Jay Bedwani’s Brilliant Docu-Pic Unfolds San Francisco Story by Robert M. Gardner Director Jay Bedwani’s new documentary, Donna, subtly follows the growing self-acceptance of Donna Personna, San Francisco trans cabaret singer. The story centers on Donna’s involvement in a play about the 1966 Compton Cafeteria drag uprising, an event that brings up unsettling memories…
Millennial Notes Karen Zacarías Questions the Ground Beneath Our Feet by Ian Waters In these turbulent times, political crisis reaches from climate change right down to our own backyard gardens. City Lights Theater Company, in San Jose, has created the perfect environment for Karen Zacarías’ “Native Gardens” to plant serious and comic questions in…
Millennial Notes Isaac Gómez Exposes the Horrors of Gentrification by Evelyn Arevalo “The Displaced” is not your run-of-the-mill horror story. Playwright Isaac Gómez gives us a bright, young interracial couple whose haunted past manifests itself, physically. The energy and chemistry in this two-person play is exhilarating. Marisa (Jordan Maria Don) and Lev (Troy Rockett)…
Gary Soto Urges Us to Reflect by Patricia L. Morin As a therapist who ran a suicide hot-line, I have talked to teens who cut themselves, then heal, and cut again. In Gary Soto’s play, The Afterlife,” Crystal (engaging Bianca Catalan), daughter of wealthy almond growers, begins to “cut” herself. And another schoolmate gets…