Folks who’ve been following local theater for any amount of time hear Equity actor Angelica Howland’s name and think of her performances in The Yellow Boat at Childsplay. Or her turn in Quills at In Mixed Company. Or one of her personal favorites: as the sexy ingénue in The Vibrator…
Fans of the Ritz Carlton’s tony Bistro 24 are perhaps still sniffling over the loss of that landmark lunch and dinner spot. But The Camby, the new resident of the still-upscale hotel purchased last December by Marriott International, hopes the culinary talents of chef Dushyant Singh will help us forget…
It was heartbreak that led Lenard Rubin, the executive chef at the Country Club at DC Ranch, to the culinary arts. “I had a girlfriend in Rhode Island who was going to school in Boston,” he recalls of his college days. “I got a job in Boston at the Ritz,…
Daniel Schay cornered me at a cocktail party a few years ago. Usually, encounters between myself and theater people don’t go well, and often involve a thespian telling me how disappointed they are in my recent critique of their work. But not Dan, who died suddenly last Thursday. Dan wanted…
To create his film Rwanda and Juliet, Canadian filmmaker Ben Proudfoot traveled to Kigali with a movie crew and a plan. There, they followed Andrew Garrod, a former Dartmouth College professor and the co-founder of a decades-old group called Youth Bridge Global that mounts Shakespeare productions in hopes of inspiring…
In the first scene of this three-act play — call it Who’s Afraid of Alternative Theater? or maybe Revenge of Master Ronald and the Boys — we find thespian game-changer Ron May standing in the dusty courtyard of a big, shiny, downtown playhouse. Circled by a small group of well-wishers, he is smoking…
All season, I’ve been counting the weeks until Arizona Theatre Company’s production of John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men, which opened on Saturday and runs through mid-April. Despite my anticipation, I was not, by and large, disappointed. Steinbeck wrote the adaption of his 1937 novella that same year, when it…
I am listening to my Patty Duke records. I have everything she ever recorded for United Artists Records: Seven albums and six singles, all from the mid- and late 1960s, each groove a testament to the fact that this talented actress, who died yesterday at age 69, just plain couldn’t…
If Stray Cat Theatre’s new production of Stupid Fucking Bird wasn’t so thrilling to behold, one might entertain oneself trying to figure out where Aaron Posner’s story ends, and where Chekhov’s The Seagull, to which it (sort of) pays homage, begins. Or perhaps to figure out how many plays-within-a-play this…
Nick Salerno liked to tell people he grew up in the dark. When he was a boy, Nick and his mother, a Sicilian immigrant, walked twice a week to the Cine Capri movie house together. She was there to improve her English by listening to American actors speak. Nick was…
Just inside the front door of my house is a small library table that’s home to a short stack of books I have no intention of ever reading. I am not interested in Hendrik Willem Van Loon’s handsomely bound memoirs, published in Bombay in 1942. I don’t care to read…
The publisher’s subtitle appended to prosecutor Juan Martinez’s new book, Conviction: The Untold Story of Putting Jodi Arias Behind Bars (William Morrow, $26.99) is only partly true. Much of what Martinez reports in this just-published hardcover was widely covered in this internationally ballyhooed case, which resulted in Arias being convicted…
It’s bad enough that spring has once again reneged on its scheduled appearance; that Cher has cancelled her latest farewell tour; that the Stones have limited their summer concerts to Latin American cities only. Phoenix will just have to make due with Casper’s Nap Tour, which stops here this week…
Fans of local talent, Saturday Night Live, and Phoenix’s SAS Fabrics store at long last have a cinematic place to meet: Aidy Bryant’s new short film, Darby Forever. Phoenix native Bryant, now in her third season as an SNL regular, plays Darby, a winsome loser who clerks in a sleepy,…
The man behind this week’s cleverly titled OUTLOUD: More Stories from the Gayborhood insists there’s still relevance in a gay-specific plays festival. “There’s less of a need to be on a soapbox about gay rights these days,” says the event’s organizer, journalist Richard Schultz. “But there are still points of view about…
“It’s taken me until the age of 45 to frame these stories about my life so they don’t have control over me,” says storyteller Molly McCloy about Mad Dog Grudges, her first-ever solo show. McCloy, a Phoenix native, will present the 45-minute spoken word piece at the Trunk Space this…
Some time ago, I adopted a rule about not reviewing theater students while they’re learning their craft. But last fall, I bumped into actor/director Pamela Fields, who told me about the upcoming production of Lasso of Truth she was directing at ASU. Fields made it sound so interesting, I resolved…
If you’re a grown-up person who has not recently been diagnosed with a mental disorder, and you’ve gone out in public in your pajamas, you need to know two things. First of all, you look like an idiot, and secondly, stop doing this. Immediately. Wearing pj’s in public is not…
They schlep food to and fro. They explain the meaning of al dente. They clean up after your kid, who left behind a giant pile of cracker crumbs. Here, in hopes of making you appear less ridiculous to restaurant waiters, are eight stupid things you should never ask your server…
Editor’s note: Longtime New Times contributor Robrt Pela is a volunteer with the VNSA and shares his behind-the-scenes experiences with the annual book sale in this essay. I’m always forgetting myself and putting an inner apple box where an outer citrus box goes. Or sticking an Isaac Asimov novel in the Fiction…
New year, new you — new hobbies. In the 2016 edition of Project PHX, our annual how-to guide, we’re here to help with DIY projects that range from doable to dreamy. Learn how to build a tiny house and make your own chocolate. Become an embroidery artist, publish your first…
The DIY movement isn’t going anywhere but up. Popularized in the middle of the last century, do-it-yourself was then all about craft and small construction projects. Today, DIY has a broader meaning. Upcycling isn’t just practical, it’s conscientious and fashionable. Your ability to make an end table from an old…
