Lights Up! Leans In, and More Entertainment Matters

Lights Up! Theatre Company is expanding its lighting grid and illuminating two new projects, all under the umbrella of what is known as one of Santa Barbara’s teen theater conservatories. It all comes together in this month’s SummerFest at Center Stage Theatre, the company’s home since its founding in 2018, with three different events in the span of four days, August 12-16. First up is Dearest, (comma included), written by six-year Lights Up! alum Noah Dehli and devised and performed by Dehli with fellow LU alum Ada Green and Andrew Alvarez-Cooper. 

“This show is about obligation, pigs, a lesbian, a bisexual, and an astronomically wealthy family (that is also astronomically dysfunctional),” Delhi writes on his website. “As the play churns, we learn about [a couple’s] tenuous engagement, unpack their relationship to privilege and suffering, and delight in some 1850s Victorian flavor. Last August, the three of us spent four hours on a couch together improvising and devising a prototypical, primordial soup version… lucking into some pretty special themes and scenes… in the world of Victoria-era England melded with our modern sensibilities. Something magical appeared.”

Dearest, isn’t just Dehli’s debut, it’s a new direction for Lights Up! (LU) because it also represents the company’s first production not performed by teens. The second such production takes place two days later when Lights Up! Founder/Artistic Director Amy Love directs a two-day run of another three-character work in Skylight, David Hare’s Olivier and Tony Award-winning 1995 masterwork. Hare’s intimate, emotionally charged, and humor-infused exploration of love, class grief, and more is the first offering from Ghostlight Theatre, Amy Love and LU’s new adult theater company. 

“I’ve wanted to have an adult version of Lights Up! that would incorporate community actors of any age as well as our recently graduated alums so that when they come back, they have a place to do some theater with us – and with me – again,” Love explained. “It’s always been my intent, and I finally pulled the trigger to make it happen.” 

Dearest, playwright Dehli also plays one of the roles in Skylight, which stars Felicia Hall, last seen locally in SBCC’s Unnecessary Farce this past spring, and Paul Canter, who starred earlier in SBCC’s spring offering A Small Family Business.

“The play is an acting tour de force for the three actors,” Love said. “It’s a beautiful play about people really looking back over their choices, a great work for the debut.” 

Lights Up! SummerFest winds up with the third annual Summer Lights Cabaret, an evening of live performances by an ensemble that includes current company members and alumni. Songs, improv, and even “The Philadelphia,” one of the short comedic one-acts by David Ives featured in his famous collection All in the Timing, comprise another nod to Ghostlight which Love will direct as well. 

“The evening is very much a hometown reunion,” Love said. “Our alumni get to come back and reconnect with their community and some of the current company members they’re still friends with. It’s so fun and lively, and the singers choose what to sing, whether a favorite out of our lexicon or a new selection. We also do improv because it’s a big part of our directing process. It’s such a convivial night and a very connecting event.” 

After the weekend, Love launches right into LU season No. 9, as auditions for the next teen production, The Lightning Thief: The Percy Jackson Musical, begin August 17. 

Visit www.centerstagetheater.org or www.lightsupsb.com

How Do You Get to y-a-w-d-a-o-r-B? Find Out at ETC

Ensemble Theatre Company also has a special show on tap where the funds go to helping young theater hopefuls via ETC’s Education and Outreach Programs, which work to ensure that theatre training, mentorship, and creative opportunity are accessible to students and community members of all backgrounds, regardless of financial circumstance. August 8’s signature benefit concert Play it Forward this time around is called “Backwards Broadway,” meaning the performers will be taking beloved Broadway classics from such shows at Annie, Wicked, Rent,and Waitress and flipping them on their head, reimagining the musical theater standards in unconventional, unexpected and often hilarious ways. 

The three stars of the show – David Burnham (original casts of Wicked, The Light in the Piazza), and husband-and-wife Beverly and Kirby Ward – whose credits include many roles in multiple departments on Broadway and in regional theater (including a very short stint as the successors to the founders of Ventura’s Rubicon Theatre) – will be joined by ETC students and local community artists in one shared spotlight in the 90-minute revue. Tickets start at just $35.

Visit https://etcsb.org

Surprisingly Not Sold-Out Show of the Week: Sunny Comes Home, Again 

Over a nearly four-decade career, the consummate singer-songwriter Shawn Colvin has employed her deeply personal storytelling songs, crystal clear voice, and supremely selected covers to catapult from small clubs in New York to the top of the charts, and the big Grammy sweep of both record and song of the year for “Sunny Comes Home.” Colvin has been coming to the Lobero Theatre since the heyday of the Sings Like Hell series in the late 1990s, and still performs there on a regular basis. Maybe that’s why her August 9 date still has more than 100 tickets available as of this writing. Hmmm… Time for a few small repairs. But the good news is that means you can still get in.

Visit www.lobero.org