRDATE: APRIL 13, 2001 Some sex scandals are just too delicious not to be made into movies or plays. So why did it take 150 years to bring the true story of John Ruskin to the stage? Well, thanks are due to novelist/playwright Gregory Murphy for bringing the tale to light, without stooping, Hollywood-style, to our grossest, basest instincts. The small, spare, tightly-crafted drama, the hit of Read More →
KPBS AIRDATE: JUNE 8, 2001 "As Bees in Honey Drown" attracted a big buzz Off Broadway as a darkly funny, comedy, a slyly cynical commentary on our desperate desire for hype, fame and fortune, at any cost. Faust meets Auntie Mame (on speed) in this riff on youth, creativity, celebrity and the art of manipulation. Playwright Douglas Carter Beane has a Read More →
KPBS AIRDATE: JULY 2001 There's an old story about North Coast Repertory Theatre. During a string of Neil Simon hits, the playwright's brother, Danny Simon, was in the audience. After one of his brother's especially autobiographical works, he is purported to have exclaimed, 'Why do they always make my mother into a blonde shiksa?' Well, they've done it again. Different playwright, Read More →
“San Diego is a hotbed of theater. Every year, I see 200-250 productions. This is fertile ground for new work. In addition to the prodigious local talent, theatermakers from around the country come here to premiere their latest creations. San Diego sends more shows to Broadway than nearly any other city in the U.S.”
-Pat Launer