Maggie Yates - Page 3

Hamlet's father, the King of Denmark is murdered by his brother, Claudius (Jarred Web), who then marries Hamlet's mother, Queen Gertrude (Olivia Rose Nathan), and takes the throne. No one suspects foul play except Prince Hamlet (Tadja Enos), who senses something rotten in the state of Denmark. His fears are validated when his father's ghost spurs him to avenge his untimely death. Hamlet takes up the mantle of vengeance with single-minded focus, sacrificing relationships along the way.

This weekend, Santa Barbara Shakespeare presents 'As You Like It,' a Shakespearian gender-bent forest frolic, in Montecito's Manning Park. Bring a picnic and a bottle of wine, and join SB Shakes in the Forest of Arden to experience the revelry of one of Shakespeare's most popular comedies.

Ensemble Theatre Company Celebrates a 40-year Milestone, Kicks off Season with David Ives' 'The School for Lies.'

Two Santa Barbara theatre companies have joined forces to produce WOMEN FORWARD, two plays in rep that celebrate the lives of strong, intelligent women. This dual production, created in collaboration between DramaDogs, A Theater Company and Dogstar Theater Company, includes Edward Albee's drama THREE TALL WOMEN and Peter Shaffer's comedy, LETTICE AND LOVAGE. Both plays, produced in rep, focus on the empowerment of the female-not in response to male animosity, but as a function of the natural female experience. Directed by DramaDogs' Ken Gilbert and Dogstar's Nita June Davanzo, these two companies will share the stage at Center Stage Theater September 7th-16th.

This music-infused interpretation of the Alberta Hunter's life is a true American rags-to-riches success story. Hunter, a jazz and blues singer, achieved critical and commercial acclaim in the 1920s-50s. In the late 1950s, she abruptly abandoned music to become a nurse. Several decades later, Hunter retired from nursing and returned to the stage for a two-week engagement at renowned New York blues bar, The Cookery. At age 82, this jazz legend rekindled the public's love for her powerful voice and spirit-her two-week stint at the Greenwich Village nightclub stretched into a multi-year, late-in-life comeback.

The year-end New Works Lab at UCSB, which challenges students to write, direct, design, and perform short plays, gives students a chance to experiment with form, style, and collaboration. This year's plays offered comedy, drama, and an excursion into the absurd, while expressing insecurities about the future on both a personal and global level.

Christie's presentation is a colorful, and at times poignant, journey through personal memoir; his gruff-but-likeable stage presence and interesting story make for a thought-provoking evening in the theater. It's a casual style of performance, with a minimal use of traditional theatrical conventions, for an effect of live, un-cut documentary. Christie is an engaging speaker with good material from a life lived on the fringe.

The Invisible Handplays out events in a market atmosphere without stringent guidelines, in which capitalism can run amuck. 'Pakistan is the wild west,' says Tufts. 'How will capitalism thrive in an unregulated environment? It thrives with enormous consequence.' Directed by Jonathan Fox, The Invisible Handalso stars Mujahid Abdul-Rashid and Sarang Sharma. This Southern California premiere runs at the New Vic Theater April 12-April 29th, and then moves to the English Theater Frankfurt in May.

Punk's not dead! So says Out of the Box Theater Company, who brings Green Day's American Idiot to Center Stage Theater April 6-15.

High school theater programs are faced with an interesting set of challenges that professional or community theatre companies don't necessarily experience. The age and commensurate maturity of the student actors limits the type of works that can be meaningfully and effectively produced, and there's the practical consideration of aligning the choice of production with the available student population, whether that be an overabundance or dearth of performers. Beyond that, program directors are also educators, thus beholden to the cultural regulations of the school's environment. Finding a quality play that meets these requirements can be challenging, and often the options are 'experienced' classics that have little situational relateability to a cast born in the new millennia.

Alan Ayckbourne's 'Communicating Doors,' produced by the SBCC Theatre Group, follows Poopay (Felicia Hall), a blue-collar London dominatrix who shows up at a luxury hotel to service wealthy business mogul, Reece (Matt Smith), but instead gets pressured into witnessing his deathbed confession of embezzlement and murder. On the run from Reece's homicidal business partner, Julian (George Coe), who isn't keen on being outed for his part in the murder of Reece's two deceased wives, Ruella (Leslie Gangle Howe) and Jessica (Brittany Harter), Poopay hides in a hotel closet. The closet houses a time portal that takes her back twenty years to the night of Ruella's murder, in the very same hotel suite. Poopay and Ruella team up to prevent the murder, thus changing the past and altering the future for everyone.

In an era defined by a population split by divergent ideologies and heated, propagandistic rhetoric, in which productive discussion about political issues seems impossible, Ensemble presents Anthony Giardina's 'City of Conversation,' a play that brings both sides of the political agenda to the dinner table.

Trump: A One Man Show runs at Center Stage for one nigh only, Monday January 15th at 6:30 p.m., and also features a brief opening set by magician James Lantiegne, owner of the House of Magic Foundation of the Arts in Ventura. Don't miss this satire extravaganza; it will be a huge, huge, bigly night!

Ensemble's Pemberley boasts an attractive set, beautiful costumes, and a talented cast who maintain a smooth, frothy sugarplum taste throughout. But with so little at stake for over two hours and a concerning level of emphasis on a woman's place Miss Bennet: Christmas at Pemberley seems too long and too late for audiences looking for theatre with teeth.

Though Shakespeare and Miller wrote their plays several centuries apart, the combo is fitting both plays articulate the struggles of frustrated protagonists trying to understand their function in a shifting social scape and their priorities within dysfunctional familial relationships.

Halloween is upon us, and Out of the Box Theatre Company is staging the infamous Rocky Horror Show at Center Stage Theater to celebrate! The Rocky Horror Show open on Halloween and runs through Saturday, November 4th, giving Santa Barbara a whole week of Timewarping with the ghastly show-ghouls of Frank'N'Furter's castle of salacious pleasures. A high-energy cult-classic, The Rocky Horror Show is a rock n roll sci-fi fantasy that runs on a fuel of filth and glamour.

Sophisticated and engrossing, 'Resistible Rise' is about more than a glory-hungry henchman for whom the price of power is never too high it's about the price tag of power (in this case: justice) and how quickly a desperate population will turn a blind eye to corruption and put their faith in a charismatic terrorist.

'One Man, Two Guvnors' is based on Carlo Goldoni's 'Servant of Two masters,' a 1746 commedia dell'arte piece featuring the Truffaldino harlequin as a prospecting errand boy who works for two different men, constantly confusing what tasks he's supposed to be performing for which boss. As the title suggests, 'Guvnors' mirrors this plot, though the action takes place in 1960s Brighton. Francis (Michael Bernard) is a portly loafer who stumbles into the employ of Rosco Crabbe (who is actually Rosco's dizygotic twin, Rachel (Shannon Saleh), in drag). Francis, who suffers from a constant, voracious appetite (and an equally anorexic bank account), takes another gig on the sly: working for Stanley Stubbers (Dillon Yuhasz), Rachel's boyfriend and Rosco's killer.

The Foreigner, Larry Shue's battle-of-the-hillbillies farce, brings slapstick situation comedy to Center Stage Theater October 20 22. Produced by Dogstar Theater Company, who introduced themselves to Santa Barbara with last spring's charming rendition of Last Train to Nibroc, The Foreigner spins stereotypic Americana into a physical comedy-based battle between good and evil.

'Husbands and Wives,' Woody Allen's film--and now, Ensemble Theater Company's adaptation by Jonathan Fox--examines the slings and arrows of long-term pairing through the relationships of two middle-aged couples in crisis.