Top 20: From ‘Justice’ at the Fresno Philharmonic to the range of Terry Lewis, it was a memorable 2023

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Related stories: DONALD’S TOP 20 CULTURAL EVENTS OF 2022
And: DONALD’S TOP 20 CULTURAL EVENTS OF 2021
And: DONALD’S TOP 20 CULTURAL EVENTS OF 2020
And: DONALD’S TOP 20 CULTURAL EVENTS OF 2019
And: DONALD’S TOP 20 CULTURAL EVENTS OF 2018
And: DONALD’S TOP 20 CULTURAL EVENTS OF 2017

Each year I pick a lead-in to the list, and this year I select Hotada and her orchestra for the honor. I had several favorite moments from the year. One was Damien Geter’s “Justice Symphony,” performed by the Fresno Philharmonic and Fresno Master Chorale (under the artistic direction of Anna Hamre), which pumped up the Saroyan Theatre. Robust and passionate, the performance pulsed with energy. And when the choir sang, in unison, the tender words, “We are one,” the double meaning — “We are won” —  hung tenderly afterward. 

I also applaud Hotoda for her determination. New composers have long been important to her. Last month she announced a new initiative for the Fresno Philharmonic focusing on California composers. It’s called “Cultural Crossroads.” (More on that in a future story.)

Now let’s get to my Top 20 list. I often group my list together by genre, but for this year, I took a looser approach. (Note that besides the top position on the list, the rest does not reflect any other kind of ranking.)

The full title of this list, I guess, would be “Donald’s Top 20 Cultural Events of the Year in the Central San Joaquin Valley.” In years past, because there’s only one of me and far more offerings each year than I could ever attend (even if I went out almost every night), the most realistic way to describe this yearly endeavor would be “Donald’s Top 20 List Out Of All the Stuff He Manages To Get To.” This year, however, for the first time ever, I’m incorporating feedback from two trusted colleagues who have been helping me cover the arts scene: Heather Parish and Doug Hoagland.

“Cultural” is a pretty broad term, and I have to narrow that down a bit, too: In this case think of it as shorthand for “theater-classical-music-opera-dance-visual-arts.” As in years past, I declare up front that The Munro Review covers more theater events than anything else because they’re the most likely to have repeat performances.

Now let’s get to the rest of the list.

Measure P heated up. Will it get any hotter?

For our second entry on the list, I turn to TMR contributor Doug Hoagland, who spent a good chunk of 2023 writing about the machinations of Measure P, the fraction-of-a-cent sales tax increase approved by the voters to fund the arts (but mostly the parks) in Fresno. This has been a multiyear endeavor for Doug, who did a deep dive on Measure P in 2022 and followed up with nearly a dozen stories in 2023.

Some of the news developments were feisty, including a political power play by the city parks department to bypass the Fresno Arts Council in determining grants; the apparent removal of two arts supporters from the Parks, Recreation and Arts Commission; a public pushback in favor of the Fresno Arts Council; and much more. The latest development: Applications for grants are (finally) available, with money expected to be in the hands of arts organizations and artists by midyear.

[Read Doug Hoagland’s latest in-depth report on Measure P]

Audra McDonald wowed her hometown. What else is new?

Good Company Players celebrated its 50th anniversary in the best way possible: by feting its most illustrious alumna. Audra McDonald offered a 90-minute sold-out June show at Warnors Theatre that featured numbers from the Great American Songbook to underscore McDonald’s themes of acceptance, love and gratitude as she celebrated Good Company Players’ 50th anniversary. As Doug Hoagland reported, the multiple Tony Award winner told the audience: “Almost everything I am when it comes to being a performer was built, discovered and nurtured at GCP.” That’s a strong testament to a powerhouse local theater tradition.

[Read Doug’s story about Audra’s big day]

J. Daniel Herring’s direction elevated ‘The Pillowman’ at Fresno State.

This crackling May production was one of the most daring and subversive titles I’ve seen at Fresno State in recent years in terms of its subject matter (horrific violence and despair), philosophical depth (are we the sum of our upbringings?), and, most important, in a generally saucy tone that might seem antithetical to the subject matter but makes perfect sense paired with Martin McDonagh’s superb work. I saw one of the two alternating casts, and the acting quartet of Randall Kohlruss, Mason Beltran, Luke Robert Nothstein and Tyler James Murphy were positively searing.

[Read my review of ‘The Pillowman’]

[Read my preview interview with J. Daniel Herring]

Camille Gaston and the cast of ‘Next to Normal’ soared at Selma Arts Center.

How does Camille Gaston elevate the local theater scene? I counted the ways in “Next to Normal.” Gaston was superb in May as the central character of Diana, the troubled mother with a bipolar disorder, in this deeply felt and powerfully realized musical production.

Co-directors Laramie Dawn Woolsey and Jessica Meredith took some chances with their concept for this much lauded 2008 Broadway musical by Tom Kitt (who wrote the music) and Brian Yorkey (who wrote the lyrics). One of the biggest was including a featured dancer (a graceful Shelby Guizar) to offer selective movement-based moments interpreting Diana’s various states of mind. I had mixed feelings about that directorial choice, but the intensity of the acting (including standout performances from Terry Lewis and Ben Sells) and the emotional pull of the material made it a production not to miss.

[Watch my video: Broadway tackles mental health with ‘Next to Normal.’ Selma’s co-director and a psychologist talk about why it’s important.]

[Read my review of “Next to Normal”]

Soli Deo Gloria’s spring concert blossomed with beauty.

Julie Carter, music director of Fresno’s premier women’s chorale, loves close, intense, multi-part harmonies. We certainly got that in this April concert. One of my favorite pieces was Frank La Rocca’s stellar arrangement of “Nunc Dimittis,” which offered eight parts of gorgeous tones. Carter is a big fan of Clara Schumann, whose arguably more famous husband (Robert) has long eclipsed her fame. Her selection of lieder (lyrical poems of several stanzas, performed by the ensemble) was lush and romantic. I could easily imagine two tender Berlin lovers strolling on the Lindenstrasse.

[Read my preview interview with Julie Carter]

‘Into the Woods’ at Madera Theatre Project reminded us that no one is alone.

Director Michael Christopher Flores took a big risk with this August production. Picking up on the theme of children that Stephen Sondehim so eloquently weaves through “Into the Woods,” Flores used a framing device to set it in a child’s world. A group of students became a Greek chorus of sorts: providing props, pantomiming plot points, dancing in the background.

The biggest shift, however, was breaking the Narrator/Mysterious Man into two separate roles played by different actors. Mitchell Henderson played just the Narrator (while John Piper makes a sturdy Mysterious Man). Evidently this has been done before by some directors, but I don’’t know if any of those narrators have been quite so young as Henderson, whose buoyant performance was a standout. Meg Clark, Taylor Delgado Murray and Zelia Ankrum were in fine form, while Juan Luis Guzman offered a gruff, funny weariness as the Baker.

[Read my review of ‘Into the Woods’] 

[Read my reader survey: Fresno-area theater folks ponder the question: What is your favorite Sondheim lyric and why?]

Fresno Pacific celebrated a new theater and concert space.

The Warkentine Culture and Arts Center, consisting of a concert hall and a black-box-style theater, amped up Fresno Pacific University’s cultural wattage. In February, Matthew Horton (the FPU accompanist) and Karen Madden (director of keyboard studies) performed at two pianos in a concert titled “For the Love of Piano.” (I got to listen to them play together for a CMAC interview I conducted with them, and I was awed by how closely their musical moments were in sync.)

The new venue hosted Grammy winner Eugene Friesen in a special March homecoming performance — his father, Dietrich Friesen, was a beloved music professor at Fresno Pacific University for decades. A theater highlight was director Brandi Martin’s production of “Godspell” in April. Martin used hula hoops, bubbles and some simple yet incredibly effective props — a lighted, snaky rope lamp, for one — to set the ambiance. The finely staged show felt distinctive and timeless.

[Watch my CMAC interview with Matthew Horton and Karen Madden]

[Read my interview with Eugene Friesen]

[Read my review of “Godspell”]

Grad students made a big statement about body perception.

Katrina Elaine Sanchez Carlock and Julie Araujo, two Fresno State graduate students, set out to change the “man’s world”  narrative of viewing women as objects. In “Beneath The Surface” at Corridor 2122, they offered two visions of attaining this goal: Araujo painted real-world depictions of the breasts of 50 volunteers, while Carlock offers a series of phallic sculptures through the female gaze, each one taking an almost fantastical form.

Sarah Delgado, a Fresno State journalism major, wrote a perceptive commentary about the exhibition for The Munro Review. Araujo told her: “​​I think that art is so subjective but it can also be used as a way to celebrate us humans, our body and our development.”

After the Corridor show, the exhibition moved in October to the Phebe Conley Art Gallery at Fresno State.

[Read Sarah Delgado’s account of “Beneath the Surface”]

Dorian Follansbee made the Rogue Festival her own.

Fresno’s celebrated fringe festival made a rousing post-Covid comeback. One of the joys of the Rogue Festival is the way it can give local performers center stage. Follansbee’s Rogue Festival 2023 show, “Other People’s Showers,” did indeed focus on the act of cleansing, but it was so much more. Heather Parish writes: “Dorian is a Fresno local who threw her hat into the Rogue lottery and delivered intelligent, complex storytelling about family, itinerant living, and being OK with going your own way.”

Poets laureate got challenging at LitHop.

As literary enthusiasts know, there’s something special about the soil in the Valley: We seem to grow poets laureate — both state and national — like weeds. Two of the most important names in local poetry, Lee Herrick and Juan Felipe Herrera, made a mark as keynote readers at October’s LitHop, I’m told by TMR contributor Heather Parish. “It was an excellent reading, but even more so, a rousing discussion on the importance of art, literature, and community in challenging ‘fake ideologies,’ as Herrera put it,” Heather says.

The Oliveira children celebrated their father at the Fresno Art Museum.

Michele Ellis Pracy, executive director of the Fresno Art Museum, put her personal connections to work in “Nathan Oliveira: Rare Works From the Private Collections of His Children,” an original exhibition at the Fresno Art Museum. She was able to gather together works chosen during studio visits to the homes of Joe Oliveira and his sister, Lisa, and she curated them in a thoughtful and powerful way that captured the personality and emotional depth of Nathan Oliveira.

In many ways, the exhibition became a quest for Ellis Pracy to draw more attention to the artist’s legacy. Unlike other members of the Bay Area Figurative Movement — which included such illustrious names as David Park, Richard Diebenkorn, Wayne Thiebaud and Joan Brown — Oliveira has never received a full-scale museum retrospective after his death. It’s an example of a show that a museum the size of Fresno’s can do so well.

[Watch my CMAC video tour]

‘Seminar’ sparkled at Fresno State.

Take a terrific play by a skilled playwright, add a veteran director at the top of his game, and throw in some gifted acting. That was “Seminar,” which was forced to hack its way through an unprecedented thicket of electrical issues at Fresno State’s aging Speech Arts Building just to be seen. (All performances ended up being powered by portable generators, and one was canceled outright.) Director Brad Myers, working with Theresa Rebeck’s punchy script, delivered a tight and witty ensemble piece that touched on many themes of the artistic life (criticism, pretense, opportunism, crippling self-doubt, to name just a few), while keeping the flinty linguistic comedy rolling across the surface. Terry Lewis was fierce and fragile as a private writing instructor.

[Read Heather Parish’s review of “Seminar”]

The Ring Cycle in Fresno? You bet.

Edna Garabedian isn’t one to shirk from making big statements. It’s always been a dream of hers to present Wagner’s monumental Ring Cycle, which is rarely performed except by the world’s biggest opera companies, as part of her California Opera festival summer season. She took the first step in August with an abridged, concert version of “Das Rheingold” at the First Congregational Church of Fresno.

Garabedian’s foremost goal these past 20 years with California Opera has been to offer specialized opera training to students and mid-career professionals, along with the veteran singers to teach them. And specialized training is something required for Wagner’s Ring Cycle, which is made up of four titles that require 15 hours of performance time in the original versions. Garabedian is already planning for the next title in the cycle. For Fresno opera fans, it’s a godsend.

[Read my preview of California Opera’s “Das Rheingold”]

With a dash of ‘Arsenic,’ Jon Maxwell perked up an old classic.

It’s a great thing to present new, cutting-edge plays and make them memorable. But it can be a different challenge to take a title that many would consider an old chestnut and find a fresh, lively spin. In the September Good Company Players production of “Arsenic and Old Lace,” director Denise Graziani did just that — with the help of a talented cast that included Jon Maxwell.

Maxwell is a veteran GCP performer who returned to Fresno decades after a professional career. His “Arsenic” performance had the solid, assured feel of a veteran. From the moment he bustles onto stage in an energetic burst, his Jonathan comes across with a slightly manic but still grounded befuddlement that balances the quirks of his relatives. There’s a reason why “Arsenic” is a classic, and Maxwell showed us why.

[Read my interview with Jon Maxwell of “Arsenic and Old Lace”]

URHere Theater made its mark with staged readings.

Hey there, Terry Lewis: You keep popping up on this list! Your turn as the creepy Doyle — a guy who’d rather live in cyberspace than the real world — in the September staged reading of “The Nether” managed a 10 on the Ick Scale. And that’s with no blocking or scenery. Jennifer Haley’s provocative play imagines a not too distant future in which horny people spend their free time in virtual worlds committing virtual romance and sex. Given the dark nature of the internet (aka the Nether), socially repugnant fantasies such as pedophilia often arise. Haley asks intriguing questions: Isn’t it better for people to live out such unacceptable fantasies online rather than in person? Or do the ready availability of avatars as sex partners make it easier for such predilections to spill out into the real world?

Staged readings are a special treat that appeals to the imagination in terms of sets, blocking, costumes and visual effects. The focus is on the script and the acting, and when someone like Lewis is able to chew on this meaty of a part, the impact is palpable. In a talkback following the show, director Kristina Balfour told the audience that “The Nether” wasn’t even at the top of her top list of plays to read in Fresno. There were seven before it, but she couldn’t get the rights. The title turned out to be “one of the most uncomfortable, yet thought-provoking pieces of theater I have encountered,” Balfour says. Kudos to URHere for bringing that kind of theater sophistication to Fresno.

‘Once’ you saw it, the memories lingered.

Darren Tharp, the artistic director of CenterStage Clovis Community Theatre, has a knack for selecting big, impactful titles and presenting them in emotionally potent ways. He followed up on the success of last year’s “All Is Calm” with the crowd pleaser “Once.”

The slight boy-meets-girl story (fleshed out by Ted Nunes and Carly Oliver in the leading roles) got a boost from the pleasant Irish melodies and a cast of talented actor musicians. Thanks to Darren Tharp’s inspired direction, these musicians become a choreographic force. (Erin Roberts created the movements.) In some numbers, they became a cross between ballet and marching band.

Tharp once again found a way to make his big production of the year an event, not just a theater title.

[Read my review of “Once”]

Fresno Master Chorale got De’Luxe’ with ‘Aeterna’

If any group deserves a Latin pun along with its accolades for the year, it’s the musical powerhouse Fresno Community Chorus, of which the Master Chorale is a significant ensemble. The chorale’s November concert was but one of several that could have made this list; this one was so gosh darn beautiful I couldn’t resist.

Morton Lauridsen’s big-deal contemporary favorite “Lux Aeterna” burst with light and color, from the plaintiveness of the “Miserere” movement to the gorgeous vocal shadings of “Jesus, redeemer of the soul.” The piece was joined by Ola Gjeilo’s sprightly ““Song of the Universal,” and Tarik O’Regan’s “Triptych,” both of which washed over me like an aural waterfall. I felt like I’d had a spa day for my soul.

[Read my preview interview with Anna Hamre]

Children were the future (of theater)

Don’t get mad at me for wedging two titles into one position on this list: I just couldn’t choose between the Children’s Musical Theaterworks summer production of “Chicago” and the Selma Arts Center’s fall teen production of “Mean Girls.” Both featured strong vocals, terrific production designs and some really fetch direction (Josh Montgomery delivering the crispness of “Chicago” and Renee Newlove and Adrian Oceguera finding the slick/sweet teen vibe of “Mean Girls.”) Both companies play a major role in strengthening the local theater scene.

Lively Arts gave a tip of the hat to tap.

At October’s ““Jazz Tap Jam!” concert at the Tower Theatre, pro dancers Mindy Millard Copeland, Gabe Copeland, Mark Mendonca and Sarah Reich showed the tap-hungry audience how much artistry and skill is involved. The concert was modeled after one performed decades ago in Fresno by the legendary Gregory Hines, who helped bring tap back to the forefront in this country. He also believed in elevating students, which is why he was so friendly to them (and occasionally invited them on stage).  At “Jazz Tap Jam,” students from various dance schools in Fresno got a chance to perform alongside the pros.

What stood out for me (besides the pedagogical good vibes), was the sound of tap — the visceral, pounding, scraping relationship that professionals have with the stage. Tappers aren’t dainty. They make their mark, and they make it with friction. On this special evening, Mindy Copeland and pals scraped with style.

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