A bit of history

Larry Williams, director of Sonoma Arts Live’s ‘Pinky,’ appearing as David in the play when it was produced in Marin County in 2017.

When Sonoma Arts Live’s upcoming production of ‘Pinky’ Zooms onto computer screens and into living rooms on Valentine’s Day weekend, it will be the first time a full production of the play has happened since 2017, when Marin OnStage presented the two-actor comedy with Melissa Claire as Pinky and Jeffrey Weissman and Larry Williams (alternating, It’s a long story) as David. Carl Jordan directed the show.

Among its audience members was Jaime Love Managing Artistic Director of Sonoma Arts Live, in Sonoma California. After the show, Jaime made it clear that in the future, when the time was right, she would love to produce her own version of ‘Pinky’ in Sonoma.

Skip to 2020, a pandemic, the closure of theaters, and a moment when many companies were experimenting with various forms of online theater, as an alternative to the kind of theater that involves audiences and actors breathing each other’s exhalations in the dark. On thing led to another, and this February, ‘Pinky’ will get its Sonoma Arts Live production, though with an audience watching safely from their own homes, as the actors — in this case, married performers Mark and Julianne Bradbury — performing in their very own living rooms, under the distanced direction of the aforementioned Larry Williams, bring his own experience of being in the rather demanding play to his now-alternately-demanding role as Zoom director.

A nice full-circle kind of thing going on there, don’t you think?

For information on how to watch ‘Pinky,” running Feb. 12-21, visit SonomaArtsLive.org.

Larry Williams and Melissa Claire in the 2017 production of David Templeton’s ‘Pinky.’ Williams in directing the upcoming Sonoma Arts Live production of ‘Pinky,’ streaming on Zoom from Feb. 12-21.

‘Pinky’ on Zoom (and an update)

Well, let’s see.

The last time there was a new production of ‘Pinky,’ a full production, anyway — there have been some colleges that have used scenes from the play, with our permission — it was 2017, and it was a three-weekend production at Belrose Theater in San Rafael, California. Since then, the playwright has written two new plays (‘Drumming With Anubis,’ which had its world premiere at Left Edge Theatre in Santa Rosa, and ‘Galatea,’ which was to have debuted on March 20, 2020 at Spreckels Performing Arts Center in Rohnert Park, CA, but was called off on March 13 due to a certain global pandemic. ‘Drumming with Anubis’ had a live Zoom production in the summer of 2020, presented by New York City’s Ted Wold Productions.

With so much theater taking to Zoom and other online platforms, small cast plays are (no surprise) suddenly highly attractive, and ‘Pinky’ fits the bill — especially if a theater company can find two actors who are already in each other’s bubble. When Sonoma Arts Live, in Sonoma, CA, asked married actors Julianne and Mark Bradbury to suggest a two-hander they’d be interested in performing together, they suggested ‘Pinky,’ and by a delightful cohesion of proximities, North Bay director-actor Larry Williams was A. available, and B. had actually appeared as one of the two characters in the Belrose Theater production on 2017 (alternating with actor Jeffrey Weissman, both playing opposite of Melissa Claire. The play was produced by Marin Onstage and was directed by Carl Jordan. So, Larry Williams was a perfect choice to take the reins of Sonoma Arts Live’s first full Zoom production.

The play will be performed over two weekends, presented live from the Santa Rosa livingroom of the Bradburys, beginning Friday, February 12, and running Fridays through Saturdays until February 21. All performances will be at 8 p.m.

Details can be found at Sonoma Arts Live’s website (sonomaartslive.org, sometime soon, or on the Sonoma Arts Live Facebook page). The play will be presented for free, but donations to SAL are encouraged and much appreciated.

We will be adding updates here as we get them.

If you are fan of ‘Pinky,’ the play, you will not want to miss this one-of-a-kind Valentine’s weekend show.