Arts: Page 234

Channeling Chekov

The upper classes get poked in OCT’s production of Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike

Theater
Storm Kennedy and Josh Francis in OCT’s Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike

Premiering this weekend at Oregon Contemporary Theatre, Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike, winner of the 2013 Tony Award for best play, represents a kind of second act for playwright Christopher Durang. “Durang is known for his outrageous comedy, and rightfully so,” OCT director Tara Wibrew says. “But I particularly appreciate that his characters are lovable. In many of Durang’s pieces, there isn’t a villain against a hero — just good people taking opposing routes in an attempt to make life better.”  Continue reading →

ArtsHound

Visual Arts

The Maude Kerns Art Center opens Photography at Oregon Commitment to Vision: 50th Anniversary Retrospective Exhibit 6 to 8 pm Friday, May 20. The late Bernard Freemesser, a longtime photography professor at the University of Oregon, started Photography at Oregon, a fine arts photography exhibit at the UO in 1966. The 50th anniversary show features the work of more than 80 artists including Ansel Adams, Brian Lanker, Barbara Morgan, Mary Ellen and Brett Weston. Continue reading →

Raising Eyebrows

ArtsVisual Arts

Comic book people do love their origin stories. The tale of the University of Oregon program in comic studies dates back some seven years, to the 2009 opening reception of the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art’s Faster Than a Speeding Bullet exhibition of superhero comic art. Then-UO President Richard Lariviere was on site to help launch the exhibition.  “I don’t think he was terribly interested,” says Ben Saunders, UO professor of English and guest curator of the show. “I think he was doing due diligence.”  Continue reading →

Welcome to the Playhouse

Portland’s athletic BodyVox dance company brings retrospective Urban Meadow to the Hult

Dance
Urban Meadow

Eugene Ballet Company presents a rare treat for Eugene audiences Saturday when Portland-based BodyVox returns to the Hult Center with Urban Meadow, a retrospective of work from its 18 dynamic seasons.  “We wanted to make a show that was repertory,” says BodyVox co-artistic director Jamey Hampton, sitting in the airy lobby of the BodyVox studio and performance space in northwest Portland.   Continue reading →

The Law of Thermal Dynamics

Get existential with Portland’s The Thermals

Music
The Thermals

Portland power-trio The Thermals are obsessed with death. “It’s a subject Hutch [Harris] and I think about a lot,” Thermals bassist Kathy Foster tells EW. Harris plays guitar, sings and is primary songwriter. “It’s always present,” she says of the specter of death. “Sometimes it can be scarier than other times. Sometimes I get obsessed with it, think about it a lot and have this doomed feeling: It’s inevitable.”  Continue reading →

A Post-Everything World

Music

Bay-area black-metal act Bosse-De-Nage makes music in a post-everything world. Read how the band’s sound is described in the media: post-hardcore, post-metal. It’s hard to know what any of that means. But listen to the band’s latest, 2015’s All Fours, and you can believe this might be music for a post-human world, or maybe a world where our industrial excesses finally overtake us — the sound of the last human hand reaching out from an oozing pool of toxic waste.  Continue reading →

The Queen Has Spoken

Music

Unfortunately, Beyoncé doesn’t seem to have Eugene in her sights and, if looking at the mostly male, mostly white lineups of Eugene’s biggest venues is any indication, they wouldn’t book her anyway. So to see Bey’s Lemonade tour, you’ll have to head north to Seattle. Continue reading →

Arts Hound

Visual Arts

The New Zone Gallery announced that it will be leaving its downtown digs at 164 W. Broadway in August after a 10-year run. Steve LaRiccia, New Zone’s treasurer and gallery coordinator, tells EW that the gallery is grateful to Oregon Contemporary Theatre, which has been subsidizing rent. “The owners of the building, Oregon Contemporary Theatre, who have leased us that space, they found a tenant to rent that space for like $3,000 a month,” LaRiccia says, “and we were paying $250.” Continue reading →