KPFA - Bookwaves/Artwaves

Bookwaves/Artwaves is pre-empted today for the Fund Drive, and returns at this time on March 17, 2021 with new interviews with filmmaker Wayne Wang and composer/lyricist Paul Gordon.

Book Interview/Events and Theatre Links

Note: Most in-person events still require proof of full vaccination for all audience members over 12 and masks. Many venues will require proof of boosters. Shows may unexpectedly close early or be postponed due to actors’ positive COVID tests. Check the venue for closures, ticket refunds, and vaccination status requirements before arrival. Dates are in-theater performances unless otherwise noted. All times Pacific Standard Time.

Book Stores

Live Theater Companies

Misc. Listings:

Playbill List of Streaming Theatre: Updated weekly, this is probably the best list you’ll find of national and international streaming plays and musicals. Each week has its own webpage, so scroll down.

If you’d like to add your bookstore or theater venue to this list, please write [email protected]

The post Bookwaves/Artwaves – March 10, 2022: Fund Drive Pre-Emption appeared first on KPFA.

Bookwaves/Artwaves is pre-empted today for special fund drive programming.

The post Bookwaves/Artwaves – March 3, 2022: Fund Drive appeared first on KPFA.

Bookwaves/Artwaves is pre-empted today for special fund drive programming.

The post Bookwaves/Artwaves – Feb. 24, 2022: Fund Drive Pre-Emption appeared first on KPFA.

Links to assorted local theater & book venues

Wil Haygood, author of Colorization: One Hundred Years of Black Films in a White World, in conversation with host Richard Wolinsky.

Colorization looks at the history of Hollywood from the perspective of the African American community, from protests over the showing of the racist silent film, “Birth of a Nation,” to the first great Black director, Oscar Micheaux, through the forties and the rise of black actors such as Sidney Poitier, Harry Belafonte and Dorothy Dandridge, to so-called Blaxploitation films and up to the present, all the while putting the films in context of the larger society and race in America.

In the interview, he discusses the origins of the book, the careers of some of the Black pioneers in Hollywood film, and the way television and streaming has changed the race equation in our culture.

Wil Haygood is a journalist who spent several years with the Washington Post before writing a series of biographies. He is also known for an essay in the Post which became the source for the successful film, Lee Daniels’ The Butler.

Bill English, Artistic Director of San Francisco Playhouse, in conversation with Richard Wolinsky, recorded via zencastr February 9, 2022.

Bill English is the director of SF Playhouse’s latest production, Heroes of the Fourth Turning by Will Arbery, playing through March 5, 2022, as well as the company’s Artistic Director. In this interview he discusses, in depth, the themes and characters of the play, as well as some of the challenges in bringing this production to fruition. He also talks about upcoming shows in the SF Playhouse season, including Sondheim’s Follies, which closes the season and plays through the summer.

Complete Bay Area Theater podcast.

Book Interview/Events and Theatre Links

Note: Most in-person events require proof of full vaccination for all audience members over 12 and masks. Many venues will require proof of boosters starting February 1, 2022. Shows may unexpectedly close early or be postponed due to actors’ positive COVID tests. Other shows have already been cancelled (see below). Check the venue for closures, ticket refunds, and vaccination status requirements before arrival. Dates are in-theater performances unless otherwise noted. All times Pacific Standard Time.

Book Stores

Live Theater Companies

Misc. Listings:

Playbill List of Streaming Theatre: Updated weekly, this is probably the best list you’ll find of national and international streaming plays and musicals. Each week has its own webpage, so scroll down.

If you’d like to add your bookstore or theater venue to this list, please write [email protected]

The post Bookwaves/Artwaves – February 17, 2022: Wil Haygood – Bill English appeared first on KPFA.

Links to assorted local theater & book venues

Joseph Hansen (1923-2004) was a pioneer of private eye fiction, whose main character, Dave Brandstetter, an insurance investigator, was the first gay protagonist in the detective field published by a mainstream house. The first Brandstetter novel, Fadeout, was published in 1970. At the time of publication, being gay was illegal in 49 of the 50 states.

Richard Wolinsky and Richard A. Lupoff had a chance to interview Joseph Hansen on June 14th, 1990 following the publication of the eleventh novel, The Boy Who Was Buried This Morning. It turned into a career retrospective.

There were twelve Brandstetter novels in all, culminating in 1991’s A Country of Old Men. Successful at the time, they’d fallen out of print since Hansen’s death, and are now being reissued by Syndicate Books and distributed by Soho Press. The first three books in the series, Fadeout, Death Claims and Troublemaker, were published on January 8th, 2022, with each succeeding book published on the eighth day of each succeeding month.

Priot to  the Brandstetter books, Joseph Hansen published gay-centric novels in various small presses under a pseudonym. Two gothic novels under the pseudonym Rose Brock. There were also autobiographical novels and short story collections among his output. Despite the acclaim his books received, none of Joseph Hansen’s work has ever been adapted for film or television.

This interview has not been heard since its initial airing thirty years ago, and has never seen the light of day in its entirety. It was digitized, remastered, and re-edited in February 2022 by Richard Wolinsky.

Complete 40-minute interview.

Janis Ian, singer/songwriter, in conversation with Richard Wolinsky, recorded June 14, 2008 in the KPFA studios while she was on tour for her memoir, “Society’s Child.”

Janis Ian achieved success as a teenager with “Society’s Child,” but was known as a one-hit wonder until her twenties with “At Seventeen” and the album Between the Lines in the mid-1970s. She later went on to write science fiction short stories, became a columnist for The Advocate, and continued her music career as a composer (“Stars”) and performer. All told there have been 24 albums — she now says her latest, The Light at the End of the Line, released in January 2022, will be her last studio solo album.

Complete 42-minute interview

Book Interview/Events and Theatre Links

Note: Most in-person events require proof of full vaccination for all audience members over 12 and masks. Many venues will require proof of boosters starting February 1, 2022. Shows may unexpectedly close early or be postponed due to actors’ positive COVID tests. Other shows have already been cancelled (see below). Check the venue for closures, ticket refunds, and vaccination status requirements before arrival. Dates are in-theater performances unless otherwise noted. All times Pacific Standard Time.

Book Stores

Live Theater Companies

Misc. Listings:

Playbill List of Streaming Theatre: Updated weekly, this is probably the best list you’ll find of national and international streaming plays and musicals. Each week has its own webpage, so scroll down.

If you’d like to add your bookstore or theater venue to this list, please write [email protected]

The post Bookwaves/Artwaves – February 10, 2022: : Joseph Hansen – Janis Ian appeared first on KPFA.