Cool Kat

What does a renowned tattoo artist and television star who’s dating a heavy-metal icon do for an encore? Why, she writes a book, of course. Kat Von D, star of the wildly popular TLC series Miami Ink and its even more popular follow-up, LA Ink, has, er, inked High Voltage…

Bless Our Homo

It seems, somehow, a little late in the game for another film about the religious condemnation of homosexuality. But while Daniel Karslake’s documentary For the Bible Tells Me So makes the usual points — about whether God censures gay relationships; whether the Bible actually even addresses the subject; whether gays…

Death on Two Legs

Jason Webley used to stage his own theatrical death each Halloween — until a couple of years ago, when he announced that he would no longer die each autumn and would instead live year-round, singing about death and drinking in venues large and small. The former Seattle busker, who travels…

Rabbit Hole at the Herberger Dumbs Down Death

I kept thinking about John Lennon as I watched Actors Theatre of Phoenix’s Rabbit Hole the other night. Specifically, about how Paul McCartney was widely quoted as having said simply, “What a drag!” upon learning that his friend and former collaborator had died. I was mindful of this because that…

First Christian Church is a Real Frank Lloyd Wright

I’d always assumed that the peculiar church on Seventh Avenue was a Frank Lloyd Wright knockoff, one of dozens of acclaimed buildings around town that are politely referred to as “homages” because they ape Wright’s trademark concrete-and-stone stylings. But it turns out that this prettily peculiar building is that rarest…

Through the Looking Glass, Lightly

Its plot, in summary, sounds like the synopsis of a Lifetime TV movie. Its accolades, which include a 2007 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, give it a sheen of “importance.” But what’s significant about David Lindsay-Abaire’s Rabbit Hole is not its honors or its ability to rise above what sounds like…

Landmark Victory

You think you know Phoenix until you see it through Jason Hill’s eyes: the Luhrs Tower, the Westward Ho, the Rosson House, and especially the artist’s color-saturated image of the Phoenix Financial Center all bring our fair city into brighter, sharper contrast. Hill’s vibrant, handcrafted prints combine photography and paint…

Hollywood Ending

Fans of Tinseltown tripe may be disappointed by “The Last Mile: An Exhibition of Rare and Private Photographs by Barbara McQueen” exhibit. While it offers a behind-the-scenes look at the personal life of a Hollywood legend, it doesn’t show celebrated leading man Steve McQueen bedding babes or snarling at paparazzi…

Art Detour 2009

For proof that art lovers are about more than schmoozing and sipping cheap wine from plastic glasses, one need look no further than Art Detour, the free, self-guided tour of downtown artist studios, galleries, and art-friendly businesses. Now in its 21st year, the Phoenix tradition, which typically draws upwards of…

Look Homeward, Fallen Angel

Thomas Wolfe was apparently mistaken: You can go home again. But if you do, terrible things may well befall you, as happens to Bruce Graham’s fictional Deke Winters, a former high-powered lawyer who’s recently lost his wife and all his money. In Graham’s play Minor Demons, Deke has scampered back…

28 is Enough

It’s tough to look away from a story that begins, “I was one of twenty-eight children born to my dad and his three wives.” So commences Flora Jessop’s Church of Lies, in which the former member of the Fundamentalist Church of Latter-day Saints details the horrors of indoctrination and child…

Landmark Victory

You think you know Phoenix until you see it through Jason Hill’s eyes: the Luhrs Tower, the Westward Ho, the Rosson House, and especially the artist’s color-saturated image of the Phoenix Financial Center all bring our fair city into brighter, sharper contrast. Hill’s vibrant, handcrafted prints combine photography and paint…

Sub Pop

In the late Fifties and early Sixties, a handful of artists — most notably, Edward Hopper, Roy Lichtenstein, and Andy Warhol — elevated Pop Art and became its acclaimed leaders. Among them was James Gill, whose work was the first of the group’s to be hung in major museums and…

Sub Pop

In the late Fifties and early Sixties, a handful of artists — most notably, Edward Hopper, Roy Lichtenstein, and Andy Warhol — elevated Pop Art and became its acclaimed leaders. Among them was James Gill, whose work was the first of the group’s to be hung in major museums and…

Middle Age Crazy

Today, getting someone’s attention is all about texting and tweeting and maybe starting a rumor about the size of certain of one’s organs. But in the mid-19th century, it was fashion that caught the eye of a potential paramour. Medievalism — also known as Gothic style — is celebrated in…

Black and Blue

Eleven-year-old Pecola Breedlove is a young, black girl growing up in Ohio in the 1940s. But she’d like very much to be someone else. She prays that her eyes will turn blue, which will mean she’s no longer a poor, neglected black girl who’s carrying her father’s baby. She wishes…

Turn the Other Sheik

Head’s up: Duncan Sheik is coming to town. But the singer/songwriter won’t be performing his ’90s radio hits “Barely Breathing” and “Half-Life” this time out. Instead, he’ll be playing songs from his colossal, Tony-winning Spring Awakening, the Broadway tuner adapted from Frank Wedekind’s controversial 19th-century play, for which Sheik and…

Surburban Gothic

The Apocalypse nears. The new baby is coming. And one of the neighbors won’t keep his damn dog off the freaking lawn. This is Clay Stilts’ story, as told by playwright Matt Pelfrey in his stirring (and, according to one critic, “gruesomely hilarious”) black comedy about the horrors of suburbia…

Of Human Bondage

Should African-Americans cling to the legacy of slavery as part of their identity or should they distance themselves from this shameful, victim-identified chapter of their history? Thomas Gibbons’ A House with No Walls, in a co-production by iTheatre Collaborative and ASU, explores this conflict by juxtaposing a fictionalized, present-day story…