Bill Raden

Aliyah Conley and Trevor H. Olsen star in Sharon Yablon's Hello Stranger; Credit: Darrett Sanders

Day of the Dead in the Inland Empire Comes to Life as a Fever Dream

Though it would be a stretch to call Hello Stranger a Halloween horror, Sharon Yablon’s poetically pitched homecoming drama looks an awful lot like a ripping haunted house yarn. It features restive spirits tied to the unsavory history of a proverbial old dark house; it is driven by the uncanny......
Julie Dretzin and Maya Bowman have a fraught mother-daughter relationship in Mary Laws' wickedly funny Yaju.; Credit: Darrett Sanders

Five Female Playwrights Explore Being a Woman in the Time of Trump

It takes a long memory to recall a time when Los Angeles gave the short play its due respect. Decades of skyrocketing rents, plunging government arts support and the recent loss of Actor Equity's fabled 99-Seat Plan, which made large-cast shows affordable for L.A.’s intimate stages, have transformed a once......