Goldstar

The S&P Experience presents the premiere of House Rules. It's 1944. Billie Holiday, at the height of her career, walks into a rinky dink bar called Joe's and finds herself in a world where eight characters try to hide something, find something, or just forget. That is, until a set of house rules changes everyone's lives forever. Learn more...

Fielding Edlow's skewed romantic comedy The Something-Nothing comes to the Lounge Theatre. The story of an unrequited love triangle between three narcissistic, drunken New Yorkers in their twenties has earned praise for its sharp characterizations and witty dialogue. Learn more...

Hosted by MADtv's Daheli Hall, an assortment of top slam poets will perform with hopes of high scores from celebrity and entertainment industry judges to win the Slam Champ title. Audience members may enter a 60-second Audience Slam to win prizes. Learn more...

A university English professor and his wife, a conservative Catholic, have been happily married for decades. One day, the two are faced with a life-shattering change. The couple's situation is further complicated when their daughter announces her intention to marry her life partner, further pulling the family apart. Learn more...

In the first act of this pair of comedies, "All Aboard the Marriage Hearse," Sean and Amy are a typical co-habitating, Catholic/Jewish, twenty-something couple living in Manhattan for three years when suddenly Amy decides she wants to get married. In "Stay Over", the second act, Mark and Michelle are trying to reconcile after infidelity when Mark's mistress unexpectedly rings the door buzzer. Learn more...

Liza Hochberg is young, beautiful, sexy, smart (in some areas), creative and Jewish. She's fallen hard for a Sam Besser, a guy in her writing group. He's a young, emotionally unavailable, handsome poet. Luna Allergash is Liza's bossy alcoholic lesbian roommate. All three become entangled in a destructive love triangle enshrouded in a web of emails, poetic diatribes and gallons of Jim Beam. Learn more...

The Next Arena presents their followup to the successful Histrionics, TNA Onesies: The Future? a series of futuristically-themed world premiere short plays. Among the stories are: an auto mechanic who sees his future and isn't pleased; a waitress eager to leave a Martian bar; and a prophetic vision of a post-apocalyptic family living a 1000 years in the future, existing entirely on mud (and sick of it). Learn more...

Pairing hilarious, rapid-fire dialogue with dark subject matter, Dolores tells the story of two sisters coping in different ways with abusive husbands. The sisters are drawn closer together by their shared secret, which is influencing their lives far more than they can admit to their friends and themselves. Learn more...

Amy Stiller (The King of Queens) stars in Vaclav Havel's absurdist, fast-paced, 1968 comedy about a sex-crazed sociologist who is the subject of a government-sponsored experiment involving artificial intelligence. Playwright Havel (The Memorandum), a former dissident, was also the first president of the Czech Republic. This production from The Next Arena marks the west coast premiere of a brand-new translation of Concentration. Learn more...

Harlem's Night Cabaret hosts, The Brown Betties, preside over a group of monologists competing for the Slam Champ title. Audience members may also enter a 60-second Monologue Slam contest to win prizes. Post-Slam reception to follow. See below for a list of performers. Learn more...

The Lounge Theatre hosts The Most Mediocre Story Never Told, a deconstruction of the one-man show. Playwright and performer Jay Sefton, a veteran of Los Angeles and Philadelphia's theater scenes, has created a show about the nature of memory, its unreliability, and the obstacles it presents toward living in the present. Learn more...

Named for its four main characters, Sona Tera Roman Hess probes the lives of a family struggling to reconstruct itself in the aftermath of a crushing infidelity. Set against a backdrop of impending war, the play juxtaposes the charged atmosphere of adultery and incest with circus cousins who bring music, magic and predictions of the future. Learn more...

The Immediate Theater presents Herpes Tonight! at the Lounge Theatre, a compelling comedy about -- you guessed it -- herpes. From understanding medical jargon to disclosing the disease to your current date, Herpes Tonight! keeps it simplex with this crash course in all things herpes. Learn more...

Back by popular demand! Regretrosexual - The Love Story, starring former Bay Area stand-up comedy favorite Dan Rothenberg at the Lounge Theatre, is the hilarious exploration of the fluidity of amorous behaviour and how it affects those caught somewhere in the middle. Learn more...

From the depths of Hell arrives a fresh twist on Jean-Paul Sartre's No Exit. M.A.N. Power Entertainment breathes new life into the classic play about death through an original production design first conceptualized by the late Brett Gandy. No Exit exposes the corrupt lives and sudden deaths of three marvelously sinful souls, seductively stylized by abandoned dolls of different eras. Learn more...

Acting teacher Josh Galitsky provides a safe, nurturing, non-judgmental environment designed to help students of every level break through their fears and creative obstacles at their own pace. This "UN-LA" class allows artists to take a break from the Hollywood grind and explore a fun, dynamic, and challenging process that returns them to their emotional roots. Classes are small -- no more than 12 students per session -- and Josh focuses on keeping all students involved throughout the class. Learn more...

Set in Chicago, 1953, Invasion of the Minnesota Normals presents Ruth McKinley, an ordinary housewife, and her encounter with Robert and Mary Jones, two uninvited guests who happen to be former test subjects for a test inspired by the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory. Confronted with what the world considers "normal," Ruth examines her life and discovers it is anything but ordinary. Learn more...

Big Baby is a seriocomedy about a crazy Catholic mother living with her disturbed middle aged son who falls for the dominatrix next door and all hell breaks loose. Joe Keyes, the author of the critically-acclaimed play Pete's Garage and co-author of the holiday romp Bob's Holiday Office Party, is presenting the world premiere play in the cozy setting of the Lounge Theatre. Learn more...

The Gay Mafia is back with new sketch comedy show that takes a mega-wide stance in a winter laugh explosion. The Gay Mafia, a cutting edge improv and sketch comedy group from the gay and lesbian point-of-view, arrives fresh from the famed Outlaugh Comedy Festival. This remarkable group presents a new show bursting with shocking characters and outlandish comedy that threatens the very fabric of society! Learn more...

Dubbed "hilariously deranged" by the Los Angeles Times, Bob's Holiday Office Party originated as an improv sketch 12 years ago and has since developed into a seasonal tradition with a loyal cult following. Every year, insurance agent Bob Finhead's whacked-out friends and clients stop by his small-town Iowa office for their annual holiday bash. Learn more...

An eight-year-old murderess is born without pity! Who will her next victim be?! Weird, wild, wonderful and wicked, this pulp-fiction gem first opened on Broadway in 1954, only to be banned by the Legion of Decency. Now see this goofily twisted production in all its cross-dressed, side-splitting, viciously-delicious glory. Learn more...

Intimacies, a one-act play by Steven Fechter (The Woodsman, starring Kevin Bacon) is about the life, death and the in-between of intimacy. Through a series of monologues, flashbacks and often awkward glimpses of reality, a man and woman explore the terminally unanswered question: What is intimacy? Learn more...

Take the Points is a comedy for anyone who's ever bet on anything. It breaks down the odds on relationships and how they work--mostly, how they fail. As a relationship outsider, comedian Joe Mortimer explains why he would rather wager money on grown men who barely graduated college than risk the very real possibility of a broken heart. Learn more...

Now extended through February, Please Take a Number is a funny and irreverent look at our society today. Nia takes the audience on a rollercoaster ride through the lives of ten completely different characters over the course of just one day at a typical NY welfare office. What does a sixteen year old pregnant girl from the Bronx have in common with a sixty year old homeless woman?... they are both waiting for their number to be called, just trying to get their share in the world and in the world of welfare Learn more...

The Chase Lounge uses every theatrical trick in the book to create a flat-out hilarious comedy at the expense of one exhausted actress! A young woman battles her evil, egocentric, plastic-surgery-augmented twin sisters to win their mother's diamonds. How can one woman stage a five-character play with a five-minute chase-scene finale? The Chase Lounge shows how. Learn more...

Estranged brothers Stephen and Luke come together for Stephen's theatrical debut--but each gets more than they bargained for when a flubbed stunt and a missed airplane catch up to both of them. They find themselves stuck on Christmas Eve with just the actors cast in Stephen's play: an oversexed ex-nun and an ex-con born-again religious nut! Learn more...

The critically-acclaimed Jabberwocky Theatre Company presents the world premiere production of Lost and Found, directed by Emmy-nominated director John Flynn. Lost and Found tells the story of a fifty year-old woman living with her two grown children in a tough working class Boston neighborhood. Conflicts flare up when the son she secretly gave up for adoption over 30 years ago arrives at her doorstep. Learn more...

During a ScripTease show, the troupe will have some scenes called "Strip Scenes." These scenes have certain rules, and it is up to you, the audience, to enforce them. If you catch a performer breaking a rule during a "Strip Scene" you yell out "STRIP" and the actors promptly take off an article of clothing, much like strip poker. Their mission is to expose theater to people who don't consider themselves "theater-goers" -- while trying not to expose too much of themselves. Learn more...

A stunning woman, dressed to the nines, sips martinis and chain smokes cigarettes in a dive bar haunted by ghosts of 1950's film stars. A charming man approaches her. Conversation ensues. Flirtation rises. Martinis are thrown in faces. A tango is danced. Will they fall in love? Come and see who woos whom in the West Coast premiere of this one-act play written by award-winning writer, Steven Fechter (author of The Woodsman, starring Kevin Bacon). Learn more...

Athena Theatre Company presents Slow Dance on the Killing Ground, William Hanley's 1964 Broadway hit that is considered a powerful social statement. It's the story of a businessman closing up shop one night in New York, when a "young gentleman of some color" runs into his store breathless and appearing to be on the lam. The two quickly begin a verbal "slow dance," when a lost woman enters, engaged in an inner struggle of her own as she plans to terminate her pregnancy. Learn more...

In this eery spine-tingler, a blind young woman is stalked through her basement apartment by a killer. This masterfully constructed thriller moves from one moment of suspense to another as it builds to a terrifying climax. Learn more...

Critically acclaimed director Darin Anthony (The Book of Liz, Loot) turns his attention to Tape which centers on two men, a filmmaker and a drug dealer, who were best friends in high school. When they are reunited years later, one admits to a dark secret from his past -- only to discover that the other is taping the confession. Tape was a hit Off-Broadway and was also adapted for film in a production starring Ethan Hawke, Robert Sean Leonard and Uma Thurman. Learn more...

Playwright Wendy MacLeod's Schoolgirl Figure is a hilarious and perverse dark comedy about the awful world of high school, dieting and the struggle to win the cutest guy on campus. Learn more...