UCSB Arts & Lectures’ House Calls: Just What the Doctor Ordered
By Steven Libowitz   |   September 24, 2020

UCSB Arts & Lectures is by far the area’s busiest arts organization, presenting in the pre-pandemic era upwards of 100 public events every academic year, not to mention add-ons in the summer. So, naturally A&L is stepping to the front of the line again as the COVID-19 crisis passes the six-month mark. After transferring its […]

He’s Got Rhythm, He’s Got Music
By Steven Libowitz   |   September 10, 2020

For nearly 20 years, Hershey Felder has made a career out of creating one-man shows in which he portrays and plays famous artists from recent and centuries-old history, and the novel coronavirus hasn’t caused him to slow down much at all. Ensemble Theatre Company got in the mix when it presented his Hershey Felder: Beethoven […]

 

Recently Trending

More from Montecito

Rubicon’s ‘September Blitz’
By Steven Libowitz   |   September 10, 2020

Since the pandemic forced its doors to close in March, Rubicon Theatre rose to the challenge by quickly pivoting in creating digital content, including taking its summer youth programs online, but also launched the nation’s first theatrical drive-in concert series. Now, as its Rubicon Goes Retro Drive-in Concert Series comes to a close this week, […]

The Zany Zoom Schedule: 5Qs with Ed Giron
By Steven Libowitz   |   September 10, 2020

Actor-director-playwright Ed Giron has been a very busy thespian despite the limitations of the pandemic. Although in-person appearances have been curtailed due to COVID, of course, the well-known Santa Barbara actor has found, or mostly fashioned, frequent opportunities to perform and/or direct theater events online. Giron’s lockdown list began with recording himself reading “Bedtime Stories” […]

Naked Shakes’ ‘Immortal Longings’
By Steven Libowitz   |   September 3, 2020

UCSB’s much-beloved Naked Shakes program, which massages and presents stripped-down versions of works by Shakespeare, celebrates its 15th anniversary with Immortal Longings, a new adaptation by founder Irwin Appel that combines Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar and Antony and Cleopatra with George Bernard Shaw’s Caesar and Cleopatra into a single play. “We are in the middle of […]

At PCPA, Interplay is the Thing
By Steven Libowitz   |   September 3, 2020

Every arts organization has responded to the coronavirus crisis in their own way and in their own time, from raiding the archives to shutting down completely to, in the case of Ventura’s Rubicon Theatre (see above), trying innovative new ways to still go live and in person despite the pandemic. PCPA Theaterfest, which in normal […]

A Honking Good Concerts Series Comes to a Close
By Steven Libowitz   |   September 3, 2020

Actress-singer Teri Bibb has played the role of understudy-turned-star Christine Daaé in The Phantom of the Opera more than 1,000 times, both on Broadway and with the national tour that included singing a command performance at the White House. A veteran whose experience includes appearing in more than 50 musicals across the country, Bibb’s credits […]

Advertisement
  • Good Grief, That Could be the Summer Winner
    By Steven Libowitz   |   August 27, 2020

    For Brian McDonald, selecting You’re A Good Man, Charlie Brown as the production for Ensemble Theatre Company Young Actors Conservatory this summer was a no-brainer once it became clear that COVID-19 had made his original choice – Hello, My Baby, by Montecito’s Cheri Steinkellner – impractical. Not only had ETC’s Education Director played the title […]

    Elocutia Does Pygmalion
    By Steven Libowitz   |   August 6, 2020

    Cheryl L. West’s plays have been performed on and Off-Broadway and on stages in England as well as myriad regional theaters across the U.S. including Seattle Rep, Arena Stage, Old Globe, The Goodman, Indiana Rep, Williamstown Festival, Cleveland Play House, South Coast Rep. Those venues have collectively produced some of her long list of titles […]

    Read more...

    Online ‘Personal’s
    By Steven Libowitz   |   July 16, 2020

    Center Stage Theater’s daily Digital Arts Festival came to a close back in May, with the daily doses of videos, photos and interviews with local artists of all kinds to share  their creative processes and samples of their work perhaps set to return later this summer. In the meantime, a Quarantine Edition of Speaking of […]

    Play Reading Season Launches on Zoom at UCSB
    By Steven Libowitz   |   July 16, 2020

    After the sensational success this spring of UCSB Launch Pad’s Alone, Together project that found more than 20 past playwrights-in-resident contributing short original works created to be performed and directed by theater students and faculty over Zoom, the 2020 Summer Reading Series: New Plays in Process might seem a bit anticlimactic. But don’t sell the […]

    ETC Easing Re-entry to Theater
    By Steven Libowitz   |   July 2, 2020

    Ensemble Theatre Company has announced a hybrid approach to cope with COVID for its upcoming 2020-21 season, which will consist of four plays, including spring productions of American Son and Tenderly that were originally scheduled for the previous season that was interrupted by the pandemic closures. The remaining two plays are reportedly set to be […]

    Stream Three for Free
    By Steven Libowitz   |   July 2, 2020

    RTC has also another gift for theater lovers this month by offering free viewings of Arlene Hutton‘s Nibroc Trilogy via Vimeo recordings of the award winning works directed by the company’s own Katherine Farmer. Nibroc is a set of three plays about the challenges of a young couple living in Kentucky and Florida in the […]

    Layman Leaves a Lasting Legacy After 24 years at SBHS Theater Helm
    By Steven Libowitz   |   May 17, 2020

    If things were different, if the novel coronavirus that causes COVID-19 hadn’t turned into a global pandemic shutting down almost everything across the world, this would have been a weekend of wonder for Otto Layman. The theater director had planned a big blowout of a show to serve as his crowning achievement in a career that […]

    Advertisement