by Adam McKinney for OLY ARTS Seeing stand-up comedy live can be exhilarating. Even if the comedian is a seasoned performer, it’s never a given that a show will go smoothly; this uncertainty goes double for showcases featuring newer comics. Comedy without a net lends an electricity to the air that’s hard to find in …
Anna Badkhen writes about people in extremis, exposing the world’s iniquities by honoring the lives these iniquities most affect. Her investigation into what it means to live in the Global South has yielded five books of lyrical nonfiction, most recently Walking With Abel: Journeys With the Nomads of the African Savannah, a book about transience …
by Molly Gilmore for OLY ARTS Olympia loves Arts Walk, when businesses become galleries and people who crave culture stroll the streets. This Saturday, the city gets another walk: the first Olympia Jazz Walk, a fundraiser for JazzClubsNW, a North Bend-based nonprofit that aims to keep jazz alive and well through performance and education. Eleven …
Theater Artists Olympia (TAO) will present an evening of science fiction in the Midnight Sun Performance Space. This event marks the sixth installment in the ongoing series Words, Words, Words, a sardonic quotation from Hamlet. Full disclosure: This collection of sci-fi classics was curated by OLY ARTS‘ managing editor, Christian Carvajal, himself a published author …
by Alec Clayton for OLY ARTS The downtown Olympia Timberland Regional Library now has a child-size, handmade bookmobile built by local woodworker Jay T. Scott, with a painting of otters on the back by artist Nikki McClure. On the side is an aphorism hand-lettered by Ira Coyne–“You Otter Be READING!”–and a poem, also lettered by …
by Christian Carvajal for OLY ARTS Theater Artists Olympia (TAO) has announced its fall 2016 stage offerings exclusively to OLY ARTS. As it has for the past four years, the end of summer will bring An Improbable Peck of Plays to the Midnight Sun Performance Space, TAO’s home since April 2014. This evening of short, …
by Molly Gilmore for OLY ARTS Sharon Stearnes, the organist for the Seattle Mariners from 1985 to 1990, will play the 1924 Wurlitzer organ at The Washington Center for the Performing Arts in a free concert Thursday, Aug. 18. The Andy Crow Mighty Wurlitzer was originally made for the Liberty Theater, which was torn down …
by Christian Carvajal for OLY ARTS The Terry Twins, Lesa and Mona, will play music for stringed instruments at Salon Refu. The gallery is displaying landscapes by Olympia-based artist Barlow Palminteri as well as sculptural works in progress by textile artist and sculptor Lucy Gentry. Refreshments will be served, and the twins’ music CDs will …
by Molly Gilmore for OLY ARTS Could Border Songs be on its way to becoming a TV show by acclaimed Canadian screenwriter Graeme Manson, the man behind the award-winning BBC series Orphan Black? It’s taken the first step. Last week, Olympia novelist Jim Lynch announced that Manson purchased an option for TV and movie rights …
by Christian Carvajal for OLY ARTS In only five short years, Olympia funksters DBST have graduated from playing downtown dive bars to share stages with the likes of Joe Doria, Monophonics, Blue Lotus, and Eldridge Gravy and the Court Supreme. This sexy sextet mixes blues, rock and funk grooves to please the most discriminating of …