Charles Donelan, Author at The Santa Barbara Independent

Charles Donelan

Executive Arts Editor

Recent Stories

Theater By Charles Donelan | Thu Oct 04, 2007 | 6:00am

Debra Ehrhardt Bids Jamaica Farewell

Every so often, a rare flower blooms in the theatrical garden: the organic one-person show. These performances arise out of a natural storytelling situation and not from behind the proscenium arch of traditional theater. Debra Ehrhardt’s Jamaica Farewell is a prize specimen of this very glorious and special kind of theater, and we are fortunate to have Ellen Pasternack and Albert Ihde’s Santa Barbara Theatre here in town to bring it to the Lobero. I spoke with Ehrhardt last week about the show, and the prospect of playing it for a Santa Barbara audience.

Theater By Charles Donelan | Thu Sep 27, 2007 | 6:00am

Ensemble Theatre Company Opens The Clean House

Nothing excites serious stage actors more than the emergence of an important new playwright, and the 33-year-old American Sara Ruhl, author of The Clean House, which opens this week at Ensemble Theatre, appears to be just that-perhaps even in a league with Tennessee Williams and Arthur Miller. Her reputation is based on a corpus of plays-The Clean House, Passion Play, Eurydice, and Late: A Cowboy Song-distinguished by their poetic economy, lightness, and wit, as well as their sudden openings onto great depths of pathos and sublimity.

Arts & Entertainment By Charles Donelan | Thu Sep 27, 2007 | 6:00am

Phil Lesh and Friends.

Take a fine Saturday evening on the cusp of autumn, add a dash of rain to clear the air, and set the most faithful of the currently touring bands to come out of the Grateful Dead on stage, and you have a recipe for some people’s idea of bliss. Phil Lesh’s bass guitar was the pulsing heart of the Dead for several decades, and his funky, syncopated, and melodic playing is as fresh as ever.

Arts & Entertainment By Charles Donelan | Thu Sep 27, 2007 | 6:00am

Pink Martini

Pink Martini was a great choice for the season-opening concert for UCSB’s Arts & Lectures, and the group brought their idiosyncratic and crowd-pleasing take on world music to a packed Arlington last Thursday. They opened with Ravel’s “Bolero,” a decision that bandleader and pianist Thomas Lauderdale acknowledged may have broken the law. Apparently, Ravel was bothered by some early adaptations of his most famous work and took an aggressive stance toward future non-standard arrangements.

Arts & Entertainment By Charles Donelan | Thu Sep 27, 2007 | 6:00am

Vonda Shepard Takes On SOhO

Going your own way is something a lot of artists in the music business pay lip service to, but few can really claim to have done. Vonda Shepard came up through an unusual set of circumstances and got a break-her featured role on the television hit Ally McBeal-that doesn’t fit with any formula. Today, Shepard is off television and on the mommy track with her 17-month-old son, whom she had with her husband, music producer and keyboardist Mitchell Froom.

Arts & Entertainment By Charles Donelan | Thu Sep 20, 2007 | 6:00am

Judy Collins Comes to the Marjorie Luke Theatre

With an exemplary career that spans nearly five decades and one of the world’s most pure, perfect, and instantly recognizable singing voices, Judy Collins could be forgiven for taking things easy, but that’s not her style-at all. With a new record of Lennon and McCartney songs out on her own label and an established second career as an author, she is as lively and perhaps more ambitious than she was in her early twenties when she took the 1960s folk movement mainstream.

Theater By Charles Donelan | Thu Sep 20, 2007 | 6:00am

Rubicon Takes On Albee’s A Delicate Balance

Ask a drama scholar what makes the history of theater special, and she will tell you about the incredible way exceptional plays make themselves felt across time. Edward Albee, the most gifted living American playwright, won his first Pulitzer Prize in 1966 for A Delicate Balance, the story of an odd three-person household in an affluent New York City suburb whose lives are disrupted by the arrival of familiar neighbors who have been struck by a sudden, unnamable fear.

Theater By Charles Donelan | Thu Sep 20, 2007 | 6:00am

Bad Dog and Other Plays

Janice (Laurel Lyle), the protagonist of Michael Smith’s Bad Dog, is a mother, a presidential candidate, and a former terrorist. Like the ancient Greek Prometheus, Janice sins against the gods by bringing the gift of fire to the people. In her case, that gift takes the form of homemade bombs and the spirit of violent 1970s radicalism.

Arts & Entertainment By Charles Donelan | Tue Sep 18, 2007 | 6:00am

Judy Collins
These classics were first recorded by the Beatles in the era of Judy Collins’s early success, and the overlap between our memories of the two songwriters is celebrated here in a series of “covers” that totally transcend the genre. Like a great documentary filmmakerthink Ken Burns, not Michael MooreCollins knows exactly when to cut the cards and when to fold ’em.

Theater By Charles Donelan | Thu Sep 13, 2007 | 6:00am

2007 Fall Arts Preview – Theater
Fall brings out the absolute best in our theater companies, and 2007 looks to be a record year for total output by professional theaters in Santa Barbara. We have new and less well-known works coming from big names like Sam Shepard and Edward Albee, debuts by highly touted young playwrights Sarah Ruhl and Evan Smith, and plenty of politics, just in time for the ramping up of the 2008 presidential campaigns.

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Charles Donelan

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