Are you a big Josh Brolin fan, especially ever since his character Llewellyn Moss got his buff cowboy body blown away by Javier Bardem’s methodical and passionless hitman Anton Chigurh in No Country for Old Men, one of the Coen Brothers’ finest films? Or perhaps your taste runs to Jeff Bridges, another locally resident actor […]
Hot on the heels of the milestone 25th Ojai Film Festival, and just a week after the launching of the new SBIFF Film Center in the former home of the Fiesta Five, the historic Ojai Playhouse is reopening on November 22 after being closed for a decade. Similarly but on a much smaller scale than […]
Earlier this fall, the Legal Aid Foundation of Santa Barbara County (LAFSBC) marked its 65th anniversary with an early evening gathering at the Anchor Rose in Santa Barbara Harbor. LAFSBC – which works tirelessly to close the justice gap for low-income residents in the area – took the occasion to make note of its own […]
If truth be told, UCSB Theater’s Annie Torsiglieri probably would have preferred that The Threepenny Opera, which she is directing at UCSB’s Performing Arts Theater, wouldn’t have turned out quite so resonant for its November 15-23 run. But she very intentionally chose Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill’s groundbreaking musical – and dark satirical commentary on […]
SBCC Theatre jumps the gun on the holiday season, turning to Tony Award-winning playwright Christopher Durang’s Mrs. Bob Cratchit’s Wild Christmas Binge for its student showcase, even before the campus collectively takes a break to talk – er, eat – turkey. A twist on the classic A Christmas Carol, Binge gets all unhinged in a […]
Santa Barbara’s three major public high schools’ theaters are all buzzing this weekend with their big fall productions. SBHS’s Teenage Wasteland is an original piece of theater created by the Theatre Department’s 19 performers, including three student designers and eight ensemble members who have come up with a combined performance, concert, love story, fashion show […]
The world of the Santa Barbara International Film Festival keeps expanding. What started as a tiny weekend film festival 40 years ago – a way to draw tourists to our seaside berg during the winter off-season lull – has exploded into a juggernaut of a festival that boasts more star power than any place outside […]
Although retail shops on State Street may not agree, it’s no exaggeration to say the pandemic is squarely behind us, at least in terms of the Lobero Theatre, where a big percentage of pop concerts have drawn capacity audiences this year. Now, as we head into the holiday season, the trend is continuing, with three […]
Last month, Sansum Diabetes Research Institute (SDRI) reached a major milestone with its year-long $20 million capital campaign to facilitate the renovation of the nonprofit’s current building, breaking ground on the 18,000-square-foot building renovation project. The work is to transform the building, located near Santa Barbara Cottage Hospital, into a state-of-the-art diabetes research facility that […]
Tim Matheson has been acting since he was a teenager and has a list of credits that runs to many pages, but the onetime Montecito resident (1994-2010, the only time he lived more than minutes from Hollywood) might still be best known for playing rush chairman Eric “Otter” Stratton in National Lampoon’s Animal House – […]
It was pure serendipity when rock band Doublewide Kings co-founder Palmer Jackson, Jr., met Brett Strader at a social function in San Francisco just shy of two years ago. When Jackson mentioned that his band was planning a collaborative concert of Van Morrison songs with the Santa Barbara Symphony for the following November, Strader – […]
Opera Santa Barbara launches its 2024-25 season with a classic in Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci at the Lobero Theatre on November 8 and 10. The tale of lust, jealousy, and murder inside a traveling troop of comedians features the famous aria “Vesti la giubba”, which closes the first act. OSB’s new production of the dramatic thriller, set […]
Santa Barbara chef and author Pascale Beale is booked for two public events this week to celebrate the launch of her new cookbook, FLAVOUR – Savouring The Seasons: Recipes From The Market Table. This is the fourth in the Market Table series from the proprietor of Pascale’s Kitchen, the online culinary boutique. The new book […]
For the last several years, New Beginnings’ annual fall fundraiser has moved beyond the typical wine-and-dine gala concept to actually put the focus on the longtime nonprofit’s areas of service – via presenting a theatrical event that mirrors themes of issues it works to combat. This year’s offering, The Boys Next Door, examines issues of […]
A couple of major theaters in town have been celebrating centennial anniversaries of a sort this year, while in February the Santa Barbara International Film Festival will turn 40. But in between, two well-established art galleries are also having 40th birthdays, and the city’s most enduring bookstore is marking a major milestone as well – […]
Trick question: Is Beetlejuice Beetlejuice – one of this summer’s hits –twice as good as the 1988 original? Not so much, which is why seeing Tim Burton’s now-classic 36-year-old Beetlejuice on Halloween seems like a special sort of holiday treat as it opens the Ojai Film Festival with a free screening in Libbey Park. The […]
The Council on Alcoholism and Drug Abuse, aka CADA, is looking to dive deeper into the ARTS. Lest anyone think the seven-decade old nonprofit is planning on building a theater or promoting a series of rock concerts or dance performances, ARTS is the acronym for CADA’s Adult Residential Treatment Services; a residential treatment facility for […]
White Buffalo Land Trust has only been around for six years, and it was only in 2021 that the nonprofit dedicated to restoring our ecosystem through regenerative agriculture acquired the 1,000-acre Jalama Canyon Ranch to establish its center to practice, promote, and develop systems of regenerative agriculture for local, regional, and global impact. Located near […]
The twist is decidedly not part of the ballet repertoire, but State Street Ballet has done some shakin’ for its 30th season, the first one to be entirely programmed without the supervising hand of founding director Rodney Gustafson. New artistic director Megan Philipp and executive director Cecily MacDougall – who worked with Gustafson for more […]
Aimee Mann’s gift for literate lyrics that belie the bright melodies of her chamber folk-pop music has defined her own genre for more than 30 years of a solo career. Her oeuvre is the vulnerable truth laid bare, mostly drawn from her own experiences, but in such refreshing ways that it’s decidedly universal, and healing […]
Out of the Box Theatre Company kicks off its new season with something different a few blocks up from its usual home at Center Stage. Family Album – a song collection by Joe Iconis, composer-lyricist of the Broadway hit Be More Chill and several other musicals – will be performed just once in a concert-style […]
Organizations don’t last 137 years if they’re not capable of changing with the times. For Santa Barbara Humane, the local nonprofit that – despite the mistaken notion that they’re part of a big network – is not affiliated with any national groups, the mission that guides them is that of championing both animals and the […]
Anybody who caught Tina Schlieske’s mini-set closing out the series of six vocalists fronting the “Granada All Star House Band” at the theater earlier this month – where the powerhouse singer belted out her take on The Beatles “I’ve Got a Feeling,” Aretha Franklin’s version of “Bridge Over Troubled Water,” and her own composition “Everyday” […]
Maria Muldaur’s career has been a 60-year exploration of the music she grew up with as a Greenwich Village native who came of age in the early 1960s, the era of what John Sebastian calls the “folk scare,” when acoustic music of all kinds exploded in the downtown New York scene. “It was an incredibly […]
DramaDogs Theater Company is celebrating three decades of presenting compelling and largely offbeat theater with a new production called HERE! This Moment for Women, featuring a series of dramatic short plays and monologues by contemporary playwrights E. M. Lewis and James Still. The pieces highlight women’s grit, resiliency, longing, sorrow and wonder, such that, collectively, […]
Academy Award-nominated French-Canadian filmmaker Denis Villeneuve gets SBIFF’s superstar treatment via a curated career retrospective of seven of the director’s important movies, including Incendies, Prisoners, Sicario, Arrival, Blade Runner 2049 and Dune Parts One & Two. The films – which have garnered a collective 28 Oscar nominations (with Dune 2 still pending) will screen in […]
For almost a century, the Santa Barbara Foundation has been a catalyst for change in Santa Barbara County, analyzing issues to identify challenges that burden people, and then convening community stakeholders to build coalitions and partner with nonprofits and other leaders working on the front lines to solve problems. While issues, approaches, and methods might […]
Jonathan Fox was both surprised and moved when he saw Neil Simon’s Lost in Yonkers in its original Broadway run back in the early 1990s, back when he was still a grad student in New York. “I was familiar with his earlier plays like The Odd Couple and Barefoot in the Park, so I was […]
While Lost in Yonkers walks a fine line between poignancy and humor, there’s no such balancing act in the play that opens Ensemble Theatre Company’s 46th season this month. Unless you count the challenge of mastering the fast pacing, quick-change scenes, joke-filled dialog and sheer physicality of Dracula: A Comedy of Terrors, Gordon Greenberg and […]
In a strange twist of fate, The 39 Steps itself is actually being showcased in another venue over the next two weekends. The Alcazar Ensemble will present Vintage Hitchcock: A Live Radio Play, Joe Landry’s stage adaptation of three of Hitchcock’s most renowned stories, October 11-13 and 18-20 at the Carpinteria venue. The thrilling world […]
Colin Mochrie has been doing improv professionally for more than 40 years, the last 35 or so as a cast member of Whose Line is it Anyway?, the popular TV series that features actors performing short-form improvisation games based on formats and audience suggestions. WLiiA started in Britain in the 1980s, moved to ABC in […]
On October 2, 2023, Sansum Clinic became part of Sutter Health, a significant milestone that altered Sansum’s then 103-year history as the largest independent nonprofit outpatient healthcare organization between Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay. The new relationship, cemented after a 15-year courtship between the equally venerable organizations, was created to take advantage of […]
David Bragger hadn’t had much exposure to old time music before 1999, instead spending his time as an itinerant street magician, collector of South Asian folk tales and filmmaker after graduating from UCSB with a Religious Studies degree. But then he inherited his great uncle’s fiddle and began exploring the genre that dates back centuries […]
Carpinteria goes green again this weekend courtesy of The California Avocado Festival, the free fest dedicated to the locally grown fruit that also serves as a massive musical extravaganza. The Avo Fest is also fully back to its pre-pandemic glory, stretching for three days and several city blocks, encompassing four stages of music including the […]
Johnny Irion never sounds more like Neil Young, one of his main influences, than when he’s playing acoustically, as he did as the co-headliner of the second annual Local Vibes concert at Elings Park – which by the way is still a vastly underutilized facility for concerts and such. This year, thankfully, the glaring lighting […]
UCSB A&L launches the season debut of the “L” part of their name with a lecture by Salman Khan, the much-valued visionary behind educational nonprofit Khan Academy, which seeks to remove the barriers to education that leave over 600 million children lacking basic math and reading skills. His free curriculum, available to all at any […]
UCSB’s Carsey-Wolf Center kicks off its CWC Docs series on October 8 with Borderland | The Line Within, the uber-timely investigation of immigration that dives into the border-industrial complex – the way businesses profit through the undocumented workers and the attendant human cost. The film, which was produced over five years with the assistance of […]
The Music Academy of the West is roaring back into action. Not two months after the summer festival came to a close, MAW is back with the third season of its Mariposa Concert Series – a collection of musical experiences staged at the intimate Hahn Hall with some connection to MAW alums. Mariposa makes its […]
There have been hundreds of adaptations of Lewis Carrol’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, or works based in part on the story, whether on the stage, in movies, musicals, other books, or even in video and board games. Locally, just within the past 10 months, Ensemble produced Alice, Formerly of Wonderland about the romantic adventures of […]
For some reason, UCSB Arts & Lectures has decided to open its season on a mocking note dripping with sarcasm. Make that a lot of notes, as Snarky Puppy arrives at the Arlington Theatre on Tuesday, October 1, to kick off the 2024-25 slate of events. Not that the Texas-bred quasi-collective that boasts around 25 […]