Author: William Kennedy

QueerCorePower

A self-identified queer-core duo from upstate New York

Music
PWR BTTM

PWR BTTM is a self-identified queer-core duo from upstate New York that now resides in Brooklyn.  Last year the band gained massive critical buzz with the release of its debut LP Ugly Cherries, a collection of punk and power-pop tunes subverting heteronormative guitar rock reminiscent of Weezer. The track “Serving Goffman” draws comparisons among personal identity, dressing in drag and the costumes worn in corporate America — after all, aren’t we all just roleplaying?  Continue reading →

All That Jazz

University Theatre takes on the rhythms of Pulitzer-winning Water by the Spoonful

Theater
Michael Teague, Meghan Small and Allie Murakami in Water by the Spoonful

Theresa May, associate professor of Theater Arts at the University of Oregon, is directing University Theatre’s current production of Quiara Alegría Hudes’ Pulitzer-winning drama, Water by the Spoonful. The play tells the story of an Iraq War veteran readjusting to civilian life. May says the play is about two intersecting worlds. “One is the world of a Puerto Rican family in Philadelphia,” she tells EW. “The other is a world of online members of an addiction chat room and support group.” Continue reading →

Written in the Stars

OCT’s Silent Sky tells story of little-known female astronomer

Performing Arts
OCT’s Silent Sky director Elizabeth Helman

Like a lot of people, Corvallis-based theater director and educator Elizabeth Helman watched Neil deGrasse Tyson’s Cosmos series on Netflix. “I just happened to see a tiny little biography,” Helman tells EW, “a 10-minute segment of the Cosmos series and it had this mini-biography about Henrietta Leavitt.” Henrietta Swan Leavitt was an American astronomer at the turn of the 20th century. Continue reading →

Shanghaied in the Eug

The Shanghais

Music

San Francisco band The Shanghais have never been to Eugene. Lead vocalist Natalie Sweet is wondering if we have any good vegan food here. “I’m always on the hunt,” Sweet tells EW via email. Based on that question alone, the quartet should feel right at home in our fair city with its verdant veggie foodie scene. The Shanghais will release their latest EP, Fall in Love with the Shanghais, this spring on Philadelphia-based label Endless Daze Records.  Continue reading →

Looking for Liberman

Vanessa Carlton

Music
Vanessa Carlton

Songwriter Vanessa Carlton’s 2015 release Liberman is partially inspired by her grandfather. “He was a painter,” Carlton tells EW. Carlton’s family changed its surname from Liberman to Lee after World War II “because of anti-Semitism,” she says. Carlton hangs her grandfather’s work near the piano where she writes her music. “The swirling, beautiful, crazy colors ended up being the inspiration for the type of music I was writing. I wanted to honor his work as a painter,” she recalls. Continue reading →

Goodbye David Bowie

Music

David Bowie; Memorial I don’t like this one bit, not one bit Mr Bowie. I don’t like this one bit, Mr Bowie, one bit. A father a teacher a sister A brother a lover But death like life like art aren’t about me Unless the me is a you and the you were a we If I had a cathedral I’d carve your face in it. I don’t like this one bit, Mr Bowie, one bit. Continue reading →

Buggin’Out

Portland company with Eugene roots produces powdered crickets

Culture

CHarles Wilson is founder and CEO of Portland-based Cricket Flours, a platform food ingredient and consumer food product company.  Wilson says his mother’s gluten-intolerance inspired the business. He founded the enterprise during his last year of law school at the University of Oregon. “Ten or 15 years ago my mom got diagnosed,” Wilson tells EW, “and she couldn’t have gluten anymore.” Continue reading →

The Big Book of Bard

Four hundred years in the making, Shakespeare's First Folio comes to Eugene

Culture

London, England, 1622; William Shakespeare has been dead for seven years.  Six years prior, in 1616, Shakespeare’s rival, playwright Ben Jonson, had published a collection of his own plays. Emboldened by this publication’s success, the former business partners of Shakespeare, John Heminges and Henry Condell, follow Jonson’s lead and set about anthologizing Shakespeare’s work. Continue reading →