“The point of the studio tour is to allow people to go behind the scenes and see how the work is made.” said Susan Aurand, acting president of the South Sound Studio Tour’s board of directors. Many artists are sharing their studio space with colleagues for the tour, happening the last weekend of May in Olympia, Lacey and Tumwater, so there’ll be about 80 artists involved, showing their work and offering insights into their methods.
The 2026 Center Salon will take place Mothers Day weekend, Saturday, May 9, in the Washington Center Black Box Theater with cabaret-style seating to provide an immersive ambiance. In commemoration of Mother’s Day weekend, many pieces included in this year’s Center Salon will tie back to the themes of mothers and motherhood. This includes a slideshow that will be projected ahead of the salon, featuring family photos of performers and audience members.
Similar to a vibrant garden, our arts scene in Thurston County is filled with a variety of artistic companies and artists who are consistently adding color, beauty, joy, and their own lovely fragrance to our lives. Let Oly Arts be your “florist” this spring and give ideas of what you can add to the bouquet of your lives: TAO’s Anna Considers Mars — Harlequin’s Where the Summit Meets the Stars — OFT’s The Hobbit — and SPSCC’s Anastasia the Musical.
In May 2016, in the best possible way, Olympia writer Ned Hayes was struck by lightning. His third novel, The Eagle Tree, was scaling bestseller lists as speedily as its neurodivergent narrator climbed trees. Hayes demonstrated his Oly boosterism when he decided to spend some of that authorial windfall on a new publication to highlight the manifold arts presentations and opportunities in the South Sound. This new publication would put a spotlight on the arts in our region. Appropriately, we named it Oly Arts.
In recognition of 40 years of dedicated service to the performing arts in Thurston County and the South Sound, Washington Center Production Manager Roger McIntosh has been selected as the 2026 Excellence in the Arts Commitment to the Arts Awardee. The Center’s Star Dressing Room has been officially named in his honor in recognition of the organization’s “deep appreciation for four decades of service, care, commitment, and the philosophy that guided his work,” according to a Center Marketing and Sales Director Tineke Raak.
Double Shot Theater Festival in Tacoma is a kind of theatrical 100-meter dash. For roughly 20 years (festival creator Bryan Willis isn’t quite sure when it all got started), Double Shot has been assembling directors, actors, and playwrights to complete the Herculean task of writing, memorizing, rehearsing, lighting, costuming, and eventually performing 10-minute plays, all in about 24 hours. Saturday, April 18, and Sunday, April 19.
The print edition of Oly Arts magazine is published! This is our 10th anniversary edition and it includes The Oly Arts Origin Story and much more! Find out where you can pick up a free copy and/or read and download the PDF version.
Theater, from the beginning, has been a space for confronting death and life’s existential questions. Shakespeare, in Julius Caesar, has much to say about both. Fast forward to the current zeitgeist, and the evil that men, mostly men, are doing, from one side of the earth to the other—climate derangement, a new ICE age, nuclear proliferation, war crimes and lawlessness from sea to shining sea—looks very much like it will have enduring if not undying consequences. Olympia Little Theatre’s September 2025 production of Sarah Ruhl’s quintessentially quirky comedy, Dead Man’s Cell Phone, was directed by Kendra Malm and Toni Holm. It contained pertinent messages for today.
Ballet Northwest boldly enters its 55th season with highly innovative, inspirational and diverse programming in store. Time flies by quickly, so mark your calendars now. After a performance of Crescendo on October 11, comes The Nutcracker, Olympia’s favorite December tradition that invites the whole family into a land of sweets and all others we create in our imagination. We are excited to give you an inside glimpse into everything that is in store.
These two films depict the Pacific Northwest in two radically different times. In Robert Altman’s classic revisionist Western, McCabe & Mrs. Miller, Warren Beatty moves into a mining town in 1900s Washington, trying his best to become a big shot in the middle of a boom period. Michael Sarnoski’s new classic, Pig, explores the fringes of modern-day Portland, with Nicolas Cage starring as a reclusive former chef whose truffle pig gets stolen. The films – showing at Capitol Theater November 15 & 16 – showcase the Pacific Northwest’s natural wonders as an overwhelming force that has to be bent to, not conquered; and both films have an elegiac atmosphere that hangs over them.