The Scottsdale Culinary Festival’s still going strong in its 34th year. Let’s not discuss putting everything end to end (because most of it would have gone bad by now), but that’s beaucoup bites and slurps of yummy stuff. On Thursday, April 19, check out Bubbles and Bliss, a champagne-infused cocktail…
It’s no one’s fault but my own (okay, and maybe that of the design of Actors Theatre’s promo poster below) that I’d really hoped Annie Baker’s Body Awareness would delve deeply into the topic of body acceptance even while being funny, moving, and well-acted. It doesn’t in particular. For example,…
Some of us yahoos have to take it for granted that 18th-century composer Christoph Willibald Gluck made important advances in the art of opera — it’s all Greek to us. It was also largely Greek to Gluck, who frequently drew inspiration from the enduring mythology of those heathen Hellenes, from…
During The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, we couldn’t stop visualizing our skinny little ex-co-worker Kay. You see things in your head when you read literature, right? No? Come on, we’re not the only one. Well, um, at least we know that Center Dance Ensemble is in our boat, because…
Isabel Allende’s trippy, political, multigenerational 1982 novel The House of the Spirits is a good match for the highly visual, dreamlike, multimedia aesthetic of ASU Theatre and Film professor Rachel Bowditch, who directs a stage adaptation of the book that runs through Sunday, April 15. The passionate strength of the…
Before audiobooks, before books of any kind, we humans delighted in the oral tradition — of storytelling, that is. (Other delights are, shall we say, another story.) And we still revel in a well-told tale passed through generations and across cultures. South Mountain Community College is the only Arizona school…
Some great works of literature are challenging to read, even if you enjoy reading fiction. And sometimes an excellent film or play can introduce you to an enjoyable book or author you might not otherwise have happened upon. But I’m afraid that the effect of Arizona Theatre Company’s production of…
You’re gonna feel like a noob if the town of Maricopa’s eighth annual Salsa Festival is your first, but you’ll be an excited, happy noob, enjoying samples from amateur and pro chefs vying for cash prizes awarded to Best Overall, Mild, Hot, and Unusual recipes for the spicy slush, for…
In our younger and more vulnerable years our father gave us some advice that we’ve been turning over in our mind ever since. Other than that, we hang with our friends, dancing, drinking hooch, and rebelling. ’Cause women have the vote now. F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Jazz-Age novel The Great Gatsby…
Huzzah for massive unemployment! Along with fine weather and site upgrades, it promises a hearty turnout of pre-registered participants in Estrella War XXVIII, who’ll start arriving Tuesday, March 27, and pack it in on Monday, April 2. Day visitors are also welcome, even in modern dress, Thursday through Sunday. If…
As Schoolhouse Rock! taught us, “Three is a magic number.” The proof’s in the pudding of what happens when you travel or, God forbid, live with two of your friends — if it’s not unanimous, someone always loses. Then there’s that tipping-point tension — no spare legs to keep the…
Ignite Collaborative Arts states that their group exists partly to let artists from different disciplines work together and inspire one another, and that is perhaps the greatest accomplishment of The Shadows Inside: Exploring Lust, Fear, Delusion, & Misery, a compilation of dance works they’re presenting at PHX:fringe. The dancers are…
For six years, the ASU Herberger College of Design and the Arts’ School of Theatre and Film has worked with the Tumbleweed Phoenix Youth Resource Center to bring the benefits of the arts into the lives of homeless and at-risk youth. For the past four years, the Center’s clients have…
You should know that the pleated, bejeweled part of Paisley Yankolovich’s costume in this photo is a vibrant, mother-of-the-groom royal blue. The rest of his clothing is black. This combo, in the manner of Proust’s madeleines, will recall the ubiquitous leggings, baggy sweaters, and big hair of 1985 for anyone…
Oakland, California’s AlulA Ensemble proves with their PHX:fringe show, Tight Assets, that you can be kind of up your own ass about your art and still make things that people want to see. For all the crunchy, first-world-problems tweeness of their vision statement and CVs, they’re a solid, hard-working, entertaining…
PHX:fringe update: Phoenix’s own Space 55 production of Night of the Chicken 2: The Rise of Aunt Lulu was added to the Fringe schedule. It’s a live-radio-broadcast-style show by local playwright Carrie Behrens that’s suitable for the whole family. The final performance is tomorrow, Saturday, March 10, at 8:30 p.m…
BlackPoet Ventures is a Valley institution. They present fascinating, quality performance work that frequently mixes the disciplines of poetry, drama, dance, and music to impart a rounded image of African-American culture and its role models. BPV’s Cool Like That: A Tribute to Miles Davis is a painstakingly researched, lovingly presented…
Theatre in My Basement’s PHX:fringe show might not be the same show I saw Sunday, March 4. Or it might be the same. That’s because, according to the company, whether they present Twitch or Eclypse [sic] or Kassandra depends on “the whims of the audience and the performers.” Now, the…
Actors Alchemy is a group of Valley performers who allegedly get together every week and work on their craft. This is a good thing. Plenty of acting teachers charge money, and some of them deserve to, but you can accomplish a lot in a cooperative with your peers, too, while…
Phoenix Center for the Arts is right in the middle of building an elevator. It isn’t finished yet, though, so please keep in mind that unless you can get up stairs somehow, you won’t be able to attend any PHX:fringe performances that are scheduled in PCA’s studio, which is on…
Minority troops had seen a lot by the time they came home from World War II, and the status quo became a no-go, lighting a fire under the civil rights movement’s ass. The soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines also defended their country heroically, sometimes without even being citizens of the…
Phoenix is fortunate to be home to plenty of awesome poets who are unfamous and, often, nearly jobless — we get to enjoy them while they still have time for us. But when you’re in the mood for a little hoity-toity crème de la crème, you can’t get much creamier…
