Think of the Young Playwrights Festival as a reverse Launch Pad. The springtime program at Ensemble Theatre Company’s New Vic Theater gives aspiring playwrights ages 14-19 the opportunity to create a play that is produced and staged with professional directors and actors, and then presented as a staged reading at the theater. The Young Playwrights […]
Alvin Ailey’s American Dance Theater is described as “an American cultural treasure” and after two performances at the Granada, part of the popular UCSB Arts & Lectures series, one can see why, as it brought its unique blend of contemporary and classic movement to the cavernous stage. Showcasing a dazzling range of cultural influences and […]
Recently Trending
More from Montecito
Gordon Greenberg and Steve Rosen, the playwrights who took a bite out of a famous Transylvanian count in Dracula: A Comedy of Terrors – which opened Ensemble Theatre’s current season – have also set their mandibles on digging into Dostoevsky with Crime and Punishment, a Comedy, which makes its local debut at the Jurkowitz Theatre […]
When State Street Ballet founding artistic/executive director Rodney Gustafson fully retired at the end of 2023, the destiny of the company – founded by the former American Ballet Theatre dancer some three decades earlier – was something of an unknown. Things seemed to be in good hands with the twin appointments of Megan Philipp as […]
Society Invites was contacted by Jeannine Morgan – former Head of School for El Montecito School in Montecito (ELMO) – about her son Judson Pearce, who has volunteered to direct the Providence School play Annie Jr. The performances are April 25 – 26, tickets are on sale now. Proceeds benefit the school. Jeannine is a […]
Pianist-actor-playwright-producer Hershey Felder has appeared on stages across the world more than 6,000 times in original works focused on a single famous composer. His works include George Gershwin Alone, Beethoven, Maestro Bernstein, Hershey Felder as Irving Berlin, Our Great Tchaikovsky, and A Paris Love Story – Debussy. A few of his similar filmed creations have […]
Out of the Box, the local theater company that has been producing alternative contemporary musical theater for 15 years, soars all the way up into the heavens for its next show, Natasha, Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812. Dave Malloy’s genre-defying musical adaptation of a scandalous 70-page segment from Tolstoy‘s famed 1869 novel War […]
Rubicon Theatre Company’s New Play Development Program both sponsors and benefits from a reading of The Journals of Adam and Eve, a two-person play inspired by the biblical characters, Mark Twain’s sense of humor, and A. R. Gurney’s Love Letters. The play, written by nine-time Emmy Award-winner Ed. Weinberger (Taxi, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, […]
The venerable Granada rocked to the Motown sound when the Tony Award-winning show Ain’t Too Proud: The Life and Times of the Temptations rocked the theater in the American Theater Guild production. Electrifying smash hits launched them from their home in Detroit to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in a fascinating story about […]
Read more...
When the world premiere of Parents in Chains, which features three largely different casts over the course of its March 12-30 run at Ensemble Theatre Company’s New Vic Theatre, launches its second week on March 18, veteran actor Joshua Malina will be making his Santa Barbara theatrical debut. Malina’s list of credits runs for pages […]
Hurricane Hilary heading up the coast to California when his own teenage daughter and several of her friends were due to drive back from a weekend in San Francisco was the impetus for prolific writer Jay Martel to create his latest play. But Parents in Chains – which has its official world premiere at Ensemble […]
A new generation of young creatives is shaking up the local arts scene, and at the helm of this exciting movement is none other than Chloe Voigt, a 14-year-old high school freshman with big dreams and a passion for theatre. As the founder and leader of YOUTHCLUSIVE, a new nonprofit theater company dedicated to giving […]
Westmont’s famed theater arts professor John Blondell, who will retire after 37 years at the college, directs The Wind in the Willows, which runs at various dates and times through March 2 in Porter Theatre. Purchase tickets, which cost $20 for general admission and $12 for students and seniors, at westmont.edu/box-office. Blondell says he chose […]
Ariel arises anew in State Street Ballet’s world premiere original adaptation of The Little Mermaid, the 1837 Hans Christian Andersen story that became a beloved animated Disney movie 150 years later. The production – bursting with colorful characters and sets, including a number of puppets and a cast of 45 – comes from co-choreographers Cecily […]
