Email Author Robrt L. Pela

2008 Stories by Robrt L. Pela

• Phoenix gets malled

  published July 10, 2008

  Not too long ago, my spouse and I took our friend Caitlyn out to celebrate her seventh birthday. Our plan was to have a little lunch at Scottsdale... More >>

• A Midsummmer Month's Dream

  published July 10, 2008

  Most big cities have summer stock of some kind. Phoenix’s post-theater season typically equates to a handful of remounts and three months... More >>

• Reefer Madness fires up at Phoenix Theatre’s Little Theatre

  published July 3, 2008

  It's a theater critic's job, as he enters a playhouse, to leave at the door any attitudes or preferences he may have about a particular genre of... More >>

• Wee Shall Overcome

  published July 3, 2008

  He claims he “isn’t even a D-List celebrity,” yet he has an Emmy Award and a best-selling memoir and is on a national tour.... More >>

• Pela gets sentimental over an old cemetery

  published June 26, 2008

  You live in a town long enough, and every corner contains a memory of someone you used to know. I've been here almost half a century, and I can... More >>

• Transpeople Will Talk

  published June 26, 2008

  Let’s face it: What most of us know about transgender people could fit into a Barbie shoe. And what we think we know about them —... More >>

• For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow Is Enuf at Kerr Cultural Center

  published June 19, 2008

  My friend Michelle and I were the only white people in the audience at last week's performance of For Colored Girls Who Have Considered... More >>

• Deconstructing Barry

  published June 19, 2008

  He was a defining figure in American public life, and that rarest of people: a local politician of whom we could be proud rather than ashamed.... More >>

• Deconstructing Barry

  published June 19, 2008

  He was a defining figure in American public life, and that rarest of people: a local politician of whom we could be proud rather than ashamed.... More >>

• Logoville U.S.A.

  published June 12, 2008

  It’s gotten so we don’t even see them, the carefully placed product endorsements that are part of everyday life. On an episode of... More >>

• Smokey Joe’s Café at the Herberger Theater is a rollicking musical revue

  published June 5, 2008

  I've seen Smokey Joe's Café too many times over the past decade to have been very excited about attending Black Theatre Troupe's... More >>

• Eye Candy

  published June 5, 2008

  For some folks, nothing says “happy” better than a pink-iced Hostess cupcake and an ice-cold Nehi. And then there’s Mindy Sue... More >>

• Summer Guide: Retail therapy doesn’t have to cost a fortune

  published June 5, 2008

  Getting through the summer is no mean feat, and I find myself buying a lot more crap in July and August than I do any other time of the year, if... More >>

• Summer Guide: The Geography of Bliss is the one book about happiness you should read this summer

  published June 5, 2008

  Once upon a time, people were allowed to be unhappy. Today, we have Deepak Chopra and Prozac and seminars that turn ordinary people into... More >>

• Verrado raises the question: Would you trade an urban community for a suburban farce?

  published May 29, 2008

  I made some new friends the other day, and they live in Verrado. I'd always wanted to know someone who owned a home in this peculiar development... More >>

• Heaven and Eartha

  published May 29, 2008

  “One of a kind” is a worn-out phrase used to describe everything from baked beans to hand-painted vases. One hesitates to use it to... More >>

• Cum As You Are

  published May 29, 2008

  You have to hand it to the subjects of Giulio Sciorio’s “Faces of Ecstasy: Real People, Real Orgasms” exhibit, which has been... More >>

• Gross Indecency: The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde is sleep-inducing

  published May 22, 2008

   Gross Indecency certainly lives up to its name. I was bored within three minutes of this play, subtitled The Three Trials of Oscar... More >>

• Camera Obscura

  published May 22, 2008

  A single, quick glance at Billie #14 is all it takes to burn the name Lyle Ashton Harris into one’s brain forever. Ashton’s... More >>

• Hail Marry

  published May 22, 2008

  The Spanish version opened in Madrid last October. The Swedish take opened in Karlstad shortly afterward. The Japanese production opened... More >>

• Metrocenter: Part One of "Look What They’ve Done to My Mall, Ma!"

  published May 15, 2008

  I lost my virtue in a shopping mall. Sort of. It was actually in my boss's office at the Mexican restaurant where I had my first-ever job, in... More >>

• Crazy Little Thing Called Love

  published May 15, 2008

  It’s an age-old story: Boy is committed to insane asylum; boy meets schizophrenic girl in insane asylum; boy and girl perform interpretive... More >>

• Speak Spanish to Me at the Herberger Theater leaves Robrt L. Pela looking for the exit

  published May 8, 2008

  The most sparkling bit of dialogue I heard the other night at Actors Theatre's production of Speak Spanish to Me came from the charming... More >>

• Off-Off-Off Broadway

  published May 8, 2008

  Crispin Glover doesn’t want to be misquoted. He’s worried that journalists don’t understand his peculiar new film, What Is... More >>

• The Hayden Flour Mill transforms into a glass castle

  published May 1, 2008

  I've gotten pretty good at acting bored when I meet someone who feels as I do about old buildings — that we don't have enough of them here,... More >>