Once upon a playwright
In the first part of a series on Arizona playwrights, Lynn Trimble reflects on the work of Dwayne Hartford, associate artist and playwright-in-residence with Childsplay in Tempe, which presents his...
View ArticlePlaywright tackles teen depression
"Signs of Sara" by Jim Gradillas and Michelle Marie, which imagines a teen's fall into the pit of depression and her attempts to escape it, is part of the 2012/13 season for Creative Stages Youth...
View ArticleSpilling secrets
The real playwrights of Arizona present new works during this weekend's "Pandora Festival" at Scottsdale Center for the Performing Arts. Lynn Trimble previews selections and shares news of other events...
View ArticleA smugglers tale
Picture yourself a single mother, widow of two men, trying to raise your son while heading a drug cartel on the Mexico/U.S. border. Odds are, you can’t do it. That’s what makes “Smugglers,” a play by...
View ArticleOnce upon a pageant
In many ways, it was Childsplay’s “Still Life With Iris,” enjoyed during a Desert View Learning Center field trip to the Herberger Theater Center more than a decade ago, that sparked my love for local...
View ArticleOde to innocence
Children shouldn’t know life-threatening disease. Or discrimination. But a boy named Benjamin, who died when he was 8 years old of AIDS-related complications after receiving a blood transfusion used to...
View ArticleDeep in the heart of Hamlet
Deep in the heart of Texas, Arizona playwright James Garcia found inspiration for a new take on Shakespeare — an adaptation of “Hamlet” featuring “the perspective of a modern political family.” They’re...
View ArticleCulture wars
Arizona playwright James Garcia is fighting the culture wars on two fronts these days, with a witty foray into “the truth hurts” style theater called “Everything You Wanted to Know About the Culture...
View ArticleLost boys take center stage
Three stools sit atop two planks on the Kax Stage at Herberger Theater Center in Phoenix. They’re flanked by a pair of murals painted by Edgar Fernandez, a young artist living in Tolleson who studies...
View ArticleSummer shorts
One playwright imagines conversations between Lincoln assassin John Wilkes Booth and two brothers following their performance in Shakespeare’s “Julius Caesar,” and another the complications for a...
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