Kpfa - Bay Area Theater

KPFA theatre critic Richard Wolinsky discusses the year in theatre in the Bay Area in 2023, plus a top ten list and two honorable mentions.   Text of the podcast. In the Bay Area, Live theatre companies continued in 2023 to adapt to the post-Covid world. While movie audience sizes seems to be returning to pre-pandemic numbers. live theater remains mostly on life support across the board, mainly because season subscriptions are down by at least a third or maybe more, which means theatergoers are buying tickets on a show by show basis. That makes planning difficult, and it also means artistic directors are less likely to produce shows that are more challenging in favor of audiences pleasers such as musicals, comedies, and most importantly, the warhorses that folks are willing to see over and over again. The great multi-theatre venue, Piano Fight, in the Tenderloin closed its doors in March, leaving a host of younger theatregoers bereft. Bay Area Musicals didn’t survive the pandemic, and its successor Landmark M