KPFA - Bookwaves/Artwaves

Links to on-line and streaming local theater & book events

Daniel Handler (Lemony Snicket), in conversation with host Richard Wolinsky.

Daniel Handler discusses his latest novel, “Bottle Grove,” set in San Francisco, along with his earlier novel, “All The Dirty Parts.” He also talks in depth about the Netflix three-season series of Lemony Snicket’s “A Series of Unfortunate Events,” as well as his work in theatre and how his life has changed with success.

“Bottle Grove” deals with the intricacies of marriage, along with how San Francisco has changed in recent years due to the influx of the tech world. “All The Dirty Parts” dissects what life is like for a horny teen-aged boy in a way that few books have attempted. “A Series of Unfortunate Events” is about the terrible things that befall the poor Baudelaire orphans, mostly due to the nefarious schemes of Count Olaf (Neil Patrick Harris).

An extended 47-minute version of this interview can be found as a Radio Wolinsky podcast.

Third in a series of interviews about how theatre companies are coping with the Corona Virus shutdown.

Evren Odcikin, the Associate Artistic Director of Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland, Oregon discusses how OSF dealt with the shutdown due to Covid-19, followed by the Black Lives Matter movement engendered by the murder of George Floyd, and then the September fires which burned parts of Ashland, as well as the nearby towns of Phoenix and Talent. Hosted by Richard Wolinsky.

Evren’s latest directorial effort is This Is Who I Am by Amir Nizar Zuabi, a co-production of PlayCo and Woolly Mammoth, in association with OSF and other theatre companies, which is performed and broadcast live from December 5, 2020 through January 3, 2021.

Evren Odcikin, prior to joining OSF in 2019, was part of the creative team of Golden Thread Productions in San Francisco, and has directed several plays around the San Francisco Bay Area.

Oregon Shakespeare Festival is a theatre company founded in 1935, which presents five plays, in repertory at the same time, from February through October each year. The company is located in Ashland, Oregon, just off Route 5 north of the California border.

:Photo: Kim Budd, The complete interview can be heard as a 33-minute Bay Area Theater podcast.

Announcement Links

Book Passage. Conversations with authors, all at 4 pm Pacific:  Chris Rainer with Phil Cousinou, Satuday December 5. Zyen Joukhader, Sunday December 6. Jane Smiley, “Perestroika in Paris,” Saturday December 12.

Curran Theatre: Taylor Mac’s Holiday Sauce: Pandemic, Live, Saturday December 12, 7 pm Livestream. Streams through January 2, 2021.

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

The post Bookwaves/Artwaves – December 3, 2020: Daniel Handler – Evren Odcikin appeared first on KPFA.

Links to on-line and streaming local theater & book events

Tommy Orange, author of the novel “There There,” in conversation with Richard Wolinsky.

Winner of the PEN/Hemingway Award, the National Book Critics Circle John Leonard Prize, and the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize. “There There” is set in and around Fruitvale and the Coliseum areas in Oakland, and looks at the lives of several Native Americans, young and old, as they converge for a giant pow-wow. The novel stretches back in time to the takeover of Alcatraz and forward to the present day, shattering stereotypes and delving into the real lives of the urban Native American.

Tommy Orange was born and raised in Oakland, and is an enrolled member of the Cheyenne and Arapaho tribes of Oklahoma.

Second in a series of interviews about how Bay Area theatre companies are coping with the Corona Virus shutdown.

John Fisher, Executive/Artistic Director of Theatre Rhinoceros, based in San Francisco, “The Longest Running Queer Theatre in the World,” since 2003, discusses how his company has managed to survive and move into the digital realm as live theatre, on stage with an audience, vanishes from the American scene.

While the subscriber base keeps the company alive, Theatre Rhino now boasts a weekly one-man show from John Fisher, created in his home and sometimes on his bike, on Zoom and Facebook Live, and has begun a digital season that is intended, whenever it happens, to return to the stage.

Included in this interview is a five-minute piece focused on the Thanksgiving Battle of Saratoga, written and performed for this podcast and radio show by John Fisher.

:The complete interview can be heard as a 33-minute Bay Area Theater podcast.

Announcement Links

Book Passage. Conversations with authors, all at 4 pm Pacific:  Chris Rainer with Phil Cousinou, Satuday December 5. Zyen Joukhader, Sunday December 6. Jane Smiley, “Perestroika in Paris,” Saturday December 12.

Curran Theatre: Taylor Mac’s Holiday Sauce: Pandemic, Live, Saturday December 12, 7 pm Livestream. Streams through January 2, 2021.

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

The post Bookwaves/Artwaves – November 26, 2020: Tommy Orange – John Fisher appeared first on KPFA.

Links to on-line and streaming local theater & book events

Nicholas Meyer, author of “The Seven Percent Solution,” returns to Sherlock Holmes with “The Adventure of the Peculiar Protocols,” just out in trade paperback this past November 10th. In this interview with host Richard Wolinsky, he also discusses his work in film and television, and specifically his work in the Star Trek universe.

Nicholas Meyer is a screenwriter and director. Among his directorial works are “Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan,” “Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country,” “Time After Time” and the lauded TV film “The Day After.” He’s written several screenplays, including “Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home,” and worked on the first season of “Star Trek: Discovery” and the first season of the Netflix series “The Medicis.”

“The Adventure of the Peculiar Protocols” takes Sherlock Holmes to Budapest and Odessa as he searches for the forger behind the infamous Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion. This adventure, which takes place in 1905, falls into a period during which  the activities of Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes are unknown.

An extended 45 minute version of this interview can be found as a Radio Wolinsky podcast.

Anne McCaffrey, in conversation with Richard A. Lupoff and Richard Wolinsky, from the Probabilities Archive, recorded June 29, 1992. Her most recent novels at the time were The Rowan and Damia.

From Wikipedia:

Anne Inez McCaffrey (1 April 1926 – 21 November 2011) was an American-Irish writer known for the Dragonriders of Pern science fiction series. She was the first woman to win a Hugo Award for fiction (Best Novella, “Weyr Search”, 1968) and the first to win a Nebula Award (Best Novella, “Dragonrider”, 1969). Her 1978 novel The White Dragon became one of the first science-fiction books to appear on the New York Times Best Seller list.

In 2005 the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America named McCaffrey its 22nd Grand Master, an annual award to living writers of fantasy and science fiction. She was inducted by the Science Fiction Hall of Fame on 17 June 2006. She also received the Robert A. Heinlein Award for her work in 2007.

New York Times Obituary

:The complete interview can be heard as a 37-minute Radio Wolinsky podcast.

Announcement Links

Book Passage. Conversations with authors, all at 4 pm Pacific:  Deborah Madison with Jane Hirschfield, Saturday November 21. James Ritchie, Sunday November 22; Zyen Joukhader, Sunday December 6. Jane Smiley, “Perestroika in Paris,” Saturday December 12.

Irish Repertory Theatre: Bill Irwin “On Beckett.” Streaming through November 22, 2020. Free. Reserve tickets up to two hours before selected performance.

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

The post Bookwaves/Artwaves – November 19, 2020: Nicholas Meyer – Anne McCaffrey appeared first on KPFA.

Links to on-line and streaming local theater & book events

Theatre In the Time of Covid

Pam MacKinnon, Artistic Director of A.C.T., American Conservatory Theatre, in conversation with host Richard Wolinsky.

Now in her third season as Artistic Director, Pam MacKinnon has had to rearrange her life (which was already in flux, still learning about her new home town of San Francisco) and the work of her organization in order to survive the complete shutdown of live theatre in America.

A noted theatre director before joining A.C.T., Pam MacKinnon won an Obie and then was nominated for a Tony on Broadway for Clybourne Park. A leading director of the works of Edward Albee, she won a Tony Award in 2013 for a revival of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf. In the Bay Area, most notably, she directed Albee’s Seascape for ACT during the 2018-2019 season, and before that, directed the musical Amelie at Berkeley Rep.

In this interview, she discusses the changes A.C.T. was forced to make to deal with the shutdown, the rise of streaming, working with other companies, and coming up with new ways to survive the pandemic, including a host of streaming options at act-sf.org.

Complete 48-minute interview.

David Grann,  in conversation with Richard Wolinsky about “The Lost City of Z,” recorded in the KPFA studios in 2009.

David Grann has become one of America’s leading writers of non-fiction. Having written pieces for The New Yorker and New Republic as a staff writer, his first book was titled The Lost City of Z, which was adapted into a film in 2017 and now streams on Amazon Prime. Since that time, he has published three books, The Devil and Sherlock Holmes, Flowers of the Killer Moon – which will become a film when shooting starts next year, directed by Martin Scorcese and starring Leonardo di Caprio and Robert DeNiro, and most recently, The White Darkness, about the British explorer Henry Worsley.

:The complete interview can be heard as a 51-minute Radio Wolinsky podcast.

Announcement Links

Book Passage. Conversations with authors, all at 4 pm Pacific:  Naomi Wolf, Saturday November 14. Thomas Keller and David Breeden with Ruth Reichl, Monday November 16. Deborah Tannen with Amy Tan, Wednesday November 18. Deborah Madison with Jane Hirschfield, Saturday November 21. James Ritchie, Sunday November 22.

Irish Repertory Theatre: Bill Irwin “On Beckett.” Streaming November 17-22, 2020. Free. Reserve tickets up to two hours before selected performance.

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

The post Bookwaves/Artwaves – November 12, 2020: Pam MacKinnon – David Grann appeared first on KPFA.