Tag archives: SBCC

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 Moving Forward
By Richard Mineards   |   May 30, 2023

After days of May gray, the sun shone brightly when Santa Barbara City College Foundation hosted its 4th annual Spring Forward! gala on the campus’s Great Meadow with 320 guests raising around $450,000 for general funds. Chief Executive Officer Geoff Green welcomed the supportive crowd of staff, faculty, college trustees and volunteers, and auctioned off […]

A Marriage Made for Santa Barbara
By Steven Libowitz   |   April 18, 2023

Rick Mokler is updating Our Town for our times and, well, our town too.  With George and Emily Get Married, the (now officially retired) longtime theater teacher at area high schools, who also later chaired the SBCC Theater Department, has taken the young lovers from Thornton Wilder’s 85-year-old chestnut, updated their professions to a recent […]

Getting SBIFF-y
By Steven Libowitz   |   February 14, 2023

Here comes the Santa Barbara International Film Festival: more than 200 movies, including 52 world premieres and 78 U.S. premieres, representing more than 40 countries and just about every film genre ever invented, including a wide swath of documentaries elucidating myriad topics. The usual Oscar nominee-decorated/movie star actor tributes and an even more Academy Award-hopeful […]

Opening the Castle Doors
By Richard Mineards   |   January 10, 2023

Milt and Arlene Larsen opened the doors of their former club, the Magic Castle, to let the public know that the space by the Bird Refuge is now available for rental. Sarah Anticouni’s Groovy Vintage Clothing is already leasing space in the property, the former Cafe del Sol, so guests, including Alan and Lisa Parsons, […]

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 […]

Book ‘em 
By Steven Libowitz   |   October 25, 2022

As Time Goes By, the new novel from SBCC English professor emeritus W. Royce Adams, follows his protagonist called Old, who is now near death and reflecting on key life moments dealing with love, lust, friendships, betrayal, and illness. Working on his memoir, Old asks himself “playful existential questions with no pertinent answers,” examining whether […]

It’s Okay to Not Be Okay
By Stella Haffner   |   October 18, 2022

Over in the sunny cove of Santa Barbara City College, a small health revolution is brewing. At the helm is Student Program Advisor Becky Bean, ASW.  With a background in the nonprofit sector and social work, Bean was excited to collaborate with the Student Health Services team at SBCC and spearhead their new wellness program: […]

The Play’s the Thing (That Goes Wrong)
By Steven Libowitz   |   October 18, 2022

The Play That Goes Wrong began life in 2012 in a British pub as a frothy vehicle for its three writers to star in. But the comedy about amateur actors attempting to mount a fictional murder mystery called The Murder at Haversham Manor that goes hopelessly awry, chock full of pranks and pratfalls and all […]

A Collection of Collage
By Richard Mineards   |   October 11, 2022

Santa Barbara Museum of Art was socially gridlocked when it launched its latest exhibition, The Architecture of Collage: Marshall Brown. The comprehensive presentation includes 24 artworks, including six recent acquisitions by SBMA, loans from the Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago, the Art Institute of Chicago, and a private collector. In addition, an original etching […]

November 8th Election: Our Endorsements
By Gwyn Lurie   |   October 11, 2022

This year the Montecito Journal co-hosted a handful of Zoom candidate forums, all involving local school board races for which Montecito residents will have a vote (the one exception is the SBUSD area #1 seat, for which a smaller portion of our readers will have the chance to weigh in). This is not to say […]

The Psychology of eSports
By Stella Haffner   |   September 6, 2022

Part of the joy of producing this column is learning about spheres that are foreign to me. I have written before on how I don’t believe in New Year’s resolutions; instead, I use the journal here to try new things, to give me the kick in the backside that I need, to go out and […]

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 […]

SBCC Foundation Springs Forward
By Richard Mineards   |   June 7, 2022

Santa Barbara City College Foundation hosted its Spring Forward! gala on the Great Meadow of the West Campus with nearly 300 guests raising more than $450,000, with $325,000 collected even before the sun-soaked event began. The ubiquitous Geoff Green, foundation CEO, says the organization provides more than $5 million annually to support scholarships and emergency […]

Spring Gala to Support SBCC
By Zach Rosen   |   May 24, 2022

You know, when I spend time with our students, I never give it a second thought that the world’s going to be a better place,” says Kindred Murillo, the interim President and Superintendent of Santa Barbara City College, in an inspired tone during our conversation. “When you talk with our students, they’re concerned about sustainability; […]

OOB’s ‘Tick….’ 
By Steven Libowitz   |   May 3, 2022

Also emerging from the pandemic for its first live theatrical production in 30 months, Out of the Box (OOB) is reviving a three-decade-old work as well, in this case tick, tick…Boom! (TTB), originally a semi-autobiographical one-man show that Jonathan Larson created in the early 1990s before his Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award-winning Rent. Coincidentally, TTB […]

Everyday Sacred: Every Opportunity is a Blessing
By Richard D. Hecht   |   May 3, 2022

Chernor Diallo arrived at LAX after a long, exhausting flight in May 2021. His host for his two-year stay in Santa Barbara met him. He had come a very long way in both time and space. He had imagined that Santa Barbara would have skyscrapers and wide boulevards, like other American cities. But when he […]

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 […]

Play On: ‘Murder’ at the Garvin
By Steven Libowitz   |   March 8, 2022

Ken Ludwig’s stage version of Murder on the Orient Express was written at the request of the Agatha Christie Estate, so the classic Christie mystery – which was also adapted into a hit movie – was in good hands when it premiered in March 2017 at the McCarter Theatre in Princeton. Five years later, The […]