Author: T.D. Mobley-Martinez

For the next week or so, the zombie apocalypse is in full swing at the Cottonwood Center for the Arts. Outside, a Jeep teeters on a curb, abandoned. Zombies shamble hungrily through the street and parking lot. A few humans keep them at bay as theatergoers slip into the building and up the low-lit stairs…

There’s something so right, so deeply resonant about Shakespeare performed outside on a summer night: King Lear railing against fate as the gathering clouds echo his rage or star-crossed lovers scrambling for a happy ending under a sky studded with stars. TheatreWorks has produced both plays – as well as many others by the Bard…

As much as we may hide it at dinner parties (“Of course I’ve read ‘Coriolanus!’”), Shakespeare can be a tough nut for most of us. Especially his plays, which can inspire (oh, the beauty!) and deflate (oh, the confusion!), in equal measure. Springs Ensemble Theatre’s production of “Titus Andronicus,” which runs through Aug. 7, doubles…

It was a brilliant idea, really: Pair superstar painter John Singer Sargent and superstar photographer Cindy Sherman in a Fine Art Center exhibition. Separated by a century, they are a curious but thought-provoking match-up. One created exquisite portraits of the high-society darlings of the turn of the last century. The other, an explorer of mainstream…

Maybe it’s a good time for “9 to 5: The Musical,” which debuted on Broadway in 2009. It’s set in 1979, but women are still struggling. Today, we make 79 cents for every dollar a man earns. Less than a quarter of the 100 senators in Congress are women and fewer than 1 percent of…

Peter Pan is having something of a renaissance these days. He flew into view in the 2014 live TV performance of the original musical, as well as big-screen movies, including “Pan,” “Return to Neverland” and “Finding Neverland,” a musical version of which is on Broadway. “Peter and the Starcatcher,” an imaginative prequel that won five…

Judas Iscariot’s mother speaks first, leaning earnestly toward the small audience. Then St. Monica, who will in-form-you that she has Judas’ number. Then there’s Mary Magdalene and later, Peter, Matthew and Thomas, Jesus’ apostles and saints all. Judas, though, doesn’t have a lot to say during “The Last Days of Judas Iscariot,” which runs through…

From the moment you walk into the theater, you can sense it’s going to be something quite different. On the stark stage, a pasty figure is frozen in midgate. (Is that a mannequin?) He’s seems to be heading toward a human-shaped lump covered with a white tablecloth. (Is that a person in a chair?) The…

Let’s be frank: I’m conflicted by Alfred Uhry’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play “Driving Miss Daisy,” the Fine Art Center’s Black History Month offering. It runs through Feb. 21. In theory, it’s a heartwarming story: At 72, feisty Daisy Werthan isn’t interested in giving up her driving privileges, even after piloting her new Packard across her Atlanta…

When it comes to romantic comedy, love is a prickly, wonderful thing. Take playwright Michele Berdinis’ “Italy,” which runs through Jan. 30 at Funky Little Theater. Angela (Tracy Hunziker) is a successful movie producer in L.A., but after her husband dies, she’s convinced that she’s too old – and too “droopy” – for love. The…