Best Classical Avant-Garde Performances 2012 | Downtown Chamber Series | People & Places | Phoenix
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Best Classical Avant-Garde Performances

Downtown Chamber Series

Anyone convinced that classical music is all stuffy musicians in starched white collars needs to investigate the Downtown Chamber Series, a concert series that features highly skilled musicians of all ages interpreting the music of composers like minimalist Steve Reich and Beethoven in unexpected places, like downtown art space The Icehouse, restaurant/multi-purpose venue The Duce, and the Phoenix Art Museum. The sounds are strange and exciting, and the musicians bring an edgy spirit to the classical material that rivals the noisemakers at Trunk Space and can be as heavy as anything going on in the Nile Basement.

Best Independent Movie Theater

FilmBar

Sometimes sipping a stiff drink and taking in a movie is the best way to unwind. Lucky for cinephiles and cocktail enthusiasts (and those who fall into both categories) FilmBar lives up to its compound moniker.

With near-daily screenings of indie and foreign films, a stocked bar, and club-style nights with DJs, comedians, and other performers, it offers up a moviegoing experience unlike any other in the Valley. Combine all that with its recent expansions — including pairing up with AIGA for monthly design-focused documentary screenings, opening its doors to the under-21 crowd, and showing midnight flicks — and you're headed to the multiplex because why?

Best Luxury Movie Theater

AMC Esplanade 14

Reclining seats. Swing-over tray. Waitstaff that comes when you push a button. Going out to a movie has never seemed so civilized. AMC renovated and re-opened this theater in August 2011, and the experience is now first-class. Each time at the Dine-In Theater, we felt almost giddy for the first few minutes in our ultra-cushy recliner, and when we got our first cocktail, we giggled out loud. After a lifetime of cheap-to-middlin' movie seats, munching on popcorn and Milk Duds while sipping a Coke we shouldn't have upsized, we find the novelty of being served real food and alcoholic beverages — in a real glass! — very appealing. Another cool thing: Some of the 14 theaters are only for adults over 21 — nixing the possibility that we'll have to see someone take their 6-year-old to the new Saw flick. As the lights dim and the feature presentation begins, we raise a White Russian to AMC.

Best Budget Movie Theater

Pollack Tempe Cinemas

 The last time we took the kids to a movie, we had to take out a second mortgage on the house first. Next time, we figure, it'll be time to sell the second car. Just getting in the door of a first-run theater is a ridiculous prospect — let alone the situation at the snack bar. Which is why we are so grateful to Michael Pollack. Not only does the guy own just about every strip mall in the East Valley (really, people, where would Phoenix be without the strip mall?), he graciously houses the best budget theater in town in one of them. The selection is good (you'll catch the films that have just left the big movie houses) and best of all, movies are $3 — $2 on Tuesdays. Sure, the snack bar is still pricey, but Pollack's got such a crazy collection of movie memorabilia for your family to gawk at that the sensory overload will knock the appetite right out of 'em. The air-conditioning blasts, just like at the fancy joints, and no one will try to up-sell you on your bag of popcorn. Now that's luxury.

Best Actress

Susan Claassen in A Conversation with Edith Head

Susan Claassen's performance in A Conversation with Edith Head, Actors Theatre's one-woman show about the world's most famous Hollywood costume designer, was the one to beat last season. In this pleasant, quietly entertaining homage to Head, which Claassen co-wrote with Head's biographer, Paddy Calisto, Claassen-as-Head dished about Bette Davis, Audrey Hepburn ("She was awful, with that long, skinny neck!"), Hedy Lamarr (who ate constantly, even during fittings), and Bing Crosby (who hated clothes that made him look silly) and allowed us to forget that the renowned designer died in 1981. She prompted the audience with trivia questions and struck poses Edith Head was known for, placing a manicured hand on a hip she repeatedly jutted out into the audience. Claassen moved effortlessly from scripted storytelling to ad libs aimed at her audience, and even those of us not obsessed with the Late Late Show were able to enjoy this warm, witty performance by a fine actress.

Best Actor

Mike Traylor in Race

iTheatre Collaborative's production of Race was a stunner, thanks in good part to a striking and memorable lead performance by Mike Traylor. Race, a triptych of short acts about lawyers who consider taking on a controversial rape case involving a billionaire, offers a typically Mametian setup. But Traylor's performance was anything but typical. As an embittered black man and a successful lawyer, he delivered a polemic on racism and commentary on the amorality of the legal profession with an amped-up intensity that allowed us to simultaneously hate and admire his character — a tough sell for even as estimable an actor as Mr. Traylor.

Best Director

Damon Dering in Shakespeare's R & J

Shakespeare's R & J offers the bare bones of Romeo and Juliet (interspersed with other Shakespearean verse) in Joe Calarco's passionate play about four Catholic school boys who read aloud from a banned copy of the bard's most famous tragedy. In a chilly attic that doubles as Verona, these repressed, rep-tie-wearing lads honor an old Shakespearean tradition of males playing female roles as they create an evening's entertainment that's all subtext. And every moment of that subtext was cleverly outlined for even the most illiterate among us, thanks to the finesse and insight of director Damon Dering in last season's production of this difficult, complex piece of theater. It's a rough-and-tumble play that grafts comedy onto a tragic love story and asks that we watch both what these boys are doing with Old Will and what reading his love story is doing for them. And Dering made it all look so easy — and entertained us, besides.

Best Risk-Taking Artistic Director

Matthew Wiener, Actors Theatre

Last season, he (and his Actors Theatre) brought us Geoffrey Nauffts's Tony-nominated and controversial paean to atheism, Next Fall. He brought Peter Sinn Nachtrieb's Hunter Gatherers (about a dinner party at which an animal sacrifice kicks off the evening, followed by sex, violence, wrestling, and dancing). And while so many other theaters were dusting off Gypsy and West Side Story for the umpteenth time, he brought us a stunning Time Stands Still, Donald Margulies' finest play in years. Weiner and company take risks where other companies won't, and for that (and for the bravery that led to Weiner booking this season's The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs, starring Ron May), we salute him.

Best Ethnic Theater

Teatro Bravo

Teatro Bravo

Having completed a successful 12th season (which included a beyond-the-grave visit from Federico García Lorca and a play about Frida Kahlo, culminating in a New Works series of staged readings), Teatro Bravo is going strong. The company, co-founded by playwright Guillermo Reyes, has produced plays in English or Spanish for more than a decade — plays that offer a complex portrait of the Latino and Latin American populations of Arizona. Its upcoming season is sure to offer another cultural boon to Phoenix — as if the company's mission to employ and develop the talents of Latino actors, directors, playwrights, and designers weren't enough.

Best Improv Collective

Torch Theatre

Local performers Bill Binder, Jose Gonzalez, Jacque Arend, Sam Haldiman, Nina Miller, Mack Duncan, Shane Shannon, and Tommy Schaeffer own and operate a theater collective they insist isn't theirs.

There's no one leader or decision-maker in Torch Theatre, which formed in 2007 when local performance troupes Apollo 12, Galapagos, Remainders, Mail Order Bride, Light Rail Pirates, Phoenix Neutrino Project, and Dangerville joined forces to perform on a regular basis, as well as offer classes and workshops.For Torch, the goal was always to find a home. And in 2011, they found a spot on Central Avenue, took out what was left of an old hair salon, added few coats of fresh paint, a stage and a curtain, and a few rows of chairs, and settled in.The Torch members since have seen countless performances, a number of graduation ceremonies, and a wedding. They've solidified a weekly schedule of performances and introduced new levels of instruction, and they organize the annual Phoenix Improv Festival. And now, they're waiting for you to come on board.

Best Of Phoenix®

Best Of

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