The setup: Madcap, whirlwind, and sexy, the farce is the perfect form of theater to revive the pants off of during recovery from an economic recession. As I recall, if you do it right, an illicit relationship can be one of the most affordable diversions (“We can’t go out; people…
The curtains open tonight for the Dance Graduate Choreographic Presentations, a series of performances by groups of graduate dancers from ASU’s Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts. The performances showcase everything from modern dance and pointe to a little dance theater, and, based on what we saw during a…
The setup: Three American cities have hosted “tryout” productions this season of National Pastime, a new musical with an interesting little history and a super-adorable, relatively plausible premise. Its creators continue to project optimism about its suitability for Broadway, or at least they did before it opened at Theater Works…
Mesa Encore Theatre announced last week that it will receive the 2014 Twink Lynch Organizational Achievement Award from the American Association of Community Theatre on Saturday, June 21, during AACTWorldFest in Venice, Florida. This is a pretty big deal. Though only a few Valley theaters are members of AACT, the…
Amy Schumer is taking her Backdoor Tour to Celebrity Theatre tomorrow night. And if you haven’t already shelled out $38.50 for the 8 p.m. show, you might want to get on that. The unfiltered, unapologetic comedienne of all things sexual and unspoken has quickly become one of the most talked…
The setup: For The [SIC] Sense’s third show in its new home in the Basement Theatre at Phoenix Center for the Arts, the sketch comedy troupe takes a break from transitioning new cast members in and welcomes back Kristie Cowles, a one-woman ninja patrol of comic anarchy. About half of…
When we heard that Performance in the Borderlands was teaming up with ASU Deer Valley Rock Art Center once again, with the added collaboration of ASU’s Gammage’s BEYOND series, we knew there was cause for celebration. In an event scheduled for the end of this month, Japanese performance artists Eiko…
After what seemed like a very long time, Phoenix Theatre’s production of Pippin stopped shrieking and wiggling its collective hips, and shuddered to a close. Meanwhile, we — an audience made up mostly of “people of a certain age” — endured a lifeless rip-off of Cirque du Soleil staged by…
In our groundhog-free city, the astronomically defined season of spring can still be rather delightful, even if the weather doesn’t feel that much different from autumn or even winter. Skies are blue, everything smells good (well, better than usual, anyway), and our typically understated vegetation is at its greenest, fluffiest…
After what seemed like a very long time, Phoenix Theatre’s production of Pippin stopped shrieking and wiggling its collective hips, and shuddered to a close. Meanwhile, we — an audience made up mostly of “people of a certain age” — endured a lifeless rip-off of Cirque du Soleil staged by…
The Hormel Festival of New Plays and Musicals at Phoenix Theatre gives theatergoers a rare opportunity to check out new plays and musicals in the works and to offer insight to the directors, actors, and producers on how that particular work could improve. With a range of themes and styles,…
The setup: Like Danny, the hero of his currently popular play The Submission, writer Jeff Talbott is a Yale Drama School grad who’s finished a handful of full-length scripts that haven’t really gone anywhere — until now. (Talbott does have a festival reading of his newest work, A Public Education,…
The setup: In her diverse 30+-year career, writer-comedian-educator-activist Monica Palacios, a.k.a. the Surfer Chola, has not written a whole lot of plays (though she’s helped others make hundreds of theater pieces) — she’s more of a lecturer, standup/solo performance artist, blogger, essayist, and magazine-style journalista making queer Latinahood something that’s…
Andy Kindler speaks his mind, often at length and with great detail. “I’m famous for my long-winded responses,” the comedian, known for his recurring roles on Bob’s Burgers, Wizards of Waverly Place, Everybody Loves Raymond, says laughing. Kindler is a stand-up vet. A joke-teller for nearly three decades, he often…
The setup: 1949’s South Pacific, based on a few of the stories in James Michener’s Tales of the South Pacific, is Rodgers & Hammerstein’s third big show to completely change the face of the American musical (a genre that typically had made even less sense before). Instantly both a blockbuster…
Jomar Mesquita’s Dolores begins with a lone woman, arms outstretched and eyes closed, spinning in circles around the stage. Her full red skirt billows out around her thighs as the dulcet tones of “Cucurrucucu Paloma” gently waft over the audience. I was pretty much sold from the start. The Brazilian-based…
“Getting older makes me a better artist,” says playwright Monica Palacios, with absolutely no irony. “The stories I’m telling now I couldn’t have told 20 years ago.” Palacios’ latest story, Clock, is about to open at Teatro Bravo. Directed by ASU’s Marivel Danielson, Clock tells the story of a Latina…
The setup: Since 2014 began, it seems we theatergoers have faced down an awful lot of family dysfunction depicted on Valley stages — especially if you count The Taming of the Shrew and Macbeth, which one probably should. You ought to hang in there for one more real masterpiece, though…
Several nice plays opened here last weekend. What’s more, there was a lot of chatter among theater types about the bazillion or so dollars donated to one of our local playhouses. But if culturally minded people remember anything about Valentine’s weekend, 2014, it will be this: That was the weekend…
Several nice plays opened here last weekend. What’s more, there was a lot of chatter among theater types about the bazillion or so dollars donated to one of our local playhouses. But if culturally minded people remember anything about Valentine’s weekend, 2014, it will be this: That was the weekend…
The setup: Not everything that takes the Manhattan theater scene by storm (besides the polar vortex) is a musical extravaganza or a heavy, thoughtful, or surreal drama. One of the hottest tickets right now is C. Denby Swanson’s The Norwegians, a fairly ridiculous short comedy that opened off-off-Broadway at The…
The setup: Nina Raine’s thought-provoking Tribes, about a typically troubled family whose deaf adult son, Billy, illuminates further hurt when he discovers the Deaf community he’s been denied, has been acclaimed since it premièred in London in 2010. Winner of New York’s 2012 Drama Desk Award for Best Play, the…
