b royalty, 37, painter, day-care artist and self- proclaimed mediocre violinist, says she paints “to make me visible to myself.” Visible to the rest of us are her enormous talents, via the oil-and-collage paintings that have brought her almost instant recognition in the fickle art world. Royalty’s texture-heavy, color-saturated paintings…
Screw Willy Wonka. Colin Redding is our very own chocolate wizard, a man with his own candy factory who’s willing to make a 40-foot dildo out of chocolate (although he’d rather not). He’s even pulling a Wonka by sneaking golden tickets into chocolate bars sold at Changing Hands Bookstore (ticket…
Until scientists master the secret to immortality, local businessman-jock-turned-philanthropist Bill Wohl has the answer: Donating your organs (and therefore your DNA) is a good way of stayin’ alive. Granted, you won’t be entirely yourself, but your affection for chicken wings might well live on if you leave your eyes or…
We’re a town lousy with theater awards: the ariZonis, the Scotties, the Milties and the Tilties. Chris Page at the Tribune has his Spotlight Awards, and even Mark Turvin hands out something called The Fishy Awards, which sounds sort of — well, you can finish that thought yourself, can’t you?…
Just when you think you’ve seen everything Phoenix has to offer, someone drives you down to the warehouse district and walks you through a towering maze of boxes stuffed with papier-mâché teapots, tiny plastic feet, and soaring stacks of grosgrain. And there, deep in the swamp-cooled bowels of Diane Ribbon…
I envy people whose favorite television show is something well-written or intelligent. My cousin John loves The Mary Tyler Moore Show; my sister has seen every episode of The Dick Van Dyke Show a dozen times each. Even my mechanic favors smarty-pants programs like Seinfeld and Curb Your Enthusiasm. I,…
High on the list of life’s great mysteries, way up near “Why do we wait until a pig is dead to cure it?” and “Why do women sometimes shave off their eyebrows and then draw them back on?” is this one: “Why does dinner theater always suck so bad?” On…
I won’t add my voice to the cacophony of complaints about the gratuitous nudity forever on display at Nearly Naked Theatre, in part because I don’t care, but also because it’s bad form to bitch that the players are undraped when we’ve been warned ahead of time. The name of…
“He’s pretty heavy,” Diane Putnam says of her late husband, Gary. “But I’m used to toting him around.” She’s talking about the big-as-a-brick box containing Gary’s ashes that she’s kept with her since he died six years ago after a brief battle with cancer. But there was a week late…
Ah, progress. It’s given us better medicine, faster computers, tastier snack cakes. But often as not, progress in Phoenix involves the obliteration of our already tenuous local history. And while we’ve grown used to city landmarks being torn down to make room for another Osco, we’ve learned to rely on…
Last Wednesday night, while the rest of America was watching Bo and Carrie duke it out in the final hour of American Idol, I was watching a room full of singers on a different stage. And thinking that maybe I’ve been watching too much television lately, because Phoenix Theatre’s production…
I’d like to meet the jerk-off who decided that founding a city in the middle of the desert was a good idea. I’ve been gunning for this guy (because it has to have been a man — no woman would be stupid enough to set up housekeeping inside a kiln)…
In front of a movie theater, far, far away, a family sits and waits. Dad is chatting with some cyber buddies, and Mom is reading. She reaches over and smoothes the hair of her youngest, who’s playing a video game on her cell phone. Nearby, her two oldest enact a…
It happened again the other day. I was asked what I do for a living and, when I confessed that I’m a theater critic, I got the same response I’ve been getting for years. “Is there enough theater in Phoenix for you to cover?” That’s the polite version. I’ve also…
Two women kiss on a deserted Manhattan street, and the consequences of that kiss change their lives forever. Diana Son’s Stop Kiss burnishes a brief moment in the lives of ordinary people, making it memorable with smart dialogue and familiar personalities. And Stray Cat Theatre once again rises to the…
It’s 10 a.m. Do you know where your cats are? According to Nohl Rosen, they’re probably crapped out in front of the television, enjoying reruns of Seinfeld while you’re at work. Rosen is co-owner and co-operator of Cat Galaxy, a Scottsdale-based Internet radio and TV station for cats that broadcasts…
I arrive early at America West Arena and feel especially imbecilic telling the parking attendant that I’m there “to see the gorilla.” But I’m apparently the only one who finds this foolish. “He’s expecting you,” she tells me without a hint of irony. “Please tell him hello for me.” Inside,…
I love hate mail. Next to the envelope that arrives at my home each week filled with what screenwriter Joseph Mankiewicz once called “the most restful shade of green,” getting hate mail is the best part of my job. I’m nuts for letters written by angry actors whose work I’ve…
Gifted playwright alert: Donald Margulies is in town, or at least one of his better plays is, in time to help wind up what’s turned out to be a mediocre season and to remind us of what we’d have lost if the troubled Actors Theatre had succumbed to its recent…
Wendy Cashaback is wearing a stiff upper lip these days. She’s also wearing a tiny Danskin dress and flashing a warm smile at everyone who visits her shop, even that creepy guy over by the sex lotions who’s been admiring the fur-lined handcuffs for way too long. When Creepy Guy…
I knew it was going to be a long night when Koko! The Island Adventures of Miss Koko Neufchatel began with the show’s lone actor dragging a couple of audience members onto the stage to wish them happy birthday. Note to local directors: Theater is not Chuck E. Cheese’s, and…
Even before its publication, Phoenix author Martha Beck’s Leaving the Saints: How I Lost the Mormons and Found My Faith was causing cramps among Latter-day Saints around the globe. In the memoir, Beck, a life coach and columnist for O, The Oprah Magazine, depicts sacred Mormon ceremonies and accuses her…
