Whats-Happening: Page 424

Works in Progress

Oregon Performance Lab returns with teens, motorcycles and beer

Theater
Beer playwright Nick Leavens with actress Laura Ramadei

Oregon Performance Lab is back for its second summer of theater workshops, bringing rising playwrights of America to Eugene. Described as a “three-week pop-up laboratory,” OPL connects artists with venues, actors and an audience for theatrical experimentation. The wife-and-husband team of Willow Norton (artistic director) and Corey Pearlstein (creative director) are based in New York but have roots in Eugene. On the heels of last year’s successful inaugural season, now they are fueling even more ambitious plans. Continue reading →

Bard on the Butte

Magic things happen when a Texan hikes Skinner’s Butte

Theater
Richard Leebrick and Penta Swanson in A Midsummer Night’s Dream

It’s such a good idea. Why didn’t someone think of it sooner? “I was out one day moseying around on Skinner’s Butte,” Robert Newcomer says. “I thought, ‘Wow, this is fairyland up here.’”  Newcomer, a native Texan and theater arts educator who relocated to Eugene four years ago, is directing Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream in the inaugural production of Bard on the Butte.  Continue reading →

Art & Craft

Brooklyn transplants with Eugene ties set up a modern-day apothecary and gallery downtown

Visual Arts

The day after Erika Fortner graduated from art school in New York, she headed straight to Berlin to work on a $5 million 80-foot long mural for banking behemoth Goldman Sachs.  She wasn’t alone; Fortner was one of about 30 art assistants in the employ of abstract painter Julie Mehretu, a 2005 MacArthur “genius” grant awardee who Goldman Sachs commissioned in 2007 to create “Mural.”  Continue reading →