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…
The setup: Great Arizona Puppet Theater, an outstanding cultural resource since 1983, is currently presenting a revival of one of its most popular original shows, The Princess, the Unicorn, and the Smelly Foot Troll. (Preschool audiences age out of shows within a few years, while another mini-generation has reached toddlerhood…
Look. We know plenty of people want to claim Aidy Bryant as their own. She lives in New York. She made a name for herself in Chicago. But we Phoenicians really should have first dibs on the Saturday Night Live performer. A few reasons: Her fam lives here (her mom…
The setup: Peoria’s Theater Works is right in the middle of their first annual presentation of New Works, so we can’t complain there’s almost nothing to see this month. (Phoenix Theatre has moved its Hormel New Works Festival up to March for 2014, so we didn’t get to enjoy the…
Fans of Bill Burr know him as a regular on podcasts and the late-night comedy circuit. Pop culture pros probably remember him as Kuby, the assistant to Bob Odenkirk’s Saul Goodman, the main comic relief on AMC’s Breaking Bad. His loud, angry comedic style is kind of like a toned…
The dance scene in the Valley is gearing back up after a summer-long hiatus from the grind of rehearsals and performances. But as with many things Phoenix, the dance world can feel disparate and hard to navigate. Lucky for you, we’ve done the hard work and gathered the dance events…
The setup: Many people who are or were cool enough to enjoy midnight showings of The Rocky Horror Picture Show (in continuous release longer than any other motion picture) don’t know that it started out as an extremely popular stage musical in London. In the Valley alone, I’ve seen productions…
Arizona Theatre Company, the state’s largest producer of professional live stage work, ended its fiscal year June 30 with a $1 million deficit. In the wake of other Valley not-for-profit theaters having gone on hiatus or closed outright due to the recession, largely because of steep dropoffs in corporate giving,…
Say what you will about professional cheerleaders, but these women take their job seriously. And they have to, since being a Phoenix Suns Dancer requires a lot more than just good looks and dance ability. Don’t believe it? We asked veteran Suns Dancer Brittney and Suns Dancer manager Taryn Carmichael…
I was too old for Sesame Street. When it debuted in November 1969, I was in the second grade, and this oddball educational show wasn’t yet a groundbreaking, game-changing cultural touchstone. It was a brand-new public TV kiddy program aimed at 3- to 5-year-olds just learning their ABCs. I already…
Shout!FactoryThe cast of Fridays Whether you love it or hate it these days, it’s still tough to compete against Saturday Night Live. Although the show certainly has seen much better and much funnier days, you still can’t knock it off its perch after all these years. The powers that be…
Two of Saturday Night Live’s freshest cast members will bring a slice of the show to Tempe Improv in August. Aidy Bryant, who’s from Phoenix, and Tim Robinson will co-headline three nights at the Valley club…
Know how to shake your groove thang and pump up a crowd? Well, then you might be a fit for the Phoenix Suns Dancers. Auditions for the 2013-14 season are less than a month away, and if you want a good shot at taking your show to the big stage,…
During the summer, between seeing musicals, drinking, and napping, we eagerly anticipate local theater companies’ announcements of their upcoming seasons. Shows to which performance rights have recently become available are politely competed for, actors look at their schedules and wonder what roles might suit them, and audiences keep their fingers…
I’m standing out front of the Torch Theatre — an improv space in downtown Phoenix — on a recent Saturday night, asking the performers how improv has impacted their lives. I feel like I’m getting two shows for the price of one. The first was the one I just watched…
For comedian Anthony Jeselnik, offensive is the name of the game. Literally. His hit Comedy Central show is called The Jeselnik Offensive, and on it he riffs on tragic news and pop culture and says generally terrible (and hilarious) things. This fall, he’s taking his show on the road, stopping…
The setup: Whether you embrace or avoid contemporary musical theater, you’ve heard of composer Andrew Lloyd Webber, he of the dancing, spandex-clad kittycats and singing choo-choo trains on roller skates, the man who (with the able assistance of iconic source material and talented collaborators) gave us the desire to have…
I’m standing out front of the Torch Theatre — an improv space in downtown Phoenix — on a recent Saturday night, asking the performers how improv has impacted their lives. I feel like I’m getting two shows for the price of one. The first was the one I just watched…
Phoenix is in for something of a lunar landing. This week, Chicago-based pan-Latina theater troupe Teatro Luna will deliver a double dose of culturally driven performances, presented by Performance in the Borderlands, that explore Latina sexuality through two plays…
Oy vey. Interviewing comedian Richard Lewis is like being inside one of his monologues. The only difference is that rather than a one-sided conversation operating on a stream of consciousness level, there are breaks where questions are inserted — though those are only brief bumps in Lewis’ full-throttle comedic autobahn…
The setup: Agatha Christie may not have been the first mystery writer to maroon a bunch of strangers in a house together, tell them one of them is a murderer and some of the rest of them are potential victims, and then just let the secrets and paranoia do all…
Getting a PhD in English from Yale is not like eventually completing a stint in rehab. You don’t have to do it in order to remain insurable in the eyes of film producers who decide whether you can work on a project that involves paying hundreds of people pulling down…
