Eugene Weekly

Throughout the opening night performance of Grease at Actors Cabaret of Eugene, I noted that my 8-year-old companion, and the elderly gentleman next to him, were both alternately laughing, clapping or simply enthralled. Young and old, they were watching a musical from the 1970s about teenagers from the 1950s; they were both loving it. Continue reading →

A limitless cosmos of doorways and dead-ends, New York City is a dream, as much a state of mind as it is a place on the map. Adam Gwon’s 2009 musical Ordinary Days beautifully captures the chaotic flux of NYC in a nutshell, by reflecting in microcosm the city’s everyday influence on the romantic lives of two couples. Deceptively simple in form, Gwon’s love letter to Gotham is a minor masterpiece of lyricism and perk, condensing worlds of emotion into a mere 90 minutes. Continue reading →

Claire, Jason, Warren and Deb are just four ordinary New Yorkers, but their lives intersect in the most extraordinary ways as they search with classic longing for love and fulfillment in a very modern setting. Ordinary Days is a contemporary musical by up-and-coming American composer Adam Gwon. According to Charles Isherwood of The New York Times, “Mr. Gwon writes crisp, fluid and often funny lyrics that reflect the racing minds of the four New Yorkers on a nervous search for their immediate futures.” Continue reading →

According to Dr. La Donna Forsgren, playwright and associate professor of theater arts at University of Oregon, there are three things newcomers should know when they sit down to enjoy her adaptation of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland at Hope Theatre: 1. Clap when you want. 2. Laugh when something funny happens. 3. Dance along if you like the music. (Oh, and there will be a bathroom break, too.) Continue reading →

According to the National Survey of High School Biology Teachers, 13 percent of American high school bio teachers explicitly teach creationism in the classroom. Sixty percent give evolution very little class time and 17 percent don’t even touch the subject at all, wanting to avoid the whole controversy. These statistics speak to the state of radical religious interference with education, which gives a ’50s play new relevance in the 21st century. Continue reading →

A witty, often biting examination of neighborhood integration, white flight, gentrification and just how far we have not come in the last half century, Clybourne Park is playwright Bruce Norris’ 21st-century response to Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun, in which a black family plans to move into a white neighborhood. Norris’ play, now at Oregon Contemporary Theatre, takes Hansberry’s tale of balancing assimilation and heritage full circle as white professionals return with grand plans to the neighborhoods their grandparents fled. Continue reading →