Harry Davis

After a thirty-year tenure at Court Theatre, the professional theatre of the University of Chicago, Charles Newell has decided to transition out of his role as Marilyn F. Vitale Artistic Director in June 2024.

Overall, 'A Winter's Tale' has visual richness, but the text is all over the place, and additional elements like modern pop music and choreographed slow-motion stage crosses pile superflua onto an existing wealth of 'eclectic' narrative components.

In Santa Barbara, Ensemble's end of season production is a rom-com about an odd couple that comes together while learning to dance. SBCAST, an art space yet underutilized by the theatre community, will host Dogstar Theater Company's drink-and-walk exhibit of scenes and short plays. In Carpinteria, catch DramaDog's production of The Lost Virginity Tours, a comedy that takes four women on a road trip of memories as they visit the sights of first love. Up in Isla Vista, UCSB is producing the student one-act plays and a main-stage play about a young woman's heroine's journey over the border. Out in the valley, PCPA presents a raucous contemporary Broadway musical in the outdoor amphitheater in Solvang for theatre under the stars.

UCSB's Department of Theater and Dance presents the third annual New Works Lab May 9 19 in the Performing Arts Theater. New Works Lab showcases bare bones developmental productions of half-hour scripted and devised plays. The program provides a basic 'fringe festival' level of technical and design support so that each work may evolve in content and structure through the final performance. The platform has most notably given Malique Guinn, a fourth-year undergraduate at the time, the opportunity to realize his play Gang Sines which would go onto to win him the 2018 Kennedy Center Hip Hop Theater Creator Award.

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.

UCSB's Department of Theater and Dance is proud to present the annual New Works Lab, a workshop production by six UCSB student playwrights. The production is split into two programs: Gold Bill and Blue Bill. Under the mentorship of Frances Ya-Chu Cowhig, Vickie J. Scott, Daniel Stein and Una Mladenovic, New Works Lab will be held May 10 through May 20 in the Studio Theater.