Tag archives: Center Stage Theater
Meredith Ventura’s Selah Dance Collective is performing the world premiere of Palermo! (Sure Shot Comedy! Bang Up Fun!) over three shows at Center Stage Theater January 17-18. The piece continues Ventura’s choreographic exploration of early 20th-century performance, building on her acclaimed research project Sound and Smoke, which examines the aesthetics and social undercurrents of 1920s […]
Critics have unanimously praised Florian Zeller’s The Father, a play that takes the unusual perspective of presenting the world from the vantage of an elderly but still elegant man going through progressive stages of dementia. His shifting and relative reality – including concepts of such taken-for-granted facts as time and place – wreaks havoc on […]
It’s been a couple of years since the local Nebula Dance Lab has produced its HHII Dance Festival, so Selah Dance Collective has stepped up to offer something similar in the same Center Stage Theater space this weekend. While the event won’t be as wide-ranging nor as long in duration as HHII, the vibrant and […]
Heroes, Tom Stoppard’s loose translation of Gérald Sibleyras’ 2003 French play Le Vent des Peupliers (“The Wind in the Poplars”), won the 2006 Olivier Award for Best New Comedy – the highest honor in British theater, equivalent to Broadway’s Tony Awards. A year later, the funny, heart-warming work – about three aging World War I […]
What’s the buzz? A revolutionary rock musical presented in a revolutionary reinvention in the latest production from Out of the Box Theatre Company; which normally focuses on alternative/contemporary musicals. Jesus Christ Superstar, the sung-through rock opus musical by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice that stunned Broadway in 1971, juggles the gender in the tale […]
There’s something quite magical and yet weighty in the way in which Lights Up! Theatre Company has taken a firm toehold in the Santa Barbara youth theater scene – one that has never been sorely lacking in the first place. Theater stage and screen veteran Amy Love has parlayed her professional and teaching background into […]
Opera Santa Barbara took over the Paseo Nuevo’s Center Stage Theater when it staged Xavier Montsalvatge’s charming El Gato con Botas with singers from the Chrisman Studio Artists. Puss in Boots, to give it its English title, was a purr-fect production with director of the studio, Tim Accurso, on piano for the hour-long show, mezzo-soprano […]
Out of the Box Theatre (OOB) has specialized in selecting off-beat, often off-Broadway contemporary musicals to mount in town in the intimate space of Center Stage Theater ever since its founding by Samantha Eve. The latest example in the universe of alternative conversation-inspiring shows is OOB’s first production of the new season, Alice by Heart, […]
Ensemble Theatre Company’s area premiere of Lucy Kirkwood’s 2016 drama The Children winds up its three-week run at the New Vic on April 23. ETC favorite helmer Jenny Sullivan directs the trio of well-traveled actors Michael Butler, Linda Purl, and Nancy Travis – all of whom are familiar to recent ETC audiences – in the […]
Like every musical Out of the Box produces, Once is near and dear to company founder Samantha Eve’s heart. But its plot – the charming tale of an Irish busker musician ready to give up on his dream, the Czech immigrant in adoration of his songs, and their being drawn together by their shared love […]
Opera Santa Barbara’s latest production The Light in the Piazza at Center Stage Theater, this year’s annual showcase of the Chrisman Studio Artist Program, was an absolute gem. With music and lyrics by Adam Guettel and a book by Craig Lucas, the show was based on the 1960 novella by Elizabeth Spencer and the 1963 […]
Still stuck about where to take your sweetheart for Valentine’s Day? SOhO might have the solution. Veteran Santa Barbara songbird Shawn Thies, who has emotional richness amid the silky smoothness, is bringing along a bunch of her musical friends for a Tuesday, Feb. 14, dinner show at 7 p.m. at the restaurant-nightclub, including local stalwarts […]
Westmont performs an ambitious operatic double bill of Gilbert and Sullivan’s Trial by Jury and Rossini’s The Silken Ladder Friday, January 27, and Sunday, January 29; both at 7 pm in Center Stage Theater. To purchase tickets, which cost $20 for general admission, $15 for seniors or military members, please visit the Center Stage box […]
An age-old artists’ conundrum of the relationship between creativity and madness gets explored anew in a world premiere original play, The Patient, at Center Stage Theater this weekend. Peter Frisch, the veteran theater director, TV producer, and educator, collaborated on the writing with Shay Munroe, an L.A.-based actress and writer (and former student of Frisch’s […]
A Christmas ‘Unicorn’: And Now for Something Completely Different… It would be hard to imagine something more polar opposite from a Christmas show than Bulletproof Unicorn, a one-woman show from Los Angeles-based comedian and singer-songwriter Stacie Burrows rife with dark humor about trying to fix her dysfunctional family that culminates in her estranged, alcoholic brother […]
Out of the Box founder Samantha Eve has always exhibited an enduring fondness for contemporary or offbeat musicals, as indicated by the nonprofit community theater company’s past productions over the last dozen years of everything from Bare to Bonnie & Clyde, and Carrie to Heathers. But in the wake of the turmoil of the last […]
Given that Abraham Lincoln might be the most popular president in U.S. history, one whose story is the stuff of legends, it would seem there isn’t a whole lot left to tell about Abe. And even less likely, that a practicing insurance litigator would be the one to tell it. Yet, here’s Terrence L. Cranert, […]
Every Brilliant Thing starts off as the story of a seven-year-old boy whose mother has been hospitalized with suicidal depression. In an effort to lift her spirits, he begins creating a list of the joys of life from his perspective, from ice cream, water fights, and badgers, to, as time goes by, Christopher Walken’s voice, […]
The pandemic might have been a cause for pause for most of us, but Claudia Hoag McGarry took a different path. Not only did the screenwriter-turned-playwright take up watercolor painting – she’s created more than 575 pieces in 27 months, several hundred of which have sold online or, more recently, at Kathryne Designs in Montecito […]
In recent years, Santa Barbara Improv (SBI) has added long-form format opportunities, in both workshops and performance, to its longstanding tradition of hosting weekly short-form classes and a monthly performance of the format most folks might be more familiar with via Whose Line Is It Anyway? Now, SBI is trying something brand new for the […]
