By Harry Duke
North Bay theater companies are crossing their collective fingers in hopes audiences continue to come out and support them in 2025. Holiday-themed shows now give way to the usual mixture of comedies, dramas and musicals, from classics to contemporary works to a short-play festival.
Santa Rosa’s 6th Street Playhouse gets things going in early January with What the Constitution Means to Me. Heidi Schrek’s 2019 Pulitzer Prize for Drama finalist may take on deeper meaning with the potential Constitutional crises we may face in the coming years.
6thstreetplayhouse.com
For folks looking for something a little sillier, Cinnabar Theater continues taking its shows on the road to Sonoma State University with Gutenberg! The Musical! Opening Jan. 17, it’s a musical spoof about two hapless friends putting on a backer’s audition with the hopes of raising funds to produce their musical about the creator of the printing press.
cinnabartheater.org
Former Bohemian critic David Templeton gets a remount of his one-woman show, Mary Shelley’s Body. Originally produced in 2017 at Sebastopol’s Main Stage West, this show features Spreckels Theatre Company artistic director Sheri Lee Miller reprising the role of Mary Shelley (well, her ghost) as she tells the story of her life.
spreckelsonline.com
Sonoma Arts Live presents Six Degrees of Separation in late January. Playwright John Guare based his tale of a young African-American conman insinuating himself into the lives of the New York elite on a true story. Jonathen Blue stars as “Paul.”
sonomartslive.org
Some may have seen this already, but 6th Street Playhouse’s second stage will be occupied by Groundhog Day: The Musical starting Jan. 31. The 1993 Bill Murray comedy gave way to a 2017 Broadway musical that, while not a smashing success, became a reliable audience-pleaser.
6thstreetplayhouse.com
For folks looking for something on a little smaller scale, Napa’s Lucky Penny Productions will present Love Letters. A.R. Gurney’s two-hander features two actors reading the correspondence their characters have shared over 50 years. Three sets of performers—Taylor Bartolucci and Barry Martin, Daniela Innocenti-Beem and Dennis O’Brien, LC Arisman and John Browning—take on the roles over a three-weekend run starting Jan. 31.
luckypennynapa.com
Theatergoers who like their plays short, really short, might check out the Raven Players’ Raven Shorts. The show is composed of eight eclectic, original 10-minute plays by local playwrights Dan Stryker, Tony Sciullo, Jacquelyn Wells, Kyle Therral Wilson, Ron Nash, Francine Schwartz, Christopher Johnston and Scott Lummer. The “festival” runs for two weekends starting Jan. 24 in Healdsburg.
raventheater.org
There’s quite the variety of live theater from which to choose to warm our hearts and minds, and to escape the North Bay’s cold winter nights.
‘Raven Shorts,’ a collection of eight 10-minute plays, will have performances from Jan. 24-Feb. 2. The Raven Theater is located at 115 North St.
raventheater.org/series/raven-shorts
