posts that will be on the front page
By Karen Lunde Comedian Drew Carey once said, “Oh, you hate your job? … There’s a support group for that. It’s called everybody, and they meet regularly at the bar.” Not everyone in Daphne’s Dive, a play by Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Quiara Alegría Hudés, hates his or her job; but everyone has a story, and …
By CHRISTIAN CARVAJAL Lacey will soon have its own theatrical troupe. Artistic director Kevin McManus explains, “Seven of my closest friends and I gathered together to form a theater company. We got ourselves a little 501(c)(3) license and are heading toward a three-production, inaugural season.” That fledgling company is Goldfinch Productions. “It’s exciting and a …
By MELINDA MINTON Art Beat Olympia is working to bring art-education equity to Olympia schools. Because art is essential for all students, this program offers a high-quality arts-learning format that teaches sequential skills and techniques, develops students’ 21st-century skills and is culturally responsive. Art Beat’s protocol includes training teachers to integrate arts with other subjects, …
By Alec Clayton Tumwater High School is presenting a student-written play, “Other People’s Lives” by Caelyn White, an 18-year-old graduating senior. “Other People’s Lives” is structured like seven interconnecting short stories, all loosely related with different principal characters. It focuses on a single neighborhood and the conflicts the various neighbors face. “I think it is …
By Melinda Minton Rumors, a local wine bar, has expanded and moved from Fourth Avenue into an airy space on Washington Street in the heart of downtown Olympia. Rumors offers curated selections for every type of palate—old world, domestics and imports from the finest variety of wineries around. Rumors is all about wine and the …
Celebrated band Los Lobos (Spanish for “The Wolves”) is coming to Olympia for a concert that’s sure to sell out.
By CHRISTIAN CARVAJAL On June 2, Harlequin Productions will offer one performance, the name of which all but dares critics to slam it. That show, concocted by Aaron Lamb, is entitled Miscast! (The exclamation mark is very much Harlequin’s.) Usually when actors are accused of having been miscast, it’s no compliment. Consider, for example, the …
THEATER REVIEW by Alec Clayton for OLY ARTS Henrik Ibsen’s controversial classic A Doll’s House as presented at Harlequin Productions is stunning, and as relevant now as it was when it shocked theater-goers in 1879. Director Aaron Lamb has updated it with modern sets, costumes, music, and a highly stylized opening and closing that are …
By JONAH BARRETT Steamboat Island isn’t known for its boisterous antics, but that changes every spring as it bursts with a variety of melodies. The fifth-annual Steamboat Stringband Jamboree, occurring the last day of May and first day of June, is hosted by Olympia bands The Oly Mountain Boys and The Pine Hearts. The jamboree’s a celebration of …
By Adam McKinney Tiny Holes seemed destined for underground music fame, if they hadn’t disbanded so quickly. The Olympia band only had a few months over the course of 1980 and ’81, in which to spread their delightfully inscrutable New Wave and art-rock stylings, before going their separate ways, with no full-length album ever released. …