THE ESSENTIAL A&E PICKS FOR MAY 11 - 17 

• Courtesy Photo

KRCL Music Meets Movies: Meet Me in the Bathroom
KRCL's "Music Meets Movies" series has presented a wide range of documentaries over the years, ranging across decades and genres. For this season's closing offering, the series dives into a very particular subject of the bands that emerged from the turn-of-the-millennium New York City indie-rock scene.

In Meet Me in the Bathroom, directors Dylan Southern and Will Lovelace (the LCD Soundsystem doc Shut Up and Play the Hits) employ only contemporaneous footage (sometimes supplemented by voice-over interviews that clearly took place a bit later) to explore the years 1999 – 2003, as bands like The Strokes, The Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Interpol and more emerged in local clubs like the Sidewalk Café and Mercury Lounge, before finding the inevitable perils of fame. The wealth of live performance footage is bound to be a draw for fans, while Southern and Lovelace fill in the blanks with kaleidoscopic images of New York and obvious historical touchstones like 9/11 and the August 2003 blackout. There's interesting material here about why this particular "scene" could only have happened when it did, before gentrification priced out the artists and clubs that had thrived in Brooklyn, and plenty of stuff for those who knew the bands back when.

Meet Me in the Bathroom plays at Brewvies Cinema Pub (677 S. 200 West) on Thursday, May 11 at 7:30 p.m. Tickets go on sale at 6:30 p.m. the day of the event, $10 per person or 2-for-1 with a KRCL T-shirt and free for KRCL High Fidelity members; attendees must be over 21. Visit krcl.org for additional event information. (Scott Renshaw)

• Stephanie Dunn, BW Productions

Pioneer Theatre Company: The Prom
The word "wokeness" has lost all meaning as it has become a conservative bugaboo, making it harder for the notion of "performative wokeness" to retain its original intent. But it's hard to find a better expression for the silliness at the core of The Prom, the 2018 Tony-nominated musical from the creative team behind Elf: The Musical which got a Netflix movie adaptation in 2020, and makes its Utah premiere with Pioneer Theatre Company.

It's the story of a group of Broadway actors who, for a variety of reasons, find themselves at down-and-out phases in their careers. Seeking to make themselves relevant again, they look for a cause to which they can attach themselves on social media. They find it in Emma (Celeste Rose, pictured), a lesbian high-school student in Indiana who has been told that she can't take her girlfriend to the school prom. When the actors show up in an attempt to help Emma—but really to help themselves—a media circus ensues, involving the actors, the students, the PTA and the principal all working towards different ends. According to PTC artistic director Karen Azenberg, who directs and choreographs the show, "The Prom, with its feel-good message of love and acceptance, is exactly what our world needs right now."

Pioneer Theatre Company's production of The Prom runs at the Simmons Pioneer Memorial Theatre (300 S. 1400 East) May 12 – 27, with performances Monday-Thursday at 7 p.m., Friday at 7:30 p.m. and Saturday at 2 p.m. & 7:30 p.m. Tickets $48 - $72 in advance, $5 more day of show; visit pioneertheatre.org to purchase tickets and for additional event information. (SR)

• Courtesy Photo

Plan-B Theatre Company/KUER Radio Hour: The Case of the Missing Dog
After 15 previous installments, Plan-B Theatre Company's Radio Hour project—collaborating with KUER on broadcast performances in the style of vintage radio drama—is hardly a brand-new concept, especially for returning artists like actor Jay Perry (who has been part of every previous installment). That doesn't mean it can't be a fun new experience for folks like playwright Brandon Ngo, who penned The Case of the Missing Dog in a humorous homage to old-school gumshoe tales.

But more than just playing within the detective genre, Ngo is having fun with the particular requirements of writing for radio. "I knew I would have to rely on pure dialogue-driven storytelling," Ngo shared in a Plan-B blog interview. "Every plot point, every joke, every moment of character building relied entirely on dialogue. It was an exciting challenge and I soon discovered this was my favorite kind of dialogue in media: indulgent, extremely drawn-out monologues where, for no particular reason, characters divulge to each other way too much information about their thoughts and intentions." And as for the canine character of the title: "This play features speaking parts for a dog because I want to hear actors make dog noises. Was this worth my time, and will it be worth anyone else's? That's for listeners and god and Hollywood to decide."

Plan-B Theatre Company's production of The Case of the Missing Dog can be heard in a live broadcast on Saturday, May 12 at 11 a.m. on KUER (90.1 FM), and rebroadcast at 7 p.m. on RadioWest. Visit planbtheatre.org for additional information. (SR)