Although its title suggests that architect Will Bruder has either branched out into science fiction or has flipped his award-winning lid, “Will Bruder: Notes on Making a Time Machine” is in fact a lecture about architecture, not time travel. Specifically, it’s about Bruder’s keen design for the Deer Valley Rock…
The Wallachs have a problem. The fact that their teenaged daughter, Rose, is rebelling is certainly no surprise; what teenager doesn’t? But her parents are Marxists who have devoted themselves to opposing McCarthyism, anti-Semitism, and the exploitation of the working class with equal zeal. But Rose finds her parents’ ideologies…
Beatrice Moore is feeling a little anxious. As the September 4 opening of her Kooky Krafts Shop draws near, she’s worried not that no one will show up to buy her chenille wreaths and wildly colorful piñatas, nor that her supply won’t meet the almost inevitable demand for her always…
The funniest thing I saw the other night at Broadway Palm Dinner Theatre wasn’t up on stage, but rather in the men’s room. As I stood in the lavatory stall, relinquishing the two gin-and-tonics that had made getting through another cheeseball musical slightly less painful, I noticed a butter knife…
Former Phoenix mayor Terry Goddard will undoubtedly be reminding us in the near future that it was he who finally managed to revitalize our long-sagging downtown, which is once again the vital and vibrant center of our city. In the meantime, we have Phillip VanderMeer, who will present “The Collapse…
This is what we’ve come to: In order to have worship happen, it must be made convenient. Church attendance is down; prayer meetings are graced by fewer folks each week. And so Matt Myers, the associate pastor of Chandler Christian Church, has launched something called Drive Thru Prayer, which is…
I went to a psychic the other day. Not because I happen to believe that there are people who can see into the future or can tell you the names of your dead childhood pets simply by looking at the palm of your hand. Because I don’t. I didn’t go…
You’re a loser who can’t sleep, so what do you do? Listen to the nighttime shock jock on your local AM station. You listen just long enough to get pissed off, because this asshole gets paid to say stupid things in between pappy pop songs, and you know it. You’re…
I’m not a big Rent fan. I know: It’s a musical theater milestone; it single-handedly revived the sung-through musical; its monster success here and abroad introduced a whole new generation to musical theater. It won the Pulitzer Prize, four Tony awards, and a half-dozen Drama Desk Awards. Blah blah blah…
It’s messy, this Tomatina festival. Not the one being celebrated at Flamenco! . . . the Studio on Saturday, August 22, but rather the traditional version celebrated in Spain, which involves the throwing of tomatoes at revelers who attend. Flamenco! has re-imagined the festival’s traditions by hosting a cook-off at…
David Mamet has been rather widely referred to as a misogynist, and Theatre Artists Studio has set out to consider the question. With David Mamet — Mothers, Daughters and Other Loves?, a festival of scenes and monologues from Mamet’s plays, the company places a spotlight on Mamet’s complex, lovingly crafted…
It’s a wonder I haven’t driven off the road and straight into a lamppost by now. I’ve spent my entire adult life craning my neck at passing buildings as I drive by — buildings I’ve seen a hundred times; buildings I know I’m about to pass and that won’t have…
Mimi is a drug-addicted whore. Roger is a rocker. Angel is a drag queen. Perhaps most shocking of all, Angel’s boyfriend is a former MIT professor. And Mark Cohen is trying to get them all onto film, because Mark is a wannabe filmmaker who hopes to become a famous movie…
If anything good has come from Sheriff Joe’s tyranny, it’s the art being created in response. The latest creative commentary to surface is New Carpa Theater Company’s The Tears of Lives, a play by James E. Garcia, directed by Luis Avila. It tells the tale of fictional Regino Ortega, an…
Even if the largely teenage cast of bare: A Musical hadn’t succeeded in really selling this rather stunning story of naughty Catholic school kids, it would have appeared that they had. That’s because the audience for Aperio Productions’ loud, rowdy show screamed with joy after every number, as if they…
Don’t tell Los Angeles — they’ll be pissed — but there’s a new documentary that details the ways in which its modern-art scene came of age in the Fifties and Sixties. If Angelenos are annoyed by The Cool School: How LA Learned to Love Modern Art, it’ll only be because…
This is a story in which something marvelous happens. It’s a story about how, not long ago, a bunch of bright, talented people came together to create a project both beautiful and useful. This is also a story about how that beautiful, useful project, not too long after it was…
There’s loss, then there’s the childhood loss of a sibling, which, according to filmmaker Perry Allen, comes with peculiar complications. Besides the usual grief, there’s guilt (“Why not me?”), the loss of companionship, and the restructuring of the family dynamic. Allen explores childhood grieving and the loss of his brother…
Terry Helland, director of Desert Stages Theatre’s Jekyll and Hyde, took the stage just before curtain. “This show is the most difficult I’ve ever worked on,” he announced cheerfully. “But I think I got a handle on it.” That didn’t seem likely, somehow. Directors typically produce crap and think it’s…
It used to be that knowing who Jade Esteban Estrada was was like wearing a ball gown to the grocery store – it meant you were gay. But ever since NBC News dubbed him “America’s Prince of Pride” (presumably, the network meant “Gay Pride”), Estrada’s star has been on the…
Bare: The Musical is not about getting naked. Instead of tits and ass, this contemporary tuner offers tightly wound commentary about the influence of Catholicism and the evils of peer pressure in the modern world. Its story concerns a cadre of Catholic boarding-school students who tunefully attempt to fight the…
Who was worse, the Wicked Witch of the West or Stalin? According to author Suzanne Ross, one was as bad as the other. Ross is in town to promote her new book The Wicked Truth: When Good People Do Bad Things, based on the smash musical Wicked, a road-show version…
