Arts: Page 241

Slice of Heaven

OCT'S Silent Sky tells the story of hearts and stars

Theater
Inga R. Wilson (left) and Erica Towe in OCT's Silent Sky

Lauren Gunderson’s 2011 play Silent Sky is about succeeding and failing, seeking and discovering, journeying and arriving. That is to say, it’s the story of a life — the life of astronomer Henrietta Leavitt. Silent Sky, directed by Elizabeth Helman, is playing now at Oregon Contemporary Theatre. Working at Harvard at the turn of the 20th century, Leavitt made significant discoveries leading to the development of the Hubble Telescope.  Continue reading →

Back Beat

Music

While the Hawaiian Slack Key Guitar Festival is only in its third year in Eugene, it’s part of a 34-year-old tradition that “began in 1982 as a tribute to one of Hawaii’s iconic and most celebrated slack key musicians, Gabby ‘Pops’ Pahinui, considered the ‘Modern Day Godfather’ of Hawaiian Slack Key Guitar.” The one-day fest kicks off 7:30 pm Friday, March 4, in the Hult Center’s Soreng Theater. For newbies, slack-key guitar is a fingerstyle type of guitar music that became popular in Hawaii in the 1960s. Continue reading →

Jersey Boys at the Hult, March 1-6, 2016

Performing Arts

Jersey has taken over the Hult, and audiences are happy.             Long-running Broadway hit “Jersey Boys” opened last night, and with its familiar tunes and Cinderella story – of four charming guys who make their way from singing under a streetlamp, to selling out shows across the country – how could it not appeal? People love this stuff. Continue reading →

Jersey Boys at the Hult, March 1-6, 2016

Performing Arts

Jersey has taken over the Hult, and audiences are happy.             Long-running Broadway hit “Jersey Boys” opened last night, and with its familiar tunes and Cinderella story – of four charming guys who make their way from singing under a streetlamp, to selling out shows across the country – how could it not appeal? People love this stuff. Continue reading →

Toil and Trouble

Film

Lush, brooding and contagiously creepy, The Witch is just the sort of spooky gem that fans of horror clamor for but rarely get. The film neither shocks nor bludgeons you. It does not beg indulgence, nor does it paint its grotesqueries in broad strokes. Continue reading →

Carte Blanche

Film

After more than a decade of writing about movies, the Oscars, somehow, still raise a fire in me. I know I will be disappointed. I know there will be one or two wins that seem perfect, one or two speeches that surprise, just like I know that most of the lauded films will be about white men enduring something. I know the Oscars matter, on a business and cultural level, no matter what the Coen brothers — who’ve conveniently already earned a few — say. Winning is power and power is money, and money lets people decide which stories get told. Continue reading →

Drone Grrrls

Seattle band Chastity Belt

Music
Chastity Belt

Last year, Seattle band Chastity Belt released its debut, Time to Go Home, on Hardly Art, a subsidiary of Sub Pop Records used to foster and grow interesting bands that might not otherwise be quite ready for prime time.  The album runs the gamut of Northwest indie rock: a little Riot Grrrl here, a little Nirvana there, a little Sleater-Kinney elsewhere. Listen closely and hear the guitar tone of REM’s Peter Buck on the song “Trapped.”  Continue reading →

Fire Waiting for Fuel

Activist singer-songwriter Ani DiFranco comes to McDonald Theatre with a mission

Music
Ani Difranco

Ani DiFranco doesn’t mince words: Her current tour is called Vote Dammit! The objective is to ignite the political fires of an audience through music and community building.  “It’s about participation,” DiFranco tells EW. “If we sit out on election day, bad things will happen, but if everyone who could vote would vote we’d have a better country.”  Continue reading →