Tag archives: theater
Long time Southern California and frequent Ensemble Theatre Company director Jenny Sullivan doesn’t want people to make same mistake she did, which was to wait until the last performance of The Legend of Georgia McBride when it ran at the Geffen Theater in LA in spring 2017. “It was so funny and so moving. I […]
The Kronos Quartet has never shied away from controversy. Over the course of its 45-year history, the ensemble has exploded any previous notion of the limitations of the string quartet, embracing everything from ultra-modern composers and unfamiliar sounds to wildly unexpected and some would say edgy collaborations, most recently with “Sight Machine,” a multimedia piece […]
Even in today’s post-#MeToo/women’s movement era, just about every little girl in America still dreams about being a princess. Witness the number of Cinderella dresses out on the streets and trick-or-treaters just three weeks ago on Halloween. On the other hand, not too many harbor a desire to wind up as a wicked stepsister, but […]
Turning Amélie into a stage musical might appear to be a fool’s mission, given that the indie French film was a surprising hit in 2001 largely because of the movie’s tone and the charms of its breakout star, Audrey Tautou. But Out of the Box (OOB) Theatre Company founder Samantha Eve thinks the recent translation […]
Eddie Tuduri’s life turned upside-down when the same thing happened to his body during a surfing accident off Carpinteria back in 1997. The former drummer for The Beach Boys, Rick Nelson, Engelbert Humperdinck, and many other acts broke his neck and was paralyzed. But his recovery began as soon as he was transferred to The […]
Bringing Return to the Forbidden Planet back to the Rubicon Theatre just two years after the Ventura debut of the hit early-1990s jukebox musical based on Shakespeare’s The Tempest and the 1956 science fiction film Forbidden Planet was a case of a trite theater cliché actually turning out to be true. “It very definitely is […]
Westmont Theatre Arts brings a contemporary energy and sense of humor to its staging of Pride and Prejudice on Thursday, October 25, and Saturday, October 27, at 7:30 pm, and Sunday, October 28, at 2 pm, all in Westmont’s Porter Theatre. Tickets to the play, which is based on the novel by Jane Austen and […]
Anne Torsiglieri has been seen on Broadway in Top Girls, Parade, Blood Brothers, and Miss Saigon, as well as in the official national tour of Les Misérables. Her off-Broadway and regional performance have taken place everywhere from Manhattan to the Pacific Northwest, and she earned DramaLogue and Garland awards for her portrayal of Catherine Sloper […]
Man and his machines form the basic elements of Cirque Mechanics, the modern company founded 14 years ago by former BMX bike champion Chris Lashua, who began by creating an innovative aerial apparatus. In his and his team’s vision, circus certainly has acrobatics and clowning around, but also is rooted in realism achieved by the […]
The choreographers behind State Street Ballet’s season-opening world premiere, Chaplin, had no idea that Charlie Chaplin had a major Montecito and Santa Barbara connection, the silent-film icon having had a hand in the building of the Montecito Inn in 1928, and marrying Oona O’Neill here in 1943. All they knew was that not only did […]
New York choreographer Doug Elkins, after a month-long residency at the Lobero as part of DANCEworks 10th anniversary, put on a fan-tastic 40 minute performance Kintsugi as the culmination of his creative stay in our Eden by the Beach. The 10-year-old company’s six talented dancers – Carolyn Cryer, Alexander Does, Cori Marquis, Donnell Oakley, Eric […]
Montecito has always been an integral part of the Santa Barbara Studio Artists (SBSA) Open Studios tour. But not so much this year. The annual Labor Day weekend event when local artists who are members of the organization welcome guests into their working home studios or off-site locations has just one site for visitors to […]
Chloe Howard didn’t consider her deformity to be a disability before a horrible incident of bullying in high school left her ashamed and suffering from PTSD. But just a year later, the Washington State native living in Los Gatos found a new source of inspiration in the person of U2 lead singer Bono, whom she […]
On the Verge (OTV), Santa Barbara native Kate Bergstrom‘s repertory theatre company founded in 2015 with a mission of marrying new work created by female and LGBTQ writers with the local community of actors, directors, producers, and theater-goers, is taking a slight detour for its fourth year. In place of presenting several different plays in […]
Director Brad Carroll said it was just a coincidence that the sequel to the movie version of Broadway smash-hit musical Mamma Mia opened just days before PCPA Theaterfest’s production opens at the Solvang Festival Theater this Friday night, July 27. But there’s no accident that the long-standing conservatory booked the show as the centerpiece of […]
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 […]
Renowned New York theater producer Winthrop Ames (1870-1937) significantly influenced the development of Santa Barbara’s community arts programs, the opening of the new Lobero Theatre, and, by extension, Old Spanish Days Fiesta. Ames was born into a prominent family in Easton, Massachusetts, whose wealth derived initially from the manufacture of shovels and expanded exponentially through […]
It was some enchanted evening in the upper village when Vanity Fair writer Todd Purdum launched his new well-researched, 386-page book Something Wonderful: Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Broadway Revolution with a bibliophile bash at Tecolote, the lively literary lair. Purdum, who worked for The New York Times for more than 20 years as White House correspondent […]
Ensemble Theatre Company has clearly found the recipe for success with the fifth and final show of its season at the New Vic. Cookin’ at the Cookery: The Music and Times of Alberta Hunter, a production about the extraordinary life of an extraordinary woman infused with jazz and blues, is written, directed, and choreographed by […]
Sometimes it takes a village. That point was well demonstrated three weeks ago, when dozens of Montecito residents – mostly strangers to each other – gathered at a community roundtable to share what they’d learned so far from the Thomas Fire and Debris Flow insurance claim experience. There was some initial trepidation the group might […]
