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.
Pink Martini is the little orchestra love child of pianist/composer Thomas Lauderdale and vocalist China Forbes. Their distinctive, hyper-glamorous, neo-retro world music has made them best-selling international recording artists and a tremendously successful touring act. They played the grand opening of the Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles with the L.A. Philharmonic in 2002, and then returned to sell out two consecutive New Year’s Eve concerts in the same venue.
Michael Smith’s latest production starts tonight, Thursday, September 13 at 8 p.m., and plays September 14, 15, 20, 21, and 22 at 8 p.m., plus a 2 p.m. matinee on September 22, all at Center Stage Theater. Here’s why you should go:
Selden “Denny” Spaulding’s work of the 1960s ought to spark a widespread revival of interest in one of Santa Barbara’s most original abstract artists. Spaulding was educated at Laguna Blanca School where his father, Edward Selden Spaulding, was the first headmaster, and at Princeton, where he majored in art and archaeology. After serving in World War II, Spaulding relocated to the French countryside in 1950.
S.B.’s film festival is listed by entertainment mag as one of the world’s best.
This exhibition of prints by the 20th-century French artist Georges Rouault revisits a question that has fruitfully occupied the art department at Westmont College for many years: “Is modernism in art compatible with Christian devotion?” Rouault’s magnificent work answers the question with an emphatic “yes,” and anyone with an interest in modernism, printmaking, the Passion of Christ, or social justice ought to see it.
With all due respect to its bigger neighbors to the north and west, the Lobero Theatre, more than any other performing arts structure in town, is Santa Barbara. Intimate without being exclusive, elevated without being elitist, and recognized around the world as a magical venue, the Lobero gives Santa Barbara’s creative community a picturesque focal point and a vital connection to some of the greatest performing artists in the world.
City air makes free” was the slogan of medieval serfs, who could escape their enslavement to the great rural landowners by migrating to the city, where such customary obligations did not apply. Out of this early modern political anomaly has risen what this group show terms “the urban myth,” a complex and ever-evolving set of ideas and assumptions about what city life has to offer.
The group of performers that has coalesced around director and actor Ed Giron’s various projects has talent and an aptitude for comedy, and this night of one-act comedies may be the best thing the group has done yet.
Dave Brubeck began Monday evening’s performance by pointing out that there was a music stand onstage-something unusual for this band, three of whom have played together for 30 years. Brubeck excused its presence by saying he is under some pressure right now. Clint Eastwood is making a documentary about him, and there will be cameras rolling when he takes the stage at the Monterey Jazz Festival next month.
