Comedian and author Annabelle Gurwitch has a habit of turning the negative into positive — or, at the very least, a lucrative book deal. When Woody Allen fired her from the cast of his off-Broadway New York production, Writers Block, in 2003, she created Fired, a collection of essays about…
The setup: Space 55’s Late Night Series is a thing we’ve visited and written about before. It’s alternative performance for (eventually) every taste, something we both enjoy and pine for more of. This month, Saturday nights at 9 p.m. bring us 7 Minutes in Heaven, a thing that link kind…
The Phoenix-based web seriesVoyage Trekkers is looking to boldly go where no Arizona sci-fi web series has gone before: the silver screen. After doing two seasons of their “comedic love letter to Star Trek,” creators Nathan Blackwell and Craig Michael Curtis have their sights set on making a feature film…
Patent trolls be damned, The Adam Carolla Show must go on. Former host of The Man Show and the Crank Yanker himself, Adam Carolla will bring his podcast, The Adam Carolla Show to Phoenix’s Stand Up Live on Friday, June 20, and Saturday, June 21, with two shows per night…
“Really, to me, the whole thing is about building a storytelling scene.” These are the words of Dan Hull, architect of the downtown Phoenix storytelling scene. After two seasons of the weekly Yarnball storytelling open mic night at Lawn Gnome Publishing, and one season of the monthly Storyline feature at…
The setup: There really isn’t anything wrong with the lemons God gave you, even before you pluckily make lemonade from them. But in 1997, when director Peter Cattaneo showed us the work of screenwriter Simon Beaufoy (Slumdog Millionaire, Salmon Fishing in the Yemen, The Hunger Games: Catching Fire) in The…
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…
