Category: Writing

Dancer Melissa Ullom, Photo by Stuart K. McDaniel
ONSTAGE : Velvet overground – Betrayal, disaster and idealism emotionally compete in UCSB Dance Concert
By Ted Mills, News-Press Correspondent
November 30, 2007 10:12 AM

This weekend’s dance concert, “Through Darkness and Light,” not only marks the opening of the 2007-2008 season of student dance performances at UCSB, but is a send-off for a select group of dancers, under- and post-grads, as they make their way to Beijing for a special series of concerts. More on that later, though. The trip would not be happening if not for the work of the dancers and choreographers shown in the seven pieces this weekend.
The last time we saw faculty choreographer Valerie Huston’s work was a year ago with “Tête à Tête,” which shares some themes and ideas with her latest creation, “The Velvet Touch.” Like “Tête,” this work revisits an early version of the choreography and deals with two characters who may or may not be aspects of the same person.

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ONSTAGE : The ‘Sister’ experiment – Local director shapes actors and a play out of her life experience
By Ted Mills, News-Press Correspondent
November 30, 2007 12:00 AM
“This is not theater in Los Angeles, this is not working with professional actors, but this is really where you have to step up your game.”
Writer and director Trinity Amanda Kesselring feels she’s onto something completely different and challenging with her play “Four Sisters, Four Seasons,” set to debut Thursday at Center Stage Theater.
Her company, Acting Out, gathers together a group of non-actors and gives them an opportunity to shine in a venue very few of them would have considered.

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ONSTAGE: Smooth sailing from here – ‘Rough Crossing’ closes season with a farce on the high seas
Ted Mills, NEWS-PRESS CORRESPONDENT
July 6, 2007 8:02 AM
In his rehearsals, director Rick Mokler is having a Tom Stoppard, life-imitating-art moment. The second half of “Rough Crossing,” Stoppard’s farce set onboard a transatlantic cruise ship, plunges the action into stormy seas, a moment when all the technical stage wizardry afforded by the Garvin Theatre will come into play. And midway through rehearsals is exactly when things get tough: The actors go off-book and Mokler starts to run through the technical aspects of the show.
“The challenges are all about precision,” he says about the production, which previews Wednesday, and will cap SBCC’s season. “We have incredible speeches, and it’s all about the timing. Coupled with that, we have six primary actors and eight dancers, and they all have to move in the same direction.”
That is, Mokler says, when the ship hits rough waters. It will look a bit, one imagines, like the moments in “Star Trek” when the bridge is under fire, but much, much better.
“We have a horizon line that goes up and down outside the window, wall sconces tipping one way and then the other and a tray on top of a piano that keeps moving,” he says.
Audience members might want to pop a Dramamine before the show.

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ONSTAGE: Taking the Finnish line – Lit Moon presents four theater words from Finland
Ted Mills, NEWS-PRESS CORRESPONDENT
June 8, 2007 8:12 AM

Norway had Ibsen. Sweden had Strinberg. But more than that, those countries had promoters of their most famous playwrights in the English-speaking world.
But what about Finland? Enter Mikko Viherjuuri, a Finnish playwright, director and man with a mission. Also enter Lit Moon Theatre Company founder John Blondell, who was ready to listen. Now, they’re about to give Finnish theater some exposure with Lit Moon’s Midnight Sun Festival, opening tonight.

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SOUND BYTES: COLIN HAY
Ted Mills, News-Press Correspondent
June 8, 2007 9:03 AM
“Are You Lookin’ At Me?”
COMPASS RECORDS

Twenty years after this former Men At Work frontman set off on a solo career, his ninth album finds him relaxed and still able to knock out the melodies. It’s not an ambitious album, yet neither is it bland. Hay ruminates on life — the title track, half-sung in his thick Scottish brogue — and death — “Lonely Without You,” which manages to be both touching and funny — in equal measure, and could have a hit in “Land of the Midnight Sun,” if radio still made a place for artists this quirky. Recommended.

ONSTAGE: More ‘Lesser’ – Director returns to ‘Children’ 22 years after SBCC production
By Ted Mills, NEWS-PRESS CORRESPONDENT
June 8, 2007 8:27 AM
“This is the ultimate role for a deaf woman,” TL Forsberg says about her lead role in “Children of a Lesser God,” opening tonight at the Rubicon Theatre. “Then again, maybe it’s the only role.”
Forsberg is only half-joking. Mark Medoff’s “Children of a Lesser God” first premiered in the early 1980s and introduced audiences to the world of the deaf through a romance between James Leeds, a teacher of lip-reading, and a deaf former student, Sarah. The film version made Marlee Matlin an Oscar-winning star. As for the theatrical event, few plays involving the deaf have come since, says director Rod Lathim. And none, he says, match “Children” for its power and effect.

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IN CONCERT: Three women in Coma rise – A newfound complexity is apparent on three-piece band’s latest album
Ted Mills, NEWS-PRESS CORRESPONDENT
June 8, 2007 8:55 AM
With a name like Girl in a Coma, music fans will be forgiven for thinking this three-piece all-female outfit sounds like a Morrissey/Smiths tribute band. After all, their name comes from The Smiths’ 1987 single. But have one listen to “Clumsy Sky,” the first single off the band’s debut album, and one hears an alternate world in which Patsy Cline was born decades later and started a punk band.
“That’s funny,” lead singer Nina Diaz says when the Cline comparison comes up. “The first song I ever sang with my mom was ‘Crazy.’ But really, I’m influenced by whatever I’m listening to at the time.”
Which is true for the whole band. The members of the San Antonio-based Girl in a Coma have spent their formative years absorbing decades of musical influences: The Smiths, Joy Division, The Ramones and Jeff Buckley all share CD shelf space.
“We still get a lot of Morrissey fans turning up,” the band’s drummer, Phanie D, says. “People come thinking we’ll do Smiths songs, but then they stay anyway.”

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Plain White Tim – From Bright Life to White Hot
Ted Mills, NEWS-PRESS CORRESPONDENT
June 8, 2007 8:59 AM

Followers of Santa Barbara’s rock scene may remember a band called Bright Life from a few years back. Signed to Capitol Records, they released one record, went on tour and even inspired a song by Sugarcult.

Tim Lopez remembers Bright Life well, because he played guitar for them. Now he returns to the area as guitarist for Chicago-based pop-rockers Plain White T’s, who play this week’s KJEE Seaside Beach Ball. How did a Santa Barbara native find his way to the Windy City?

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