Best Return from the Theatrical Grave 2014 | Actors Theatre | People & Places | Phoenix
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The behemoth stirs! We're grateful that this smart professional theater company didn't just blow away after plunging into financial despair in 2012. Instead, artistic director Matthew Weiner and his staff got busy raising funds, booking plays, and spending a whole season as vagabonds, working out of several different playhouses. And what work! Patti Suarez in 4000 Miles; Joseph Kremer and Christopher Haines in A Steady Rain. And an all-star cast of local talent in Good People. As if that weren't enough, Actors Theatre then launched a summer stock season, featuring a pair of plays in repertory (Karen Zacarias' The Book Club Play; Sandy Rustin's The Cottage) as well as many one-person shows (most notably, Sally Jo Bannow's The Boob Show and The Agony and Ecstasy of Steve Jobs, featuring a star turn by Ron May). Here's to hoping this company continues to thrive.

There are times when living in Phoenix can be tough. Politics, the endless sprawl of chain restaurants and strip malls. But Vintage Phoenix, a Facebook page managed by local musician and photographer Dave Driscoll, doesn't make Phoenix perfect, but the vintage pictures, of canoe paddlers at Encanto Park, the Tovrea stockyards in the late '40s, and a downtown remarkably different looking than the one we're used to, do help remind us of a true community, of a shared historical perspective that often is built over or demolished by our local government and industry. More than 31,000 folks "like" the page, and they regularly take to the comments section to reminisce and share more photos. It may be just pictures popping up in a social media feed, but a couple of times a week, it feels like home. Pictures evoking nostalgia for a time in which some of us lived, and some of us just wish we had.

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