Why hang around grimy little arts venues? Well, for one thing, to like stuff before it’s cool. In 1980s Manhattan, for instance, we enjoyed the fresh-faced, low-rent versions of now-mainstream performers: Eric Bogosian, John Malkovich, the late Spalding Gray, Bill Irwin — and Kathy Najimy and Mo Gaffney, whose Obie-winning…
See also: A profile of Sam in Phoenix New Times’ Hero Worship See also: Phoenix’s New Theater Season Looks for an Edge No matter what results you were hoping for from Tuesday’s Arizona primary election, no matter how fervently you supported the candidates you supported, at least a handful of…
Some people have already tired of working at home alone in their jammies, hence the multidisciplinary, social, ineffably vibrant trend of “co-working.” People who’ve never met congregate in places they don’t have to be, check out projects they’ve never heard of, and share skills and ideas they might otherwise never…
The setup: In the last of the three installments of Soul Invictus’ Summer of Soul series, Lucas Gomez’ one-act play Moonbeam & the Vampire Girl is followed by a one-man show by Andrew Eninger, The Last Castrato…
Ways to enjoy music keep evolving, allowing us to niche-ify our listening without all that laborious groove-counting, stylus-dropping, and mixtape-making. It makes sense, then, that the musical revue, which begat the “jukebox musical,” has enabled the playlist musical. Now, instead of asking Pandora or your iPod for some sweet soul…
The best-laid staycation plans gang aft agley, and ours ganged majorly agley. We need a culture break even more desperately than usual, and meanwhile, the ambitiously retentive school-year routine has pulled out of the station once again. So we’re sneaking off to the secret oasis of all that’s classy, ASU…
The only way to understand why big-ass Broadway-style musicals are so popular is to see one of them in big-ass Broadway style: performed live on stage, with lusty vocals, a nimble dance corps, and an honest-to-God orchestra playing the score. That’s the philosophy of Scottsdale Musical Theater Company, and it’s…
Not everyone’s life-altering experience makes for an entertaining story, but Herberger Lunch Time Theater audiences tend to get lucky with respect to true tales of transformation — most recently, with the richly musical, sometimes funny and/or embarrassing She Knows from Nothing/De Nada Sabe. In it, professional musician Ruth Lara Vichules…
Just as the characters of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night escaped the fury of the waves to land safely on the shores of Illyria, Brelby Theatre Company’s endured a few seasons of scampering from venue to venue before finding harbor at its own space in historic downtown Glendale. So that comedy of…
Shakespeare’s canon contains a fair number of shipwrecks, something I hadn’t really thought about before a big old wind- and thunderstorm pursued Brelby Theatre Company’s Saturday night performance of Twelfth Night, a comedy that begins with wreck survivors cast on shore. The show, originally scheduled for an outdoor patio due…
The leitmotif of Miss Gay Arizona 2012 is Turn Back Time (or, as Cher would belt, “Turn back tah-hahm”). The pageant website elaborates thusly: “The pageant is already in progress. You’ll understand, when you catch up. But you’re having a great time!” At 27, the annual event is about as…
There are simply not as many plays to go see during the summer, and I’m sure we’ve talked about this before. The upside is that you can fit more arts events into your schedule, because there are fewer conflicts. One of the downsides is that the scaling-back results in almost…
Paul Rodriguez, standup/actor/activist, is the father of the Paul Rodriguez (P-Rod) who won a record fourth X Games gold medal in Skateboard Street earlier this month. Bust that out when the hip kids ask why you’re heading to Talking Stick Resort for the elder Rodriguez’ performance on Friday. ’Cause what…
Violence is as integral a part of American entertainment as the banjo. If you think you can get away from it by avoiding sports and World’s Dumbest… then think again. The world of comedy, for instance, is a ferocious battle for dominance that’s reflected in its vocabulary of cheap shots,…
Rent is not the latest hot new thing on stage, fellow babies. The La Bohème-based rock musical is 18 years old. You won’t go to jail for spending the evening with it. It can vote and buy cigarettes and serve in the military. But there’s nothing wrong with liking a…
How into theater are you? We dare you to spring for the value-packed VIP pass to Phoenix Theatre’s 15th annual Hormel New Works Festival. You won’t merely get admission to four star-studded staged readings and An Evening of Short Plays and the results of the legendary and incredible 24-Hour Theatre…
RPM Orchestra makes nontraditional and way hypnotic sounds (they’ve called themselves a “proto-industrial Americana” band) that are even more compelling live, because their performances are evocative, multidisciplinary, and of a piece with the very breath and sweat of the toiling musicians. Audio recording can’t quite capture the headlong immersion that…
Though we supported the French Revolution, perhaps the Reign of Terror didn’t have to cut off absolutely every one of those aristocrats’ heads. The Scarlet Pimpernel, Sir Percy Blakeney, achieved Spider-Man-like acclaim by helping many of the endangered nobility sneak out of France — a less bloody compromise. Blakeney concealed…
You have one more week to see one of the best productions of a musical you’ll ever see anywhere, ever. Briefly, in case you’re unfamiliar with it, Spring Awakening is an adaptation of an early 20th-century German proto-Expressionist play about what happens when adolescents don’t have anyone to talk to…
A nice independent community theater that’s stuck together for a few years in Flagstaff and the Valley has signed a lease on their own venue in historic downtown Glendale. Brelby Theatre Company, which is named for its founders, NAU grads Brian and Shelby Maticic, will open Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night (one…
Drew Carey, apparent time traveler, visits our epoch sporting a soul patch and performing sketch comedy that makes people remember when Saturday Night Live was good. We’re grateful — and we’re okay with having missed the part where he appeared crouching nude in the middle of Jackson Street during an…
Mercury up, attention span down. If therefore you crave a live version of the unfiltered, baffling behavior television brings you in spazzy little bursts, attend 7 Minutes in Heaven, the time-honored (yet always different) variety show from Space 55, presented each Saturday night this June. From the weird to the…
