Billy Thomas 
By Christian Carvajal William Shakespeare will be celebrated this summer in a unique trifecta of his work on stage. Three theater companies have joined to create a mini-Shakespeare festival in the South Sound from June through August 2019. Beginning on June 28, Animal Fire Theatre has staged one of Shakespeare’s most outrageous comedies, The Merry …
THEATER REVIEW by Alec Clayton for OLY ARTS Outdoor performances of Shakespeare continue through the Summer in Olympia with Goldfinch Productions’ As You Like It, featuring performances at LBA Park and Sunrise Park after an opening performance in City Park, Yelm. As You Like It is a smart and thoughtful, romantic comedy — the kind …
By Molly Walsh Portland band MarchFourth boasts a visually powerful set, with 20 onstage performers that do it all from guitar to vaudevillean dancing, acrobatics to trombone. A supernova of color and carnival chic, MarchFourth gets people of all ages clapping hands and stomping feet. Breaking the barriers between musical and visual performance, the troupe …
Theatre Review by Alec Clayton for OLY ARTS The Merry Wives of Windsor is arguably Shakespeare’s funniest comedy. It is also one of the bard’s most accessible plays. Animal Fire Theatre’s outdoor production of Merry Wives, using Olympia’s Priest Point Park as its venue, is hilarious, and the dense and sometimes difficult to understand Shakespearean …
By CHRISTIAN CARVAJAL Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra’s two-part novel The Ingenious Hidalgo Don Quixote of La Mancha, first published in 1605 and 1615 — concurrent with Galileo, the King James Bible and Shakespeare — has been called the greatest novel ever, easily the most influential of the Spanish Golden Age. That novel inspired the 1965 …
By Molly Walsh On Sunday, June 23, thousands of members of the LGBTQ community and their supporters convened on downtown Olympia to celebrate Pride. It was the largest parade on record, according to Capital City Pride Coordinator Gina Thompson. Accompanying the parade at Heritage Park were over 100 booths of local organizations, artisan crafts and …
ART REVIEW by Alec Clayton for OLY ARTS Mia Schulte knows her way around paint brushes and palette knives. When it comes to color, form and texture, she has a sure hand. So do the four other women who join her in the exhibition Out of the Blue at Childhood’s End Gallery: Susan Glendenning, Laraine …
By Billy Thomas Local author, entrepreneur and community activist Olivia Salazar de Breaux has written a new book that pays homage to family and her hometown of Olympia. She recently sat down with OLY ARTS to talk about her journey along the creative process. “The idea came to me in an English course a couple …
By JONAH BARRETT Growing up LGBTQ+ can be a challenge. Queer youth face a number of difficulties, like developing straight crushes, teachers using the wrong pronouns, even not being accepted by their families. It’s a tough journey, but it isn’t all gloom and doom. Two major nonprofit organizations are helping LGBTQ+ youth get a leg …
By Alec Clayton A collection of 50 small Sumi artworks from 22 members of Puget Sound Sumi Artists fills the walls at the Fifth Avenue Loft Gallery. “There’s a good cross section of traditional sumi-e and contemporary mark-making in the show, which more and more of our members are trying,” says artist, teacher, calligrapher Sally …