Irma Herrera Tells HerStory with Wit & Insight by Cynthia K. Lopez In the U.S., why do we think it’s okay to mangle a person’s name or assign them an entirely new one, if the original is hard to pronounce? Civil rights attorney, social justice advocate, journalist, and playwright, Irma Herrera, asks, “Why would…
Millennial Notes Christina Anderson Reveals the Fight for Recreation by Tyler Jeffreys Christina Anderson joins the trending Black Joy movement with her world premiere of “the ripple, the wave that carried me home” at Berkeley Rep. We see so much Black oppression porn on TV, we don’t need more oppression stories that cater to…
Marcus Gardley’s Modern Verse Version Shakes US Up! by Lynne Stevens At Cal Shakes, Co-directors Eric Ting and Dawn Monique Williams have staged a first-rate “Lear” with all its rage and fury. In his new, modern verse adaptation, playwright Marcus Gardley uses Bay Area Black history to modernize Shakespeare’s King Lear. The smartest play…
Aaron Sorkin Adapts Harper Lee’s Racial Thriller for Our Time by Jeanette Quick “Before you judge someone, crawl around in their skin,” says Atticus Finch to his children in Aaron Sorkin’s adaptation of Harper Lee’s “To Kill a Mockingbird.” The excellent Richard Thomas plays morally upright Finch, our favorite small-town lawyer, to a quiet…