Tag archives: UCSB

If you’ve heard Octavia Spencer give an interview, you can probably tell she’s from the South. But someone who really understands her voice can tell she’s from Alabama. Reese Witherspoon on the other hand? Her voice reveals she’s from Tennessee. And a good dialogue writer knows, it’s not just the twang. It’s the culture.  A […]

It was almost half a century ago, but I can still remember driving home after seeing Jaws in the movie theater on a rainy night in New Jersey – so much so that when we came to a freeway underpass that had flooded with several feet of water, I was happy that the police were […]

UCSB’s Media Arts and Technology Program (MAT) 25th Annual End of Year Show titled soft AI+ M: Realities Altered Realities Emerging, was a dual treat with students showing at UCSB and SBCAST. I attended the SBCAST show on June 6. The poster for the show quipped, “No AI was harmed in the generation of this […]

UCSB’s popular Arts & Lectures program is celebrating its 65th anniversary in grand style with more than 47 events in the entertaining lineup for 2024-2025 featuring world-renowned artists, forward thinking speakers, and impressive ensembles. Performance highlights include legendary cellist Yo-Yo Ma, the Wynton Marsalis Ensemble, the London Philharmonic Orchestra, violinist Itzhak Perlman, the Alvin Ailey […]

Indecent is a 2015 play by Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Paula Vogel, inspired by the controversial events surrounding the play God of Vengeance by Sholem Asch. God of Vengeance was briefly produced on Broadway in 1923 before the producer and cast were arrested and convicted of obscenity due to the play’s depiction of lesbian love. Vengeance […]

I went to the UCSB Santa Barbara Economic Summit held at the Granada Theatre. The place was packed and the presentations were great.  The speakers, Gene Deering, a principal at Radius Commercial Real Estate, host UCSB econ professor Peter Ruppert, and real estate entrepreneur Rick Caruso, were informative and hit on some of the problems […]

Normally at this time of year, UCSB Music’s voice program would either mount a full-scale opera or a collection of staged opera scenes, but for 2024, the show has morphed into an Opera Gala, which is not only a collaboration between the music and theater-dance departments, but also a tale of two cities as UCSB […]

Incandescent is the intriguing title of this year’s MFA Thesis Exhibition at UCSB’s Art, Design & Architecture Museum (AD&A), on view May 17 to June 9. The seven grad students with heritage from Mexico, Nigeria, Iran, the Philippines, and elsewhere, drew on Michel Serres’ notion of incandescence to create art that emphasizes the interconnectedness of […]

Pulitzer Prize finalist, culture critic, producer, and screenwriter Xochitl Gonzalez is a staff writer at The Atlantic and the author of its newsletter Brooklyn, Everywhere, about class, gentrification, and the American Dream. Her debut novel, Olga Dies Dreaming, was a critical fave in 2022, while the follow-up, Anita de Monte Laughs Last, came out this […]

Ephrat “Bounce” Asherie is an award-winning, New York-based hip-hop “b-girl” with extensive training in ballet and modern dance. Rooted in African American and Latinx street and club dances, her dance company returns to town with her latest exploration of the inherent complexities of the dance forms. Ephrat Asherie Dance‘s latest work ODEON brings together and […]

Alonzo King LINES Ballet, the latest hour-long dance production staged by UCSB’s popular Arts & Lectures at the Arlington, was a real showstopper. The talented company staged Deep River, which premiered last year as part of LINES Ballet’s 40th anniversary, based on more than four decades of thought-provoking dance. The production is the result of […]

Going back to its first concerts and recordings 50 years ago, Bay Area-based Kronos Quartet has made it a mission to revolutionize the string quartet as a living art form that not only sonically challenges the status quo but responds to the challenges of our era and issues. Dedicated to playing work almost exclusively by […]

Shpilkes is Yiddish for “pins,” as in “sitting on pins and needles.” The Jewish English Lexicon defines the term more colloquially as “Nervous energy, anxiousness, restlessness.” But for local playwright Barbara Gural, Shpilkes is the Yiddish equivalent of “ants in your pants,” an appropriate title for her new comedy, which was inspired by her close […]

UCSB Arts & Lectures packed the Arlington Theatre on two consecutive nights with jazz legend Herbie Hancock and a very different performance with drag queen RuPaul, who was promoting his new memoir The House of Hidden Meanings. Before 14 Grammy-Award-winner Hancock’s energized show with his extraordinarily talented quintet, a dinner was thrown at Villa & […]

Campbell Hall at UCSB was the place to be when the popular Arts & Lectures program staged two more major entertaining concerts. The first was the Danish String Quartet, joined by Finnish cellist Johannes Rostamo, for the eagerly anticipated capstone to their Doppelgänger Project, which I have watched over the past three years at Campbell […]

Roger and Robin Himowitz opened the doors of their charming Provencal-style Montecito estate to host a sunset soirée honoring former U.S. Secretary of Labor Robert Reich before he spoke at UCSB’s Campbell Hall, part of the popular Arts & Lectures program. Reich, 77, who studied at Dartmouth College, Yale Law School, and won a Rhodes […]

Shabbat Shalom! The 12th Annual Mega Shabbat event by Chabad of UCSB was held outside on Friday, April 5, at the Rohr Chabad Jewish Student Center, established 2007 by the Rohr Family of NYC in memory of Mrs. Charlotte Rohr (née Kastner).  The attendance was approximately 1,100 people, the largest single shabbat in the history […]

Grad Slam, the annual event in which UCSB graduate students present their research in three-minute talks meant to quickly spotlight the exciting work they are doing on campus, wraps up its 11th year with presentations from the seven finalists on April 5 at Campbell Hall. The pitches are designed to captures the students’ research in […]

After postponing their concert in February given a mandatory evacuation warning because of heavy rain, the charmingly named Grammy Award-winning octet Roomful of Teeth with pianist-guitarist Gabriel Kahane, performed in a UCSB Arts & Lectures show at the Music Academy of the West’s Hahn Hall. The tony troupe is dedicated to reimagining the expressive potential […]

Considered one of America’s foremost experts on jobs and the economy, Robert B. Reich was part of the administrations of three presidents – Ford and Carter and Secretary of Labor for Bill Clinton’s first term – and is also a bestselling author, award-winning documentarian, and a respected commentator. Chancellor’s Professor of Public Policy at Berkeley […]