Hometown Hero
A talk with playwright Aaron Posner about the Eugene flight of Stupid F@#*ing Bird
Considering the sterling reputation of J. Cole, it’s incredible that his new tour kicks off here at the McDonald Theatre. Continue reading
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Class Act
Veteran director Judy Wenger is back with Snow White at Rose Children’s Theatre
Veteran teacher, director, author and the inspiration for Ms. Wingit of the nationally syndicated cartoon Stone Soup, Judy Wenger is a Eugene icon. And she’s directing again, with a gleeful adaptation of Snow White and The Seven Dwarfs for Rose Children’s Theatre. During her 37 years in education, Wenger developed a theory of theater education that rests heavily on community and respect, at the expense of starpower. Continue reading
Play it as it Lays
Very Little Theatre presents Five of a Kind
Chronicling the lives of five women in show business, the new play Five of a Kind spans half a century of friendship and social transformation. Written by Anita Dwyer and Adrienne Armstrong, the play premieres this week, Feb. 13-15, in a “reader’s theater” format at the Very Little Theatre. Continue reading
Students bring plays to life
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
I Dream of Cuba
Cottage Theatre transplants Twelfth Night to 1950s Havana
Send Shakespeare to the moon. Put him in the middle of Nazi Germany, the antebellum South, the Prague Spring, the Whiteaker Block Party. The miracle of Shakespeare’s plays, and the iambic mechanics of their impossible flexibility, is that wherever you set them, Shakespeare more or less remains Shakespeare — even in Castro’s Cuba. Continue reading
Information Overload
A swirling, whimsical, breathless catalogue of human relationships in varying stages of intimacy
Caryl Churchill’s new play Love and Information is simultaneously the worst and the best first-date idea ever. In the intimate horseshoe shape of UO’s Hope Theatre, the play’s litany of 57 scenes and 100-plus characters was so relentless that it never occurred to me to shift so that my date could grab my hand. Continue reading
Oregon Shakespeare Festival Premiers Three New Plays
Fingersmith, Head Over Heels and Sweat
Just a few hours south on I-5 exists a dulcet community that my family has re-named “The Magical Twinkly Fairyland.” For the uninitiated, the village I’m referring to is Ashland, where good restaurants abound, creeks babble, deer wander and, from February through November, some of the finest theater glimmers across the stages of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. Celebrating its 80th year, OSF’s 2015 season features three world premieres: Continue reading
What a Way to Make a Living
ACE Pours a Cup of Ambition with 9 to 5
In the iconic 1980 movie 9 to 5, workaday heroines Doralee Rhodes, Judy Bernly and Violet Newstead (played by Dolly Parton, Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin) suffer under — and ultimately triumph over — their “sexist, egotistical, lying, hypocritical bigot” boss, Mr. Hart (rendered to oily perfection by Dabney Coleman). It’s a classic film, with a title song that’s been scientifically proven to be the foremost go-to karaoke anthem of all time. Continue reading
Domestic Crimes in Arid Climes
Christmas is fakakta for the family in VLT’s Other Desert Cities
No American playwright — and perhaps no playwright ever — was as adept as Tennessee Williams at pulling apart the icky, sticky tangle of hurt that one furiously guarded secret can exact on a family. In the humid atmosphere of a Williams play, a single skeleton in the closet can level an entire clan for generations down the line, by way of recrimination, jealousy, resentment, obsession, addiction and, most of all, fear. Shit gets ugly when we tamp down the truth. Continue reading
Oregon Contemporary Theatre offers A Bright New Boise
A dark comedy that keeps you laughing until at last you’re chilled to the core
Ah, yes — when God finally arrives in all his glory to destroy the wicked and raise up the true believers in a dazzling city of eternal happiness, how beautiful it all will be! Right? Right? Continue reading