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“‘Member? You ‘member.” The rallying cry for George Lopez was introduced to me a little over a year ago when my roommate and I sat down to watch Why You Crying?, Lopez’s 2005 standup show. Since my roommate’s a first-generation Mexican-American, it made sense that Lopez would have her cracking up; I, on the other hand, was pretty certain Lopez’s humor would go right over my Caucasian head.
A spoken-word artist and professor of anthropology at Wesleyan University, Gina Athena Ulysse was born in Haiti and migrated to the United States with her family in her early teens. Her dramatic monologue, Because When God Is Too Busy: Haiti, Me, and the World was staged last Saturday as a benefit for a new documentary film on Haiti, Poto Mitan: Haitian Women Pillars of the Global Economy, and was hosted by UCSB’s Center for Black Studies Research.
“You must plan a murder carefully,” states one of the suspects in The Mystery of Edwin Drood, and while the novel itself may have started out being planned carefully, Charles Dickens inconveniently died while still writing Drood, so any careful planning of its ending on his part was lost.
Chong said her character is particularly endearing, despite having been a criminal since high school. Peg is unsure whether she has made the right decisions in life and is insecure about her intelligence, said Chong, and she relies on her sexuality to get what she wants until she discovers later in the play that she has a real knack for law. Most of all, Peg “enjoys her life and is sort of funny by accident,” Chong said.
The audience stepped out of the Santa Barbara sun and into a dark and gloomy Center Stage Theater last weekend, dusting off Fiesta confetti and settling in for the Summer Stock Youth Theater’s production of the horror story Dracula. The show delivered the expected blood-curdling shrieks and air of general creepiness befitting its dark tale, but it was Dracula‘s unanticipated humor that showcased the creativity of director Kyra Lehman and her cast of 30 teenaged actors and made this version of the gothic staple unique.
Some theater companies use outdoor venues merely as quirkier settings for the same old thing, ignoring the potential of a more relaxed crowd and an expanded stage. Not so for Shakespeare Santa Barbara, as the group amply demonstrated with its new production of The Comedy of Errors.
Set on Highway 57 between Frogs Level and Smyrna, North Carolina, Pump Boys and Dinettes celebrates the sassy self-possession of rural service station employees and diner waitresses everywhere. The show was written by a working band and is performed concert-style, with all the pump boys playing instruments and both dinettes singing.
As technology becomes more advanced, we find ourselves more and more reliant on it. I can hardly go a day without checking my e-mail at least three times. Meanwhile, television beckons with its dumbed-down version of reality. How can we escape this language of text message abbreviations that would have George Orwell rolling in his grave?
em>Kiss Me, Kate is so full of catchy tunes and witty dialogue that even a mediocre production would be fun. What a joy, then, to arrive at the Solvang Festival Theatre and realize that PCPA has done much better than that. From Michael Jenkinson’s flawless choreography to Misti Bradford’s perfect costuming-a challenge, given the play-within-a-play structure of the show-Kiss Me, Kate is a delightful, if slightly qualified, success.
Whether it’s through the infamously awkward “talk” with one’s parents or in a private conversation with a blushing friend, we all eventually learn that our lives did not begin when a stork dropped us at the doorstep. But today more than ever, pregnancy is less likely an accident and more often the product of careful planning, with many women having just one or two children, and doing so much later in life.
