Featured Column

The SF Gate and American Theatre magazine are reporting the unexpected death of Mark Rucker, associate artistic director of San Francisco’s American Conservatory Theatre.

We also love Asner for an ancillary reason: He’s Pro99. He made that abundantly clear during the recent AEA election, when he was quoted (at the height of the Pro99 election campaign), “I hate to go against the laws of unionism, but actors need the 99-seat rule. Since time immemorial, actors have been known to work for free, and will continue to do so. It is not a governable art.” BY PAUL BIRCHALL

Here is a comprehensive archive of all 2015 Hollywood Fringe performances reviewed by Stage Raw

Just last night, I found myself emerging from a theater at the Complex (Santa Monica Blvd., near Wilcox) at 8:15 and needing to zip to Theater of NOTE (Cahuenga Blvd., north of Sunset) for a show at 8:30. The Uber got me there like a Star Trek Transporter. And, after spotting my badge, I have to confess the Uber driver revealed that he was a comedian performing frequently at one of the Improv Olympic-y theaters at the Complex. His girlfriend was in a fringe show herself. Welcome to Los Angeles, where even (and perhaps especially) your Uber driver is chasing some theatrical dream.--BY PAUL BIRCHALL

Musical Theatre Guild has had a splendid track record with obscure Sondheim: they made their bones as a substantial company with the first local presentation of Passion in 1999, and later did a crackerjack job with his resuscitated first (unproduced) Broadway show, 1955’s Saturday Night. Director Richard Israel, with no time at all to solve the material’s intractable difficulties, ploughed headlong into inventive staging stratagems that rely almost entirely on the persuasive musical abilities of his cast and orchestra. --BY MYRON MEISEL

I left Philadelphia for Los Angeles more than 20 years ago to become a working actor. I had spent my last six years in Philadelphia on staff at People’s Light & Theatre, a LORT-D regional theatre in Malvern, and I used to know the theatre community back there. Talking with a Philadelphia-based candidate who recently ran for a seat on AEA’s council made me realize how long I’d been away. I was trying to explain to him why I was so opposed to AEA’s efforts to end the 99-Seat Plan out here in Los Angeles. It quickly became clear that I didn’t understand Philadelphia anymore, but also that he didn’t know L.A., either. --BY WENDY WORTHINGTON

It is only as word of mouth starts to circulate over the ensuing weeks that the cream is likely to rise and certain shows will draw away from the pack to become “Fringe hits.” This is what makes going to shows early on in the festival so interesting: You have the privilege of making up your own mind without being influenced by outside opinion.-- BY PAUL BIRCHALL

The American Theatre Critics' Association has issued a statement on Bitter-Lemons new initiative inviting theaters to pay its critics for reviews.

Tim Norris's photos from the first annual Stage Raw Theater Awards, April 13, 2015

Wallace Shawn states the dilemma thus: A new version “that would sound to a contemporary audience like believable contemporary speech would have to be to a certain extent false to the feeling and atmosphere of the original text.” His chosen solution was, first, to rationalize that he was acting as a “collaborator” of the playwright. In such a collaboration, “it was probably inevitable that the role of the living collaborator would grow, while the role of the dead collaborator would not.” BY BOB VERINI