There are plays that work very hard to say a lot of things in as many words as possible. They stretch on and on, satisfying every question,... More >>

It's fitting that South Coast Repertory is staging the world premiere of Noah Haidle's heartbreaker of a play, Smokefall, because years earlier,... More >>

It's always a daunting experience walking into a local theater for the first time. Sure, you may have heard wonderful things about it from people... More >>

Samuel D. Hunter's play The Whale might as well be called The Wail. The sad sack of bitchers and moaners assembled in this tale would make a... More >>

Remember those late-night sessions in high school or college (or maybe last night) when you'd sit around with a bunch of friends and conjure the... More >>

Marlon Brando's character said it most succinctly in the 1953 film The Wild One. When asked what he was rebelling against, he replied, "Whaddya... More >>

Well, it's finally happened: I hate straight people. I knew it was coming, of course. After 43 years of being pummeled by their insipid... More >>

Last month, a Daily Pilot editor used the occasion of South Coast Repertory staging a play with a dirty word in the title—which he could... More >>

In a little more than a year, Orange County lost two of its edgiest, longest-established storefront theaters: The Monkey Wrench Collective, which... More >>

Welcome to the 2012 OC Weekly holiday theater preview, the timing of which is weird on two fronts: Most of these shows wrap up this weekend,... More >>

Color me embarrassed. For years, I assumed the book Little Women was not only written by the same author as Little House On the Prairie, but was... More >>

Two years ago next April, I sat in a hospital room and waited for the person who brought me into this world to depart it. Anyone who has shared a... More >>

Jerry Patch, the longtime dramaturge at South Coast Repertory (he split SCR about seven years ago), once remarked that every great play, along... More >>

Rod Serling's legendary television series The Twilight Zone shook up mainstream-minded squares and creepy-geeky sci-fi nuts alike from 1959 to... More >>

Thank God's rainbow for David Carnevale and Joey Baital. As the co-founders of Theatre Out, OC's only LGBT performance company, they bring a... More >>

Gophers apparently attacked the early drafts of Sarah Ruhl's 2003 play, Eurydice, for there are enough holes in the script to keep Carl Spackler... More >>

Fans of the cable show Sons of Anarchy (i.e., The Sopranos on motorcycles) will realize something when examining the set of Trojan Barbie: Tig... More >>

If the mark of a good director is actors willing to follow you over the side of a cliff, then Dave Barton is one hell of a director. That's not... More >>

The most popular scenarios in "what if" stories are how the present might be rewritten if certain events never happened and what our reaction... More >>

The time is always right, unfortunately, for a play, television show or film about hate crimes in America—this year alone, we've had more... More >>

Anyone with more than a passing interest in the Anaheim summer of 2012, with cops shooting reputed gang members and protests flaring in the... More >>

One might think, with the array of garbage on television—from filthy hoarders and illiterate swamp people to shrewish dance moms and Kathie... More >>

The Church of the Foothills made headlines—and attracted a small group of protesters—when it approved a Los Angeles theater troupe's... More >>

It's not exactly playing the race card to state an obvious fact about Orange County demographics: There ain't a whole lot of black folks in these... More >>

It's customary for beautiful women in Hollywood to feel the need to prove how little they have done to become beautiful. They deny... More >>

It's not uncommon to see the name Shakespeare pop up on the schedules of many a theater during the summer. The epic scope and huge casts involved... More >>

This may be the first time in recorded history that the movie The Avengers and the play Frost/Nixon get double-billing in a sentence, but just as... More >>

There's something distinctly American about the road trip. Be it on a river (Huckleberry Finn), in a car (On the Road) or on foot (Into the... More >>

Amanda DeMaio debuted Unrelenting Relaxation three years after our nation declared 1992 "The Year of the Woman," which was a response to the... More >>