Maggie Yates - Page 8

Not many musicians would be willing to turn over the entirety of their proceeds from their new album to charities, but then Pete Muller isn't your ordinary musician.

Andrew Carroll, author of 'If All the Sky Were Paper,' lost everything in a fire - most importantly, letters he'd saved from his ancestors, a family history in a series of first-person accounts. Relief came from an unlikely source: A distant cousin sent Carroll a bundle of letters that he was planning to throw away if Carroll didn't want them. Carroll accepted the gift and was inspired by the contents - letters from wartime and letters sent from combat half a world away.

Good Day is a well-crafted production that delivers precise characterization of confused, chaotic people.

This Halloween in Santa Barbara features temperatures in the 80s and zombies singing the classics of the 80s at open mic night.

Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson investigate the mysterious death of Sir Charles Baskerville. Though he seems to have died of natural causes, the locals believe he was the victim of the Baskerville curse, in which members of the family are hunted down by the dreaded hellhound who wanders the moors.

Ensemble's 'Sweeney Todd' is a highly enjoyable production that captured the dark romance and comedy of this tale of love and vengeance.

Westmont's many-tiered theatre program offers student shows as well as professional shows produced by Lit Moon theatre company. This month, Westmont produces two plays that feature the writing and acting of Westmont Theatre Program's Alumni.

Dark, feisty, and satisfyingly bawdy, 'Heathers: The Musical' offers witty dialogue and clever lyrics that highlight the humor in both the invented melodrama and the disquieting realities of the American teen experience.

Pete Muller, whose album-release tour kicks off October 22nd in Chicago, concludes at SoHo here in Santa Barbara. Muller's philanthropy tour, dubbed the “Two Truths and a Lie” Tour, benefits selected organizations and charities in each concert location.

Simple, profound realism layers comedy neatly into quirky, messy dissatisfaction in Melissa James Gibson's play about characters with varying degrees of social ineptitude dealing with the confusion of life's transitions.

'Sweeney Todd,' directed by Jonathan Fox, will be Ensemble's 2015-2016 season opener: an appropriate horror-story musical for the Halloween Season.

PCPA closes out their season this year with 'Other Desert Cities,' Jon Robin Baitz's critically acclaimed drama about a troubled household struggling to overcome the pain and embarrassment of a disturbing family history.

An engaging spoof of Casablanca-style detective films, 'Murder at Cafe Noir' is a suitably wacky, everyone's-a-suspect caper in which the audience eventually chooses the guilty party.

Good, bad, or ugly, no show offers the certainty of selling tickets.

Dark comedy sprouts roots and finds the resources to flourish inside the VA hospital, despite the hard truth that the patients are suffering veterans who've lost some aspect of their humanity in the jungle.

Anne Torsiglieri, KJ Sanchez, and James Still present new plays via the UCSB Launch Pad workshop program. Readings are free and open to the public: Thursdays in August: 8/6, 8/13, and 8/20.

Indoor/Outdoor's concepts more closely describe human relationships than they do feline behaviorisms, and the play is both comedic and touching.

Dark themes mercilessly played through incredibly sympathetic characters makes for an unapologetic and ambitious play that forces the audience to consider meaning, whether on a personal or universal level.

The French Festival means Absinthe in flasks at the thigh of your stocking, champagne flutes and big hats with tri-color garnish, and bushels of lavender large enough to spill out of barrels-and, le piece de resistance: the corset-clad, curly-haired, high-kicking can-can ladies of the annual French Festival Drag Review.

A company created to bring exciting theatre to Santa Barbara in the summer doldrums between Solstice and Fiesta, On the Verge's mission is to galvanize local playwrights, performers, and designers to create shows that are attractive to a diverse audience demographic, especially the younger crowd.