NEWS

Long-distance Pass Holders: Meet Lindsey and Charles Shere

Ain’t no mountain high enough! (As for valleys low enough, we’re not quite sure.) But in either case: living in NorCal has been no impediment to composer Charles Shere and his wife, Lindsey (an accomplished pâtissière), who have been attending the Company’s plays since seeing Hay Fever in 2001. They became subscribers the very next season, and have done so every season since.

Charles and Lindsey lived in Berkeley from 1956 to 1997, then moved to the country, near Healdsburg in Sonoma County, where they live now. “For years,” Charles says, “We have managed to talk a couple of friends into subscribing and attending plays with us. Not always the same friends, and some alas are no longer able to make the trip, but we haven’t missed a single season at A Noise Within.”

As well, Charles says, “We occasionally try to take in something else in LA during these semiannual visits—Actors Gang, or a small company, or the symphony, and museums of course. And we enjoy the wide array of restaurants and cuisines we find there.

A Noise Within is special to us for the quality of its productions and performances and the range and significance of its repertory. I suppose my favorite this fall was A Flea in Her Ear, for the consistency of the cast, the energy, the beauty of the production. But the other two were almost equally impressive: click here for more.”

Charles has been the recipient of two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts (as an art critic and an opera composer), and is the subject of an article in the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians. The composer of the opera The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even (1964-1986)—after the painting by Marcel Duchamp— (1989), as well as concerti for piano and for violin. Charles also taught at Mills College and served as music critic for Oakland Tribune.

Are you an ANW fans who travel to visit us? We’d love to hear your story, too! Please write to David at dandrusia@anoisewithin.org.