"If I could only do one kind of performance," Mandy Patinkin explained in a recent phone interview with the B.A.R., "it would be doing concerts."

"Stomp," the so-called "international percussion sensation," played A.C.T.'s Geary Theater in San Francisco for eight performances last week, and Out There and a lot of vicarious percussionists were in the house.

Playwright Kate Attwell's "Testmatch" is about race and gender and global economic power.

Robert Townsend, who helped pioneer 1980s independent cinema with "Hollywood Shuffle," has a file cabinet's worth of autobiographical anecdotes.

Della, the cheery proprietor of a small-town North Carolina Bakery, shares her philosophy in the opening moments of "The Cake," now at the New Conservatory Theatre Center.

You've got to give Michael Longoria, Broadway performer in "Jersey Boys" and "Hairspray," credit for being ballsy.

"Elevada" is a tonic. This singular whatchamacallit of a show, being presented by the Shotgun Players through November 17, effervesces with an offbeat creativity .

Evelyn, a 20ish ingenue in a cheery floral-print dress, wears a grin of unabashed delight through most of the first act of "The Daughters,"

The new play "The Inheritance" by Matthew Lopez, is an epic of current gay life in New York performed in two parts, lasting a total of 7.5 hours.

Afong Moy was the first Chinese woman to ever set foot in the United States. She arrived as chattel, a 14-year-old girl leased out for a tidy sum by her already well-to-do father.

"There's a huge community out there looking to see narratives about themselves, to hear stories that represent them as something other than caricatures," says director Ely Orquiza, discussing "Driven."

During quick breaks between scenes in the thrilling Berkeley Rep production of Suzan-Lori Parks' audacious new drama "White Noise," we hear the play's titular sleep-inducing sound.

"Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson" is a rock musical originally produced in the year of Obama's first election and now onstage at the Custom Made Theatre Co., through Oct. 27.

You don't expect a show called "Dance Nation" to be about a lack of coordination. But Clare Barron's bold, original play, at the San Francisco Playhouse through Nov. 9, is exactly that.