Ned Hayes 
Harlequin Productions calls its 2023 season a “Resilience Season.” That appellation could well apply to all local live theater after more than two years of Covid. Here’s a great season preview for all local theaters, including Harlequin, Olympia Family Theater, Olympia Little Theatre, Broadway Olympia, and SPSCC.
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 the first-annual spring and fall Arts Walks kicked off. In addition to visual art, there will be street performances, a busking zone and food trucks.
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 the elments within individual works …
By Karen Lunde The Washington Center and Minnaert Center stages will ring with the sounds of orchestras and choirs this weekend as Olympia’s student musicians take the stage. One will deliver a beloved holiday tradition, and the other a program centered around the universal theme of hope. On Friday, December 6, the Student Orchestras of …
by Ned Hayes Carols often become the background mutter of the holidays – old tunes covered by bored pop stars. Yet the joy of hearing a professional group of singers deliver Christmas standards in the original intended choir format is a surprisingly fresh and enlivening experience. In the skyscape of sound, the sopranos hit the …
THEATER REVIEW by Alec Clayton for OLY ARTS The Tempest — third and final of this area’s outdoor-summer-Shakespeare plays — opened Thursday, August 15 at the viewing tower at Olympia’s Port Plaza. It opened with the crash of thunder and lightning in a chaotic scene of a storm at sea performed in front of the …
by Tom Simpson William Shakespeare will return to the South Sound this summer with an exceptional production of his classic, magical romance The Tempest at Olympia’s Port Plaza. The production will feature professional stage actors from the Oregon Shakespeare Festival and is co-sponsored by Olympia Harbor Days, which will bring tall ships as stage scenery …
by Ned Hayes Olympia has professional theater, amateur theater, family theater and community theater. Yet we are often bereft of truly experimental genre-busting theatrical adventures. In late July, on one night only, writer/performer/puppeteer and underground wandering clown-minstrel Donna Oblongata will grace Olympia with her presence and fill your need for an experimental journey to the …
Annual festival showcases world-class cartoonists, and now includes a wedding! By NED HAYES Olympia’s Comics Festival returns on Saturday, June 15. This free exposition was created in 2001 by Danger Room proprietor Frank Hussey and has grown tremendously over the past 19 years. This year’s day-long festival expo will feature more than 50 tables with …
THEATER REVIEW by Alec Clayton for OLY ARTS Standing Room Only’s “Shrek the Musical” at Triad Theater is a fairy tale for adults that is also suitable for children, even though children might not get all the pop-culture references and tongue-in-cheek jokes on traditional fairy tales, shows and movies. For a low-budget, small community theater, …