Tag archives: Ensemble Theatre Company

Case Closed on ETC’s Big Season
By Richard Mineards   |   June 21, 2022

Ensemble Theatre Company has concluded its 42nd season at the New Vic with an absolute cracker! Anthony Shaffer’s Tony Award-winning 1970 play Sleuth, directed by Jenny Sullivan, staged on a magnificent baronial set, is an absolute old-fashioned delight with two perfectly chosen British actors, Daniel Gerroll and Matthew Floyd Miller as the principal characters of […]

Sleuth: Theater’s Biggest Brain-twister is Back
By Steven Libowitz   |   June 14, 2022

The New Vic sounds like a theater in England, but the downtown venue is actually an old, converted church, although Ensemble Theatre Company’s lavish remodeling left few of those attributes visible inside. But there’s no way ETC’s old digs at the antiquated Alhecama Theater could have supported the sets and stagecraft required for its next […]

Painting the Stage
By Richard Mineards   |   May 31, 2022

Ensemble Theatre Company staged its tour-de-force one-man show Vincent at the New Vic, originally presented by the Santa Barbara Museum of Art in March to sold-out audiences as it mounted its highly acclaimed Vincent Van Gogh exhibition. The play paints a thoughtful, imaginary scenario about one of the most famous names in the art world […]

Vincent & Theo: Through Charles’ Eyes
By Steven Libowitz   |   May 17, 2022

Ensemble Theatre Company is bringing back its production of Vincent, the critically-lauded one-man show created by Leonard Nimoy, who spent years researching the hundreds of letters exchanged between the artist Vincent van Gogh and his brother Theo, to fashion the intimately-scaled 1980 play in which the actor portrays both brothers. Veteran thespian Charles Pasternak takes […]

DeVine Direction at Ensemble 
By Richard Mineards   |   May 3, 2022

Ensemble Theatre Company has a new head honcho. Following a national search, the New Vic-based organization has appointed Scott DeVine, who brings 20 years of theater management experience to the role, as its managing director. “Scott has skillfully managed complex artistic organizations and been responsible for ensuring theaters he has served have maintained a sound […]

American Son Impresses
By Richard Mineards   |   April 19, 2022

Racial dynamics are at the forefront of the Ensemble Theatre Company’s latest New Vic show American Son. The nail-biting drama, directed by Jonathan Fox, takes place at a Miami, Florida, police station where, in the middle of the night, the parents of an African American teenager anxiously await news of their son, who may have […]

ETC’s American Son 
By Steven Libowitz   |   April 12, 2022

After two false starts forced by the pandemic, ETC is finally bringing American Son to the New Vic Theatre for a mid-April run. The nail-biting drama takes place in real-time in the waiting room of a Miami police station where the parents of a bi-racial African American teenager anxiously await news about their son, who […]

Ensemble Goes Solo for Rare Bird ‘Lillian’
By Steven Libowitz   |   March 4, 2022

While film lovers will be flocking to Santa Barbara over the next 10 days to watch scores of world premieres and welcome widely loved movie stars in the Arlington and other cinemas, the Ensemble Theatre will be staging a premiere of its own just across Victoria Street in the New Vic, one that also boasts […]

CAMA Comeback Kicks Off
By Richard Mineards   |   January 25, 2022

CAMA – Community Arts Music Association – kicked off its 103rd season with its first performance in 22 months at the Granada with one of the world’s leading orchestras, the 75-year-old Royal Philharmonic from London under the trusty baton of Russian music director Vasily Petrenko, who took charge less than a year ago. Our tony […]

Vivacious Vocals in Vogue with Baker’s Dozen
By Steven Libowitz   |   January 11, 2022

There’s a plethora of a cappella singing groups at Yale, the Ivy League School known for theater and music as much as the liberal arts. “I think there’s 16, including four all-male,” said Jacob Wu, the current tour manager and a bass singer for Baker’s Dozen (BD), which despite its name actually boasts 16 singers. […]

A Debut at ETC
By Steven Libowitz   |   December 7, 2021

Were it not for a pandemic-induced postponement, former 20-year Laguna Playhouse artistic director Andrew Barnicle would have returned to Ensemble Theatre to direct The Wickhams: Christmas at Pemberley, playwrights Lauren Gunderson and Margot Melcon’s witty companion piece to Miss Bennet: Christmas at Pemberley and the second in a planned trilogy that serves as an imagined […]

Staying Civil
By Richard Mineards   |   October 26, 2021

Former corporate attorney and Harvard Law School graduate David Gersh has published his seventh book, The Whisper of a Distant God, an historical fiction of the Civil War. “It explores a little-known battle in that war and the struggle with duty, honor, and compassion by the Union commander’s wife, Louisa Canby, which made her the […]

‘Quite Extraordinary’: Broadway Legend Bringing Talents to Santa Barbara
By Steven Libowitz   |   October 12, 2021

It’s not hyperbole at all to suggest that the original production of Kismet that will play three performances at the Granada Theatre later this month might be the most exciting show ever to play in Santa Barbara. While official touring shows of classic Broadway hits and more modern musical fare are still appearing at the […]

Curtain (Back) Up!
By Lynda Millner   |   September 14, 2021

Ensemble Theatre Company (ETC) director Jonathan Fox spoke to the audience at the Santa Barbara Club, saying, “I dreamt over and over while we were building the new theater, ‘If we build it, will they come?’” No problem they came but will they come back? The answer is yes. The new season has been announced. […]

‘No Substitute for Live Theater’: ETC Raises its Curtains
By Richard Mineards   |   August 31, 2021

It was just the ticket when the venerable Ensemble Theatre Company, which is fully reopening after 15 months of pandemic lockdown, hosted 150 guests and raised a hefty $250,000 with its “Curtain (Back) Up!” bash at the Santa Barbara Club. “When the New Vic theater opened in 2013, we had a Curtain Up fête,” says […]

Fear Turns into Needed Hope
By Mark Leisure   |   August 5, 2021

I’m going to reveal something right here you may not know about me: I’m a 6 on the Enneagram, the ancient personality typing system that dates back before Christianity, which is at the heart of the fear-based triad of types. So as scary as the idea of catching COVID was, the lockdown worked for me, […]

Bringing Back the Beatles: ETC Music Benefit Honors the Fab Four
By Steven Libowitz   |   July 1, 2021

For Ensemble Theatre Company’s education director Brian McDonald, the theme for this year’s fundraiser for the ETC’s education and outreach programs was a bit of a no-brainer: “Come Together.” After all, the title of the Beatles song from their penultimate album provides the perfect prescription for emerging from a pandemic that has kept people apart […]

A Philanthropic Visionary: Celebrating the Life of Lee Luria
By Nick Masuda   |   June 24, 2021

It was a late afternoon in early 2017 and Jonathan Fox was en route to a pre-dinner cocktail with Lee Luria, the philanthropist extraordinaire that had just given Fox’s Ensemble Theatre Company a new lease on life — quite literally. With her favorite gin and tonic at her side and Fox acquiring a glass of […]

Summer in Solvang
By Steven Libowitz   |   June 10, 2021

With the continued easing of pandemic restrictions, PCPA is returning after two summers to the Solvang Festival Theater, the charming outdoor amphitheater in the heart of the Santa Ynez Valley village. The stars will be live on stage as well as visible in the sky above starting in mid-July, when PCPA debuts an original production […]

Telly Us More About It
By Richard Mineards   |   June 10, 2021

TV Santa Barbara, the area’s community access center that operates channels 17 and 71, is the recipient of four 2021 Telly Awards, including the prestigious Gold Award for the production of “Make Goleta Count!” Silver and bronze honors were also earned for video productions created in partnership with the Central Coast Division of the American […]