For those who put “attending more shows and cultural events” on their list of New Year’s resolutions, UC Santa Barbara’s gymnasium offers plenty of opportunities to stay focused. From film screenings to spectacular music concerts, the winter season has a lot to offer for students, professionals and adventurers alike.
Movies and TV
The Carsey-Wolf Center (CWC) is showing several events this season, including a new episode of its CWC-TV series. UCSB alum and “The Sopranos” director James Hayman will be at the Pollock Theater to watch an episode of “Eloise” and discuss the show’s lasting legacy, moderated by Patrice Petro, CWC Dick Wolf Director. The event is 7-9 pm Thursday, Jan. 19.
Later in January, the CWC will present the next installation of the Big Screen film, showing “Now, Voyager” with Bette Davis, followed by a talk by E. Ann Kaplan (link is external), author of “Feminism and Film.” Hosted by Peter, the event will be held from 7-9 pm on Tuesday, Jan. 31.
CWC events for February and beyond can be found on their website.
Dancing
UCSB’s resident professional dance company, Santa Barbara Dance Theater returns for a new season under the direction of Brandon Whited. The fifth concert will feature a new work by Whited, who is also a professor of dance. Guest composers David Maurice Johnson and Helen Simoneau will present their work. Johnson will premiere the duet, and Simoneau will perform his part in “Darling”, which premiered in 2020.
Movies are set at 7:30 pm Jan. 18-21, and 2 p.m. Jan. 22 at the Hatlen Theatre. Pre-sale tickets are $13 for faculty, staff, alumni, students, seniors and children, and $22 for everyone else. Tickets purchased the day of the show are $15 and $25, respectively.
Artistic director Delila Moseley and the UCSB Dance Company will present their season-opening concert, “Full Circle,” March 9-11. Their first full concert in the Hatlen Theatre, “Full Circle” is an all-female group of 16 female and non-binary dancers.
Theater
Four new games receive 20 hours of discussion and are presented to the public in the LAUNCH PAD Amplify Reading Series Festival, Jan. 13-14, in collaboration with the National New Play Network (NNPN) and UCSB’s student-led AMPLIFY team.
Formerly known as the BIPOC Reading Series, the LAUNCH PAD Amplify Reading Series Festival was inspired by the Black Lives Matter movement and works to focus on centrality, diversity, inclusion and opportunity.
During the two-day festival, the theater program will present four new plays. After each reading, there will be a discussion with the cast, crew, playwright and director, giving the audience the opportunity to ask questions and discuss.
Beginning in February with the LAUNCH PAD Preview Production: “She Wolf, Margaret of Anjou,” by Katie Bender and directed by Brainin. Shakespeare’s Queen Margaret’s Indecent Retelling will be at the Performing Arts Theatre, Feb. 22–March 5.
Next, from March 3-12, Roni Ragone’s musical play “Night Night, Roger Roger” – directed by Julie Fishell – will be performed at the theater studio, March 3-12.
Art, Design & Architecture Museum
UCSB’s art community will be buzzing in 2023 with four new exhibitions opening at the Art, Design & Architecture Museum. All exhibits will open on Saturday, Feb. 25. The museum will be open to visitors at noon with a reception from 5:30-7:30 pm.
In conjunction with the bicentennial of the Chumash Rebellion, the year-long exhibit Sandy Rodriguez – Untold Histories: 200 Years of Resistance (Feb. 25-March 3, 2024) highlights periods of resistance from the 19th century to the present.
Painting with locally sourced natural materials such as minerals, plants and insects, Rodriguez reaffirms the American artistic tradition.
The center of the display is a two-sided folding screen, or screen, with flavors of alone and mother of pearl. One side of the canvas has a map of past and present riots, and the other side has a night view of Santa Barbara as seen from Santa Cruz Island – the area being described is also known as. Limousinethe sacred site of the Chumash community.
Fans of Southern California architecture will be excited to learn about the museum’s upcoming exhibit Genius Loci: Domesticity and Placemaking in Southern California (Feb. 25-May 7).
With the help of Silvia Perea, curator of the museum and Architecture and Construction (ADC), which celebrates 60 years this year, the exhibition has 10 single-family projects removed from ADC – including architects Albert Frey, Bernard. Judge, Edla Muir, Lutah Maria Riggs and Rudolph Schindler.
To see how buildings respond to their environmental and historical contexts, the exhibition presents new renovation projects built in desert areas, on mountain sides, on seashores, in flat areas and even underground.
This exhibition showcases the humble and bold buildings that helped advance the practices that created them, all the while creating a lifestyle of aspiration that underpins SoCal’s modern art.
Also this winter quarter, the AD & A Museum will open On Famous Women, 1500-1700 (Feb. 25-May 7). Celebrating famous women from the 1600s and 1700s and drawing from the museum’s archives, the exhibition features paintings, drawings and medallions of Renaissance figures, depicting the figures of the biblical Bathsheba – whose actions led to for his son Solomon to be the king of Israel. – and the Grand Duchess and co-regent of Tuscany Christina of Lorraine – a famous scientist who helped Galileo.
The exhibition’s selection of works, including a recent portrait of Bathsheba from William and Nyna Mahan, is from Giovanni Boccaccio’s “On Famous Women (1361-62),” the first historical collection devoted to women in Western literature.
Music
The Music Department Corwin Concert Series kicks off the season with “A Night of Visual Music” at Lotte Lehmann Concert Hall. The concert will feature performances by six musicians, including UCSB Corwin chair Joao Pedro Oliveira.
Some of the performances include the duo Luminico, created by Rodrigo Sigal, an electronic and video artist, and Alejandro Escuer, a comedian. Luminico will play an audio, video and electronic concert on Feb. 17, at 7:30 pm.
Also on the program is Annette Vande Gorne(link is external) , presenting a concert of acousmatic music, 7:30 pm March 3.
The music department’s full list of winter events can be found here.
UCSB Arts & Lectures
With a slate of ensembles, artists and thinkers at the UCSB Arts & Lectures winter program, the school will see winners of the Grammy Awards, the MacArthur Prize, the Nobel Prize for Peace and more this season.
Nobel Peace Prize laureate Maria Ressa discusses her new book, “How to Stand Up to a Dictator,” Thursday, Jan. 19, in Campbell Hall. Ressa is the founder, CEO and editor-in-chief of Rappler, a popular news and investigative journalism website. He will take the stage to explain the hardships he faced at the hands of the Duterte (now Marcos) government in the Philippines.
Tuesday, Jan. 24 at 7 pm, the series of Arts & Lectures Great Performances will open at the Granada Theater with Joyce DiDonato’s multimedia presentation. EDEN, featuring the Baroque Chamber Orchestra Il Pomo d’Oro and a special appearance by Sing!, the Music Academy’s Community Children’s Choir.
DiDonato arrives in Santa Barbara shortly after starring as Virginia Woolf in the Metropolitan Opera’s premiere of “The Hours.”
Art & Education goes to the Lobero Theater at 7 pm on Saturday, Jan. 28 for a special presentation of the world-renowned Ensemble Intercontemporain, conducted by Matthias Pintscher.
The group will create a new role for Austrian singer Olga Neuwirth in the 1924 silent film “City Without Jews.” Sponsored by the Santa Barbara Jewish Federation and part of the A&L Justice for All initiative, this presentation will examine the roots and rise of anti-semitism in Austria in the 1920s and today.
Student tickets for Arts & Lectures events are no more than $20, and typically less ($11-15). See the full calendar of Arts & Lectures events on their website.
