Memorizing lines for a play can be difficult enough, but jumping onto a stage without directions or a planned script takes a different set of skills. Improvisation, or improv, requires the ability to take audience suggestions and build a spontaneous performance based on chemistry with fellow actors and with audience…
As we were leaving for a matinee this past Sunday, my spouse said to me, “This has got to be the low point in your career.” It was hard to argue with him, but I was hopeful that the play we were headed to — a live-action re-enactment of the…
Michael Ian Black will take the local stage this weekend at the Improv. The comedian/actor/director/panelist from VH1’s “I Love the ‘__’s” shows isn’t exactly a Valley veteran, but his upcoming plans for a road trip (and a book) will see him in Arizona more often in the coming months.We caught up with Black…
The star of Footloose is in town this week for a little toe-tapping seminar at Dance Studio 111 in Phoenix. No, not Kevin Bacon — he’s busy riding the wave of box office success from his turn as supervillain Sebastian Shaw in X-Men: First Class. We’re talking about Kenny Wormald,…
The life of a novice comedian is not an easy one. Failure and frustration seems to be ever-present companions for burgeoning jokesters, as most of their quips and punchlines wind up bombing.As the old saying goes, however, the best way to learn is by doing, which means honing your comedy…
The intelligence (sometimes coupled with a cheerful sadism) of certain playwrights produces work that’s a genuine challenge to pull off. Alan Ayckbourn can do the trick for a community theater; for professionals the likes of those with Southwest Shakespeare Company, it apparently takes Oscar Wilde to (metaphorically) slice their tendons…
Theater lovers of the Valley better clear their upcoming schedules for the fall and spring, as some major Broadway blockbusters will be making their way to ASU’s Gammage Auditorium.Some of the biggest hits in the history of the Great White Way that are currently touring the country will take to the…
Paul Bartel’s musicalization of his 1982 black comedy, Eating Raoul, is a blast. This is an excellent example of a musical theater subgenre that has dogged the stage ever since Little Shop of Horrors launched the low-budget-cult-film-as-musical craze that same year. Funny, campy, and crammed with catchy tunes and over-the-top…
It’s that time of year when some of us are a bit more free to get out of town occasionally, and whether you want to go or have to go, you might need a guide to diversions in strange places. Curtains is happy to visit such exotic locales as Anthem…
Do sketch comedy long enough, and you’ll even be able to compile The Best of Tim Meadows. It’s taken Valley troupe Th [sic] Sense far less than 25 years, though, to whomp up a Best Of show that, while lengthy, includes almost nothing you wouldn’t want to see again (and…
My friend Ruth Beaumont often says, “If the play is boring, you can always just stare at the stage décor.” Unfortunately for me, the set for Stray Cat Theatre’s Abraham Lincoln’s Big Gay Dance Party was austere and simple; there wasn’t much to look at. Too bad. Because I was…
courtesy of Space 55 Theatre From left, Patti Hannon, Shawna Franks, and Clifton Highfield in The Bakers of Lakewood. If there’s a more consistently employed Valley stage actor than Patti Hannon, I’ll be very surprised to hear it. Ever since Maripat Donovan’s nationwide hit, the interactive Catholicism-inspired hoot Late Night…
Last year, Lisa Starry’s original fashion-meets-dance work, Catwalk, pranced into Phoenix Theatre’s Little Theatre with a splash. The production featured fun, upbeat numbers set to familiar pop rock and classical tunes, with the dancers modeling clothing created by local designers. The idea was attractive enough to audiences that Starry was asked…
School’s out, summer’s here, and your (productive) schedule is looking a little … empty. Luckily, there are plenty of local and national galleries, theaters, and organizations looking to put your creative skills to use. 1. “Villains, Pick Your Poison” an open platform Vinyl Toy showPhoenix Comicon is around the corner,…
It’s so freaking cool when someone adapts a classic book or story for the stage and gets everything right while also helping the literature grow into a captivating multisensory experience. British writer Charles Way has accomplished this feat with The Borrowers, based on the first two of Mary Norton’s series…
You know the economy’s in the toilet when the state’s largest professional theater is presenting a rerun. The Mystery of Irma Vep, the rather beautiful and amply staged Charles Ludlam farce that closes Arizona Theatre Company’s season, is one it’s done before — in a widely acclaimed 1999 production starring Bob…
Pay close attention to the costumed performers in large frames at the Phoenix Art Museum this Saturday. They aren’t participating in the latest flash mob, nor are they excited art fans about to get thrown out of the museum. The dancers are part of a one-night-only performance by the internationally acclaimed Heidi…
Billy Elliot the Musical opened in London in 2005, but it didn’t cross the pond until 2008, and the first national tour company has visited only a few large North American cities. The second touring company based on the Tony-winning Broadway version (which is still running) arrived in Tempe last…
With Stand Up Live opening up a permanent home this weekend in downtown Phoenix, we bring you a list of our own favorite (and pretty damn funny) tweeters from Arizona.After the jump, meet a few — in no particular order — that we recommend you follow … if you ever…
“I have always depended on the kindness of strangers,” the character Blanche Du Bois famously said, in Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire. Given, she was being toted off by men in white coats, but that makes her observation no less trenchant, not to mention worthy of a big musical…
In Venice, I’ve looked for evidence of movies I’ve seen that are set there. I’m always peeking into shop windows, looking for the timepiece Capucine brings to Rex Harrison in The Honey Pot, and I once spent an entire morning sitting opposite the little antique store where Rossano Brazzi worked…
Oh, you guys, it’s terrible luck in the world of theater to have peacock feathers in your set or costume or props. And as Judy Garland’s mother, Valerie Saunders wears a passel of them (in one of several mostly striking and accurate costumes by the show’s author, local writer Richard…
