Labor Day weekend: Theater productions to check out

This labor day weekend why not catch a show here in the Bay Area?

There are many quality productions—big and small—with something bound to please your senses. Satires. Shakespeare. Heart-wrenching romance and drama. Musicals. Comedy. You name it! It’s impressive how much creative and artistic vibrancy we’re surrounded with here in the heartland of technology.

Some shows, like San Jose Rep’s ‘As You Like It’, are just opening (Friday). It will mark Rick Lombardo’s directing debut at the Rep. And it promises to be quite a spectacle with a modernizing take on a Shakespeare classic. How appropriate for Silicon Valley.

David Henry Hwang’s satire on race, ‘Yellow Face’, premiered last weekend and has been receiving strong reviews (Theater review: ‘Yellow Face’ an entertaining look at race in America).

In Palo Alto, Dragon Productions Theatre Company is running ‘The Memory of Water’, which we will finally see, thanks to a travel break. It promises to be an emotional rollercoaster: “It’s remembering which helps three sisters survive the despair of
losing their mother and come to terms with their own lives.”

‘Awake and Sing!’ continues to play at the Aurora Theatre Company. We will also be catching this show over the weekend. A play written at the height of the depression in 1935, it “paints a true-to-life portrait of dreams and disappointments, fears and follies in the face of the American dream, creating a rich and lasting tribute to America’s working class.”

Of course, this is the tip of the iceberg. We’re somewhat spoiled here in the Bay Area. San Francisco. Oakland. Berkeley. San Jose. Palo Alto. Or just about anywhere in between… there are hundreds of shows to choose from. It’s the third largest theater market after New York and Chicago.

Do you really want to see The Final Destination, or Halloween II?

So get out there folks, support the arts community and enjoy some live theater!

Things to do: Bay Area theater

Yellow Face
TheatreWorks
Mountain View

As You Like It
San Jose Repertory Theatre
San Jose

Awake and Sing!
Aurora Theatre Company
Berkeley

The Memory of Water
Dragon Productions Theatre Company
Palo Alto