Some theater experiences leave you overwhelmed by somber themes and dense dialogue. However, Arizona Theatre Company’s production of The Importance of Being Earnest can pretty much erase all that darkness in the course of two and a half hours with its extravagant costumes and sets, playful blend of modern and…
For a tale about the undead, Lisa Starry’s A Vampire Tale certainly does make you feel alive. From the first scene, filled with discordant pounding drums, Scorpius Dance Theater transports the audience to an almost-scary world of hissing, writhing, and cackling characters. The nearly two-hour show blends classical dance styles…
The setup: After surviving to adulthood (no mean feat for anyone born in 1832), Louisa May Alcott shunned marriage and motherhood and struck out on her own to minor literary success (with A Long Fatal Love Chase and other potboilers favored by readers of her era), partly to help support…
Dancers and cheerleaders interested in rooting for a Phoenix team with a winning record ought to know that auditions for the Arizona Rattlers dance team, the Arizona Sidewinders, are just around the corner. But don’t worry, because there’s still time to get ready. This week, the team will host the…
Director Stephen Wrentmore brings one of Oscar Wilde’s most beloved comedic plays, The Importance of Being Earnest, to Phoenix’s Herberger Theater Center starting Thursday, October 10, as the season’s opener. Judging from Tucson audiences’ reception, it’s sure to be a hysterical show. Although the Arizona Theatre Company director is a…
If you’ve seen Forgetting Sarah Marshall, in which Jason Segel’s character lives out his dream of creating an all-puppet Dracula musical, then you might have a pretty good idea of what a puppet satire of 50 Shades of Grey would look like. Imagine people dressed in black acting out sexy…
This fall will be the 10th anniversary of Lisa Starry’s A Vampire Tale, the cult classic that Starry and her troupe have taken to Edinburgh and back as of this summer. Over the years there have been more than a few changes to the production, as Starry’s tweaked her choreography…
The setup: Every three years, Arizona State University Tempe admits a cohort of Master of Fine Arts candidates in the allied emphases Theatre Performance (acting), Directing, and Performance Design (including components such as lighting, costume and makeup, and digital media). The gang spends an intense period of study and practice…
The setup: Tempe’s Stray Cat Theatre is the first U.S. company to present award-winning playwright Annie Baker’s The Flick since it premièred off-Broadway in March. It’s a long play in several scenes that take place entirely between co-workers in an otherwise empty Massachusetts movie house (called The Flick) before, between,…
Despite his onstage agitation, Bill Burr is in a very good place. The longtime comedian has secured his seat in the who’s-who of stand-up without falling victim to bad TV sitcoms, publicity stunts, and other perils of growing celebrity status. But that’s not to say the man isn’t busy…
Arizona State University’s Hugh Downs School of Human Communication is a milieu where, among other things, a lot of fascinating public performances happen. Way beyond what you might remember from your own college days, when it’s possible you even made fun of communications majors. (We all eventually learned that human…
The setup: After five years on Grand Avenue, utterly disgusting sketch comedy troupe Th [sic] Sense starts its 2013-14 season in the recently fitted Basement Theatre at Phoenix Center for the Arts with a new one-act hellride, Revenge of the Sic…
By Jose Gonzalez Warning: Spoilers follow. This past Sunday, the penultimate episode of Breaking Bad, “Granite State,” seemed to set the stage for tying up of all the loose ends from the past five years in the finale of AMC’s hit TV show. Well, almost every loose end is accounted…
Twenty years ago or more, Phoenix Theatre operated a black box, where those of us who liked edgier plays and musicals could go for offbeat theater. Last week, the now 93-year-old company unveiled, as part of its multimillion-dollar renovation, a new black box space. Those of us who once laughed…
For those of you who missed the Oddball Comedy and Curiosity Festival, we have some good news and some bad news. The good news: Roastmaster General Jeffrey Ross closed out the four-hour stand-up special by thanking everyone for attending the “2013 Oddball Comedy and Curiosity Festival.” That subtle denotative remark…
The setup: Alice Childress was a pioneering African-American stage actress of the mid-20th century who also wrote several plays and the well-known young adult novel and film, A Hero Ain’t Nothin’ but a Sandwich. Her play Wedding Band, which features an interracial relationship in South Carolina during World War I,…
The setup: The traditional info about source material or theater history will not do justice to the extravagant stage musical Priscilla, Queen of the Desert. So, to build the necessary foundation, here’s some trivia not included in the press packet: It’s allegedly just one of those show-biz coincidences that the…
Next month international performance group Nemcatacoa Teatro will take to the figurative stage for a night of archaeology, art, and exploration at the ASU Deer Valley Rock Art Center. The Colombian performers specialize in performance and street theater and will present Landscape Re-invention Society on Saturday, October 12. They’ll be…
Good ‘N Plenty artist grants were awarded to Stefanie Francis and Ryan Avery over the weekend at Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art’s semi-annual event. The grant was created last year to support “the projects of innovative art makers, wise-crackers and trailblazers based in Arizona.” Grant funding comes from ticket sales…
Tom Green has a tendency to get pretty cerebral. And yes, we’re referring to the same dude who penned “Lonely Swedish (The Bum Bum Song)” and suckled milk directly from a cow’s waiting teat. Green’s comic efforts have always been quite genius — and oftentimes exceptionally madcap — whether the…
The setup: For Curtains’ first visit to Brelby Theatre Company since they finally moved into their leased and rehabbed space in historic Glendale, the troupe presents a show in the Brelby Studio Series, in which unfamiliar plays receive modest productions. Telemachus, Darling is a one-act that, despite featuring a lot…
Nearly Naked Theatre has a tendency to comb through the oeuvres of solid contemporary playwrights and bring us productions of their earliest works, some of which hold up better than others. If you appreciate writer David Lindsay-Abaire mostly from his comparatively serious, Pulitzer-winning Rabbit Hole, presented in Phoenix by Actors…
