Author: Anna Grace

Ashland on My Mind

Local theater artists chime in on the upcoming Oregon Shakespeare Festival season

Performing Arts
The Tempest at OSF

The Oregon Shakespeare Festival kicks off once again Feb. 14. Our internationally recognized theater down I-5 is entertaining with plays ranging from 400 years old to fresh off the press, dark dramas to Marx brothers comedies. I got in touch with a few notable theater artists from Eugene to see what’s on their list to see this season. Water By The Spoonful: A 2012 Pulitzer Prize winner, Water By The Spoonful follows the public and virtual lives of a group of recovering addicts who have met and bonded as family in an online chat room. Continue reading →

Love and Language

The Very Little Theatre presents The Language Archive

Theater

“I don’t understand what you are trying to say. I have never understood anything you are trying to say,” says George, the protagonist of The Language Archive. Can you love language but have no words for love? George is a passionate linguist but a passive spouse. He cannot express his love for Mary. She, in turn, hides odd little poems about her unhappiness and then denies ever writing them, such as, “Husband or throw pillow? Wife or hot-water bottle? Marriage or an old cardigan? Love or explaining how to use the remote control?” Continue reading →

Caveman Lives, Learns

VLT presents quiet sci-fi thriller The Man From Earth

Theater
Dave Smith, Lauren Mason, Tiffany Rockwell, David Mort and Jennifer Sellers

John Oldman is either a “caveman, a liar or a nut.” A tenure-track professor quite suddenly announces his departure from the university where he has comfortably taught for 10 years. His fellow professors insist on the ritual of cheese, crackers and a proper going away, only to have their party ruined when John works up the courage to tell them the truth. He is 14,000 years old. He never ages, never dies and has been adrift in the world since the late Paleolithic age, learning about himself as the world comes to understand its own history. Continue reading →

Zen Romance

OCT contemplates love with Who Am I This Time?

Theater

At the North Crawford Mask & Wig Club, Central Connecticut’s finest community theater, Tom Newton is waxing philosophical on love, pure and complicated.  “The way I see it,” he notes, “love and theater have a lot in common. They’re both seductive. They both make promises they can’t always keep. And they’re both chock-full of attractive people who are maybe just a little too addicted to drama.”  Continue reading →

The Business of Laughter

Very Little Theatre inspires with Laughter on the 23rd Floor

Theater

“Even if he was a communist, why would he have cards printed up?” the writer asks, hearing that General George Marshall has just been accused by Joseph McCarthy of being a card-carrying communist. It’s just another day at the office — the crazy, neurotic, hysterical office for Lucus (Zachary Twardowski) as he tries to make it as a comedy writer for a major comedian against the pressures of lowering network standards and Cold War propaganda. Continue reading →

Monsters, Mayhem and Mel Brooks

The Actor’s Cabaret of Eugene brings Young Frankenstein to Life

Theater

“It’s Fronkonsteen!” he barks, steadfastly denying his monster-making roots in Transylvania. But when the death of his grandfather necessitates a trip back to the family castle, the temptation is too great. The young neuroscientist’s eyes glow as he reads through his infamous grandfather’s notes. He becomes possessed by possibility of creating life. The townsfolk, long horrified by the Frankenstein family business of animating corpses, don’t trust this transplanted New Yorker with a turnip, much less a newly dead body and an abnormal brain. Continue reading →