With family in town for the holidays, what could possibly be more apropos in theater than a family and friend fueled farcical fusion of Agatha Christie murder mysteries, the Clue board game, and popular British drama television series like Downton Abbey and Upstairs, Downstairs?  That’s the premise behind WHODUNIT?, the first fully original new production […]

When Kerry Irish Productions founder Margaret O’Carroll moved to Los Angeles from the hills of her native County Kerry many years ago, she wasn’t able to find any sort of regular productions of anything Irish or Celtic around Christmastime in the bustling metropolis.  So she decided to create something of her own. The one-time Irish […]

Back in 2017 when Susan Keller founded Santa Barbara Revels to make our city one of several in the nation to present annual Christmas-season traditional cross-cultural shows, she turned to fellow Montecitan Maggie Mixsell to serve as director. The acting coach, teacher, and director – whose credits include running the Speaking of Stories series for […]

‘Twas the weekend before Christmas and all through the house, not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse. Unless “house” refers to the Granada, where all sorts of creatures, including mice, rats, and other critters and characters won’t just be stirring but also leaping, pirouetting, gliding, and spinning all over the stage as State […]

The beloved holiday ballet chestnut The Nutcracker is a fantasy tale of a young girl named Clara, who, after receiving a toy nutcracker from her godfather at a Christmas party, imagines an enchanted journey where her toy turns into a prince to take her to a magical land full of overgrown rats, a Sugar Plum […]

Rubicon Theatre launches its 2025-26 “Crossroads” season with the hit musical Million Dollar Quartet, a somewhat fictionalized dramatization of the night when Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis and Carl Perkins came together at Sun Records for an impromptu jam session. A step up from a jukebox musical, the Tony-nominated show, which was a […]

Westmont College Theatre presents Sophocles’ ancient and disturbing tragedy Antigone with fresh language and new life in a poetic and thrilling production from Oct. 24-Nov. 1 at Westmont’s Porter Theatre.  Tickets to the play, “Antigonick,” which cost $20 for general admission and $12 for students, seniors and staff, are available for purchase at westmont.edu/boxoffice. Show […]

War, both real and made up – as well as the battle between the sexes and the standoff between truth and fiction – runs through season-opening productions from the two major theater companies in town. To launch the season with a bang, Ensemble Theatre presents War of The Worlds: The Panic Broadcast while SBCC Theatre […]

Arms and the Man, which performs at SBCC’s Garvin Theatre October 8-25, goes back even further in history, as Shaw’s 1894 play is set during the 1885 Serbo-Bulgarian war. Though the work – the first in Shaw’s “Plays Pleasant” catalog – is much more of a romantic comedy, it skewers class discrimination, the politics of […]

Enough! is a nationwide reading of six new 10-minute plays by teen writers that confront gun violence, with the aim of allowing youth voices to be heard, sparking conversation and inspiring action against one of the most pressing issues of our time. The plays, which were selected by a committee of nationally renowned playwrights, will […]