Jim Munson - Page 8

honor of Black leaders who shaped and defined American history, The Marsh is presenting Darryl Van Leer’s riveting The Escape of Frederick Douglass on its digital platform, MarshStream. Van Leer wrote and stars in the acclaimed production, which brings to vivid life the early years of African American rights activist Frederick Douglass, from his youth as an unruly boy caught in a slave training camp to his gripping and suspenseful train ride to freedom. Immediately following the performance, Van Leer will be joined by The Marsh Founder/Artistic Director Stephanie Weisman for a Q&A. The Escape of Frederick Douglass will be streamed on Saturday, April 24 at 7:30pm PDT. For more information, please visit www.themarsh.org/marshstream. BroadwayWorld up with Van Leer last week from his home base in Nashville, Tennessee. An actor with some notable film & TV credits, Van Leer is perhaps best known for his stage works about political and cultural leaders, including musical performers such as Ray Charles and Little Richard. We discussed The Escape of Frederick Douglass and how he went about bringing such an iconic historical figure to life, and his thoughts on finding hope in difficult times. Van Leer has made it his mission to take inspiration from these great historical figures and pass it on to his audiences.

San Francisco’s revered 42nd Street Moon kicks off its 2021 “Moonbeams” season with Jason Graae in Perfect Hermany, a tribute to the late, great Jerry Herman, writer of such classic musicals as Hello, Dolly!, Mame and La Cage Aux Folles. The title Perfect Hermany is an unusually apt one as Graae is the perfect interpreter of Herman’s work, having starred in a much-lauded production Herman’s The Grand Tour in LA and toured for years with Herman in Hello, Jerry!, a revue of Herman’s work. Perfect Hermany is available for streaming on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays through May 2, 2021. For additional information and to purchase tickets, visit 42ndStreetMoon.org. Among his many credits, Graae has appeared on Broadway numerous times, toured extensively as The Wizard in Wicked, performed with major symphonies across the country, recorded dozens of musical theater albums and has enjoyed a long association with 42nd Street Moon. He is known for the improbable combination of his antic, go-for-broke comedic style and the impeccable musicianship of his soaring tenor. He is the type of performer who can make you bust a gut one moment, and then melt your heart the next.   BroadwayWorld caught up with Graae last week from his home base in LA soon after he had completed filming Perfect Hermany. We talked about his long association with both Herman and 42nd Street Moon, his favorite Herman songs, a couple of key roles that somehow got away from him and a few he still hopes to have a go at. Graae is always a blast to talk to. It seems the guy just is incapable of not being funny, but he is also thoughtful and kind, and sort of a walking treasure trove of theatrical lore. The following conversation has been condensed and edited for clarity.

You may not be aware of World Voice Day, but it’s celebrated every April 16th to demonstrate the enormous importance of the voice in the daily lives of all people. I can’t imagine a better person to observe it with than Candace Johnson, who leads CJ’s FitnesSing!™ on the MarshStream platform every Friday at 12:00 noon PT, free of charge. Her unique method combines physical activity with vocal training, and if either of those things gives you some trepidation, you needn’t worry. She blends the two seamlessly and makes it all accessible to students at all levels. In a single hour you’ll get some exercise, you’ll sing, and you’ll learn a lot about the voice and different vocal styles. And most of all, you will likely have a blast. Johnson is definitely a “people person” whose enthusiasm for is infectious. A soprano acclaimed for her vocal clarity and expressive interpretation, Johnson has concertized widely, including guest appearances at Carnegie Hall and The Manhattan Center. She earned her doctorate in voice performance from the University of Michigan and is on the music faculty at UC Berkeley. BroadwayWorld caught up with her recently to find out how she came up with her innovative approach. She also talked about her background growing up in the South as a girl who sang from a young age but didn’t initially see a path for herself as a serious student of voice. She was eventually able to fuse her Black music heritage with her classical training to find her true voice. Johnson is a delightful conversationalist, fun and upbeat yet also open and honest about her own struggles, and warm and empathetic in her responses. And she has an uncanny ability to make even the nerdiest aspects of vocal health sound like fun.

The latest program in San Francisco Ballet’s 2021 digital season is the glorious return of George Balanchine’s Jewels. BroadwayWorld reviews the thrilling production now streaming through April 21, 2021.

Virtuoso pianist, actor and writer Hershey Felder certainly knows how to handle any curveballs life throws him. Stuck in Florence, Italy (poor guy!) for the duration of Covid, he is using his Tuscan surroundings to enrich his new show about native son Giacomo Puccini. TheatreWorks Silicon Valley and Opera San José are coming together to offer viewers the world premiere livestream of Hershey Felder, PUCCINI, a new work by and starring Felder, along with guest stars from the opera world - baritone Nathan Gunn, sopranos Gianna Corbisiero and Ekaterina Siurina, and tenor Charles Castronovo. Presented by Hershey Felder Presents Live from Florence, Hershey Felder, PUCCINI tells the story of a young musician captivated by the world of opera, particularly by Puccini’s eternally popular works La Bohème, Tosca, and Madama Butterfly. Sumptuously filmed and performed on location in Lucca, Italy in the very home where Giacomo Puccini was born, Hershey Felder, PUCCINI combines theatre, music and film to create a uniquely moving experience for audiences. The show will be streamed live at 5pm PST on Sunday, March 14, 2021 (with streaming on-demand access through March 21). To buy tickets or find more information, visit TheatreWorks.org or Operasj.org. Ticket sales directly benefit the arts organization through which they are purchased. BroadwayWorld spoke with Felder earlier this week from his home in Florence while he was in the midst of making final tweaks to the show. He is super fascinating and just plain fun to talk to. His knowledge of, and love for, the arts runs so deep that that I always come away from any conversation with him having learned something, having been entertained and having been moved. Much like the experience of seeing one of his shows, in fact. Underscoring everything is his irrepressible sense of humor and musical way with words.

There is a lot to love in San Francisco Ballet’s recently unveiled Program 03 of mixed repertoire, even if it takes a bit of a dip in the middle. The program gets off to a smashing start with Alexei Ratmansky’s Symphony #9, which is part of his justly celebrated Shostakovich Trilogy. Next up is Danielle Rowe's world premiere dance film 'Wooden Dimes' set in the world of 1920's vaudeville. The program comes to a rousing close with Yuri Possokhov's 'Swimmer' an imaginative take on the John Cheever short story. Program 03 is available to stream through March 24th.

When Lorraine Hansberry Theatre announced last September that Bay Area theatre luminary Margo Hall had been appointed as its first female Artistic Director, it felt like a promise of good things to come. Six months later, the venerable company is back up and running full steam ahead with its first staged production since the COVID-19 pandemic began, Erika Dickerson-Despenza’s [hieroglyph], available to stream on-demand March 13th through April 3rd. Hall directed this as a co-production with Lorraine Hansberry Theatre’s long-time collaborator San Francisco Playhouse, and would seem to be the perfect director to bring it to life. Dickerson-Despenza is a Tow Playwright-in-Residence at New York’s Public Theater who centers her writings on Black women’s land legacies and distinct experiences of environmental racism. Telling the raw, honest story of a 13-year-old girl struggling Post-Hurricane Katrina, wrestling with being displaced to a new city while secretly coping with the PTSD of an assault at the Superdome, [hieroglyph] is part of Dickerson-Despenza’s 10-play Katrina cycle focused on the effects of Hurricane Katrina and its state-sanctioned, man-made disaster rippling in & beyond New Orleans. Hall describes the play as “tragically beautiful.” Patrons may support the organization of their choice by purchasing tickets from Lorraine Hansberry Theatre at lhtsf.org or from San Francisco Playhouse at sfplayhouse.org. BroadwayWorld spoke with Hall last week, just as she was preparing to meet her cast in person for the first time after weeks of Zoom rehearsals. Speaking to her, I got the distinct impression of someone who is exactly where she needs to be right now. This may be her first stint as an artistic director, but in so many ways she has been preparing for this role her entire life. Her decades of experience as an actor, director, playwright, professor and activist all coalesce to serve her in her new role. We talked about her hopes to expand Hansberry’s purview, the need to create culturally-specific theatre, and the exigencies of producing theatre and TV (she is also acting in the new “Blindspotting” series!) during Covid times. Throughout our conversation, I was struck by the sheer joy she exudes for making theatre and for finding herself in a place where she can create new opportunities for Black theatre artists.

There are just some people on this planet who naturally operate on a more creative level than the rest of us, and mezzo-soprano Hai-Ting Chinn is clearly one of those people. She is bringing her wildly inventive musical science show Science Fair: An Opera with Experiments to The Marsh on Saturday, March 6th.  Conceived and performed by Chinn with pianist Erika Switzer, Science Fair pairs luscious operatic vocals with light-hearted humor and science lectures. Chinn herself describes it as “a classical cabaret of science songs with science communication staging, including live experiments and slide shows, a little audience participation and a general sort of Bill Nye fun.” Science Fair will be available for livestream at 5:00pm PST on March 6th, followed by a post-performance Q&A with The Marsh Founder/Artistic Director Stephanie Weisman. Chinn will also appear two days prior to that on Stephanie’s MarshStream at 7:30pm on Thursday, March 4th to discuss this innovative work. For more information, visit www.themarsh.org/marshstream. BroadwayWorld caught up with Chinn last week from her home in the Hudson Valley, where she had just moved from New York City only two days earlier. A Northern California native with degrees from the Eastman and Yale Schools of Music, Shinn has enjoyed an unusually eclectic career, with credits as varied as touring around the world in Phillip Glass’s Einstein on the Beach, playing Lady Thiang in The King & I on the West End, and performing with the experimental Wooster Group in New York. Given her resume, I had thought she might be fascinating to talk to, and she did not disappoint. I mean, what other opera singers do you know who do science in their spare time, just for fun? We talked about how Science Fair came to be, her passion for the creative process, and our evolving understanding around issues of racial and gender equity. In conversation, she is candid and accessible, brainy and funny, and always very, very thoughtful. Underlying everything is her enduring joy in pushing the boundaries of what it means to create musical art.

Indian American actress and playwright Dipti Mehta’s award-winning work, HONOUR: Confessions of a Mumbai Courtesan kicks off Women’s History Month at The Marsh, which will focus the spotlight on female performers throughout the month of March. Offered via a MarshStream livestream, HONOUR incorporates original music, the dazzling colors of India, and a riveting plot worthy of Bollywood. Described as Memoirs of Geisha meets Slumdog Millionaire, it is a vibrant coming-of-age story set in the red-light districts of Mumbai. Centering on a mother-daughter duo, it examines inter-generational prostitution and why it exists, and addresses the issues of sex trafficking and human rights. This compelling work was named “Best Solo Show” at New York’s FRINGE in 2016 and was hailed as “beautiful and devastating” in a five-star review by Time Out NYC. Following the performance, Dipti will join the Solo Arts Heal host to discuss raising awareness and how to make a difference in the community of sex workers. HONOUR: Confessions of a Mumbai Courtesan will be streamed at 7:30pm PST on Wednesday, March 3. For more information, visit www.themarsh.org/marshstream. The performance will also be archived and available to watch on demand via The Marsh’s YouTube channel. BroadwayWorld recently spoke with Mehta while she was spending some time in Mumbai before heading back to her current home base in New York. To say that she has led an atypical life would be an understatement. An ardent feminist from a very young age in Mumbai, she became an actress and radio host in her teens before coming to America to get her doctorate Molecular & Cellular Biology and work in cancer research at Sloan Kettering. In recent years, she has returned to her true passion of theater with a focus on telling stories we haven’t heard before. In a wide-ranging conversation, we talked about the genesis of HONOUR, her unorthodox career path, and the current status of South Asian representation in the arts.

For oh-so many reasons, it seems there is finally a feeling of optimism in the air as we emerge from the dark days of 2020. San Francisco’s 42nd Street Moon has decided to capitalize on that with their star-studded virtual Gala You Can’t Stop the Beat, which streams on Sunday, February 28th beginning at 6:00pm PST. You Can’t Stop the Beat will be hosted by Broadway actor and beloved “Moonie” Jason Graae and feature performances from a number of Tony winners and nominees. Musical theatre luminaries Liz Callaway, Michael Maguire, Faith Prince and Emily Skinner, plus dozens of other musical theater artists from the Bay Area and beyond will perform numbers from favorite musicals such as Hairspray, Come From Away, Bye Bye Birdie, Hamilton and many more. All proceeds from the virtual gala will support programs that are critical to the expansion of Moon’s programming and continuation of their mission - including MoonSchool’s education and outreach programs and the renovation of their home at the Gateway Theatre. To learn more about the event or to make a donation, visit www.42ndstmoon.org/annualgala. BroadwayWorld recently caught up with Daniel Thomas, who shares duties as Moon’s Co-Executive Director with Daren A.C. Carollo. Thomas’ current hopefulness and gratitude for having made it through a difficult year is palpable. Putting this particular gala together has clearly been a joy, and Thomas is confident that Moon audiences have much to look forward to in the coming year.

San Francisco Ballet just released the second program of its 2021 digital season and it’s a knockout. The mixed-rep program of 3 very different contemporary ballets beautifully shows off the breadth and depth of the company’s artistry. Watching it, I kept saying to myself, “God, they’re good!” The headliner of the program is 'Colorforms,' a stunning world premiere by Myles Thatcher.

Mary Goggin has quite a story to tell in her play Runaway Princess, and perhaps the most astonishing thing is that it’s all true. She left home at 13 to escape her strict Irish Catholic upbringing, then spent years in drug addiction and prostitution before becoming sober and finding her true calling as an actor, and ultimately emerging back into the light of survival, motherhood and daily joy. Laced with an uncommon blend of brash humor and understated pathos, Runaway Princess received three awards at the United Solo Festival 2018 in New York City (Best Storyteller, Solo Critics Choice, Best Seller) as well as the Best Actor Award at the Galway Fringe 2019 and the Fringiest Award at the Baltimore Fringe 2019. On Wednesday, February 17th at 7:30pm PST, Goggin will appear on the Marshstream Solo Arts Heal series to present excerpts from the play and discuss how she overcame the pain, struggle and loss to discover her own resilience and pursue a blissful life. For further information, visit www.themarsh.org/marshstream. The episode will also be archived and available to watch later on The Marsh’s YouTube channel. BroadwayWorld spoke with Goggin from her home base in the Bronx. Ever the dyed-in-the-wool New Yorker, she is gutsy, warm and brutally honest. She also appears to have somehow survived her painful past without an ounce of self-pity, or the need to moralize or proselytize.

The uncommonly versatile actor/writer/musician Darryl Van Leer has made it his mission to provide inspiration to others. It would therefore be hard to think of a more perfect way for The Marsh to launch Black History Month than with a live performance of his electrifying one-man play, Mandela: Let Freedom Reign, which it will present on MarshStream on Saturday evening, February 6th. From his early life to his epic struggles against apartheid, Nelson Mandela comes to vivid life in this life-affirming performance. An icon of democracy and social justice, Mandela’s life-long dedication to promoting forgiveness and equality are celebrated in this stirring reminder of one man’s incredible impact. Mandela: Let Freedom Reign will be presented at 7:30pm PST on Saturday, February 6th on MarshStream. Van Leer will also appear two days prior to that on Stephanie’s MarshStream at 7:30pm PST on Thursday, February 4th to discuss the play and perform a brief excerpt. For more information, visit www.themarsh.org/marshstream. Also, please note that the performance on February 6th will be live only, and not archived for later viewing. Van Leer is a man of many talents who has enjoyed an exceptionally wide-ranging career. While his theater work has focused primarily on his one-man shows about iconic historic and musical figures, he has also racked up some impressive film and TV credits in ensemble projects, sharing the screen with acting luminaries such as James Earl Jones, Samuel L. Jackson and Rue McClanahan. BroadwayWorld spoke with Van Leer last week from his home base in Nashville, Tennessee.  In conversation, he is instantly and effortlessly engaging, warm and upbeat, and clearly thankful for the opportunity to create and perform works of inspiration. His Kentucky roots are evidenced by the delightfully musical lilt in his speech patterns.

Good news for Hershey Felder fans and musical theater afficionados everywhere! TheatreWorks Silicon Valley is launching the New Year with three world premiere livestreamed performances in partnership with Hershey Felder Presents Live from Florence. First up is Hershey Felder as Sholem Aleichem in BEFORE FIDDLER, presented live at 5pm PST on Sunday, February 7, 2021. Decades before the beloved musical Fiddler on the Roof first delighted audiences, there was Sholem Aleichem and his beloved character of ‘Tevye the Milkman.’ Long before songs like “Tradition,” “If I Were a Rich Man” and “Sunrise, Sunset” first beguiled audiences, there was klezmer, a music that imitated talking, laughing, weeping, and singing, and where musicians didn’t just make music, they spoke to audiences in song. Acclaimed playwright & performer Felder will play Sholem Aleichem, giving audiences the true story of what happened ‘Before Fiddler.’ He will be joined by Florence’s celebrated Klezmerata Fiorentina, comprised of top musicians from Florence’s world-famous Orchestra of the Maggio Musicale. Filmed partially on location where the events actually took place, this production will feature the stories and characters of Sholem Aleichem, along with authentic klezmer music that is sure to move the soul. For more information and to purchase tickets, please visit www.theatreworks.org. BroadwayWorld spoke with Felder last week from his home in Florence where he’s been based ever since the Covid pandemic hit. As always, Felder is fascinating and delightful to talk to, simultaneously brainy and emotionally transparent, and confident enough in his own talents to be open about his enduring fears.

If your former spouse wrote a book describing how they left you to take up with someone else, even quoting your personal letters during the breakup – what would you do? That is the tantalizing question explored by Lynne Kaufman in her newest play, 'Divine Madness,' debuting January 30th and 31st on MarshStream. Local stage favorites Julia McNeal and Charles Shaw Robinson will play the roles of celebrated writer Elizabeth Hardwick and poet Robert Lowell, who had a long and intensely complicated marriage. Lowell went on the win the Pulitzer for this work, while Hardwick was left destroyed. What are the chances you would reunite after that kind of public betrayal? BroadwayWorld spoke with Kaufman from her home in San Francisco to learn more about what prompted her to write about Hardwick and Lowell, and also to talk about her long and productive partnership with The Marsh, where her play Who Killed Sylvia Plath? recently won top honors at the The MarshStream International Solo Fest. Kaufman is a terrific conversationalist, at once uncommonly erudite and naturally chatty. It is also clear that she is a born storyteller. Even the simplest question can lead her to unexpected places, like a fascinating tale of meeting spiritual guru Ram Dass in Hawaii.

We may be in the doldrums of winter right now – with nippy temperatures, dark skies and some much-needed rain – but January also means that San Francisco Ballet (SFB) is back in season for the next several months and, to me, that signifies all’s right with the world. SFB is kicking off its 2021 digital season exactly where it left off last March, when the remainder of its 2020 season was abruptly cancelled for obvious reasons. The company presented an enchanting new production of George Balanchine’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream only to have the curtain come down on opening night to the news that the just-ended performance would be its last for the season.

Opera San José hits it out of the park with its immensely moving new virtual production of Three Decembers, the chamber opera by composer Jake Heggie and librettist Gene Scheer, based on an unpublished play by Terrance McNally. Due to popular demand, streaming access has now been extended through January 31, 2021. It’s about a family of three – diva Maddie, played by world-renowned mezzo-soprano Susan Graham, and her two adult children Bea and Charlie, played by Opera San José Resident Artists Maya Kherani and Efraín Solís. In a swift 90 minutes, the three journey from a place of disconnect to a place of understanding and ultimately healing. BroadwayWorld spoke with Ms. Kherani shortly after she had completed filming 'Three Decembers.'

Talking to Khori Dastoor, General Director of Opera San José brings to mind that old quote from Elizabeth Taylor when she was faced with unimaginable adversity, “Now is the time for guts and guile.” Just one year into her tenure as GD, Dastoor is faced with an almost impossible situation due to the Covid pandemic. Out of all the arts, opera, the artform which she has made her life’s work, arguably has the biggest challenges. After all, the act of singing operatically produces enormous amounts of aerosols, the core audience is older and thus especially at risk for Covid, and the population at large may not consider opera to be essential to their lives. Since creating new works is practically impossible, many GD’s are offering a sort of greatest hits of former glories, video snippets from past years that were already in the can. Or maybe something like a “reading” of an old holiday chestnut like Der Rosenkavalier, presented Brady-Bunch style on Zoom. So what does Dastoor do instead? She goes bravely programs a brand-new, beautifully-produced production of Jake Heggie’s Three Decembers, starring no less than world-renowned opera star Susan Graham, alongside two of Opera San José’s super-talented Resident Artists, soprano Maya Kherani and baritone Efraín Solis. This immensely moving chamber work is based on an unpublished play by Terrance  McNally, adapted by librettist Gene Scheer, and tells the story of a family struggling to connect during the early years of the AIDS pandemic. The work premiered in 2008, yet somehow feels more relevant than ever, given the parallels with what we’re all going through today, as evidenced by McNally’s death from Covid earlier this year. The opera is currently available for streaming through the end of December. For more information or to purchase tickets, visit operasj.org. BroadwayWorld spoke with Dastoor shortly after the filming of Three Decembers had been completed. Dastoor was remarkably open and forthcoming about the challenges of the opera world right now, even as her passion for growing the artform burns stronger than ever. We talked about how she managed to produce Three Decembers during Covid, her successful earlier career as a lyric soprano, and the imperative to keep the arts alive during these difficult times. Her responses to my questions were invariably thoughtful, often surprising and not without humor. And, as a rare woman of color leading an opera company, her understanding of the need to open up her artform runs deep. Above all, though, she is just plain fun to talk to - effortlessly engaging, whip-smart, emotionally transparent, and without an ounce of pretension.

Virtuoso actor/pianist/playwright Hershey Felder is bringing us a holiday treat with a livestreamed performance of his hit show Hershey Felder TCHAIKOVSKY presented live from Florence, Italy where Tchaikovsky lived and worked. It is also not so incidentally where Felder himself lives and has been hunkered down ever since his normally hectic life of constant touring was brought to a halt by the Covid epidemic. Hershey Felder TCHAIKOVSKY features an extended focus on the composer’s iconic The Nutcracker ballet, and also delves into his life in Italy, and his array of works from the ballets Swan Lake and Sleeping Beauty, to his 1812 Overture, and brilliant symphonic works. Presented by TheatreWorks Silicon Valley in partnership with Hershey Felder Presents Live from Florence, the richly cinematic show is directed by Florentine film artist Stefano Decarli and based on the original stage play directed by Trevor Hay. Hershey Felder TCHAIKOVSKY will be presented live on Sunday, December 20, 2020 (5pm PST/8pm EST) with streaming on-demand access available December 21 – 27, 2020. Tickets and more information are available at TheatreWorks.org. BroadwayWorld spoke with Felder just a couple of days ago while he was in the thick of final preparations for the livestream - about who the real Tchaikovsky was and his difficulties as a gay man in tsarist Russia, the enduring popularity of his music, and how Felder is spending the holidays in Florence. He is always a fun and fascinating person to talk to, with his encyclopedic knowledge of the arts and his idiosyncratically musical syntax. His response to even a simple question can be at once funny, nerdy and heartfelt.

As we all continue to navigate our way through these unprecedented times, The Marsh is meeting this moment with its weekly Solo Arts Heal series, which uses lightness and humor to explore some of the challenging issues we’re all grappling with. The series comes from artists’ inspiring true stories that celebrate overcoming adversity; surviving emotional, mental, and physical challenges; and becoming health advocates. The vulnerability of the participating artists leads listeners through their personal journeys of trauma and healing. Producer, writer and longtime champion of the Arts and Sciences Gail Schickele is host of the informative and entertaining series, available to stream every Wednesday at 7:30pm (PST) on MarshStream. Each week, Schickele is joined by a new guest for performance excerpts, talkbacks, and Q&A. Visit themarsh.org/soloartsheal/ for additional info. BroadwayWorld recently caught up with Schickele to learn how the series came about and find out more about her own fascinating career working in various contexts with a wide variety of well-known artists.