With revolution, civil wars, and other continuing atrocities since 1964, some Zimbabweans almost miss the colonizing dimwits they overthrew. For our part, pondering the famine, oppression, violence, pestilence, and other tragic absurdities of Robert Mugabe’s Zimbabwe leaves us itching to fight the power through music and choreography. Seriously, art’s a…
The theater season has officially begun in our little cultural sweatbox, and that means more of the musicals have live orchestras again. This is great news, and it makes Theater Works’ current production of Camelot just that much less dreary. The score has great, popular, memorable songs that audience members…
Used to be, dude’d write a novel, lose the manuscript in a burglary, or burn it in an angst fit. Forget anyone besides Aunt Myrna ever reading it, either. But social media and print-on-demand have spawned viral lit (in the good, non-H1N1 way). See, these authors are just like us…
The setting sun’s pale, delicate fingers caressed the chain restaurants and MILFy boutiques of Mesa’s Village Square at Dana Park, illuminating the stragglers hurrying into the bookstore. Sure, thought Night & Day reporter Cal Byline, convicted murderers Dale Hausner and Sam Dieteman have been sentenced, but being out in the…
It’s been 25 years this summer since Denver talk-radio host Alan Berg was murdered in his own driveway by one of his white-supremacist anti-fans. Eric Bogosian’s 1987 play Talk Radio, partly based on Berg’s career, just opened at Chyro Arts Venue, serving an unsettling blend of nostalgia, activism, and respectable…
Every day since 1981, Rafe Esquith has faced an L.A. public schoolroom full of kids who nearly all live in poverty and speak a first language other than English. By the time fifth grade’s over for the day, Esquith’s students have studied algebra and music, timeless literature, and economic and…
Oh, my. 1960 (and what passed for groundbreaking then) was a very long time ago, wasn’t it? The longest-running musical ever in the whole world, The Fantasticks, manages to make that very clear while still demonstrating what made it so popular. (Some of that success has got to be mere…
I like music. I like theater. I’ve found that I even like musical theater at least some of the time. But the “revue” genre of theater is a kind of torture, as far as I’m concerned. I’d love to spend an evening listening to an excellent vocalist working through just…
Okay, Lisa Lampanelli, we’ve checked out your pretty new hair and glam frocks on Comedy Central roasts and your HBO Long Live the Queen special. We’re massively stoked about your upcoming memoir, Chocolate, Please! And we’re happy you’ve found love, even if it’s with a fat Italian club owner from…
First, a quick happy note: Childsplay has received donations of vehicle repair, maintenance, and a promotional color van wrap from Purcell Tire, FastSigns, and the reality show NASCAR Angels. This fabulous collection of valuable services will greatly benefit the award-winning professional children’s theater (which tours like a mofo so that…
“I started going to the library doing what most people do: looking at books,” says Phoenix photographer Peter Sills. “One of the things I noticed was the incredible northern light. It started to become my photo studio.” Hence the new “Peter Sills: Library Portraits” exhibit. Sills’ large color prints are…
“I started going to the library doing what most people do: looking at books,” says Phoenix photographer Peter Sills. “One of the things I noticed was the incredible northern light. It started to become my photo studio.” Hence the new “Peter Sills: Library Portraits 2009” exhibit. Sills’ large color prints…
So much bouncing. So much squealing. I love to watch young audiences. They’re better than the show — but that’s true even when the show is really good, like the productions of Great Arizona Puppets. And everybody quiets down and sits still when the lights change and Tinker Bell opens…
Man, if I had to choose between: a. making a living in the arts by presenting plotless musical revues and exploitive, offensive, witless bedroom farces andb. not making a living in the arts at all, I’d probably sit up a lot with insomnia. To be fair, audiences who love this stuff skeeve me out way…
I get it when theaters want to make sure we know that something like Rent or Les Mis has been cleaned up and squooshed down for young performers and young audiences, but I don’t think anyone had to stick the word “KIDS” on the title of a stage musical based…
For an artist, finding the medium you were destined to work in is like finding a soul mate or the perfect home. John Modzelewski had been creating art for many years when he discovered his affinity for fused glass. Now he’s all about the heat, color, and light, whipping out…
For an artist, finding the medium you were destined to work in is like finding a soul mate or the perfect home. John Modzelewski had been creating art for many years when he discovered his affinity for fused glass. Now he’s all about the heat, color, and light, whipping out…
Martha J. Clarke and the costume shop of Arizona Broadway Theatre have done it again. From the cowboy-print pajamas on little brother Randolph to the huge, crinolined confections on the wives and mothers, ABT’s Bye Bye Birdie is a vinyl overnight bag crammed with the ginchiest Barbie and Ken outfits…
We want our belongings to work as hard as we do. That wish sometimes clashes, gladiator-like, with artists’ urge to make art that does not, on the surface, seem to offer such immediate usefulness. But not at MADE art boutique, where daily inventory and scheduled exhibits both show off what…
You may not realize it, but we have a Hale Centre Theatre in the Valley because a nice young couple, Ruth and Nathan Hale, moved from Salt Lake City to the L.A. area in 1943 and discovered they could get more acting work if they opened their own theater. The…
Stephen Sondheim is not America’s most hummable, road-trip-sing-alongy composer (unless you run with a really esoteric crowd). He’s known for polyphony, occasional purposeful dissonance, and using meter and rhythm to reinforce subject matter and plot developments — sometimes even writing songs that sound like a pointillist painting (Sunday in the…
You think the Wild West is as dead as the Clanton gang? Well, you may change your mind after hearing the tale of Miracle Valley, located in Cochise County, Arizona. The town was founded in 1958 by pioneering television evangelist A.A. Allen. In 1979, the Christ Miracle Healing Center and…
