You may not find her in Ethel Merman drag ever again, but you might bump into playwright Patricia Kane when she’s dressed in karate whites and muttering French conjugations to herself. Barring that, you can find her play, Pulp, at Stray Cat Theatre this week and next. I knew I…

I stumbled across her about two years ago, when a detour on I-17 dumped me onto the slatternly mess that is Washington Street at Black Canyon Highway. Stuck in traffic slowed to a crawl, I was distracted by her bosomy façade and the wide, corset-like turret she wore wrapped around…

Fans of the Mike Nichols film Closer may be disappointed with the superior stage version on which it’s based, now playing at ChyroArts Venue. The 2004 movie, which starred Julia Roberts, Clive Owen, Jude Law, and Natalie Portman, featured a watered-down ending with no twist, and its key plot differences…

What do Oscar-winning screenwriters do between films? They make little plays, apparently. One such diminutive dramedy is John Patrick Shanley’s The Dreamer Examines His Pillow, an oddball skewering of infidelity, spousal abuse, and the vagaries of love. Shanley, who won an Academy Award for his Moonstruck script in 1987, pits…

The stage, during a performance of 9 Parts of Desire, is crowded with Heather Raffo. She’s alone up there, but the American/Iraqi actress is surrounded by the many women she’s created in this one-woman show. Raffo’s characters, all Iraqi women whose lives have been impacted in different ways by the…

I learned to ride a bicycle when I was 34 years old. I don’t recall now why I refused to learn as a child, although my father remembers that I thought bike-riding was “childish,” which sounds like something I might have said when I was 5 or 6; I was…

Director Joanna Settle is the other woman behind playwright/actor Heather Raffo’s acclaimed 9 Parts of Desire as well as a slew of other award-winning productions. She has Genet to blame for this, but takes full responsibility for her troubled relationship with schnapps. I knew I wanted to be in show…

It’s that time of year again. People who normally never travel south of Camelback will be heading downtown for Art Detour, where they’ll ogle art and artists in a tour of galleries and work studios; a subdivision-free milieu that many suburbanites consider with some small amount of fear. Folks visiting…

It may have been inspired by Euripides’ ancient commentaries on masks and false identities, but Carlos Murillo’s dark play or stories for boys is as contemporary as the Internet. In fact, Murillo’s story is about the Internet, or at least set there, in a creepy drama inspired by the true…

Poor Melvyn. His daily walk, which usually doesn’t amount to much more than waving at or chatting up his neighbors, is today filled with crises and mayhem. Plus, it’s really hot out, since Melvyn lives in Phoenix. The PG-13 film Melvyn’s Clock is the work of Tennessee-based husband-and-wife filmmakers Jon…

Reginald Rose’s Twelve Angry Men was already a loud, furious play, adapted from the author’s 1950s television script, before director Scott Ellis got hold of it. In Ellis’ production, which began life four years ago at Manhattan’s Roundabout Theatre, the director turns up the volume on what is essentially an…

At last, there’s a reason to be glad for the crummy housing market here, and for the lack of awareness among Phoenicians about our local architectural history. Both of these misfortunes led Brad Jannenga to a formidable real estate score when he recently bought architect Ralph Haver’s old house over…