Performing Arts: Page 61

Students bring plays to life

Theater

Lane Community College’s inaugural Playwright’s Showcase 2015 gives student playwrights the chance to see their nascent works come to life onstage while also gaining real-world expertise in arts management. Through this innovative program, students not only nurture creative projects, but they learn firsthand how plays are produced and promoted.    This year’s showcase, which runs Thursday through Sunday, Feb. 12-15, features five plays, each written and directed by students or former students.    Continue reading →

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 →