{"id":2397616,"date":"2026-05-01T12:08:10","date_gmt":"2026-05-01T12:08:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/?p=2397616"},"modified":"2026-05-01T12:08:10","modified_gmt":"2026-05-01T12:08:10","slug":"7-great-events-in-downtown-and-uptown-in-may","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/7-great-events-in-downtown-and-uptown-in-may\/","title":{"rendered":"7 great events in Downtown and Uptown in May"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Brittany Bradford as Tiffany and Emma Ramos as Carolyn in Alien Girls in 2026. (Photo by Rich Soublet II)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Hello, and welcome to the return of the San Diego Reader to the proudly persistent world of print.<\/p>\n

Our website, sandiegoreader.com, is still the best, most complete source for what\u2019s happening in San Diego. But as with the rest of the internet, there\u2019s a muchness to all that information, no matter how well organized, that can get overwhelming.<\/p>\n

Below, please find a curated selection of local events for your perusal. It\u2019s just a sampling, but hopefully it will serve to whet your appetite. Enjoy!<\/p>\n

Alien Girls<\/h2>\n

The meta manifests early in Amy Berryman\u2019s sweet drama about female friendship. (And it is sweet, despite the painful betrayals, tragic deaths, and surprising brutality it contains, thanks in no small part to the sympathetic performances from its leads, Brittany Bradford and Emma Ramos, and the propulsive \u2014 though not linear \u2014 action of the play. There\u2019s too much humanity, and too much artful revelation, to let things curdle to sourness.) We meet Tiffany and Carolyn as they hit the club, buzzing about their future as fellow writers \u2014 rich, respected, but not famous. It takes only a moment before the beat takes hold and one of them blurts a confession, whereupon the action freezes, the set\u2019s LED light ring flashes blue, and a voice dictates, \u201cDelete.\u201d Our girl tries again. \u201cDelete.\u201d The first two of many such moments that let us know we are in the somewhere in the midst of someone\u2019s creative process.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Speaking of creative processes: the other girl has been doing another sort of creating, and has some news to share. The difference between those two creations provides the tension of the play. But it isn\u2019t the story of the play. These writers write to process their encounters with the world \u2014 a world which often seems, as the title suggests, hostile and strange. They also write to process their encounters with each other.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The fragmented narrative can get a bit disorienting, which may explain why the audience laughed at moments that felt not at all comedic. (There are puppets. Try to give yourself over to the puppets.) And the dialogue is not above going for the easy gag here and there, and once or twice shades into self-conscious speechifying. But that\u2019s the \u201chere and there\u201d and \u201conce or twice\u201d of it. Again, the overarching sensation is sweetness, because the overarching dynamic is love.<\/p>\n