It’s time once again for the annual “Vee-Cee” Awards, in which we honor some of the most memorable performances on Ventura County stages over the course of the past year. Because of th…
SOURCE: vconstage.com at 02:34PMIn The Revolutionists, Lauren Gunderson’s 2017 black comedy about four (in)famous women of the French Revolution, comedy meets tragedy in a fictionalized what-if? premise that brings to mi…
SOURCE: vconstage.com at 08:13PMIt’s hard to believe, but 2020 marks the 25th anniversary of the Simi Valley Cultural Arts Center, one of the prime community theaters in Ventura County. In 1995, the center’s first prod…
SOURCE: vconstage.com at 04:03PMAn interview with David Krassner, director of Agoura High School’s current production of Rent. Krassner uses his experience as an actor on Broadway and in national tours to guide young act…
SOURCE: vconstage.com at 06:59PMCan a play about cancer be uplifting? That’s the question posed by Margaret Edson in her Pulitzer Prize-winning play, Wit, currently showing at the Elite Theatre Company in Oxnard. The pla…
SOURCE: vconstage.com at 12:04PMOccasionally, Broadway audiences miss the target. Such is the case with It Shoulda Been You, a musical that somehow lasted less than five months before slinking off into tours and community …
SOURCE: vconstage.com at 12:51PMOn Wednesday, February 26, Agoura High School’s drama department, under the direction of David Krassner, will be staging the high school production of Rent, Jonathan Larson’s groundbreak…
SOURCE: vconstage.com at 06:06PMThe appeal of Beautiful: The Carole King Musical, which arrived in Thousand Oaks on February 13 for a four-day run, can be summed up by the comments of an elderly couple leaving the Fred Kav…
SOURCE: vconstage.com at 01:03PMBeautiful, the musical that chronicles the life of singer/songwriter Carole King, comes to the Conejo Valley for the first time in American Theatre Guild’s national tour. Many performers h…
SOURCE: vconstage.com at 08:51PMThe sudden death of Los Angeles Lakers star Kobe Bryant on Sunday cast a pall over not just Southern California basketball fans, but people around the world who admired Bryant for his devoti…
SOURCE: vconstage.com at 12:31PMSteven Dietz’s play, Bloomsday, which made its debut at the Elite Theatre Company in Oxnard January 17, is a Twilight Zone-like story that mixes past and present, using James Joyce’s nov…
SOURCE: vconstage.com at 03:28PMIn Finding Neverland, reality is blurred by imagination as J. M. Barrie, the creator of the characters and the original play version of Peter Pan, struggles with writer’s block as he tries…
SOURCE: vconstage.com at 05:32PMIt’s time once again for the annual “Vee-Cee” Awards, in which we honor some of the most memorable performances on Ventura County stages over the course of the past year. As I explain …
SOURCE: vconstage.com at 12:57PMFor sheer timeless comedy, there are few plays better than The Man Who Came To Dinner, Moss Hart and George S. Kaufman’s hilarious love letter to owlish American theater critic Alexander W…
SOURCE: vconstage.com at 04:47PMToward the end of Meredith Willson’s The Music Man, traveling salesman Harold Hill tells Marian Paroo, “For the first time in my life, my foot got caught in the door.” A few weeks ago,…
SOURCE: vconstage.com at 03:23PMBandstand is a musical that most people are not familiar with, but should be. Its plot deals with a group of musicians who come back to the U.S. after serving in World War II and finding it …
SOURCE: vconstage.com at 09:18PMGood news for theater fans! Rubicon Theatre Company’s current production of Big River has been extended until November 17. Its success is due in part to Beverly and Kirby Ward’s evocati…
SOURCE: vconstage.com at 02:34PMBringing a show as expansive as Big River to the small stage of the Rubicon Theatre Company was a daunting prospect, but Kirby and Beverly Ward thrive on such problems and ended up producing…
SOURCE: vconstage.com at 11:20PMThere is one word that best describes the motivation of the two main characters in the 1985 musical Big River: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. The word is “freedom.” Both Huckleberry…
SOURCE: vconstage.com at 07:32PMIn this first of three features on the Rubicon Theatre Company’s production of Big River, co-producers/directors Beverly and Kirby Ward discuss their vision for bringing the Tony Award-win…
SOURCE: vconstage.com at 12:18PMEvery so often an actor emerges who is what I call a “five-tool-player,” a term borrowed from baseball, describing someone who can run, hit, field, throw, and hit for power. In the theat…
SOURCE: vconstage.com at 01:06PMIn 5-Star Theatricals’ current production of Meredith Willson’s The Music Man, acrobatics worthy of an Olympics gymnastic meet are turned in nightly by Antonia Vivino, who plays starry-…
SOURCE: vconstage.com at 01:42PMLast week we spoke with Adam Pascal about his approach to playing Professor Harold Hill in Meredith Willson’s classic musical comedy The Music Man. 5-Star Theatrical’s production, whic…
SOURCE: vconstage.com at 11:00AMVentura County theater fans were overjoyed when 5-Star Theatricals announced that veteran Broadway star Adam Pascal would be starring as raffish traveling salesman Harold Hill in the company…
SOURCE: vconstage.com at 11:00AMIn British playwright Joe Penhall’s Blue/Orange, Christopher is a patient in a London psychiatric hospital who has been admitted under a “Section 2” for what has been diagnosed as a …
SOURCE: vconstage.com at 12:38PMPlays that show characters changing through the years are some of the most challenging actors can experience. In the 1976 Off-Broadway play Vanities, author/playwright Jack Heifner focuses …
SOURCE: vconstage.com at 11:36AMToday we received a letter from Andrew Landecker, senior film student at Calabasas High School who played the role of Amos Hart in the school’s March production of Chicago. Here’s what…
SOURCE: vconstage.com at 07:56PMIn a world that is consumed by political correctness, Avenue Q, which made its debut at the Conejo Players Theatre May 3 for a brief two-weekend run, shatters Broadway conventions with its r…
SOURCE: vconstage.com at 09:10PMCamelot, the original “Game of Thrones,” is familiar to theater and film fans through its highly successful stage productions but a new ballet, produced by Pacific Festival Ballet, makes…
SOURCE: vconstage.com at 12:05PMIts theater is definitely of the no-frills variety, a black box constructed in the space of two public storage units in an industrial park in Ventura, but there is no denying the talent that…
SOURCE: vconstage.com at 11:59AMNext week, former Cabrillo Music Theater artistic director Lewis Wilkenfeld returns to Thousand Oaks to direct Matilda, the story about a precocious English girl who uses books and literacy…
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