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Weekend arts forecast: Whole lotta laughs

Bill DeYoung

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Comedian Taylor Tomlinson's two Tampa shows (on Saturday) are sold out; few tickets remain for her Sunday St. Pete appearances. Photo: Netflix.

California comic Taylor Tomlinson, 29, has been booked at the Tampa Theatre Saturday (for two performances), and St. Petersburg’s Mahaffey Theater Sunday (for two performances).

Tomlinson was the seventh most followed female comedian on TikTok in 2022; she has produced two well-received Netflix specials, Quarter-Life Crisis and Look At You. Last March, the streaming network signed her for two more specials (the current tour will be videotaped when she reaches the Washington, D.C. metro area later in November).

Stephen Colbert announced Wednesday night that Tomlinson has been named as the host of After Midnight, a new CBS late-night talk show. It will follow The Late Show With Stephen Colbert beginning in early 2024.

“I’m a pretty personal comedian,” Tomlinson told Variety. “I’m not super topical or political. I am generally writing about things happening in my own life, in what I hope is a very relatable way. And the question I think everybody around my age grapples with and my friends around me are grappling with, which is comparing yourself to everyone else. Why do I have the relationship I want but I can’t figure out my career? Or, why do I have my career stuff figured out, but I don’t have the relationship I want? Maybe I’m changing my mind about what I want, or do I want to have kids? Everyone I know is having that struggle.”

Both Tampa shows are sold out, and both St. Pete performances are coming close; to see what’s left, click here.

Comedian Dane Cook, meanwhile, has the second of two Tampa shows (the first was Wednesday) tonight at the Seminole Hard Rock Event Center. Tickets.

Tough crowd: Colin Quinn, the veteran standup comic and Saturday Night Live alum, plays the Murray Theatre (inside Ruth Eckerd Hall) tonight at 8. Tickets.

Back in February, comedian Jim Gaffigan brought a TV crew to Tampa, to video his shows at Morsani Hall (in the Straz Center) for a streaming special (The Dark Pale debuted on Amazon Prime over the summer).

Somebody in the Gaffigan camp must’ve talked with somebody in Jeff Dunham’s camp, because the ventriloquist with the wildly sarcastic dummies is videotaping his shows in Morsani Hall Friday and Saturday (Nov. 3 and 4) for a Comedy Central Valentine’s Day special.

Humorist Fran Lebowitz. Publicity photo.

Both Dunham performances are sold out.

Saturday night in Ferguson Hall (also in the Straz Center), New York author, actor and humorist Fran Lebowitz will take the stage for some witty banter, with audience Q&A moderated by WMNF’s JoEllen Schilke. It’s at 7:30 p.m. and tickets are here.

Playing the Capitol Theatre Saturday is standup Gary Gulman, a Last Comic Standing finalist whose most recent special, The Great Depresh, bowed on HBO in 2019. It’s about his lifelong struggle with anxiety and depression, and how he uses humor to survive. Tickets here.

More concerts

Rock legend Graham Nash plays the Capitol Theatre tonight, the second of two consecutive dates at the Clearwater venue. Here’s our recent interview with Nash, with ticket link.

The Zac Brown Band, the hard-rocking country eight piece from Atlanta, visits the Mid-Florida Credit Union Amphitheatre Friday and Saturday. We spoke with guitarist Clay Cook this week; there’s a link for tickets in the story.

American Idol winner Fantasia appears Friday at the Yuengling Center, on the University of South Florida campus in Tampa, with fellow R&B vocalist Joe as support act. Find tickets here.

Musicians from the Al Downing Jazz Association perform Friday starting at 7:30 p.m. on the outdoor stage at the Warehouse Arts District’s ArtsXchange campus; trumpeter Dwayne White will play the Instrument of Hope, a trumpet made in part from bullet casings, part of a nationwide campaign to keep the victims of gun violence top of mind. The concert is preceded (at 6:30) by a panel discussion on that very subject. Read all about it, and find tickets, here.

Friday brings eclectic jazz pianist Brian Culbertson and his band back to the Palladium Theater. Find tickets here.

New Orleans’ The Revivalists kick off the Rise Up St. Pete concert series Saturday at Spa Beach, on the St. Pete Pier. Find details and tickets here.

The ever-edgy and so versatile Steep Canyon Rangers bluegrass band returns to the Capitol Theatre Sunday. Tickets.

 

Where’s the orchestra(s)?

Rapper Jecorey Arthur. Publicity photo.

Arranger, composer and conductor Steve Hackman is famous for weaving seemingly incongruous musical styles and elements together; The Florida Orchestra played his Brahms X Radiohead in 2015, and his Beethoven X Coldplay just a few months ago. Now, Hackman has created a mashup score that includes elements of Tchaikovsky’s Fifth Symphony with 22 songs by the hip hop artist Drake. With rapper Jecorey Arthur and three vocalists, Hackman will conduct the piece with TFO tonight (Thursday, Nov. 2, 8 p.m.) at the Mahaffey Theater. Tickets.

Assistant conductor Chelsea Gallo has the reins for the rest of the weekend. Women Rock features vocalists Kelly Levesque, Shayna Steele and Brie Cassil, plus a rock band, plus (of course) the orchestra, all together on songs made famous by the likes of Tina Turner, Heart, Janis Joplin and others. The shows are at 8 p.m. – Friday at the Straz Center’s Ferguson Hall (tickets), and Saturday at the Mahaffey (tickets).

Gallo conducts the free Pops in the Park concert Sunday at 6:30 p.m., in Tampa’s River Tower Park.

The Tampa Bay Symphony is back in action Sunday, with Mark Sforzini at the podium. The concert (at 2:30 p.m. in Ferguson Hall, Straz Center) features Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, ​On-Again, Off-Again by Jack Frerer and Rachmaninoff’s Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, with Hui Xu, piano soloist. It will be repeated Nov. 7 and 12 at the Palladium Theater in St. Petersburg, and Nov. 10 at the New Tampa Performing Arts Center. Find all tickets here.

“The Heirs of Pretending” at LAB Theatre Project, with Ricardo Fernandez, left, and David Malloy. Photo by Kapplan Bryant.

New at LAB Theatre Project

Opening tonight at LAB Theatre Project, Ybor City: The Heirs of Pretending, a backstage drama about aging theater actor Burton Quinn on the comeback trail – or so he thinks. Just as things look like they’re about to turn rosy again, he’s visited by his son and must make a serious life choice.

The Heirs of Pretending was written by New England playwright Jared Eberlein, a New Hampshire college pal of LAB founder and artistic director Owen Robertson, who’s put several Eberlein productions onstage in Tampa. LAB’s mission is to world-premiere works, like Heirs, that have not been previously produced.

The show runs through Nov. 19. Details and tickets are here.

 

More theater

Check out the short (10 minute) play Twice as Spectacular at 2 p.m. Saturday in the courtyard of St. Pete Pride, 3251 3rd Avenue N. It’s a family-friendly show with performers Eugenie Bondurant, David Warner, John Huls, Jay Hoff and Fernando Chonqui, with origami by Jen Ring. Following the play, Creative Clay will bring the art supplies, and everyone is welcome to draw a picture of their family to be used in forthcoming videos (in English and in Spanish).

Saturday at 8 p.m.: From Nathan Daugherty and his ND Theatricals comes the latest installment of Classic Burlesque to the Palladium. “Vol. 5 – Circus Edition” adds aerial artists, clowns and the like to the striptease dancers and cabaret-style musical numbers. 18+ only. Read more and find tickets here.

It’s the final weekend for that wacky comedy Nightsweat at freeFall Theatre, penned by bay area playwright Natalie Symons. Sunday’s matinee means curtain down. Tickets are here.

Running like the proverbial gangbusters are Stageworks’ Poirot Returns!, with Roxanne Fay as detective Hercule Poirot, and the Jobsite production of Frankenstein, with Paul Potenza as The Creature. Stageworks tickets are here; Jobsite here.

The experimental one-person play White Rabbit Red Rabbit begins its American Stage-produced hop around the bay area tonight. Here’s the gambit: There are 15 separate and distinct performances of the 70-minute drama/comedy by Nassim Soleimanpour; a different actor will take it on each time, and none will see the script until the moment they step onstage. Some shows are in Tampa; some are in St. Pete. Find all details and ticket info here.

At 7:30 p.m. Monday (Nov. 6), young actors from ThinkTank Theatre will perform at Stageworks; it’s part of Enough! Plays Against Gun Violence, a national play-reading outreach. The program consists of six short (10 minute) plays, written by teens, that address the issue of gun violence in America (244 script submissions were received, from 36 states). Tickets are free, but reservations (here) are encouraged.

The Weekend Arts Forecast appears every Thursday in the Catalyst

Please add us to your mailing list – send all press releases and event info to bill@stpetecatalyst.com.

You can also submit your events to the Catalyst calendar, by clicking here.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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