Arts: Page 256

Funny Girls

Local women’s comedy festival celebrates 10 years

Comedy

Look around and you’ll find the seeds of a comedy scene germinating in Eugene. More and more, nationally touring comics are stopping to perform locally, and several venues — such as Luckey’s, The Green Room and Sam Bond’s — are hosting comedy nights. A cornerstone of Eugene comedy is the NW Women’s Comedy Festival, now entering its 10th year.  Festival founder Leigh Anne Jasheway says that in the early years the event was the only women’s comedy festival between Seattle and northern California.  Continue reading →

Crack Your Nuts with Holiday Dance

A season of sugarplum fairies, Narnia adventures, dancing Dickens and more

Dance

It’s the holiday season, and all across town, stages start to sparkle with gyrating gumdrops, spinning snowflakes and leaping lions. So grab a hot cocoa in the lobby and settle in for a nice break from your to-do list as you take in some of this shimmery season of dance. This is the biggest time of year for dance recitals for local studios, and these hard-working young dancers are gearing up to strut their stuff. Continue reading →

The original riot girls

Film

Someday, a movie will be worthy of Carey Mulligan again. An Education deserved her; little else has, though her sharp performance in Inside Llewyn Davis was a highlight. Mulligan is so delicate looking, so fresh-faced, that filmmakers either underestimate her or don’t know what to do with her. Like Brie Larson, so prickly and good in Room, she hides a steeliness behind wide eyes. I want to see her play a superhero, but she’d probably get cast as the sidekick. Continue reading →

Such Great Heights

Tall Heights play with popular Portland folk duo Shook Twins

Music

Boston duo Tall Heights is comprised of childhood friends Tim Harrington and Paul Wright. The pair got their start as street performers.  “We were living on what we made out on the street,” Harrington tells EW. He says that playing music on street corners gave Wright and himself a unique opportunity to hone Tall Heights’ sound.  “It was four to six hours a day of performing,” Harrington continues, adding that intensive practice helped the musicians gel creatively.  Continue reading →

Sad Songs for an Old Crow

Gill Landry of Nashville-based alt-country string group Old Crow Medicine Show

Music

Gill Landry of Nashville-based alt-country string group Old Crow Medicine Show says his solo work sounds nothing like his well-known band. “It’s more personal,” Landry tells EW. “It’s more songwriting in the vein of a Townes Van Zandt vibe — not so country, two different things really.” Landry is touring in support of his self-titled 2015 release, out now on ATO Records. Continue reading →

Stuff Your Ears

Global sounds from Venezuela to France round out the month

Music

Most touring chamber-music ensembles stick closely to the tried (or is that tired?) and true 19th- and early 20th-century Central European repertoire. Not the Dalí Quartet. Starting out in Venezuela’s famous El Sistema music training program, which also produced L.A. Philharmonic music director Gustavo “The Dude” Dudamel, the members of Dalí Quartet went on to study at major American conservatories.  Continue reading →

A Child’s Christmas Memory

Eugene actor celebrates 31 years of performing A Child’s Christmas in Wales

Performing Arts

Eugene actor David Stuart Bull has been performing Dylan Thomas’ timeless story A Child’s Christmas in Wales for so long, people have forgotten exactly how long it’s been.  Ib Hamide, owner of Café Soriah where Bull performs the piece, says 27 or 28 years. Bull says it’s been more than 30. “This will be, by my count, the 31st year,” Bull claims.  What’s not debatable is that his annual performance of the piece is a local tradition. Continue reading →

Bedtime Stories

Art, truth and murder collide in LCC’s production of Martin McDonagh’s The Pillowman

Theater

On the surface, Irish author Martin McDonagh’s plays are foul, transgressive affairs, full of piss and vinegar and erect middle fingers. In the tradition of his literary forbears Swift, Joyce and Beckett, McDonagh is a relentlessly physical writer given to depicting all manner of human grotesquery — violence, perversion, degradation, deformity and compulsive cussing of the worst kind. Continue reading →