The Buzz

Arts Center launches citywide art show with an election day theme: “Get Out and Vote.” It’s as American an idea as liberty and justice for all, but voting can be pretty counted on to happen every November (and presumably will still happen this year despite a pandemic and rumblings about attempts to postpone election day 2020. As part of it’s ongoing “Deeds: Arts as Action” series of exhibitions and events, the Petaluma Arts Center invited eight local artists to create an original piece of artwork that incorporates the word “Vote.” Last Saturday, enlargements of each finished piece were given a place-of-honor on the exterior of the arts center near the SMART station. Curated by Llisa Demetrios, Cinda Gilliland and Amy Critchett, the assortment of eye-catching imagery will be transformed into a series of lawn signs, posters, T-shirts and (yes, of course) cloth facemasks. The artists who delivered their colorful and vivid explorations of the act of voting are Alynn + Mags, Maxfield Bala, Jack Haye, Lukas and Scott Hess, The Kindness Committee founders, Pocho Sanchez, Bud Snow and Kathryn St. Clair. Closeups of the artwork and steps on how to order postcards, apparel and more can be found on the Arts Center website at DeedsGetOutandVote.org/store.

Cinnabar’s CinnaTriv Game Show begins streaming this weekend: For all of its theater-starved fans and supporters, Petaluma’s Cinnabar Theater has come up with a way to while away the time until audience can safely attend a live show again. It’s the CinnaTriv Theater Game Show, a Jeopardy-esque competition in which three local theater afficionados and Cinnabar patrons face off to see who knows the most (or is fastest to the buzzer). Taped on CInnabar’s new game show set, with all contestants a safe distance apart, and hosted by Clark Sterling, the show launches on Thursday, August 13, and each new episode of the 30-minute show will be available for free on subsequent weekends. To find the streaming link, visit CinnabarTheater.org.

Petaluma’s Jeffrey Weissman to be Shakespeare’s Toby Belch in worldwide Zoom production: “The Show Must Go Online,” an ambitious (and cleverly named) web-series created at the start of the coronavirus epidemic, has been presenting weekly readings of William Shakespeare’s plays on Wednesdays since late March. Rolled out in roughly the same order they were written, the plays have become wildly popular, streamed via Zoom with massive casts of professionals and amateurs alike, from around the world. Petaluma’s own Jeffrey Weissman - who famously appeared as George McFly in the second and third “Back to the Future” movies - learned about the series when word reached him that the London-based series was including a little novelty called “Get Thee Back to the Future,” in which the story of Marty McFly and his time-traveling car was re-imagined as have been written by the Bard. When Weissman reached out to producer Robert Myles, he was cast as Doc Brown, and only after that did the producers realize they had an actual original “BTTF” cast-member in their show. The show was aired in July. Since the beginning, the series has presented more than 20 plays, along with other wacky Shakespearean mashups such as “Star Wars: Verily, A New Hope” and “Much Ado About Mean Girls.” Once introduced to Weissman, the team in England has kept him in mind, and on Wednesday, August 19, the local actor will be playing the part of the outrageous Sir Toby Belch, in the comedic “Twelfth Night.” Updates are regularly posted on the “The Show Must Go Online” Facebook page and all past productions are viewable on the main website, which is, of course, TheShowMustGoOnline.com.

(’The Buzz’ runs every week in the Argus-Courier. Have an idea for a good news item, community note or interesting tidbit from around Petaluma? Drop a line to Community editor David Templeton at [email protected])