Portland Area Theatre Alliance Fertile Ground Portland Oregon
July 2019
Portland Center Stage at the Armory Nassim Portland Oregon
Ed Asner, who says a real Democrat is a euphemism for socialist, characterizes the current political environment as “like the monkeys escaped the zoo.” Photo by: Tim Leyes

Ed Asner: On politics and performing

In about 10 days, Ed Asner will take the stage at the Newport Performing Arts Center in the play God Help Us!  The 90-minute show is described as “a political comedy for our times, and centers on two opposite-leaning pundits who are

Arden Forest comes to Yamhill County

Before we get to this week’s most exciting theater opening — an open-air production of As You Like It — let’s quickly cast our gaze just south of Yamhill County, where an intriguing Hamlet will be found.  Western Oregon University keeps Shakespeare

Improvisation and displacement: the ceramics of Hans Coper

By DANIEL DUFORD Hans Coper’s vessels use silence like gravity. Coper, the British ceramicist who died in 1981, is having a resurgence. He is often associated with his mentor and friend British artist Lucie Rie but an exquisite new exhibition of Coper’s

Exquisite Gorge 5: The Alchemist

STORY AND PHOTOGRAPHS BY FRIDERIKE HEUER “Alchemy – noun : a power or process that changes or transforms something in a mysterious or impressive way.” (Merriam-Webster)  * THE ENGLISH WORD ALCHEMY has its historical roots in the Greek term chēmeia (the Arabic article al was added later when the word

Photo First: Seeing Astoria

Astoria has a garish and dramatic history, its fraught founding meticulously chronicled in Peter Stark’s award-winning book—a book with a title as long as the city’s renovated river walk: Astoria: John Jacob Astor and Thomas Jefferson’s Lost Pacific Empire—A Story of Wealth, Ambition,

Ryan Thorn as The Officer and Martin Bakari as The Visitor in Portland Opera's new production of Philip Glass's In the Penal Colony. Photo by Cory Weaver.

MusicWatch Weekly: Happy accidents

Allow me to get personal for a moment. You, my dear readers, know that I’m involved in this vibrant local music scene I’ve been writing about every week for the last three years. As a student at Portland State University, I walk

DramaWatch: a friendship in song

“And remember your main relationship to everything you bring is that you’re gonna have to carry it, so choose wisely.” That sounds like a good bit of practical travel advice. But because it is a line from a play, it also has

Ryan Thorn as The Officer and Martin Bakari as The Visitor in Portland Opera's new production of Philip Glass's In the Penal Colony. Photo by Cory Weaver.

Through a Glass, Darkly

Philip Glass never expected In the Penal Colony to be a success. “When I wrote it, I thought, it’ll get done once and then no one will ever do it again,” Glass said. “Why would you want to watch a suicide? Basically

Dance preview: The essence of love in Indian dance

Across genres of Indian art, rasas—the juice or essence that classifies the aesthetic of the work—play a key role in transporting the audience to a realm of wonder parallel to the one we live in. Though the ancient form of Indian dance,

Musical Fire in the Rogue Valley

The Rogue Valley is home to the Britt Music and Arts Festival, which takes place in July and August every summer. The Britt Festival Orchestra’s music director, Teddy Abrams, is hugely popular among music lovers here and in his home city of

“Heading Home,” a joint effort by members of the Oregon Coastal Quilters Guild, will be raffled off at the Quilts by the Sea show.

‘It takes a lot of patience and a good seam ripper’

Twenty-odd years ago, Cindy McEntee found herself with a sewing machine she had no interest in, but that a well-meaning aunt thought she should have. There it sat in its cabinet, unwanted and taking up space in McEntee’s living room. One gray

Cascadia Composers: crimes against conformity

10th anniversary season-closing concert offers clues to organization’s success by MARIA CHOBAN Guess where I am. A lemon yellow wading pool, aluminum bowls spin bump chime on its blue sparkly surface, kids clang big silver balls at them. Nope, I’m not sitting

Benjamin Braddock (John Davis Jr.) decides to follow the lead of Mrs. Robinson (Holly Spencer) in Gallery Theater's production of “The Graduate,” which opens Friday, July 26, in McMinnville. Photo by: EKay Media, courtesy Gallery Theater

‘The Graduate’ on the edge

The hottest theater ticket in Yamhill County this week is unquestionably at Gallery Players of Oregon in McMinnville, where a three-week run of The Graduate (yes, that Graduate) opens Friday. Terry Johnson’s adaptation of Charles Webb’s novel (which became an award-winning film

Art on the road: Circus in Montréal

STORY AND PHOTOGRAPHS BY FRIDERIKE HEUER IN THE STAUNCHLY CONSERVATIVE, predominantly Catholic German village of my childhood, we children eagerly anticipated three occasions each year. Carnival came around in February, an affair that allowed the entire population to break the social rules

Tin House: vulnerability & risk

By BEN BARTU Midsummer has arrived in Oregon, and every surface at Reed College seems ripe with books. The campus is hosting the sixteenth annual Tin House Summer Workshop, as a few minutes walking the grounds makes plain. Signs for lecture destinations

In Beaverton, a little night market

PHOTOGRAPHS BY JOE CANTRELL On a clear warm Saturday evening at The Round in Beaverton, the joint was jumpin’. The propulsive sounds of drums and dancing feet were rising to the sky, and a big crowd was milling about the curved concrete

Drammys: Where’s the party?

Once upon a time I had a dream about the Drammys. I don’t mean dream as in a sleepytime movie, but rather a hope, a wish, an ideal of a future. When I first began to care about the Drammy Awards, the

Radiance Orb

A synergistic triumph of wills

The five Eugene Symphony concerts I attended in the first half of this year (I was unable to attend the all twentieth-century music Valentine’s Day concert) were of such diverse programming that it is hard to ally them all with one unifying

Hunter Noack in Alvord Desert. Photo by Bridget Baker.

Loving the chaos

Hunter Noack grew up in Sunriver cherishing both classical music and outdoor Oregon. His mother, Lori Noack, directed the Sunriver Music Festival, which each year included top American classical pianists. “Growing up in central Oregon, I spent all my time outside when

Gnorski Moth

Far from nothing: John Gnorski’s Like a Train in the Sky at Stumptown

Portland artist John Gnorski’s exhibition Like a Train in the Sky at Stumptown Coffee celebrates the Portland artist’s Stumptown Artist Fellowship award. It was curated by May Barruel, the proprietor of Nationale, and features a suite of woodblock prints and tenuously representational

Modern dory boats retain the flat bottom, but have a squared stern to accommodate an outboard motor. Pacific City’s 60th annual Dory Days is July 19-21. Photo courtesy: Pacific City Dorymen’s Association

Down to the sea in ships

In many towns along the Oregon Coast, boating isn’t just a livelihood or a means of recreation, but a way of life, the foundation that defines a community. In coming weeks, two towns will celebrate their maritime history with festivals that have

‘Much Ado’: Where’s the story?

The “nothing” in Much Ado About Nothing has multiple meanings. In Shakespeare’s time, as in our own, it could be used to refer to something inconsequential, not worth “noting.” This play asks us: What do we notice in our lives? How does

The Madness of Asae Dean

Making art is often a difficult and thankless proposition. Producing theater, in particular, can be even more of both. It follows that for most fringe theater companies, producing either Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra OR his Troilus and Cressida would be an arduous

“Life Goes On,” by Tammy Jo Wilson (encaustic and ceramic on panel, 20 by 16 inches, 2019) Photo by: David Bates

Envisioning the human body — and life itself

Biological Dissonance, a collection of paintings and sculpture by Portland-area artists Tammy Jo Wilson and Amanda Triplett, is the newest exhibit to take up residence in the Chehalem Cultural Center’s largest gallery. While I was visiting it recently, two other names came

Harpist and composer Sage Fisher. Photo by Matt Hook.

MusicWatch Weekly: Hot and cold running summer

Portland summers have a little something for everyone. If you like your summers dry, hot, and aggressive, you can easily get your fill of blinding, baking, oppressively sweaty sunpocalypse. If you like your summers bitter, cloudy, soggy, and unseasonably cold—well, you’ll get

In the Frame 5: Cultural Lights

TEXT AND PHOTOGRAPHS BY K.B. DIXON The photographic portrait is a complex thing—an image gathered at the center of four corners. It is what the camera sees, what the photographer sees, what the viewer sees, and what the subject hides or reveals.

Strutting and fretting along the Oregon Coast

Theater fans could do worse than to find themselves on the Coast this summer. Performers are taking the stage in multiple venues from Newport to Cannon Beach. Let’s start with a reminder that tickets are still available, but going fast, for God

Rody trip: Ortega in Prague

The curtain falls, the lights go down, a season comes to an end. The artists have done their work, the audiences have received it, the critics have had their say. The awards ceremonies come and go, met — as always — with

The Power of Music

Sounds of a Yamhill County summer

This week’s survey of Yamhill County’s cultural scene is All Things Musical — or as close to “all” as is possible to get without being omniscient. The opera-oriented Aquilon Music Festival is in the thick of it, but they’re not the only

DramaWatch: Drammys for all

The annual Drammy Awards ceremony, which celebrates outstanding work in Portland-area theater, is a warm and welcoming event. How welcoming? Well, so much so that, after one acting award was announced, the evening’s host, Carla Rossi, observed, “That is the only instance

Blues finale: a festival with teeth

PHOTOGRAPHS BY JOE CANTRELL When the extraordinary young guitarist Christone “Kingfish” Ingram waded into the crowd at the Waterfront Blues Festival on Sunday and started picking the strings with his teeth, you knew the whole darned party was gettin’ down. Musicians, fans,

Parisian glamour at the Portland Art Museum

Paris 1900: City of Entertainment, which runs at the Portland Art Museum through September 8, is a confection, a pastel-shaded macaron that looks great on display and encourages fantasies of sunny afternoons frequenting chic patisseries and warm evenings spent promenade strolling. The

Blues Fest 3: Let the good times roll

PHOTOGRAPHS BY JOE CANTRELL A lot of Louisiana took the stage on Saturday in Day Three of the Waterfront Blues Festival – groups as redolent of New Orleans and bayou country as Curley Taylor & Zydeco Trouble, Lil’ Pookie & the Zydeco

Waterfront Blues 2: In the Spirit

PHOTOGRAPHS BY JOE CANTRELL Day Two of the Waterfront Blues Festival dug deep into the spirit of music and life with an extraordinary set by the Spiritual Brothers and their sounds of Northern Ghana and Burkina Faso. Unlike the four-day festival’s first

MusicWatch Weekly: Flutes and strings and weirdos

Chamber Music Northwest seems a lot quieter since the clarinet circus left town. After last week’s brouhaha—a wide swath of concerts featuring upwards of a hundred clarinets—the audiences at Thursday night’s Copland/Shaw concert and today’s New@Noon felt hushed, rapt, attentively relaxed in

Otis Café: the fire this time

If the best news from July 4 came from the many hilarious reactions to President Donald “The Rain Made Me Do It” Trump’s historical conflation of the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, and the Age of Flight, the worst news –

Waterfront Blues: a bang-up start

PHOTOGRAPHS BY JOE CANTRELL It was a bang-up day on the Fourth of July in Portland’s Tom McCall Waterfront Park, where this year’s Waterfront Blues Festival got off to a high-flying start and, come night time, a rainbow of fireworks lit up

Robert Porknoy, Note to self in orange

July VizArts Monthly: Visible, invisible, and sandwiches

Whatever gets your synapses firing, July’s got you covered. This month is packed with shows that run the gamut, from a rare exhibition of the the father of Japanese Conceptual art to the Salem Art Fair and Festival. If you’ve only got

Lincoln City’s big culture boost

Lincoln City got some welcome news Tuesday evening with the announcement from Rep. David Gomberg, D-District 10, that the Oregon State Legislature has awarded the Lincoln City Cultural Center a $1.5 million grant for its Cultural Plaza Project. The work will transform

What Kind of Music Do You Listen to for Pleasure?

Introduction by Matthew Neil AndrewsInterview by Charles Rose Alongside Kenji Bunch and a handful of others, recently-retired Reed College professor David Schiff sits comfortably among Portland’s most popular composers of what we still call “classical” music. There’s a good reason for that:

Chelsea Janzen at Black Walnut 6/20/2019

Punk Papageno in Wine Country

July’s three-week Aquilon Music Festival in Willamette Valley wine country debuted in summer 2018, and this year, concert-goers might have a better time pronouncing its French name.  “AK–will-on,” explains Chelsea Janzen, who will sing Pamina in the festival’s centerpiece opera, The Magic

MusicWatch Monthly: Too many notes

La Finta GiardinieraJuly 12-27, Newmark TheaterIn The Penal ColonyJuly 26-August 10, Hampton Opera Center It’s oddly appropriate that Portland Opera is closing its season with summer performances of Mozart and Philip Glass. Both composers are that rare breed: equally adept at performing

A history of Portland women artists

It’s all about the art, of course. But it’s also about the artists and the viewers, and how and why the art came to be. So on a sunny Saturday morning at Froelick Gallery off Northwest Broadway in Portland, a standing-room-only crowd

July: Dancing after dark

We’re heading outside this month for much of our dance intake, enjoying performances under the stars—although in some cases, we are the performers; you might find us dancing under the fireworks along the Tilikum Bridge as part of the July 4th HeatBeat

Bonnie Bronson 2024 Fellow Wendy Red Star Reed College Reception Kaul Auditorium Foyer Portland Oregon
Kalakendra Indian Classical Instrumental Music First Congregational Church Portland Oregon
Portland Center Stage at the Armory Nassim Portland Oregon
City of Hillsboro Walters Cultural Arts Center Tony Furtado Hillsboro Oregon
Maryhill Museum of Art Goldendale Washington
Portland State University College of the Arts
Portland Chamber Orchestra A Feast of Beethoven Kaul Auditorium Reed College Portland Oregon
PassinArt Theatre and Portland Playhouse present Yohen Brunish Theatre Portland Oregon
Golden Road Arts Grey Raven Gallery Near the Reser Beaverton Oregon
Triangle Productions presents Eleanor starring Margie Boule Portland Oregon
Pacific Maritime Heritage Center Prosperity of the Sea Lincoln County Historical Society Newport Oregon Coast
Newport Performance and Visual Arts Centers Newport Oregon Coast
Portland Art Museum Virtual Sneakers to Cutting Edge Kicks Portland Oregon
Portland Area Theatre Alliance Fertile Ground Portland Oregon
Northwest Dance Project Sarah Slipper Newmark Theatre Portland Oregon
High Desert Museum Sasquatch Central Oregon
Oregon Cultural Trust donate
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