Classical Music is Booming. Theater? Not So Much.
We look at what ails theater, still struggling to recover four years after the pandemic. The dark days of the pandemic are several years behind us now, but the performing...
May 10, 2024
SCR at 60, Part 2: The Investment in New Plays Pays Off
Editor’s Note: This is PART 2 of a two-part series recognizing SCR’s 60th anniversary season, which continues through August. South Coast Repertory founders David Emmes and Martin Benson had every reason...
May 6, 2024
With ‘Prelude to a Kiss, The Musical,’ SCR Adds New Wrinkles to the Play it Originated 36 Years Ago
REVIEW: Playwright Craig Lucas and company have, for better or worse, wrought a different theatrical animal, seemingly missing key emotional dynamics. In the opening scene of “Prelude to a Kiss,...
April 21, 2024
Biblical Times, a Musical ‘Prelude’ and More at the Pacific Playwrights Festival
The Costa Mesa company’s 26th showcase unveils two standalone productions of new shows, plus a quintet of staged readings. If new plays are indeed the life blood of theater companies,...
April 19, 2024
St.Clair and Pacific Symphony Find the Heart of ‘La Bohème’
REVIEW: The annual semi-staged opera features a talented young cast in Puccini’s masterpiece. “Is anything in the world more poignant than youth and love and tuberculosis?,” Virgil Thomson once wrote...
April 5, 2024
‘Prelude to a Kiss’ Reemerges in a Whole New Form at SCR
South Coast Repertory originated Craig Lucas’s play in 1988. Now Lucas, SCR and others have created an all-new musical version. The evolution of a new stage musical is always something...
April 5, 2024
Segerstrom Center’s 2024-25 Broadway Series Signals Confidence
The line-up of 10 musicals includes six that have never been presented in Orange County. The Segerstrom Center for the Arts’ 2024-25 Broadway Series, announced today, reflects the growing confidence...
April 1, 2024
Tom Bradac, a Pillar of Orange County Theater, Dies
Thomas Bradac, a pillar of Orange County’s theater community for decades, has died. He was 76. Bradac was best known for his longtime championing of Shakespeare as the head of...
March 14, 2024
SCR at 60, Part 1: Committing to New Plays, Eventually
Editor’s Note: This is PART 1 of a two-part series recognizing SCR’s 60th anniversary season, which continues through August. “Twenty-four years ago … two young men set out to start...
March 11, 2024
Hey Brother, Can You Spare an Empty Space?
Checking in with Orange County’s theaters without a home. Remove the high school and college theater programs, as well as those venues that mainly host and don’t create theater, and...
February 26, 2024
What’s Happening in Arts & Culture in Orange County in 2024
World premieres, the reopening of a growing museum, and cultural events galore are on the schedule for the Orange County arts and culture calendar during winter/spring 2024. The new year...
January 17, 2024
Can ‘Change the Game’ Be a Game-Changer?
Could the activities of a college debate team, the music of a garage rock band, and the theories espoused in a late ’60s book by a Brazilian educator possibly have...
January 5, 2024
