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Oregon Contemporary Theatre artistic director Craig Willis has a keen curatorial vision, one that’s helping to shape the landscape of what’s possible for the arts in Eugene. “My predecessor had done a good job of trying to provide interesting, challenging work,” Willis says, referring to OCT in its Lord Leebrick days, before he took the helm in 2003. Continue reading
This year, Eugene Opera will be twice as nice, boasting an expanded production schedule. The run kicks off with two performances of Benjamin Britten’s classic The Turn of the Screw, Oct. 30 and Nov. 1, at the Hult Center. “This is a new direction for us,” director Mark Beaudert tells EW. “It’s exciting to increase our presence in the community.” Continue reading
There’s no excuse for staying home — well, OK, that’s allowed, but should you want to venture out, there are plenty of world-class options this season at Eugene’s Hult Center for the arts lover in all of us. Ballet Fantastique’s all-original dance theater and live music delivers a retro-glam jazz holiday in American Christmas Carol Dec. 11-13. The Eugene Concert Choir offers a choral adventure, combining tradition and skill, with A Dickens of a Christmas on Dec. 6. Continue reading
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
Acclaimed “foodie” and TV personality Alton Brown has been teaching Americans how to cook for decades. The author of seven cookbooks, Brown created the Peabody Award-winning series Good Eats, has hosted Iron Chef America and has been a mentor and judge on Food Network Star. Currently the host of the popular food competition Cutthroat Kitchen, EW caught up with the multi-talented Brown in the midst of his international tour of “Alton Brown LIVE! The Edible Inevitable Tour.” Continue reading
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
When the community loses an artist, it’s first felt acutely in his mortal absence, and then in the slow, aching realization that he will never again be there to sing another song or paint another picture — or dance just one more dance. Continue reading
Once upon a time, families across this nation gathered around the radio at the appointed hour, eagerly awaiting the next installment of such classic shows as Gunsmoke, Superman, Burns and Allen or Arch Obler’s creepy Lights Out. This was the “Golden Age of Radio,” an era stretching roughly from the 1930s through the end of the Second World War, and it was no less vital for being cast now in an aura of quaint nostalgia. Continue reading
The Hult Center stands as the Grand Dame of the Lane County performing arts scene — known more for highbrow ballet, opera and classical music than contemporary or avant-garde work. Brad Garner of the Eugene-based interdisciplinary arts organization Harmonic Laboratory hopes to change that … well, at least in the lobby. Continue reading
Divas and prima donnas rule the opera stage. But in real life, not so much, no matter what happens with Hillary in 2016. On Feb. 8 and 9, the University of Oregon Opera Ensemble presents “A Tale of Two Women: The Old Maid and the Thief and Trouble in Tahiti,” a pair of delightful American one-act operas that explore — sometimes hilariously, ultimately poignantly — the psychology of mid-20th-century women and their roles in a changing America. Continue reading