Second Row Center Blog
In author-playwright Mary Spletter’s world premiere, Arches, Balance and Light, the East Bay playwright takes on a difficult, if not impossible, task—telling the personal behind-the-scenes life story of the legendary Julia Morgan, California’s first license female architect. Why is that so impossible? Well, though much is known of Morgan’s professional career and long list of …
Continue reading ““Arches, Balance and Light” – February 24, 2016″
Last year, Spreckels Theater Company staged an unconventional revival of Rogers and Hammerstein’s ‘Carousel,’ a play many have heard of but few have ever actually seen. Eschewing complex sets, shoreline scenery—and, you know, an actual carousel—director Gene Abravaya inverted the whole concept, hauling the orchestra up from the pit, and letting the show unfold in …
The Nobel-prize winning novelist Edith Wharton once wrote, “There are two ways of spreading light—to be the candle or the mirror that reflects it.” Mirrors—and candles, too—are both the set dressing and driving metaphor in two recently opened plays, stories in which indelible women stand center-stage to take a good hard look at their world, …
Continue reading ““Road To Mecca,” “Bad Dates” – February 10, 2016″
Short plays aren’t easy. Like a haiku, you have to say a lot with a little. Because of that, it’s easy for a short play to come off less like a full play in miniature, and more like a campfire skit at summer camp. Still, because they are condensed, when they are done well, the …
Continue reading ““From Russia With Love,” “In Love With the 8×10” – February 3, 2016″