Tag Archives: Karen Stephens

What Kind Of Year Was It? Our Critics’ “Best Of” 2016 Lists

Critics and award judges have been talking about it for weeks: The sheer amount of high quality work has made evaluating the last 12 months unusually challenging, but also an opportunity to remember one of the most rewarding calendar years in recent memory. So here’s a supremely subjective stab by all three critics here at Florida Theater On Stage at recognizing the shows and performances that stood out from a pack of productions.

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Zoetic Stage Debuts Premiere of McKeever’s Emotion-Filled After

There’s something thrilling about seeing a world premiere play unfold. And when the playwright is one of South Florida’s great hopes to get an original play to the Great White Way, there’s even more of excitement to see his latest work.
That was the energy that prevailed over the production of Michael McKeever’s After at Zoetic Stage.

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Music Is The New Element In City Theatre’s Summer Shorts

Hardly unusual in musical theater, Meredith Bartmon strolls around the Carnival Studio stage singing passionately about her dreams and, later, her refusal to compromise those dreams. But this isn’t a two-and-half-hour epic on a national tour; this is one of nine 10-minute playlets in City Theatre’s 21st edition of Summer Shorts.

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Thinking Cap’s Wilde Ride Takes ‘Earnest’ To A 1978 Disco Ball

Thinking Cap Theatre sets The Importance of Being Earnest in a madcap lampoon of New York City’s disco era. The urbane and farcical elements are irreconcilably at war, but each facet – one of the funniest literate scripts ever written and a zany hoot of a production – is so strong on its own merits that the result is a mostly satisfying gigglefest worth the investment.

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Hot Button Issues Dissected In GableStage’s Fine Disgraced

Awash in issues of Arab-American assimilation and Anglo antipathy, GableStage’s Disgraced is the classic contemporary example of the topical, thought-provoking drama that forces you to revalidate, even reexamine your perception of the tumult around us.

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20th Summer Shorts Even More Consistently Funny & Poignant

Intriguing premises are the jumping off points for the nine flights of theatrical whimsy in City Theatre’s annual festival of short plays, Summer Shorts. While no discernable thread runs through the disparate works, the deftly comic playlets are shot through with a striation of poignancy, and the moving entries are leavened with flashes of humor.

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The Best Of Times Is Now: Memorable Moments Of 2014

Here’s a look back at 2014 including a very subjective subjunctive reductive list of outstanding shows, performances and developments guaranteed to make someone unhappy they were not on the list. Take comfort in that there was so much good work that this is the crème de la crème de menthe.

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Newcomers Share Carbonell Bounty With Major Companies

The Timekeepers, a harrowing drama mounted on a tiny stage by a company only in its second season, swept six of its six nominations including best play at the 38th Carbonell Awards Monday night. Those wins, along with a best director award for the fledgling Slow Burn Theatre Company’s musical next to normal, was greeted as a sign that young theaters could make inroads in a program dominated by a handful of venerable and well-funded troupes.

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A Trip To GableStage’s The Mountaintop Is Worth The Climb

Certainly, The Mountaintop is about Martin Luther King’s place in the civil rights struggle, but the superb production at GableStage examines a more universal issue of how ever-present mortality makes impossible reaching an ultimate goal – which makes the pursuit all the more laudable.

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Archive of BECON-TV’s Panel Show: Spotlight On The Arts

Spotlight On The Arts is a weekly panel discussion of issues facing the local creative community and their audiences, featuring an irreverent group including actress/teacher/producer Iris Acker, actor/playwright/designer Michael McKeever, actress/writer Karen Stephens and critic Bill Hirschman. Guests so far include Christopher Demos-Brown, Michael Leeds, Stephanie Ansin and Jennifer Cronenberg

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