Matt Letscher and Marwa Bernstein star in “Cigarettes & Chocolate,” one of two one-act radio plays written by Anthony Minghella at Pacific Resident Theatre. (By Dany Margolies) Posted: 07/30/17, 12:22 PM PDT | Updated: 4 days ago Marwa Bernstein, foreground, with Matt Letscher in “Cigarettes & Chocolate” (Photo by Vitor Martins) In their West Coast premieres, two one-act radio plays by Anthony Minghella grace the smaller stage at Pacific Resident Theatre. Though the Read More

"Rhinoceros"   Philip Brandes A lone holdout (Keith Stevenson) struggles to keep civilized values alive as his neighbor (Kendrah McKay) succumbs to herd mentality. (Vitor Martins / Pacific Resident Theatre) “It's silly to get worked up because a few people decide to change their skins.” So goes the excuse as easygoing provincial townsfolk spontaneously transform into the rampaging pachyderms of Eugene Ionesco’s seminal absurdist satire, “Rhinoceros.” In the easy surrender of their very humanity lies Read More

STAGE RAW Pacific Resident Theater Through September 10 RECOMMENDED It’s difficult to imagine a timelier and more fitting play for the “Make America Great Again,” era than Eugène Ionesco’s 1959 absurdist satire. The playwright wrote it in response to the alarming ascent of fascism during the first half of the twentieth century. Despite the passage of time, it is arguably more relevant now than when it was first written. The setting is a provincial town Read More

by Gil Kaan Jul. 21, 2017 RHINOCEROS/by Eugene Ionesco/directed by Guillermo Cienfuegos/Pacific Resident Theatre/thru September 10, 2017 Director Guillermo Cienfuegos expertly guides his talented RHINOCEROS cast with tight, sturdy reins in a truly full-length play (three acts, spanning close to three hours) now at the Pacific Resident Theatre. Eugene Ionesco originally wrote RHINOCEROS in 1959 as his commentary on the state of the political atmosphere then. So, ironically funny (and sad) that Read More

UNDER THE DEFT DIRECTION of Guillermo Cienfuegos, Pacific Resident Theatre is staging a truly stunning hit production of a play that’s six decades old. And on a second PRT stage, Minghella’s two radio plays directed by Michael Peretzian are utterly compelling. When Eugene Ionesco wrote “Rhinoceros,” it was about the totalitarian takeover of his native Romania and the dangers of ideological group think, both right and left. On its surface, this Read More

A master of the Theatre of the Absurd, Eugene Ionesco penned RHINOCEROS in 1959, with its first performance in 1961. The production wowed enthusiastic audiences and won a Tony Award for Zero Mostel for best performance by a leading actor in a play. RHINOCEROS was adapted to an urban American setting for a 1973 film starring Zero Mostel and Gene Wilder. The script was later adapted to an American shopping Read More

Paul Linke of ‘CHiPs’ fame has come full circle in a series of true-to-life plays that span losing his wife and finding love again By Christina Campodonico Paul Linke’s “It’s Time” is a story of true love Photo by Ed Krieger Storytelling is like shaping a smooth stone, if you ask Paul Linke. “If you go to a river, you’ll see incredibly polished stones sitting in the river. The river keeps moving over , across Read More

Paul Linke’s unassuming show at Pacific Resident Theatre (PRT) has an unassuming title: It’s Time. Time for what? No, not for what. Just… time. It’s about how time is all we really own or have to spend. And then about his time, the kind that got spent in his one-man trajectory from childhood to drifting college student, to the actor on the stage before us who is about to tell Read More

A Touch of the Poet Director Robert Bailey interview - Electric and Emotionally Gut Wrenching By Ester Benjamin Shifren

Robert Bailey, Director Matt McKenzie, Ron Garen, August Grahn, and Dennis Madden

Only one American playwright, Eugene O’Neill, has ever received the Nobel Prize for Literature. He is a four-time recipient of the Pulitzer Prize as well, and his masterwork “Long Day's Journey into Night” (Tony Award for Best Play) is considered to be at

Thanks to Pacific Resident Theater, we have a rare chance to see Eugene O’Neill’s last completed play, A Touch of the Poet. First written in 1935 as part of an unfulfilled 7-play cycle dealing with the fortunes of two clashing New England families, Poet centers on one of the most vivid characters in all of O’Neill: a vain, swaggering Irishman, Major Cornelius Melody (Matt McKenzie), who had served in Wellington’s Read More