Editor’s Note: Summer Reading by / Sam Hurwitt

You may have noticed this already because it’s splashed all over the cover, but this issue contains the full text of “The North Pool” by Rajiv Joseph, winner of the Glickman Award for the best new play to debut in the Bay Area in 2011. “The North Pool” premiered at TheatreWorks in March of last year, at the same time that Joseph was making his Broadway debut with “Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo.”

When I saw “The North Pool” at Palo Alto’s Lucie Stern Theatre, I was amazed by how skillfully Joseph set up expectations only to subvert them again and again. Every time you think you know what the play is about and why these two people are in the vice principal’s office together, one of them says something that makes you realize this encounter, and this play, isn’t about what you thought it was about at all. Tense, dynamic and unexpectedly touching, this lean one-act proved itself a prime contender for the prize early in the year.

I’ve been on the five-critic panel that chooses the Glickman winner just about as long as I’ve been working at Theatre Bay Area, and the odd thing is that it’s sheer coincidence. My colleagues invited me to the panel back when I was the theatre critic for the East Bay Express, and I continue to serve on the panel representing the Marin Independent Journal, as well as my review blog, theidiolect.com. The other current Glickman panelists are Karen D’Souza of the San Jose Mercury News, Robert Hurwitt of the San Francisco Chronicle, Robert Avila of the San Francisco Bay Guardian and Chad Jones of TheaterDogs.net.

Serving on the panel, however, makes it especially satisfying to see the play we chose published in Theatre Bay Area magazine over the summer. The magazine has been publishing Glickman-winning scripts since Liz Duffy Adams’s “Dog Act” in 2005, and I’m thrilled to continue that tradition with “The North Pool.”

If that were all we had in this issue, that would be enough. (“Dayenu,” as we say at Passover.) Oh, but there’s so much more. I interviewed Joseph about “The North Pool,” and that Q&A appears right before the play. Associate editor Laura Brueckner profiles actor Reggie White after his back-to-back runs in Impact Theatre’s “Titus Andronicus” and “Crevice,” and she also interviews North Bay director Ann Brebner, an associate artist at AlterTheater and current “vision director” for Porchlight Theatre Company. Nirmala Nataraj checks in with venerable Gilbert and Sullivan outfit Lamplighters Music Theatre, celebrating its 60th anniversary this year.

Jean Schiffman gives us a timely update on the various projects in development to build new theatre spaces in the long-blighted Mid-Market area, including separate endeavors spearheaded by American Conservatory Theater, PianoFight and—what’s this?—Theatre Bay Area. Jean also contributes a ride-along report behind the scenes with a stage manager at Berkeley Rep.

After all that, what do we do for an encore? Check back in September when we bring you our Fall Season Preview issue! (And if you’re a company member, remember to send us your season listings by July 11 to make sure they’re in there.) Until then, happy reading!


Sam Hurwitt is editor-in-chief for Theatre Bay Area. He is also the author of The Idiolect, a blog about theatre, movies, comics, media and the decline and fall of Western civilization. E-mail sam@theatrebayarea.org.