James Hebert

Encinitas, CA

James is a versatile writer-editor and communications pro, and is the former chief theater critic for the San Diego Union-Tribune. He has written more than 5,000 bylined stories, on topics from the arts and pop culture to the environment and digital tech. His work also has been featured in two college writing textbooks. James has served as a Pulitzer Prize juror and has received more than 30 local, regional and national writing awards.

James Hebert

Encinitas, CA

Cameron Crowe gets back to where it began, with 'Almost Famous'
World-premiere musical revisits Oscar-winning writer-filmmaker’s own history in fictionalized form.
San Diego Union-Tribune
Profiles Arts
Steve Martin’s new stage: Musical theater
‘Bright Star,’ his world-premiere collaboration with Edie Brickell, hits the Old Globe starting this weekend. Steve Martin is sitting alone at an outdoor cafe in Balboa Park, sporting a green linen shirt and an even greener fedora. “Something I overpaid for at Barneys,” he cracks to a visitor about the hat, which might’ve been lifted from a particularly fashion-savvy leprechaun.
San Diego Union-Tribune
Business and finance Science Arts Profiles
American icons: Twyla Tharp finds a kindred spirit in Bob Dylan
"The Times They Are A-Changin'" takes inspiration from artists' parallel paths.
San Diego Union-Tribune
Arts Science Profiles
Curtain call: Looking back on a dozen years in the life of a critic
So much of life, after all, resides in the abiding tension between holding on and letting go.
San Diego Union-Tribune
Arts
The 8:30 Project
On a Saturday night, San Diego lights up with live performance.
San Diego Union-Tribune
Arts Business and finance
Catching up with Laurence Fishburne as he heads back to town for San Diego International Film Festival honor
Top Hollywood name, famous for the “Matrix” movies, performed at the Old Globe nearly three decades ago; he’ll receive the Gregory Peck Award at festival in October. The last time Laurence Fishburne took to a stage in San Diego, it worked out pretty well for him: The actor’s 1991 stint in the Old Globe production of August Wilson’s “Two Trains Running” was a prelude to a Broadway encore that earned him a Tony Award.
San Diego Union-Tribune
Arts Profiles Science
‘Frozen’ duo unveils ‘Up Here,’ the musical they couldn’t let go
It wasn’t enough for them to write a song that has gotten lodged in legions of brains over the last year or so. Now, Robert Lopez and Kristen Anderson-Lopez are about to put up an entire musical inside someone’s mind. And it turns out that “Up Here” — the world-premiere work that begins its much-anticipated La Jolla Playhouse run this week — is the one project that has most occupied these married artists’ own minds for nearly a decade.
Los Angeles Times
Business and finance Science Arts Profiles
An arts community's search for diversity
To those who feel misunderstood or invisible, there is power in the words: You are seen.
San Diego Union-Tribune
Arts Science
Mixing it up with Sara Bareilles as she talks Broadway and pie
Bareilles calls her work on the musical "Waitress" the proudest moment of her career so far.
San Diego Union-Tribune
Arts Profiles
San Diego-bred 'Memphis' tops the Tony Awards
La Jolla Playhouse-launched musical wins top honors in annual theater celebration.
San Diego Union-Tribune
Arts
A renegade turned author finds purpose in the surf
Near a stretch of reef known as Grimace Rock, surf champ's project helps disabled kids find joy.
San Diego Union-Tribune
Boardsports and ocean environment Profiles Science and environment Arts
Devo, musical theater and skateboarding at La Jolla Playhouse
What do the leader of Devo, the guy who wrote the “SpongeBob SquarePants” musical, the man behind the novel “High Fidelity” and the North San Diego County athlete who practically personifies action sports have in common? The short answer to the question is: Skateboarding. The (slightly) longer answer is the skateboarding-centric stage musical project “Slam,” which had its first-ever public readings at La Jolla Playhouse over the weekend.
San Diego Union-Tribune
Arts Boardsports and ocean environment Profiles
Salk performance is Laura Benanti's science project
Yes, Laura Benanti was party to some pretty weird astrophysics in the Broadway production of Steve Martin’s San Diego-bred play “Meteor Shower.”. And she was also at the center of a famously grand human experiment as Eliza Doolittle in the just-closed Broadway revival of “My Fair Lady.”. But when the ace comic actor and Broadway favorite takes the stage at the Salk Institute this Saturday with the San Diego Symphony, she will consider her duty to the world of scholarly research fulfilled.
San Diego Union-Tribune
Science Arts
How 'Come From Away' became a Broadway hit
Three years after it premiered at San Diego’s La Jolla Playhouse, the musical “Come From Away” — a story of journeys interrupted by tragedy and redeemed by kindness — is about to see its own journey come nearly full circle. This Wednesday, the Broadway show’s touring production lands at the Ahmanson Theatre in Los Angeles for a six-week run that represents the musical’s first return to California since its Playhouse debut in June 2015.
The Chicago Tribune
Business and finance Arts
Remaking tradition with top San Diego chefs
We peek into the kitchens of three renowned San Diego restaurants to see what's cookin'.
San Diego Union-Tribune
Arts
Quantum physics and romantic destiny in 'Constellations'
In the certifiably strange world of quantum physics, there’s a maxim that says nothing actually happens until someone is there to observe it. That idea doesn’t quite apply to the act of observing a play, unless it’s a play on a very tiny, subatomic scale, such as my own long-dreamed-of musical spectacular “The Photon of the Opera.”.
San Diego Union-Tribune
Science Arts Science and environment

About

James Hebert

Writing

editing

digital marketing

James earned his master's degree at Columbia University in New York and has written about San Diego's cultural communities for more than two decades. His awards include a national writing prize from the Society for Features Journalism and 30-plus local and regional journalism honors. He was part of a San Diego Union-Tribune staff whose cultural coverage was named best in the state in 2019 and 2020. James also has seven years' experience as a newspaper copy editor, plus skills in SEO, AI, video editing, digital marketing content creation/management and social media.