Tag archives: Cheri Steinkellner

Pee-wee’s Big Adventure: Subverting Saturday Mornings
By Steven Libowitz   |   November 5, 2020

Actor Paul Reubens developed his Pee-wee Herman character for a live stage show that premiered in 1980 after being workshopped at Los Angeles’ famed improv troupe The Groundlings. The character became a huge success, as Pee-wee would go on to appear in the TV movie The Pee-wee Herman Show and the feature film Pee-wee’s Big […]

Fortunes Launches on Zoom
By Steven Libowitz   |   April 2, 2020

UCSB’s Launch Pad program began in 2005 as a grand experiment to offer a high-tech lab for playwrights-in-residence, UCSB theater students, faculty, and guest artists to collaborate in developing a new play each year. The residency culminates in a fully realized Preview Production, when the play completes its journey from incubation to professional world premiere […]

One Last Conversation in Prima Materia
By Steven Libowitz   |   January 2, 2020

Cheri Steinkellner had no idea when she showed up for a one-day introduction to Pacifica Graduate Institute that the visit would eventually have a big impact on her writing. “I just wanted to see what was going on over there, figuring maybe I’d take a weekend program or perhaps get a certificate, because I’d already got […]

‘Witch’ Way to Go?
By Steven Libowitz   |   November 21, 2019

Emma Steinkellner was three years old when the first Harry Potter novel came out in America, and 13 when the original series came to a close. So maybe it’s no surprise that the subject of the first graphic novel she wrote and illustrated on her own is 13-year-old Moth Hush, who has just discovered that […]

Love in Tinseltown
By Richard Mineards   |   February 28, 2019

The literati and the glitterati were out in force at the Music Academy of the West’s Hahn Hall when author Victoria Riskin, a Montecito resident for three decades, launched the 397-page biography of her parents, actress Fay Wray and screenwriter Robert Riskin. As part of the celebrations, the 1934 Frank Capra-directed film, It Happened One […]

Know Your Place
By Richard Mineards   |   November 1, 2018

Ensemble Theatre Company’s third annual Ghost Light Night was a real thriller! The 175-guest fête, which was expected to raise around $225,000, kicked off in the gardens of the Santa Barbara Club, when a local group of wonderfully costumed and choreographed players performed the late Michael Jackson’s hit “Thriller,” and then led supporters two blocks […]

Ford Tough: Center Celebrates 50th
By Richard Mineards   |   September 27, 2018

Veteran film actor Harrison Ford landed at Santa Barbara Airport to help the New Beginnings Counseling Center celebrate its half-century at a sun-drenched celebration at the 76-year-old Ovington Terminal, I can exclusively report. Ford, 76, globally known as Hans Solo in Star Wars and the title character of the Indiana Jones film series, flew in […]

Miraculous Magic
By Richard Mineards   |   December 21, 2017

Montecito marriage and family counselor Randi Rabin has launched her new book, Grab Your Miracle – The Magic of a Mother’s Love, which recounts her quest to find the meaning of love through the discovery of a great desire to have a child to cherish. As a young women in the early 1990s, Randi had […]