An unsurpassed, extraordinary opening night performance for the premiere of Carleton Bluford’s The Clean-Up Project, Plan-B Theatre’s newest production

Just slightly past the midway point of the opening night performance in the world premiere of Carleton Bluford’s The Clean-Up Project, it was evident that another Plan-B Theatre production was having the usual very good opener. Bluford’s script, about a swift revolution that has transformed the country and flipped the power structure, is complex in … Read more

Plan-B Theatre set to open 2022 season In Person. In Color. with world premiere of Carleton Bluford’s The Clean-Up Project

This is the psychological balm of racial caste in America: If you’re Black and couldn’t overcome every obstacle to pull yourself up, it’s because you’re lazy and did not want to work hard. If you’re Black and you manage to be successful, it’s because of affirmative action and you didn’t earn it. Your failures and … Read more

Lots of new energy: The top 10 moments of The Utah Enlightenment in 2021

INTRODUCTION It has been an enormous project to regain the spirited momentum that many arts and cultural organizations in Utah’s creative industries had amassed before the pandemic brought everything to a ground stop in the early spring of 2020. With resilience and durability exercised to their intrinsic advantages for respective organizations, many creative producers also … Read more

Plan-B Theatre’s Radio Hour series set to return to live broadcast premiere on KUER-FM’s RadioWest with Matthew Ivan Bennett adaptation of Sleepy Hollow

Most young people in the last three generations have been introduced to Washington Irving’s short story The Legend of Sleepy Hollow through the Disney animated adaptation package, which includes Kenneth Graham’s The Wind in The Willows. The 1949 film The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad has long legs both in residuals as a long-term … Read more

Plan-B Theatre’s newest Free Elementary School Tour production, Alli and #3, featuring alligator and heron characters, introduces K-3 children to basic science of nature and climate

Children attending school in Utah or the Intermountain West region might be surprised to learn that even in the southernmost Rio Grande River Valley, alligators and herons have been known to congregate together. In Alli and #3, the latest children’s play in Plan-B Theatre’s Free Elementary School Tour program (FEST), Alli is an alligator who … Read more

Plan-B Theatre’s premiere of Matthew Ivan Bennett’s Art & Class sets new height of excellence, maximizing impact of audio production format

One of many richly textured epiphanies in Matthew Ivan Bennett’s Art & Class, the audio-only production receiving its Plan-B Theatre world premiere, occurs shortly after Lucía confronts Mindy, the parent of a student in her art class, at a Christmas tree lot in Hyrum. Mindy is pushing for Lucía to be fired from the school … Read more

More than a story of censorship: Plan-B Theatre to launch April 15 world premiere audio-only production of Matthew Ivan Bennett’s Art & Class

In Utah, many contradictions confound in their complexities. Mormonism champions its cosmopolitan outreach through its mission service, where members proselytize about the virtues of perfection, prosperity and duty of faith. Meanwhile, while immigrants and refugees are welcomed in the state, many also feel isolated and vulnerable, seeing clearly how lip service and posturing barely mask … Read more

Three examples of virtual excellence: Plan-B Theatre’s P.G. Anon, Ririe-Woodbury Dance Company’s Home Run; Repertory Dance Theatre’s Regalia

Three recent virtual events emphasize just how well three Salt Lake City performing arts institutions continue to sustain their creativity and visibility. PLAN-B THEATRE: P.G. ANON Plan-B Theatre always is a master of minimalism so its instrinic strengths are making an audio-only season to celebrate its 30th anniversary possible. The premiere of P.G. Anon, written … Read more

For 30th anniversary, Plan-B Theatre’s unprecedented audio-only season set to premiere Julie Jensen’s P.G. Anon

In a December 2020 interview with The Washington Post, Alexis McGill Johnson, the newly installed president of Planned Parenthood, recalled speaking with a woman who told the story about her mother as a college student discovering that she was pregnant and how afraid she was to tell her parents. “Her brother was a flight attendant, … Read more

Pearls in three world premieres slated for Plan-B Theatre’s audio-only 30th anniversary season

Pearls are the gift for the 30th anniversary. In its three decades, Plan-B Theatre has strung together many strands of luminescent pearls. The company has produced an impressive canon of original work by Utah playwrights. It has put weight behind the words of committing to bring new, diverse and historically suppressed voices to the stage. … Read more