Arts: Page 290

Oregon Shakespeare Festival Premiers Three New Plays

Fingersmith, Head Over Heels and Sweat

Theater
Fingersmith

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

Theater

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

Theater
Brett French, Tracy Ilene Miller, Bill Campbell, Christine Hanks and Pamela Lehan-siegel 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 →

Pressing On

In the Schnitzer’s new exhibit, Under Pressure, more than contemporary art is on display, but also a challenging reflection of our times

Visual Arts
‘The Pastoral or Arcadian State: Illegal Alien’s Guide to Greater America,’ Enrique Chagoya, 2006

Playing devil’s advocate, I ask art collector Jordan Schnitzer how contemporary art can possibly fulfill us in an age of flickering screens and attention spans. Immediately I regret siding with the devil, even if only momentarily. Schnitzer’s response is so passionate, so righteous and, frankly, so absolutely correct that his indignation at the thought that art could ever be irrelevant reverberates through the phone.  Continue reading →

Selma – a study on MLK Jr. and the work of leading

Film

Ava DuVernay’s Selma starts off so calmly that, despite what history promises, it’s a shock when the first moment of violence arrives. Four little girls walk down the stairs of a church. You know what this means. But what happens next occurs in a flash, a moment never explained.  What’s to explain? They’re there, and then they’re gone. It’s like the bottom drops out of the world. At that point, a man in my theater began to cry and I’m not sure he stopped.  Continue reading →

Nether Friend Nor Foe

Netherfriends

Music
Netherfriends

Even via email, I got the sense musician Shawn Rosenblatt (aka Netherfriends) enjoys a good put-on. Listen to his music and hear a keen pop sensibility, a voracious musical sense of humor and stylistic attention-deficit disorder. In 2010, Rosenblatt started the 50 Songs 50 States Project. “I started a year-long project where I played a show and recorded a new song in all 50 states,” Rosenblatt says. “For Oregon, I played a show and wrote a song in Portland.” Continue reading →

Music Today, Music Tomorrow

From the contemporary Music Today Festival to a John Williams’ score

Music
Branford Marsalis

Of all the music events happening in Eugene this month, perhaps none is more valuable than the University of Oregon’s Music Today Festival. In contrast to most classical music institutions, which over the past century have turned into moldering antiquities, endlessly recycling well-known works by long dead Europeans, the Music Today Festival is devoted to incubating the creative work of Oregon’s next generation of composers. Continue reading →

Brotherly Love

The Wood Brothers

Music
The Wood Brothers

Oliver Wood says you need to see his brother play the bass. “My brother is a world-class upright bass player,” he boasts. Wood, alongside his brother Chris Wood and drummer Jano Rixx, is one-third of hard-touring roots-Americana act, The Wood Brothers, who return to Eugene in support of 2013’s critically acclaimed record The Muse. Continue reading →