The Arizona Theatre Company recently received a $20,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Arts for Latino community outreach and programming, which brings the opportunity for diverse voices of Phoenix to be heard. But it also raises important questions about how we integrate those voices into a sometimes white-washed theater community.
Lots of companies and venues offer student tickets at cheaper prices to attract students to shows. What’s unfortunate is that many students aren’t aware that these kinds of discounts exist. Some who may know don’t want to take advantage of them.
Mary Stephens, producing director of ASU's Performance in the Borderlands, owned the Phoenix Youth Hostel and Cultural Center for four years, but recently sold it to focus on her culture work.
The kinds of communities Myrlin Hepworth spends time in include this one: graffiti artists live-painting at the corners of the Phoenix Center for the Arts stage, a crowd clustered around a circle of young and vibrant people doing dance battles, a taco stand set up in the back of the room.
As this year’s season begins, the variety of theaters and troupes in downtown Phoenix have some fantastic new shows starting up over the next three months. For the downtown theater-lover (or dance-lover, or general performance-lover), we’ve laid out some shows as they’re scheduled for September, October, November and early December.
Through humor, drama and a dash of desperation, “By the Way, Meet Vera Stark” illustrates a black woman in film who refuses to back down from her creative dream, even as it means taking roles that may support stereotypes. Thought-provoking and humorous, “By the Way, Meet Vera Stark” presented by iTheatre Collaborative is well worth watching.
