Last time around
Bay Guardian theater critic bids farewell.

By Brad Rosenstein

THIS IS MY last appearance as the Bay Guardian's theater critic. After five and a half years, I recently decided it was time to hang up my critic's hat and move on to other endeavors, including my own creative work. It's been a tremendously exciting time to be watching Bay Area theater. From the bleak funding-cuts days of the mid '90s to the dot-com boom and bust, it's been fascinating to see the commensurate changes in dramaturgy. I've watched theater shift from the omnipresent solo show to the return of complex, multicharacter plays. A fin-de-siècle weariness that had been creeping into theater in the '90s has begun to transform in the new millennium into a rejuvenated new spirit, laced with irony but also post-ironic, a clear-sighted vision that refuses to settle for smart-ass facility. It's anyone's guess where this will go, but it's been thrilling to see how theater has paralleled, and in some important ways anticipated, our national mood.

Theater by its nature is parochial even as it reaches its hands toward the infinite: it is finally always a local art form. The Bay Area is blessed with an astonishing and tremendously gifted community of theater artists, and it's been my privilege to watch and write about them these past few years. There is a core of loyalty to theater here among local artists that I've seldom seen anywhere else. San Francisco has to rank as one of the most exciting theater cities in America, yet I rarely see it appraised as such. If I have a wish for this town, it's that it would start to appreciate the treasures it has on its own doorstep.

For someone who loves theater as much as I do, this has been a dream job, and I can't imagine any better place to do it than at the Bay Guardian. I've had the unlimited trust and support of my editors, who gave me carte blanche to explore any corner of the theatrical arena, along with generous space in this highly visible publication every week. Bay Area culture has a real friend in my editor, Tommy Tompkins, whose passion for and knowledge about the local theater scene have been a constant inspiration to me. And I owe a real debt to my other editors over the years – Susie Gerhard, Johnny Ray Huston, Alvin Lu, Annie Guy, and Cheryl Eddy – for their sensitivity, understanding, and light editorial touches. Finally, I have to thank the eagle-eyed bunch at the copy desk for keeping me honest and, whenever possible, accurate. In this increasingly homogenized world of global media conglomerates, I've come to appreciate even more the quirky, independent voice that the Bay Guardian represents. I'm proud to have appeared in these pages, and have been the constant beneficiary of this paper's challenging, sometimes maddening, but definitely all-embracing worldview.

In the hundreds of productions I've seen in these past few years, I've certainly seen my share of crappy shows. As a critic, that's my job: I see bad theater so you don't have to. But for every moment of mind-numbing boredom there have been 10 moments of joy, of pleasure, of surprise. Every time the lights go down and the curtain goes up, it's still a thrill for me, hoping for one of those magical nights. And every so often it happens, sometimes in the most unexpected places. You might be in a palace or in a pizzeria basement, but there will be those nights when a play and its director, designers, actors, and audience all fuse to give you an experience that can change your life, that becomes as much a part of you as something that you've lived. And you only have to experience one night like that to keep you going to theater forever. I've had many such nights in these years, and my gratitude for the glow they've left behind is eternal.

I'm honored to have been part of this theatrical community as a critic, and I look forward to continuing to serve it in other ways. Thanks for reading me, thanks for arguing with me, and thanks for keeping the dialogue alive.