posts about shows at TAO
Molly Gilmore “Arts Aficionado” #18 — October 28, 2026
Celebrate scary and sweet season with Halloween happenings
— Love Oly Downtown for Halloween
— Boo Bash
— Samba Olywa’s Bone Gang
— “A Spirited Manor”
— “Alien”
Molly Gilmore “Arts Aficionado” #17 — October 21, 2026
Theatrical treats range from mysterious and spooky to serious
— Fun with Holmes and Watson
— In the spirit of the scary season
— Timeless and timely theater at Harlequin
Because voters approved a one-tenth of one percent Olympia sales-tax increase (now in its third year) to fund the Inspire Olympia grant program, the city recently announced $3.3 million in grants for 2026-27, with $2.1 million awarded to 49 arts nonprofits. Thanks to this, Olympia has gained a theater and a gallery as well as other opportunities for the community to experience and participate in arts of all kinds.
Molly Gilmore “Arts Aficionado” #8 — August 19, 2026
— See a Play or a ‘Peck’ of ’em, and Savor Oly Music
— Celebrated romcom at Harlequin
— ‘Improbable Peck of Plays’ returns
— Local legends play free show
Olympia’s own Elizabeth Lord directed “Crazy Dinner,” a new musical by the performance collaborative Nightmayor. Based in both Olympia and Seattle, Nightmayor started life as a punk rock band that morphed into a theatre collective known for its original, eccentric musicals, of which “Crazy Dinner” is the latest. In late August, TAO will be bringing back one of their signature productions, “An Improbable Peck of Plays, Volume VI.” which they have been staging in collaboration with The Northwest Playwrights Alliance since 2012.
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.
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 Artists Olympia has a new home in downtown Olympia in what is now called The Jefferson Street Arts Center, at the former site of the Johansen Olympia Dance Center. In TAO’s first show there, Ruben Grijalva’s “Anna Considers Mars” (the very model of TAO’s trademarked “untamed theater” while speaking at the same time, to our fateful current condition) brings us to the not-so-distant future where the earth’s habitability is critically threatened by climate change, the human search for a new home is under serious consideration, and people are overwhelmed by having to live in a vividly augmented reality, in which they wear glasses that make them appear to others wearing the glasses to be better-looking than they really are.
Theater Artists Olympia’s “The HEAD That Wouldn’t DIE!” at Lakewood Playhouse is a takeoff on one of the worst B movies ever, “The Brain That Wouldn’t Die,” with additional dialogue and lyrics by the TAO collective. It is two hours of camp and insanity, not recommended for children younger than 13 according to a warning posted in the theater and not recommended for people who don’t get satire according to this reviewer.
“One of the reasons that Olympia had such a great theater scene was due to the cross-pollination of companies, actors and theaters. With the loss of Capital Playhouse, and now Oly Theater, opportunities are dwindling.” – John Serembe