KPFA - Bookwaves/Artwaves

John Kolvenbach is the author of several plays, including Sister Play and Goldfish, both previously performed at the Magic. His latest, Reel to Reel, has its world premiere January 31, 2018 and deals with a 55-year marriage, what really happens inside a marriage compared to how it appears to the outside world. His previous works have been performed all over the globe, and Love Song was a nominee in London for an Olivier Award for Best New Play. He is interviewed by Richard Wolinsky.

 

An extended version of this interview can be found as a Bay Area Theater podcast. [1]

Also: review of "The Birthday Party" at ACT's Geary Theatre.

[1] https://kpfa.org/area941/episode/interview-john-kolvenbach-playwright-reel-reel-magic-theatre/

[caption id="attachment_279647" align="alignleft" width="170"] Michael Strunsky in 2015[/caption]

[caption id="attachment_279646" align="alignleft" width="176"] Deena Rosenberg in 2017[/caption]

An interview with Deena Rosenberg, author of “Fascinating Rhythm: The Collaboration of George and Ira Gershwin” and Michael Strunsky, nephew of Ira Gershwin, recorded August 14, 1992, hosted by Richard Wolinsky with guest host Alex Davis.

In 1992, as part of the KPFA Morning Concert series, Richard Wolinsky interviewed both Deena Rosenberg and Michael Strunsky, co-hosted with San Francisco concert pianist Alex Davis, who prepared excerpts of Gershwin’s work for the show, titled "The Gershwin Legacy."

A full-scale radio documentary was planned following the program, and a handful of interviews recorded before the project was abandoned. One of those interviews, with Michael Strunsky’s father, English Strunsky, was aired for the first time on August 29, 2016, and the complete one-hour version was uploaded as a Radio Wolinsky podcast. [1]

But the project began with this program, originally a live two-hour radio broadcast featuring songs and original recordings from the Gershwin archive. For copyright reasons, outside of short segments performed by Alex Davis, those recordings have been removed. Some of the dialogue has been tightened, but the result is what was heard from the KPFA studios that morning.

George Gershwin was born in 1898 and his brother Ira two years earlier. At the age of 15 he took a job as a song-plugger, playing other people’s songs on a piano for Remick Music Publisher for the sale of their sheet music. His first composed song was published when he was 17, and at 21 he scored his first big hit, Swanee. But it wasn’t until 1924 when he teamed up with his brother Ira as lyricist that George Gershwin became, what we might call a superstar, which he remained until his untimely death from a brain tumor in 1937. Ira Gershwin, who went on to work with other composers until he retired in the early 1960s, died in 1983.

An extended version of this program can be found as a Radio Wolinsky [2] podcast.

 

[1] https://kpfa.org/area941/episode/gershwin-project-english-strunsky/

[2] https://kpfa.org/area941/episode/gershwin-project-ii-fascinating-rhythm/

Judith Ivey, two-time Tony winning actress, in conversation with Richard Wolinsky.

Judith Ivey is appearing in Harold Pinter’s classic play The Birthday Party, directed by Carey Perloff, at ACT’s Geary Theatre January 10th through February 4th. Judith Ivey has appeared in several Broadway productions, including the role of Amanda in The Glass Menagerie and Sally Durant in Sondheim’s Follies, and is the winner of two Tony Awards for her work. She’s appeared in numerous films and television shows, from The Devil’s Advocate and Flags of Our Fathers to a season’s stint on Designing Women and guest starring roles in dozens of programs.

In The Birthday Party, she portrays Meg, half of a couple who run a boarding house where the events of the play occur.

Cleve Jones, author of the memoir, “When We Rise,” in conversation with Richard Wolinsky, recorded during a benefit for KPFA on January 25, 2017. Excerpts from the Q&A following Cleve’s speech, and replayed at the start of the New Year as a rousing call to activism.

Cleve Jones is a ground-breaking LGBT  and labor activist who came on the scene as one of the core group of people supporting Harvey Milk in his run for San Francisco Supervisor. Cleve later began the NAMES Project, the AIDS quilt, which helped bring the horrors of the AIDS epidemic to national consciousness and helped propel the discovery of the HIV cocktail, which turned a fatal disease into one that’s manageable.

Jones was portrayed by Emile Hirsch in Gus Van Sant’s Oscar-winning film, “MILK,” and was the historical consultant for the production. Jones led the 2009 National March for Equality in Washington, DC and served on the Advisory Board of the American Foundation for Equal Rights, which challenged California’s Proposition 8 in the US Supreme Court.

James Gleick, whose latest book is Time Travel, is interviewed by Richard Wolinsky.

The author of The Information, an all-encompassing exploration about how we give and receive information, returns with Time Travel, which focuses on the history of time travel in literature and physics, and on the various paradoxes and possibilities of the idea of time travel. In this interview, he talks about H.G. Wells and his time machine, about Robert Heinlein and the role of science fiction in talking about time, and of course on the physics of time, infinite realities and how and why we focus so clearly on the concept.

An extended version of this interview can be found as a Radio Wolinsky  [1]podcast.

[1] https://kpfa.org/area941/episode/james-gleick-time-travel/

Richard Connema, long-time Hollywood stills photographer and San Francisco theatre critic, in conversation with Richard Wolinsky.

Richard Connema is the Bay Area reviewer for the theater website Talkin’ Broadway. From 1946 to 1993, first at Republic Pictures, and later at Warner Bros., he was a staff stills photographer for dozens of movie shoots, from A Streetcar Named Desire, through Rebel Without a Cause, Giant, The Music Man, My Fair Lady, and on through Missouri Breaks and later films.

Though speaking with a benign brain tumor which limits his vocabulary, Richard Connema talks about his years in Hollywood, including the underground gay community, the blacklist, sexual harassment and what it was like to work with several Hollywood stars. He is currently working on a memoir, which is about one-third completed.

At the age of 91, he continues to write reviews at talkinbroadway.com [1]

Complete 37-minute Radio Wolinsky podcast [2]

Today's review: "Shakespeare in Love" at Marin Theatre Company through December 23, 2017.

[1] https://www.talkinbroadway.com/

[2] https://kpfa.org/area941/episode/richard-connema-hollywood-golden-years/

Born in Kuwait and now living in San Francisco and Beirut, Rabih Alameddine is the atuhor of several novels, including “The Hakawati” and “An Unnecessary Woman.”  His latest novel deals with memory and forgetting, as a poet remembers his lover and others who died of AIDS during the ’80s in the context of both the real world and a fantasy dialogue between Satan and Death.

In this interview, Rabih Alameddine talks about his life as an immigrant, as an Arab, as a gay person, and its relationship to his art. He also discusses the recent election and how it breaks through the fantasy of America’s exceptionalism.

An extended version of this interview can be found as a Radio Wolinsky podcast. [1]

[1] https://kpfa.org/area941/episode/rabih-alameddine/

Lisa Peterson, Associate Director of Berkeley Rep, and director of "Watch On The Rhine" at Berkeley Rep, in conversation with Richard Wolinsky.

"Watch on the Rhine" by Lillian Hellman was first presented before the U.S. entered World War II, when few people in this country understood the dangers of the rise of fascism in Europe. Today, it's still a relevant anti-fascist play. During World War II, it became a film starring Bette Davis and Paul Lukas (who won the Best Actor Oscar that year) and is available via streaming.

In this interview, Lisa Peterson talks about this new stage production of "Watch on the Rhine," as well as her upcoming directorial project, "Office Hour" by Julia Cho, and her history as a director.

Berkeley Rep website [1]

Extended Bay Area Theater podcast [2]

 

[1] https://www.berkeleyrep.org/

[2] https://kpfa.org/area941/episode/interview-lisa-peterson-watch-rhine-berkeley-rep/

Bill English, Artistic Director of San Francisco Playhouse, in conversation with Richard Wolinsky.

Every year or so, Bill English comes over to KPFA to discuss his theater company and the upcoming season. In this interview, he talks about the origins of SF Playhouse and how it came to be in its current location at 450 Post Street. The discussion includes a look at the upcoming season, including the musical "A Christmas Story' which runs during the 2017 holiday season into January 2018, as well as the company's previous productions this season. An extended version of this interview can be found as a Bay Area Theater podcast [1] in the Area 951 section of kpfa.org

 

San Francisco Playhouse website [2]

[1] https://kpfa.org/area941/episode/interview-bill-english-san-francisco-playhouse/

[2] https://www.sfplayhouse.org/sfph/

Emma Keith, producer of the National Theatre Live series of theatrical broadcasts, in conversation with Richard Wolinsky, talks about the latest broadcast, the National Theatre in London revival of Stephen Sondheim’s 1971 musical, “Follies.” The producer of the series since 2016, she discusses what is required to put on this kind of international live broadcast, some of the technical issues involved, and how the National brings in a younger audience.

The Royal National Theatre is the English equivalent of New York’s Public Theatre, or perhaps Lincoln Center, supported to a great degree by the government’s National Arts Council, and is in that sense a model of how government can support the arts. Founded in 1963 with Sir Laurence Olivier as its first director, the National now encompasses three theaters on its side near Waterloo Bridge in London.

“Follies” airs on November 16, 2017 with encore presentations following. To find out more,

National Theatre Live website [1]

Weekly review: "Small Mouth Sounds" at ACT Strand in San Francisco through December 10, 2017.

[1] http://ntlive.nationaltheatre.org.uk/