A word of explanation: A
published review is a documentation of the excellent work of a
performing arts organization. Newspapers rarely print reviews
because live, local performing arts are not part of today's mass
culture. But they should be.
In 2010, I started writing reviews of local theatrical
productions (and later, concerts) to try to build public awareness
of an overlooked local treasure. By May of 2016, I had to stop
adding reviews along with the cut-back of the Placer Performance
Calendar: there was a shortage of reviewers (despite the good
work of Letha Dawson, Sally Kallenbach and Gerry Camp), and the
pressure of writing them myself and coordinating the review activity
became too great.
Still, I wanted to keep the review database accessible
— at least while the scaled-back version
of the Placer Performance Calendar is still available. So many
of those shows and concerts were too wonderful to let the
documentation of them slip into oblivion.
- Dick Frantzreb |