I get to say something no one on earth – I’m fairly certain – has ever said before. I AM THE WORLD’S ONLY TWELVE WAFFLE COACH!!! Better backtrack. In December of 1985, three of us decided to start a golf …

Last summer, Intrepid mounted a three-week, workshop production of Shakespeare's popular comedy. It became such a hit that word of mouth could have filled the house for weeks, maybe even months, to come. Due to popular demand, Intrepid has re-staged …

"I don't think writers are sacred," Tom Stoppard told an interviewer, "but words are. They deserve respect." Stoppard's statement may have come, in part, from his first experience as a playwright. A student company, the Oxford Players, was staging an …

San Diego's first annual Fringe Festival, by all accounts, was a hit. We saw all kinds of experimental work rarely done around here, and hope next year continues what should become a longstanding tradition. Anyone needing a testimony to the …

It's hard to believe that what we take for granted these days was so revolutionary when Company premiered in 1970. The Stephen Sondheim/George Furth musical has no plot, songs don't develop character or further the action, and the piece may …

Performances at the Fringe run around 60 minutes. The six sketches for Stiff Love have less than 1/6th that time, since they must set the stage with minimal but expressive props, and present a one-act play in less than 10 …

"There are very few jobs where you invite people to watch your work," says Hannah Logan, and even fewer "where people write about your work." One of the latter is performance art which, after a long search, has become Logan's …

If you've already seen some Fringe Festival shows, you might have noticed a recurring theme, in the stories and the telling: difference. Many are about "outsiders," people condemned by traditional society to the margin and beyond. And the tales are …

Oyster Boy, by Haste Theatre. The London-based company's "an international, all-female ensemble of six-passionate theatre-makers." They tell a "dark" tale with a lightness verging on buoyancy. The combination's arresting: a story performed larger than life about a tragedy. The idea …

The inaugural San Diego Fringe Festival won't have a "Best of the Fringe" showcase. What this means: Sean Sullivan will only perform his astonishing tour de force two more times. Redboots is a double-homecoming for Sullivan, a former San Diegan, …

Ubu Roi, by Alfred Jarry. Jarry (1873-1907) loathed all things bourgeois so much he made himself an anti-saint. He dressed and acted like a clown and adopted the role of Pere Ubu, in real life, from a character in a …

Billy was born deaf. His family are "hearing." Without giving him the choice, his parents refused to have him learn sign language. Why? His father, Christopher, fears that signing would identify him with a "minority," even a cult (i.e. a …

Though the story has several attributions, many claim it's what Anton Chekhov told actress Olga Knipper when they first met. "Can you make me an artist?" she asked the great Russian writer. "Yes," he replied, "but to do it I …

"They call me MISTER Tibbs!" - Sidney Poitier asserts for all time in the 1967 movie (and in the sequel's title). Poitier plays Virgil Tibbs, a police detective from Philadelphia visiting his mother in Sparta, Mississippi. He solves a "first-class …

The world famous Edinburgh Fringe Festival showcases acts from around the world: dance, theater, music, circus acts, even work outside the avant garde box. The festival lasts 25 days. In 2012, it boasted 2695 shows from 47 countries in 279 …

In 1947, Edinburgh, Scotland, held its first International Arts Festival: theater, opera, dance, classical music, and visual arts. The aim: "to provide a platform for the flowering of the human spirit" after World War II. Performances took place in august …

A name fewer and fewer people recognize, but he was probably responsible for at least one play or book or movie you will never forget. San Diego paid Ben Hecht an overdue homage this month. Scripps Ranch Theatre staged Ron …

In 1975, Pol Pot and his Khmer Rouge stormed through Cambodia. They killed teachers, poets, artists, doctors, journalists, anyone involved with the government, anyone related to anyone in government. Anyone wearing glasses. Anyone just suspicious. To create an agrarian collective, …

King Arthur pretends to ride a horse while Patsy, his faithful servant, clop-clops cocoanuts to sound like hooves. From the walls of a French castle, a guard tells the "sons of a silly person" that "your mother was a hamster …

We watch plays from the house seats or read them under a lamp. If curious, we peruse what others have to say. But what's it like to be that character? What's it like to be, say, Beverly Weston, the alcoholic …