Tag archives: SBCC Theatre Group

The Summer of Theater
By Steven Libowitz   |   July 16, 2024

Ensemble Theatre Company’s two upcoming presentations were already terrifically timely as they arrive within four months of November’s national election. That was part of the purpose behind ETC executive director Scott DeVine’s decision to schedule short productions of Eisenhower: This Piece of Ground and What the Constitution Means to Me as special events this summer. […]

SBCC’s Clever Contemporary Political Comedy
By Steven Libowitz   |   April 16, 2024

SBCC Theatre Group closes out its 2023-24 season with Paul Slade Smith’s comedy The Outsider from April 10-27 in the Jurkowitz Theatre on SBCC’s West Campus. The comedy concerns a newly appointed governor of a small state who is terrified of public speaking and paralyzed by TV cameras, but great at actually governing. Determined to […]

Swashbuckling on Stage
By Steven Libowitz   |   March 5, 2024

“Who doesn’t want to play pirate?”  That’s how Michael Bernard explained one of his big reasons for choosing a new adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson’s beloved adventure story Treasure Island to direct for SBCC Theatre Group’s next production at the Garvin Theatre. “It’s such a classic story and it’s a really fun show, which there […]

The Winds of Change
By Steven Libowitz   |   July 18, 2023

If Anikka Abbott’s career had taken a different turn, she might be about to sing a soprano role at the Granada in the Music Academy’s opera in Santa Barbara this weekend.  As what happens in life, there’s been a bit of a detour, including serving as first runner-up to Miss Washington in the Miss America […]

SBCC Comedy: From Simply Silly to Social Satire 
By Steven Libowitz   |   November 8, 2022

Fresh from the over-the-top antics, physical pratfalls, and intentionally terrible timing of The Play That Goes Wrong, which pulled out the stops – and mantle pieces and body parts, but no punches on closing night last weekend – SBCC Theatre Group segues into a student production of Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest, one […]

A Rotten Spectacular
By Steven Libowitz   |   July 5, 2022

If campy and clever is your path to pleasure – at least in the theater – you can do no better than the mirth-making musical Something Rotten. The show, which earned 10 Tony nominations on Broadway just five years ago, takes place in the 1590s when the theatrically-minded Nick Bottom, whose lot is a lot […]

Thrown to The Wolves 
By Steven Libowitz   |   April 12, 2022

The Wolves, the first play by former college actress Sarah DeLappe to be produced and professionally written while she was still an undergraduate at Yale, was a finalist for the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Now, SBCC Theatre closes out its season with the local premiere of the piece, ostensibly about a girls’ indoor soccer […]

Wilco? We’ll Go
By Steven Libowitz   |   October 19, 2021

Not that anybody needs any more reasons to attend a Wilco concert whenever Jeff Tweedy and cohorts come to town, that is if intelligent heartfelt alt-country singer-songwriter meets crafty subtly experimental soundscapes floats your musical boat. (If it doesn’t, perhaps check your pulse or the contents of your metaphorical heart.) But us longtime locals also […]

To the Garvin! New Revue Puts SBCC Theatre Group Back on Stage
By Steven Libowitz   |   July 22, 2021

If SBCC Theatre Group’s welcome back production at the Garvin Theatre this weekend evokes a feeling of deja vu, that might be because the show, now titled Here We Go Again! A Musical Revue is something of an update of one SBCC offered last fall. But while Looking Back, Looking Forward was made inside its […]

Gros Says Goodbye to SBCC Theatre
By Steven Libowitz   |   November 19, 2020

R. Michael Gros’s direction of Santa Barbara City College’s student production of Antigone represents both his debut of putting together a show via Zoom and his swan song at SBCC Theatre. That’s because, as he announced on his Facebook page early in the morning of November 4, Gros has submitted his formal retirement papers as […]

UCSB Shakes it up All Over the ‘Net
By Steven Libowitz   |   October 21, 2020

UCSB’s Department of Theater and Dance’s new season got underway last weekend with a reprise of its summer production of Immortal Longings, a serious take on deals on issues of power and corruption in Shakespeare adapted and directed by Irwin Appel. This weekend, Appel launches its first-ever Naked Shakes Solo Festival featuring renowned artists Debra […]

A Little Elbow Grease
By Richard Mineards   |   July 19, 2018

Grease was indeed the word at City College’s Garvin Theatre when the 1950s rock musical launched the Theatre Group’s latest season. Director Katie Laris has done a tip-top job with two excellent collaborators, UCSB choreographer Christina McCarthy and musical director David Potter, More than 150 auditioned for the colorful, energized show, with grueling rehearsals, four […]

Making His Case: Singer Returns to Town
By Steven Libowitz   |   July 12, 2018

Don’t talk to Peter Case about craft. The veteran singer-songwriter who started life as a power pop/punk rocker in such bands as The Plimsouls and The Nerves back in the 1970s and ’80s finds hearing that people love his “well-crafted songs” something close to an insult as it undercuts the artistry. Which seems reasonable, since […]