Nearly Naked Theatre’s current production of Richard Greenberg’s Take Me Out, which the company also presented eight years ago, suffers in comparison to that earlier version. Watching it, I strained to forget the dynamic performances of the company’s 2006 season-opener (particularly that of Ron May, who raised his own game…
Nearly Naked Theatre’s current production of Richard Greenberg’s Take Me Out, which the company also presented eight years ago, suffers in comparison to that earlier version. Watching it, I strained to forget the dynamic performances of the company’s 2006 season-opener (particularly that of Ron May, who raised his own game…
Better call a doctor, ’cause you’re gonna be in stitches. Or, wait, no. You’ll need stitches from the doctor because… because of side-splitting laughter. There we go. For all that to happen and for some well-constructed jokes from folks who know what they’re doing, head to the Phoenix Improv Festival…
Elvis Presley is the king rock n’ roll, but he’s also the man who started the country on a hip-shaking, pelvis-gyrating kick that doesn’t seem to have lost any steam since he first went on national television with his controversial moves in 1956. Which is why it makes sense to…
If you’re looking for fun ways to get moving in the New Year, you’ll have a chance to test run your dancing shoes this weekend when Ballet Arizona opens the doors to its state-of-the-art studios for a day of free classes. On Sunday, January 12, the professional dance company will…
Comedian Sasheer Zamata will join Saturday Night Live this month as the show’s newest featured player, making her the show’s first black female cast member since 2007. Her midseason addition follows SNL’s search for a black woman to join the cast this winter. The long-running show came under fire after…
This weekend, the audition process begins for the 2014 Arizona Sidewinders, the cheerleading and dance team for Phoenix’s arena football team, the Arizona Rattlers. Dancers and cheerleaders interested in joining the squad are invited to attend preliminary auditions this Sunday, January 5, at US Airways Center. The final auditions will…
Anyone who has watched RuPaul’s Drag Race for at least 10 minutes can vouch for the magic of drag. Seeing a burly man (eyebrows optional) transform into a gorgeous woman is more entertaining than you might think. The process isn’t easy, thanks to tucking and creating the illusion of a…
The setup: It’s that time of year to look back and remember what the most amazing and marvelous experiences of 2013 were. (You don’t have to, but it’s our job.) I am filled with a sense of personal development when I realize that at least three times this year I…
Jackalope Ranch interviewed a slew of comedians in 2013. Here are the 10 best talks we had with some of the world’s funniest folks…
Al Madrigal isn’t just a funny man, he’s a hustler. His day-to-day schedule is spent moving from one project to another — from the East Coast to the West Coast, television, stand-up — all the while still making time for his number one priority, his family…
The setup: For several if not most of the past 17 years, Black Theatre Troupe presented Langston Hughes’ seminal 1961 pageant Black Nativity as its Christmas show. I never got to see it, but I hear it’s rather awesome, and now it’s a Major Motion Picture. Meanwhile, BTT is premièring…
The setup: Orange Theatre Group has been working since last summer to develop an experimental theater production inspired by Federico García Lorca’s 1933 play Blood Wedding. The show is about two-thirds complete, and that two-thirds is a stunning (yet appropriately bizarre) event that’s quite unlikely to be much like anything…
If you’re like my family and me, then seeing The Nutcracker is a holiday tradition. The score is as familiar as Christmas carols, and the story as well known as a favorite bedtime book. And if you go to Ballet Arizona’s Nutcracker looking to witness the magic of the Nutcracker…
If you’re like my family and me, then The Nutcracker is a holiday tradition. The score is as familiar as classic Christmas carols, and the story as well known as a favorite bedtime book. And if you go to Ballet Arizona’s Nutcracker looking to witness the magic of the Nutcracker…
Though the story of Frances Smith Cohen’s The Snow Queen isn’t exactly a holiday tale, the local show has become a Christmastime tradition for many Valley families. In it, Cohen turns the Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale of the same name into a 90-minute performance that includes students from dozens…
BIG OL’ HOLIDAY THEATER UPDATE: Because of you people and how much you love to go to good plays, White Christmas has added two performances, one this Sunday evening, December 15, and one on Christmas freakin’ Eve! Back to our regularly scheduled weirdness: The setup: Can it be only three…
There’s a lot of cinematic shorthand, both literal and figurative, in Zach Braff’s All New People, now on stage at Stray Cat Theatre. That’s to be expected from Braff, a TV star whose first indie film, Garden State, was a huge critical and commercial success. Braff employs quippy dialogue and…
There’s a lot of cinematic shorthand, both literal and figurative, in Zach Braff’s All New People, now on stage at Stray Cat Theatre. That’s to be expected from Braff, a TV star whose first indie film, Garden State, was a huge critical and commercial success. Braff employs quippy dialogue and…
A Christmas Carol is a moving, witty, smoothly written piece of 19th-century propaganda about being a nice person all the time — and maybe just being extra-nice at Christmastime — and removing that stick from up your butt already. It works so well and is so very in the public domain…
The setup: Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice’s third blockbuster sung-through musical collaboration, 1978’s Evita, was revived in a new production on London’s West End in 2006. That restaging, which ran 337 performances on Broadway last year, began its U.S. tour this fall and visits Gammage Auditorium through Sunday…
To call Andrew Dice Clay’s comedic career long and storied would be an understatement. Since first appearing on a Rodney Dangerfield special in the late 1980s, Clay’s leather-jacket-wearing, chain-smoking mug has become synonymous with the kind of raunchy comedy that dominated the scene in the 1990s. He became the first…
