A new home. A Big Brain award. A knockout run of successful pay-what-you-can productions. Think that’s enough for downtown Phoenix’s Orange Theatre? Not quite. Recently, the company launched its latest IndieGoGo fundraiser. While past fundraisers have gone towards basic (by this group’s standards) production expenses and moving into a new…
As an entertainment, Teatro Bravo’s production of The Motherfucker with the Hat moves snappily through 90 intermission-free minutes, punctuated with vulgar one-liners and asides that keep the audience amused and diverted from this question: We talk, but does anyone actually say anything? Stephen Adly Guirgis’ play is all about language…
If you saw the season finale of HBO’s Silicon Valley, then you definitely know the joke we’re talking about. The Mike Judge show is about a group of friends and housemates struggling to launch a successful tech startup called Pied Piper without being squashed by a giant Google-like organization called…
Comedians Matt Mira and Jonah Ray make their way to Phoenix to bring their fans a new show — sort of. The guys will bring the alternately titled The Matt and Jonah show or The Jonah and Matt show depending on whom you ask, to Phoenix for a first-of-its-kind event…
“Out of your head and into your heart.” Throughout our interview with the members of Howl Theatre Project, it was this phrase that kept appearing. By their own admission, this was a bit of a clichéd phrase, particularly for a troupe with such experimental bonafides as theirs. But still, the…
All dancers are creative, but Ballet Arizona’s most recent performance gives a few of its members the chance to be creators as well. Innovations is a showcase of new choreography by Tzu-Chia Huang, Nayon Iovino, Myles Lavallee and Astrit Zejnati. “All four of these artists have a passion that we…
The setup: You may remember a massive hit musical, The Producers, that was based on a Mel Brooks film that, by the time this century turned, not really all that many people remembered. You might not realize that Brooks wrote all the songs for that show, not just “Springtime for…
Better get used to hearing the name Chelsea Peretti. The comedian, writer, and actress is primed to blow up. Why? Well, to borrow a phrase from her comedy comrade Nick Kroll, first and first mostly, she’s hilarious. Her work in the writer’s room on shows including Parks and Recreation and…
Gammage Auditorium announced last month that The Book of Mormon, which is three years into its Broadway run and preselling seats through March 2015 as of press time, will play Tempe on tour sometime in the 2015-16 theater season. Innocent questions that arise naturally, especially in the minds of people…
It’s time for the revenge of the nerds. HBO’s original television series Silicon Valley is quickly winning over cable-TV crowd. But before this quirky comedy of geeky up-and-comers heads back to California to begin filming its second season, Silicon stars T.J. Miller, Kumail Nanjiani, and Thomas Middleditch are heading to…
The setup: Let’s set you up, first. You obviously need something to do with yourself this long weekend, based on last night’s two-hour-plus karaoke rotations, and now that the chick who sang “Don’t Stop Believing” has doubtless been murdered, you can get some investigative tips from Holmes and Watson at…
The setup: Avenue Q, a sort of adults-only musical parody of Sesame Street that exists and functions, nevertheless, completely independently of the kids’ show, opened in 2003 and won a cluster of Tonys. One would think its songs and subject matter, apparently quite topical at the time, would feel dated…
Fortune Feimster is on the rise. Despite her name, it’s not just luck that’s landed her at the forefront of up-and-coming comics in Hollywood. Just ask late night host Chelsea Handler, who snatched up the North Carolina comedian as a full-time writer and roundtable contributor for her hit E! Network…
Whether you know her as the hip-hop dancing, leotard designing, Gina Linetti on Fox’s Brooklyn Nine-Nine or as the leotard wearing, female gigolo, Farley on Comedy Central’s Kroll Show, chances are you know two solid facts about Chelsea Peretti. One, she’s funny as all get out. And two, she loves…
Innocent questions that arise naturally, especially in the minds of people of all types who live in areas with a nice, large, healthy proportion of residents who are members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, include the following: 1. Just how many Mormons live in my stomping…
The setup: One of the myriad ways Space 55 Ensemble enriches our community is by developing, training, and showcasing new writers, whether they’re creating solo performance pieces or plays with several characters, a plot, the whole nine yards. Space 55’s current mainstage show, Heyre Be Dragons . . . In…
Dear Trio of People Sitting on the Aisle of the Third Row on Opening Night of Arizona Theater Company’s Venus in Fur, Fuck you. I’m certain you don’t care, but you very nearly destroyed what would have otherwise been a rare evening of theater for those of us seated near…
Dave Coulier will always be Uncle Joey, a lovable goofball with a knack for vocal impressions and a closet full of ugly sweaters. And from what we hear, he’s okay with that. The Full House alum and stand-up comic brings his routine to the Valley with a three-day, five-show stint…
Movement Source Dance Company is closing out their season this weekend with a multimedia performance at Tempe Center for the Arts. Serendipity will feature violin accompaniment from Tobie Milford and a theatrical performance from Johnny Hotshot along with exciting new dance works from the the company…
I honestly can’t decide whether Ballet Arizona’s annual homage to legendary choreographer George Balanchine is best suited to ballet experts or complete novices. Saturday night’s performance of All Balanchine at Symphony Hall had something for everyone, with three ballets that truly showcased three distinct types of choreography from Balanchine’s hundreds…
The setup: In playwright David Lindsay-Abaire’s (Rabbit Hole, A Devil Inside, Fuddy Meers, Wonder of the World) most recent local première, Good People, South Boston single mom Margie (Katie McFadzen) has, in the latest in a string of bad breaks, lost her crappy job as a dollar-store cashier. The radiant…
The setup: Late Victorian children’s novelist Frances Hodgson Burnett’s The Secret Garden is the typical story of a couple of more or less orphaned kids pluckily figuring out how to thrive and then transform the useless adults who were supposed to be responsible for them. One of Burnett’s later works,…
