By Alec Clayton Art galleries, bars, restaurants, shops, performance spaces — more than 80 downtown venues will be aswarm with excitement as artists young and old, amateur and professional, bring downtown Olympia to vibrant life for two evenings in early October. It’s been happening twice a year since 1990 when […]
by Alec Clayton The latest artexhibition at Browsers Bookshop is DIALOGIC: Works on Paper by Evan Horback and Cecily Schmidt. Accordintg to the Oxford English Dictionary, “dialogic” means “relating to or in the form of dialogue.” That discribes this show in many ways. There are dialogues between the two artists and between […]
by Alec Clayton What better way to welcome theater lovers to the newly named Squaxin Park (formerly Priest Point Park) than a riotous evening of Shakespeare at sunset? It’s even better on a grassy slope with a scrim of trees and a peek of Puget Sound in the background. The […]
By Molly Gilmore Debra Van Tuinen has received many accolades for her paintings, which were included in the 2004 Florence Biennale and have hung in U.S. embassies, but her latest award recognizes not her art but her courage and her commitment to Olympia. Van Tuinen — who opened a downtown […]
By Alec Clayton and Molly Gilmore Like a theater version of The Odd Couple, the dark and edgy Theater Artists Olympia and the song-and-dance-fueled Broadway Olympia Productions are sharing a home. The theater companies, both sidelined since the pandemic, will each produce work in Broadway Olympia’s black box theater in […]
By Molly Walsh After Gabi and Alec Clayton packed up their home in Mississippi to start a new life in Washington State, one of the first sights they encountered when they drove into the Olympia area was the exposed tide flats of the South Puget Sound. This landscape would eventually […]
By Alec Clayton A sense of joy washes over viewers as they enter the Southwest Washington Regional Juried Exhibition at South Puget Sound Community College’s Leonor R. Fuller Gallery. Brightly colored paintings on suspended panels over the highly reflective black floors intensify the beauty of the space. Mostly paintings and […]
By Alec Clayton Life Is Complicated at Olympia Little Theatre is a play of firsts: a first-time writer and a first-time actor, the best actor in the play in this reviewer’s opinion. Kendra Malm, OLT board president and artistic and production manager, wrote and directed Life Is Complicated. She had […]
By Molly Gilmore The Washington Center for the Performing Arts’ 2022-2023 season marks both a return to pre-pandemic norms — it’s the first full season with subscription plans since theaters closed in March 2020 — and a fresh start. When the season launches Nov. 4 with “Stunt Dog Experience,” the […]
The rock musical Hedwig and the Angry Inch, with text by John Cameron Mitchell and music and lyrics by Stephen Trask, started as a performance in drag clubs and became an international phenomenon. It’s now playing at the State Theater of Olympia’s Harlequin Productions, starring Adam Rennie as Hedwig and Mandy Rose Nichøls as Hedwig’s husband and assistant, Yitzhak.
