Arts: Page 308

Students bring plays to life

Theater

Lane Community College’s inaugural Playwright’s Showcase 2015 gives student playwrights the chance to see their nascent works come to life onstage while also gaining real-world expertise in arts management. Through this innovative program, students not only nurture creative projects, but they learn firsthand how plays are produced and promoted.    This year’s showcase, which runs Thursday through Sunday, Feb. 12-15, features five plays, each written and directed by students or former students.    Continue reading →

Oscar Shorts

Film

The Oscar-nominated short films are always something of a mixed bag, but this year gives us a particularly strange crop. While there’s always at least one sentimental entry among the live-action films, the most recent nominees are notably melancholy — excepting Butter Lamp, a French and Chinese co-production set in Tibet. The camera in this poignant but funny short never moves. A photographer takes pictures of families, groups of children, a couple; he has props and backgrounds, and encounters minor officials and mischievous kids. Continue reading →

New Wheels, New Music

Folk songstress Olivia Awbrey has a love affair with writing

Music
Olivia Awbrey

Folk songstress Olivia Awbrey has a love affair with writing. Like any relationship, there are good times and bad times, times when moving seems easier than staying, and growing together is a key to success. Awbrey’s been forced to make some changes since her days as frontwoman for Small Joys, a folk-rock group that enjoyed the winning slot at WOW Hall’s 2013 Bandest of the Bands competition. Her latest EP, New Wheels, is an intimate look at the changes she’s undergone. Continue reading →

L.A.’s Las Cafeteras puts modern spin on Mexican folk music

Las Cafeteras

Music
Las Cafeteras

For many Americans, the first introduction to the infectiously happy ditty “La Bamba” was either circa 1958 from the crooning Chicano rocker Ritchie Valens or circa 1987 from a pompadour-ed Lou Diamond Phillips playing the crooning Chicano rocker in the biopic La Bamba.  This Top 40 hit, however, is hundreds of years old. “‘La Bamba’ is a traditional Son Jarocho song,” Leah Rose Gallegos explains. “It’s been remade by Ritchie Valens, Los Lobos and also us.”   Continue reading →

In the Garage

Bass Drum Of Death

Music
Photo by Andrew Paul

As far as band names go, Bass Drum Of Death is in my top five. In recent years, acts such as Ty Segall, Wavves and King Tuff have spearheaded a gorgeous, fuzzy garage revival, leaving footprints in the ashes for other bands to follow.  Bass Drum of Death’s eponymous 2013 album was chockfull of tasty lo-fi licks. Every song had the same basic tone: howling six-strings. swampy bass lines and a snare drum that just wouldn’t quit.  Continue reading →