While it might not be an entire day of cat videos like I was hoping, PetDance Film Festival looks like a purrfect way to spend a Saturday. The folks at Pets in the City Magazine, a local weekly paper dedicated to pets, decided to claw on the coattails of Sundance Film Festival with their own petcentric … Read more
In a year of many high marks for Plan-B Theatre, the month of December, normally a quiet period for this performing arts company, has become especially memorable. Julie Jensen’s smashing ‘Christmas with Misfits’ played a sold-out run drawing much well-deserved acclaim. Likewise, tickets also sold out for Elaine Jarvik’s ‘Marry Christmas,’ an ensemble piece celebrating … Read more
Plan-B Theatre’s productions normally are masterpieces of minimalism in staging and subtle lighting but for its latest premiere of Julie Jensen’s ‘Christmas with Misfits,’ director Cheryl Ann Cluff wisely decided to celebrate the occasion of the play’s theme with an overflowing bounty of holiday décor props. In the opening, when actor Jeanette Puhich bursts forth … Read more
NOTE:This is the second part of a preview featuring a pair of Plan-B Theatre holiday productions. In 2013, during U.S. Supreme Court oral arguments for the landmark Windsor case on same-sex marriage, Chief Justice John Roberts remarked that activists had really found their political momentum. Writing the day after the hearing, The Atlantic’s Conor Friedersdorf … Read more
Note: This is a two-part series about Plan-B Theatre’s unconventional approach to holiday entertainment in two world premiere productions. In the critically acclaimed box office success of the 2003 movie ‘Bad Santa,’ there were 300 profanities uttered, Santa is a small-time criminal and alcoholic, and the kid, as the late film critic Roger Ebert recalled, … Read more
If anyone needed to get in the mood for Plan-B Theatre’s exquisitely creepy rendition of three Grimm Brothers tales prior to the live broadcast on KUER-FM’s RadioWest show, the news lead-in at the top of the hour did the trick. In less than four minutes, audience members in the downtown Jeanne Wagner Theatre heard news … Read more
“If the Brothers Grimm were not trying to tell charming bedtime stories, what were they trying to do? Why are the original versions of their stories so often violent and disturbing? The first answer to these questions is that the Brothers Grimm were simply being true to the stories as they existed in the early … Read more
NOTE: This is the first installment in a two-part series about Plan-B Theatre’s 24th season and a preview of Matthew Ivan Bennett’s ‘Radio Hour Episode Nine: Grimm.’ In certainly its most ambitious season during its 24-year history, Plan-B Theatre has programmed seven new plays by Utah playwrights that explore a vast territory of family values. … Read more
For six enterprising small performing arts companies, the Rose Wagner Performing Arts Center in downtown Salt Lake City is more than a residence for their creative work. It is the home for experimentation in humanity. It is the place for creating and performing new works of art. As Daniel Siepmann wrote recently at NewMusicBox, “Newness … Read more
Salt Lake Acting Company’s Saturday’s Voyeur might be considered the “airing of the grievances” by the Gentile (non-member) citizens of the Beehive State. Set in the church office building (COB) in downtown SLC, this year’s installment of Saturday’s Voyeur, running through August 31, tackles issues familiar to those in the city of salt. LGBT rights … Read more