Troupe

A Southern California improv comedy troupe, Cherry Spitz, plans to perform for free at 7 p.m. Wednesday in the Atlantis Lounge in the Campus Village Housing Community Center at UC Irvine, 1061 W. Peltason Drive. “We are hungry,” said member Eric Wargo, “hungry to perform and hungry for food. They will be feeding us.” Wargo is unemployed, but he and the other troupe members usually have regular jobs. The group usually charges $5 at the door, and most of the earnings go toward furthering the troupe and supporting the theater, said Tim Gale, one of the group’s founders.

Founded in 2008, Luminario Ballet captivates its audience with aerial acrobatics, ballet and contemporary dance. The troupe's latest performance, "Taking Flight," will take place Saturday and Sunday at UC Irvine's Claire Trevor Theatre. The audience will have a chance to take in an array of musical and dance performances, including an aerial show tribute to Led Zeppelin called "LedZerial," a glimpse into the complexity of three relationships, called "If Walls Could Scream," and "TURF."

“Rocky Horror Picture Show” fan Bill Ung thinks of the now-shuttered Balboa Theater as an old friend. Every few years Ung, who still plays the bespectacled character Brad Majors in stage reenactments of “Rocky Horror” with the performance troupe Midnight Insanity, has gone and peered in the windows of the old theater on Balboa Peninsula. But he only ever sees dust and rubble. “It was home for such a long time — this is where I met all my friends,” Ung said.

Devin Stothers anxiously tapped his feet against a second-story balcony rail, hands half covering his eyes, as he stared intently at the stage below. The boy was about to see what appeared to be a real witch. Suddenly everything went black. The lights came back up and the witch, with eyes glowing, stood before Hansel and Gretel who were lost in the woods. Four-year-old Devin watched as the witch seemed to fly, feet barely touching the stage as she crossed the stage. Although this witch could cast spells and fly, the actor could barely move without some help from above.

Deirdre Newman Call it Shakespeare by demand. This weekend, Shakespeare by the Sea will present two of the Bard's plays at Grant Howald Park -- plays that last year's audiences picked. The company will stage "Richard III" on Saturday and "Two Gentlemen of Verona" on Sunday. Both performances are free. While the language and iambic pentameter rhythm of Shakespeare can be foreign to the ear, audiences can grasp the idea of the two plays by the visuals, Producing Artistic Director Lisa Coffi said.

Young Chang You won't find fancy sets at Tales & Scales' shows. The props will be minimal, the costumes will be limited. The last thing the troupe's musicians want to do is hand over the story. Instead, their goal is to force children's imaginations to fill in the holes to completely tell the tale being performed. "If we want to show that two people are rowing in a boat, we don't have a boat and oar as props," said Deborah Moore, artistic director and percussionist for the troupe.

COSTA MESA — Unlike the girls in his troupe, Jacob Folsom doesn’t have to wear a wig when he dances. But that doesn’t mean the Newport Beach resident forgets about his hair before a show. Jacob, 9, is one of the few boys in the Claddagh Dance Company, an Irish-themed school that operates eight studios in Southern California. When the troupe goes on stage, the girls wear tightly curled wigs to give off that old-fashioned look — and Jacob, who sports a long mane of hair, firms his with gel to keep it from tossing up and down.

"Forbidden Broadway" is to the realm of musical theater what Mad Magazine is to serious journalism -- a satiric, irreverent kick in the shins, and sometimes higher, with a slam-bang, take-no-prisoners attitude. Creator-writer-director Gerard Alessandrini and his gang of merry satirists have been taking potshots at the Great White Way for the better part of two decades, updating their material with each Broadway season and zeroing in on its hits and misses.

Alex Coolman Lesson No. 1 is always the same for the men and women who train to join the troupe of Peking Acrobats: Learn how to fall. It's a safe bet that every performer in the 28-member group, which comes to OCC Saturday evening, will take a spill at some point during a rehearsal of their routine. The complicated tumbling, balancing and gymnastic feats they perform are, by design, tricks that push the limits of human agility. Don Hughes, who co-produces the tours of the troupe from his Pismo Beach office and has worked with the group for 27 years, says he's watched the complexity of the routine gradually increase over the years.

Orange Coast College is once again taking its act on the road, this time bringing the Iraq war home for local high school audiences. Titled “Voices in Conflict,” the program started off with performances at Estancia and Fountain Valley high schools and will continue with presentations this month. Alex Golson, the OCC theater arts professor who initiated the 45-minute touring show, points out that it was created by students from Wilton High School in Connecticut in 2007.

How many human bodies does it take to make an elephant? For a team of Pilobolus dancers, the answer — five — lies within their collective improvisation. At 8 p.m. on May 17 through 19, Pilobolus will perform a mixed repertory at the Irvine Barclay Theatre as part of the venue's contemporary dance series. To date, Pilobolus has produced more than 100 choreographic works. The troupe's Barclay program will consist of five pieces that span 11 years: "Gnomen" (1997), "All Is Not Lost" (2011)

"PSY," the newest and largest production from the Montreal-based circus troupe Les 7 doigts de la main (seven fingers of the hand), will spring into its debut at the Irvine Barclay Theatre for four performances only, starting May 10. Most known for their international hit Traces, 7 Fingers' fourth creation, "PSY," was conjured up in 2010. "PSY" explores the surreal underworld of the human psyche, while merging acrobatics of the body, mind and soul. Founded in Montreal in 2002, 7 Fingers' initial goal was to bring circus to a human scale.

The Little Angels Children's Folk Ballet of Korea are the South Korean people's roving goodwill ambassadors. On Wednesday night, before a sold-out Segerstrom Hall in Costa Mesa, the 32 members of the troupe's present-day generation of child performers brought their message of peace to Orange County, delighting their audience with a performance that featured a repertoire of Korean folk dances. During the two-hour show, the children - mostly girls ranging from 9 to 15 years old - changed in and out of an array of brilliantly colored costumes.

One of the world's top ballet companies will stop at the Segerstrom Center for the Arts next week. But they're not Russian; they're not even European. They hail from Havana, Cuba. The Cuban National Ballet's production of "The Magic of Dance" will feature the most beloved excerpts from 19th century ballets like "Swan Lake," "Don Quixote," "The Sleeping Beauty," "Coppélia" and "Giselle. " Following its engagement in Orange County, the company will move to Los Angeles to perform "Don Quixote" in its entirety from June 23 to 26. The company was founded in 1948 by renowned ballerina and choreographer Alicia Alonso, and has quickly risen to global prominence.

Founded in 2008, Luminario Ballet captivates its audience with aerial acrobatics, ballet and contemporary dance. The troupe's latest performance, "Taking Flight," will take place Saturday and Sunday at UC Irvine's Claire Trevor Theatre. The audience will have a chance to take in an array of musical and dance performances, including an aerial show tribute to Led Zeppelin called "LedZerial," a glimpse into the complexity of three relationships, called "If Walls Could Scream," and "TURF."

Orange Coast College is once again taking its act on the road, this time bringing the Iraq war home for local high school audiences. Titled “Voices in Conflict,” the program started off with performances at Estancia and Fountain Valley high schools and will continue with presentations this month. Alex Golson, the OCC theater arts professor who initiated the 45-minute touring show, points out that it was created by students from Wilton High School in Connecticut in 2007.

A Southern California improv comedy troupe, Cherry Spitz, plans to perform for free at 7 p.m. Wednesday in the Atlantis Lounge in the Campus Village Housing Community Center at UC Irvine, 1061 W. Peltason Drive. “We are hungry,” said member Eric Wargo, “hungry to perform and hungry for food. They will be feeding us.” Wargo is unemployed, but he and the other troupe members usually have regular jobs. The group usually charges $5 at the door, and most of the earnings go toward furthering the troupe and supporting the theater, said Tim Gale, one of the group’s founders.

A local Polynesian dance troupe, Tupua, will be hosting a fundraiser Saturday in Costa Mesa, commonly known as “a plate sale” among Orange County’s Pacific Islander population. The troupe will be assembling plates of hot food available for pickup only. The plate sale will subsidize the cost of costumes for a bigger joint fundraiser May 8 with Mater Dei High School, in an effort to benefit the troop, the school and American Red Cross’ relief for Haiti and Chile.

Wondering what all the hoopla was at Victoria Elementary on Monday morning? Hundreds of kids at the Costa Mesa school spent the morning hooping and hollering at Hoop-A-Pa-Loo-Za, a spring celebration by the KidTribe, which travels across California to engage kids in a hula-hoop, song-and-dance extravaganza. ?We have a million and a half kids hooping across the state,? said Kellee Breaux of KidTribe, who ran the outdoor assembly with ?hooperstar? William Ericson. ?It?s such an awesome fitness program.

Sam Weaver, the prop master for the percussion and dance troupe STOMP, is kind of like a real-life MacGyver. The group, which begins a six-day engagement at the Orange County Performing Arts Center tonight, is world renowned for making music in a visually stunning fashion using everyday household implements like trash cans, brooms and basketballs as instruments. Weaver’s job is to procure the props for the eight-person crew that tours around the United States and make sure they make the right noises and can be easily tossed around, worn and beaten.