At the opening of Full Color, Plan-B Theatre’s 34th season opener, the setting is pleasant and inviting: eight people enjoying each other’s company and feeling comfortable at home, outside a tent in nature. As each person shares a story, the production’s epiphany expands organically, one narrative at a time. While the audience is welcomed to … Read more
Between 2010 and 2020, Utah’s population grew at a faster rate than in any other state and more than 52% of that growth occurred in minority populations. Today, more than 1 in 4 Utahns identify as Black, Indigenous or People of Color (BIPOC), compared to 1 in 5 in the 2010 U.S. Census. As the … Read more
The two actors in the fabulous Plan-B Theatre production of Melissa Leilani Larson’s Bitter Lemon persuade the audience to reconsider Shakespeare’s Macbeth, not just as a chronicle about the fatalistic machinations of power but also as the moral conflict about good and evil. This conflict is manifested in Larson’s character creations of Lady Helen Macduff … Read more
In February, Plan-B Theatre mounted a world premiere production of Balthazar, Debora Threedy’s fresh reimagining of The Merchant of Venice’s Portia. As The Utah Review noted at the time, Threedy’s play is a well-crafted piece of fan fiction. In her two-hander script, she successfully sustained the broader integrity of Shakespeare’s literary world while reconfiguring characters … Read more
Early in Tito Livas’ new play, Squeak, the main character tells the audience emphatically that they have a very active brain. “Sometimes I can’t control what I do or what I say because there’s SO MUCH GOING ON IN HERE and my feelings can be pretty big,” Squeak says. When Squeak feels overwhelmed, they imagine … Read more
FIRE . . . flaming, burning, searing, and penetrating far beneath the superficial items of the flesh to boil the sluggish blood. FIRE … a cry of conquest in the night, warning those who sleep and revitalizing those who linger in the quiet places dozing. FIRE . . . melting steel and iron bars, poking … Read more
After a long talk with Alex, her girlfriend, Lark seems she can barely stay afloat, wondering if she will ever find success as a filmmaker. She speaks to her absent Filipino father: “It makes sense, Dad. That you wanted to fit in. The westerns are all about this idea of finding a place to belong … Read more
In Melissa Leilani Larson’s newest play Mestiza, Or Mixed, thirty-something Lark Timon is a struggling filmmaker hoping to make a big break with one of her six screenplays. Lark, who identifies as a mixed Filipino female, believes her script set in the American West is a sure bet. Lark describes her female protagonist as Reyna, … Read more
Just slightly past the midway point of the opening night performance in the world premiere of Carleton Bluford’s The Clean-Up Project, it was evident that another Plan-B Theatre production was having the usual very good opener. Bluford’s script, about a swift revolution that has transformed the country and flipped the power structure, is complex in … Read more
RADIO HOUR EPISODE 15: SLEEPY HOLLOW For Plan-B Theatre’s Radio Hour series, in addition to his original science fiction episodes, playwright Matthew Ivan Bennett has penned outstanding adaptations of Frankenstein, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s only Christmas-themed short story The Blue Carbuncle. But, his latest adaptation, which premiered last week in … Read more