posts by Alec Clayton
By Alec Clayton Subtitled “A Community Comes Together,” the “Hotel Olympian 100th Anniversary Grand Gala Extravaganza” is a recreation of the gala opening celebration of the downtown Hotel Olympian in June 1920. The project is spearheaded by playwright Bryan Willis, founder of the Northwest Playwright Alliance and directed by Deane Shellman, with an all-star cast of …
By Alec Clayton The “pARTners” exhibition at Childhood’s End Gallery showcases works by three artist couples who live and work together: papercut artist Nikki McClure and her partner, fine woodworker Jay T Scott; steel and ceramic sculptors Robin and John Gumaelious; and mixed-media painters Chuck Gumpert and Christopher Mathie. The show includes both collaborative and …
By Alec Clayton Olympia Family Theater education director Claribel Gross says, “We miss being in the theater and sharing live experiences. We are excited to find a variety of ways to still connect with our community.” One of those ways to connect is with the audio play “Good Trouble,” a pop-up performance experience produced by Blindspot collective …
By Alec Clayton In the South Sound as in the country at large, black artists are poorly represented. The “Futures Rising” exhibition, at the Leonor R. Fuller Gallery inside South Puget Sound Community College’s Kenneth J. Minnaert Center for the Arts, proves that there are many more excellent black artists in the area than is …
By Alec Clayton A woman holding a clipboard sticks her head into a dressing room and says to the actors, furiously getting into costume and makeup, a single word: “Five.” The actors say back to her, “Thank you, Five.” Five minutes later the platform in front of stadium seats at Harlequin Productions becomes the front …
By Alec Clayton In the world of theater, there are people who make the fictional world come alive, who make the characters on stage and the worlds in which they move and breathe as real for two hours as the workaday world the rest of us live in — not just the actors who garner …
By Alec Clayton Aisha Harrison is an inventive sculptor and former art teacher at The Evergreen State College. She also does two-dimensional art, drawing and printmaking, but it is as a sculptor of strong and emphatic figures that has made an indelible mark on the South Sound art world. “Aisha contributes so much to our …
By Alec Clayton Art of great variety and depth of meaning fill the windows in the vacant Goldberg Building, former home of Schoenfeld Furniture, on the corner of Fourth Avenue and Capitol Way in Olympia. The installation is part of Olympia Artspace Alliance (OAA) ongoing project, Art In Olympia Storefronts. “This and many other installations were organized, paid for …
THEATRE REVIEW by Alec Clayton for OLY ARTS In showbiz they say, “the show must go on,” and not even a worldwide pandemic can stop Pug Bujeaud and Theater Artists Olympia (TAO) from creating theatre. Bujeaud, a highly respected actor and director who has adapted many works for the stage, tackled her first ever completely …
By Alec Clayton Joining the pantheon of storytellers from Mark Twain to George Lucas is Olympia’s own Christian Carvajal. Carv, as his friends call him, tells stories on stage, behind stage and in print. He is an experienced actor, director and playwright, has published two novels and a collection of short stories, writes for The …