ARTS and THEATER
Magical Acting
Few will fail to find universal value in Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking. It’s about one of America’s great observers, a master of non-fiction writing, facing the void of catastrophic loss. Fortunately, the pair chosen by the Circle Theater to tell us her story, director Daena Schweiger and Barb Ross, the one-woman cast, have suffered nothing so traumatic as the sudden death of a husband while an...
entered on 02/17/11 at 09:56 AM | read more »
The Felix In Me
There are times when a story may tell you more about the reviewer than what happened on stage. The opening of The Odd Couple at the Omaha Community Playhouse offers such an occasion. One reason the Neil Simon classic is among my favorite comedies is that I get to celebrate my inner Felix Ungar. For one night, I am reminded there are others out there who are just like me: persnickety to a fault. Have you ever...
entered on 01/26/11 at 01:06 PM | read more »
Envelope Pushing Expletive
You could credit Bob Fischbach’s review (“Shock factor feels out of place, but message resonates”) for the sold-out house for Shopping and F***ing. But it ran Saturday so that doesn’t explain the full house Friday. Was it the title F-bomb disguised as “Expletive” in the aforementioned daily? Was it the warning about “very explicit sex” or, golly gee, the real possibility that director Randall...
entered on 01/20/11 at 12:01 PM | read more »
Of Age
As Emily Litella always said on SNL, “Nev-er mind.” Forget my recent claim that Billy McGuigan offers the most fun to be had at the Omaha Community Playhouse. That was before three dozen of us survived Live Karaoke Broadway Night. Never mind “survived” either. For others, the fun didn’t pose much imminent danger. But when you’re used to reviewing performances at the Playhouse, and you’re sitting in...
entered on 01/12/11 at 01:47 PM | read more »
2010 In Stages
If you look back at two types of triumphs in 2010, you could be arguing well into 2011 about the age-old theater question: can the most significant and challenging plays draw big crowds? In the earlier days of the 85-year history of the Omaha Community Playhouse, when they were doing O’Neill and Shaw with regularity, some would insist that the most intellectually demanding drama drew better than lighter fare....
entered on 12/29/10 at 01:27 PM | read more »
True Colors
Seven African-American women portray the title’s “Colored Girls” in Ntozake Shange’s poetic play at the John Beasley Theater, but the diversity of their personas and performances doesn’t allow for easy summary. In the beginning, some voices were muffled by a sound track that added to the impact of For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow Is Enuf when it didn’t cut into clarity....
entered on 12/15/10 at 01:41 PM | read more »
The recognition of literal and conceptual material, discovered in the happenstance of process...
Double VisionSome artists confront nature and the everyday world and illustrate it with all its beauty and...
Animal Magnetism“How are you able to form these vessels so that they possess such convincing beauty?’
“Oh,”...
Addams Family and Gearing Up for Great Plains
In 1933 Charles Addams published his first cartoon in the New Yorker when was just 21. Over the course of...
Stage Managers Make the Theatrical World Go ‘Round
When you witness a well put together production, everything you see go right on the stage (and more importantly everything...
Rose’s New Season and Struve’s New Play Bring Excitement
Children’s theatre, regrettably, often doesn’t receive the press that other productions around town get. Sometimes its the...
Les Femmes Folles…Ciao!Les Femmes Folles and Caesium Gallery are proud to present LFF…Ciao! This farewell group exhibition features 30 artists...
Play Me, I’m YoursThe Omaha Creative Institute is a non-profit organization whose mission is to provide opportunities for the community to...
Bemis Director Adam PriceNewly appointed Executive Director of the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, Adam Price comes to the Bemis from the Utah...
“Murals are a way of attracting traffic into a neighborhood,” Metro area artist, and teacher Mike Giron said. “They lift...
Metro area artist, Evelyn Katz has been selected to participate in An Enchanted Arboretum, a community driven public art...
“You know, your work is bright, colorful and simple,” said a children’s book editor to illustrator and author Dan...
“Rather than having a single exhibition that fills all of our special exhibition spaces, we have this rather unique...
He’s known as Mr. Mummy, but Bob Brier’s love of Egypt happened rather late in life and unexpectedly.
Brier is a Senior...
