James O’Barr has been a some-time writer for quite some time. While holding down a diversity of day jobs on this or that coast, he’s found reason to write in a generosity of genres, including radio scripts, play scripts, newspaper articles, film and theatre reviews, songs, stories, and poetry. His short story, “Best Teaching” was published in the 2022 anthology Mud Flat Shorts (Mostly Fiction).
Articles
- O Christmas Tea: A British Comedy at the SPSCC Minnaert Center for the Arts
“Think Mamma Mia with The Three Stooges, plus audience interaction at The Rocky Horror Picture Show.” “Theatre is in its essence an exercise in imagination,” says Alastair Knowles, who plays the eccentric Jamesy. “O Christmas Tea is exactly that, an exercise in imagination, on steroids.” At SPSCC’s Minnaert Center for the Arts on November 25th. - Every Brilliant Thing at the SPSCC Minnaert Center Black Box Theatre
Smartly produced and wonderfully performed, Harlequin Productions’ “Every Brilliant Thing” with Eleise Moore is the best of live theatre, up close and personal. It totally engages us in a story that begs to be told and needs to be heard. - Collaborating With Nature: The Installation
Atop each of the 27 pilings in Toten Inlet is a Boucante figure, bodies mostly made of weathered wood, heads and faces of sculpted stone, distinctively dressed in all manner of antiquated machine and engine parts and salvaged odds and ends. The faces are wide-eyed and staring, the mouths open, the effect inscrutable or spooky, depending on the direction of the light. - Airbound Artsby James O’Barr If you want to learn airborne arts, there are a number of skydiving venues around the state, or you can join the Army and go to the Jump School at Fort Benning, Georgia. But if it’s aerial skills and circus arts instruction you want, then you need go no further than downtown …
- Preview: Harlequin’s The Revolutionists by Laura Gunderson at The State Theater
Olympe de Gouges announces at the opening of Harlequin’s “The Revolutionists” that she has an idea for a new play, a comedy, and much of the play follows her attempts to right/write the wrongs of the Revolution in a play “about women showing the boys how revolutions are done.” - 2023 Capital Lakefair Grand Parade Saturday, July 15thby James O’Barr Olympia’s Capital Lakefair turns 66 this year, but retirement is not a word in the Capitalarian vocabulary. Lakefair Week will run from Wednesday, July 12th to Sunday, July 16th, and every one of those days Heritage Park will be brimful of food concessions, craft vendors, the Funtastic Carnival, and main stage live …
- Lacey in Tune with Heart By Heart
Lacey Parks brings its popular Friday night “Lacey in Tune” concerts, kids programs, and movie nights downtown to Huntamer Park, kicking off on July 14 with Heart By Heart, the Seattle-based Heart-tribute rock band. - Review: The Bengson’s Hundred Days At The State Theater
“Join us as we transform The State Theater into an intimate cabaret for an uncensored, exhilarating, and heartrending true story about embracing uncertainty, taking a leap, and loving as if you only had 100 days to live. With magnetic chemistry and anthemic folk-punk music, creators Abigail and Shaun Bengson explore a fundamental question: how do we make the most of the time that we have?” – Harlequin Productions - SOGO Winter Concert at the Washington Center
The Student Orchestras of Greater Olympia’s Conservatory Orchestra, with Music Director Cameron May conducting his most advanced musicians, will give the first-ever performance of Olympia composer James DeHart’s “Children’s Concert Overture.” The orchestra will bring the festivities to a close, with clarinetist Alessandro Martinez, a senior at Olympia High School, performing. - Review: Ken Ludwig’s Baskerville: A Sherlock Holmes Mystery Harlequin Productions at the State Theater
Harlequin Productions’ “Ken Ludwig’s Baskerville: A Sherlock Holmes Mystery,” an “adventure in theater making itself,” theater magic itself, that will take children of all ages on a giddy, breath-taking, uproarious ride, over, under, behind, and through the fourth wall, stopping at nothing that does not surprise, astonish, and delight you. - Nyx and the Long Night Opens at Olympia Family Theatre
An original winter folk myth from Olympia Family Theater. Everything changed the day they dropped the sun. Now, the world has been dark for a very long time – an endless winter solstice. Perhaps a young woman named Nyx will be the answer. Part girl, part tree, and raised under the light of the stars, her magic and courage might just save the world. - Halloween at Harlequin
You are about to spend an evening with Edgar Allan Poe in a play by Olympia playwright Bryan Willis, plus a reading of a new short story by Olympia’s own Jim Lynch in a one-night-only Halloween celebration at Harlequin. - James O’BarrJames O’Barr has been a some-time writer for quite some time. While holding down a diversity of day jobs on this or that coast, he’s found reason to write in a generosity of genres, including radio scripts, play scripts, newspaper articles, film and theatre reviews, songs, stories, and poetry. His short story, “Best Teaching” was published …