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The two women invited to a mysterious dinner party in the American Conservatory Theater–commissioned Brainpeople have no idea why they're there. For some time we're not sure why we are either. After detouring into the uncharacteristically straightforward screenplays of The Motorcycle Diaries and Trade, playwright José Rivera is back in quirky magic-realist overdrive. Too much of this 80-minute one-act feels propelled by a willful eccentricity less delightful than pointless. Read more »

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There are two questions that can really get on Carrie Fisher's nerves: What was it like playing Princess Leia? And what's it like having Debbie Reynolds for a mom? Read more »

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The best comedians always shear close to the bone with their truths, but believe it or not, few are necessarily a gut bust in conversation. Why is this a surprise? After all, the comic is on the interviewer's mic, not on the clock and on script. Yet W. Read more »

With its 75th season, which starts Jan. 29, the San Francisco Ballet — the oldest ballet company in the country — intends to show that the dance form is a thoroughly contemporary, international art.

With the exception of the lovely Giselle (created by Adolphe Adam in 1841), the entire season has been choreographed within the company's lifetime. When it was created in 1938, Lew Christensen's Filling Station was considered the first American ballet. Read more »

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The year 1988 marked the apex of David Mamet's celebrity. He'd won a Pulitzer Prize for Glengarry Glen Ross, and American Buffalo was being produced by every little theater on the planet. He'd scripted several mostly admired films and had just directed his first, the coldly ingenious House of Games.

It must have been a heady time. One doesn't get the impression that Mamet is the type to enjoy simply being celebrated. Read more »

Over the past two decades Julie Queen has earned her ballsy-woman stripes. She's played truck-driver killer Aileen Wuornos in Carla Lucero's opera Wuornos and the lead in Robert Rodríguez's Frida, based on the life of painter Kahlo. In the '90s, as a member of the Qube Chix, the avant-garde singing trio lead by Pamela Z, she belted out heady Karlheinz Stockhausen atonality and defiant riot-grrrl lyrics at the same time. Read more »

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"I've never been inside here before. I don't like to come in here, because I feel alienated in my own neighborhood by this place, and that is kind of what this play is about," Danny Hoch said recently. His new solo stage production, Taking Over, opens Jan. 16 at the Berkeley Repertory Theatre. Read more »

A most welcome gift arrived Dec. 12: pure dance, pure music, and pure poetry. It was "Jardín de Mis Sueños," Caminos Flamencos' new show (repeating in Mountain View on Dec. 21) and the last one at ODC Theater, which starts extensive renovations in January. Read more »

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The annual relentless prosecution of Christmas is a happy time for some. For others, not so much. For her part, Gladys Cratchit (Joan Mankin), the long-suffering wife of Bob (Keith Burkland) — that misty-eyed mistletoe of a man harried six days a week by his grasping gargoyle of an employer, Ebenezer Scrooge (Victor Talmadge) — is ready to throw herself off London Bridge. One sees her point. Read more »

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"If music be the food of love, let's party" goes the catchphrase for TheatreWorks' holiday production of William Shakespeare's Twelfth Night, or What You Will. As this jiggering with Orsino's famous opening line suggests, artistic director Robert Kelley takes the Bard's invitation to do "what you will" as a license to rock, with a San Francisco Summer of Love theme meant to warm the cockles on a winter's eve. It's a theme the show's producers run with at full tilt. Read more »