Tag archives: musicals

Out of the Box Gets Us Out of Our Heads
By Steven Libowitz   |   November 8, 2022

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 […]

A Rotten Spectacular
By Steven Libowitz   |   July 5, 2022

If campy and clever is your path to pleasure – at least in the theater – you can do no better than the mirth-making musical Something Rotten. The show, which earned 10 Tony nominations on Broadway just five years ago, takes place in the 1590s when the theatrically-minded Nick Bottom, whose lot is a lot […]

SBHS Chicago
By Steven Libowitz   |   April 12, 2022

Nearly two years after taking over for the legendary Santa Barbara High School theater director Otto Layman, newcomer Justin Baldridge is getting his chance to put his stamp on the kind of big classic musical Layman loved to bring to the school’s auditorium. Chicago, the second longest-running show in Broadway history, is a song-and-dance filled […]

It’s Kismet: A Love for Broadway, and Bringing it Home to Santa Barbara
By Sara Miller McCune   |   July 1, 2021

Growing up in New York during the 1950s turned me into a lover of Broadway theatre — especially musicals. By the age of 18 I’d been fortunate enough to see wonderful productions of West Side Story, My Fair Lady, and close to a hundred other musicals, dramas, and comedies. I next fell in love with […]

Lights Up!: Auditions are Due
By Steven Libowitz   |   September 10, 2020

Lights Up!, Santa Barbara’s newest teen theater company that serves as a professional, yet inclusive and creative home for the youngsters, is currently auditioning for its 2020-21 company membership. Interested actors, singers, and dancers aged 12-19 are invited to audition for admission and the opportunity to attend callbacks for specific shows with the rest of […]

Surf Film Fest Surfaces
By Richard Mineards   |   November 7, 2019

Surf movies, especially those with a Santa Barbara connection, have been a popular sidebar at SBIFF for many years. This weekend the genre steps to a fest of its own with the first annual event celebrating the “Santa Barbara Surf Culture” on film. The two-day fest, slated for full 12-hour plus schedules on both Saturday […]

Alexander the Great
By Steven Libowitz   |   June 20, 2019

Despite the fact that she has spent a large part of her adult life in musical theater, Arizona Theater Company’s Chanel Bragg was initially reluctant to listen to the 2015 original cast recording of Hamilton: An American Musical, Lin-Manuel Miranda’s “sung-and-rapped through” show that had opened on Broadway only a few months earlier. “I’m from […]

‘Dancing’ into Love
By Steven Libowitz   |   June 13, 2019

Saundra McClain would seem to be an inspired choice to direct Ensemble Theatre Company’s area debut of Dancing Lessons even if she hadn’t already helmed several successful prior productions for ETC, including Intimate Apparel, In The Continuum, The Fantasticks, and Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune. While McClain found her earlier ETC efforts […]

Reveling Into the New Year
By Richard Mineards   |   December 27, 2018

Santa Barbara Revels, presenting its 11th anniversary production at the Lobero, moved to Ireland this year after its Alta California Rancho period piece in 2017. “We wanted to honor the strength and courage of the intrepid Irish emigrants who left their homeland in the early 1900s, specially those who might have traveled on the S.S. […]

Seeing through the Glass Slipper
By Steven Libowitz   |   November 22, 2018

Even in today’s post-#MeToo/women’s movement era, just about every little girl in America still dreams about being a princess. Witness the number of Cinderella dresses out on the streets and trick-or-treaters just three weeks ago on Halloween. On the other hand, not too many harbor a desire to wind up as a wicked stepsister, but […]