Spano Spans the Counties, Plus Skylight Illuminated

Rubicon Theatre Company brings both the old and the new to its Laurel Street space on August 16, when Emmy & L.A. Drama Critics Circle Award-winning actor and longtime RTC member Joe Spano (Hill Street Blues, NYPD Blue) stars in a benefit staged reading of King of the Wild Frontier, a new one-man play by Emmy-nominated writer, producer and playwright John Romano (The Lincoln Lawyer, Hill Street Blues). The reading will be directed by RTC’s longtime Artistic Associate Jenny Sullivan, who will also lead a post-reading conversation with Romano and Spano covering the play, storytelling, artistic lives, and their enduring relationship through the decades. The staged event will be followed by an optional 80th birthday celebration for Spano, with proceeds benefiting the theatrer. 

Just announced is that the show will be repeated here two weeks later in Santa Barbara for Ensemble Theatre Company at The New Vic on Sunday afternoon, August 30, with the same threesome on hand. ETC also shared more about King of the Wild Frontier, which is set in a New Jersey country club in the 1960s and described as a funny, suspenseful and deeply moving meditation on family, faith, organized crime and the moral choices that shape a life. A Q&A-style discussion of the play, its development, and the stories behind the work follow the performance; but there will be no special birthday party for Spano. 

Tickets at www.etcsb.org

By the Boards: ‘Skylight’ Illuminated 

The first adult production from the teen-centric Lights Up! Theatre Company’s new offshoot Ghostlight Theatre makes its debut this weekend at Center Stage Theatre. Company Founder Amy Love directs David Hare’s Olivier and Tony Award-winning 1995 play Skylight, his funny, intimate and emotionally charged three-hander acting tour de force that explores a love triangle and much more, with performances set for August 14 & 15.