Tag archives: Center Stage
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
Arianna Hartanov, who moved to Santa Barbara to join State Street Ballet (SSB) in 2016, has danced lead roles in the company’s productions of Sleeping Beauty and The Nutcracker, among others. But ballet isn’t her only bailiwick. As a choreographer for SSB’s Evenings and Modern Masters events, she indulged her contemporary side back in 2019 […]
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 […]
Nebula Dance Lab didn’t have to cancel its annual HHII Dance Festival during the COVID crisis, although last year’s event did migrate to the virtual world. But what also happened in the more than two years since the festival’s last live weekend, was that the world caught up to Nebula and HHII’s concept of inclusivity, […]
Westmont presents Aaron Copland’s great 20th century American opera The Tender Land January 28 and 30 at 7 pm at Center Stage Theater in Paseo Nuevo. Purchase tickets, which cost $15 for general admission, $10 for seniors or military, at the Center Stage box office at centerstagetheater.org. Please visit the Center Stage website to view […]
American composer Aaron Copland was inspired to write his opera The Tender Land when he saw Walker Evans’ famed Depression-era photographs and read James Agee’s “Let Us Now Praise Famous Men.” Now, Westmont Opera is presenting the rarely seen 1954 work as its 2022 production at the Center Stage Theater, representing the school’s return to […]
Samantha Eve laughed when I told her that the only time I saw American Idiot, the Broadway musical version of Green Day’s iconic album, I hated it so much I wished I had left. Really loud. A story that was too hard to follow and a little dated, and so much incongruous activity I wasn’t […]
Fledgling actor-comedian Lauren Watson first thought of creative performance art mimicking Donald Trump late in 2015, when the real estate mogul and reality TV star announced his candidacy. After Trump won the presidency, Watson also stepped up his game, taking his impersonation into some local retail outlets, such as McDonald’s and Ross Dress for Less […]
