Tag archives: theater
Multi Grammy winner Sir John Eliot Gardiner, founder and music director of the English Baroque Soloists, was in fine form when the 44-year-old orchestra performed at the Granada as part of CAMA’s 103rd international concert series. Playing two works from Mozart – “Sinfonia concertante in E-flat Major” and “Symphony No. 39 in E-flat Major” – […]
Racial dynamics are at the forefront of the Ensemble Theatre Company’s latest New Vic show American Son. The nail-biting drama, directed by Jonathan Fox, takes place at a Miami, Florida, police station where, in the middle of the night, the parents of an African American teenager anxiously await news of their son, who may have […]
Anybody who caught initial performances of Kerrilee Gore’s When the Lights Go Out immersive theatrical mystery-cabaret show onstage at the Lobero in 2016 couldn’t have failed to be wowed by the production, featuring an impressive cast of dancers, acrobats, and choreographers with vast industry experience, thrilling music, and a spectacular light show. But on the […]
Le Sacre du Printemps has had immense influence in the classical arts ever since the collaboration between composer Igor Stravinsky and choreographer Vaslav Nijinsky was premiered by Ballets Russes to great controversy in Paris in 1913. The decades-ahead-of-its-time music has gone on to great success in the concert hall while the ballet has been adapted, […]
Robert Battle intentionally benched his own creative endeavors when he took over as artistic director of Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater in 2011, as only the third person to occupy the position after founder Ailey’s 31-year tenure, and former dancer Judith Jamison’s 21-year reign. Instead, Battle focused on administrative duties and even more so on […]
After two false starts forced by the pandemic, ETC is finally bringing American Son to the New Vic Theatre for a mid-April run. The nail-biting drama takes place in real-time in the waiting room of a Miami police station where the parents of a bi-racial African American teenager anxiously await news about their son, who […]
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 […]
The Wolves, the first play by former college actress Sarah DeLappe to be produced and professionally written while she was still an undergraduate at Yale, was a finalist for the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Now, SBCC Theatre closes out its season with the local premiere of the piece, ostensibly about a girls’ indoor soccer […]
The Rubicon Theatre Company (RTC) was the first of the local companies to find a way to produce something for its audiences when the COVID-19 pandemic shut things down way back in early spring 2020. Indeed, RTC was the first regional theater company in the country to offer a socially distanced drive-in series, bringing such […]
Center Stage Theater and UCSB’s Initiative for New & Reimagined Work are teaming to present the world premiere of Seaward, written and directed by UCSB acting student Cyrus Roberts. An absurdist tragicomedy exploring the issue of identity within the setting of a 1930s asylum for the mentally ill, Seaward finds a new patient stepping into […]
Later this month, Ventura’s Rubicon Theatre Company finally reopens, more than two years after the pandemic put the kibosh on live theater everywhere, and long after virtually every other venue in the area has returned to roughly regular schedules. The mounting of theater shows again at the converted church a few blocks from downtown Ventura […]
Ken Ludwig’s stage version of Murder on the Orient Express was written at the request of the Agatha Christie Estate, so the classic Christie mystery – which was also adapted into a hit movie – was in good hands when it premiered in March 2017 at the McCarter Theatre in Princeton. Five years later, The […]
While film lovers will be flocking to Santa Barbara over the next 10 days to watch scores of world premieres and welcome widely loved movie stars in the Arlington and other cinemas, the Ensemble Theatre will be staging a premiere of its own just across Victoria Street in the New Vic, one that also boasts […]
The Westmont College Festival Theatre and John Blondell, Westmont’s award-winning director and professor of theater arts, stage The Miser, or the School for Lies, Moliere’s funny, highly theatrical on-the-verge-of-the-absurd comedy February 25-26, March 3-5 at 7:30 pm, and March 5 at 2 pm, all in Westmont’s Porter Theatre. Tickets are $10 for students and seniors, […]
Transform Through Arts Theater’s annual Colors of Love dance show at Center Stage Theater returns to its usual Valentine’s Day weekend performance slot for 2022 after moving to August due to the pandemic last year, and the local collective’s approach to the concept of love has expanded in the interim. “It’s evolved into more diversity […]
Something rotten happened to Lights Up!, the teen theater conservatory/company, which opened for business back in 2018. That would be the COVID-19 pandemic, which of course has been pretty rotten for all of us. But the pandemic really put Lights Up! through its paces as the company has been operating under the restrictions for more […]
The Sound of Silence pervaded the venerable 1,500 seat Granada Theatre when the Theatre Guild staged the highly entertaining Simon & Garfunkel Story. Creatively staged with videos and photographic backdrops from the 1950s to the 1980s, two talented doppelgängers, Taylor Bloom as Paul Simon and Ben Cooley as Garfunkel, played the dynamic musical duo, who […]
Actress Jisel Soleil Ayon never suspected the casting directors were considering her for the lead role of Jenna when she auditioned for a part as a member of the ensemble for the musical Waitress last year. “I went through the entire process, from Zoom to my last call back in person, thinking I might at […]
All of the five virtuoso string musicians who comprise the Grammy-winning folk-grass band Punch Brothers were fervent fans of Tony Rice. The Brothers – who are led by the MacArthur “Genius Grant’ Award fellow Chris Thile on mandolin and includes bassist Paul Kowert, guitarist Chris Eldridge, banjoist Noam Pikelny, and violinist Gabe Witcher – have […]
The popularity of Simon & Garfunkel, the most famous duo in folk music history, remains unabated more than a half-century since the pair first broke up over artistic differences and personal issues following the release of the groundbreaking album Bridge Over Troubled Water. Problems persisted each time Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel contemplated reuniting after […]
