posts by Alec Clayton
By Alec Clayton For half a century, Childhood’s End Gallery has been Olympia’s paramount art gallery. Bill and Richenda Richardson opened the gallery and gift shop in 1971. Since then, they’ve introduced many of the region’s best painters, sculptors and craftspersons to our town. Today, they continue to display works, not only by outstanding local …
By Alec Clayton Content warning: This article includes language directly quoted from the performance that some readers may find disturbing. Pulitzer Prize finalist Dael Orlandersmith’s Until the Flood — now playing at Harlequin Productions, in repertory with Tenderly: The Rosemary Clooney Musical and Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar and Grill — is brutal, angry, heartbreaking …
By Alec Clayton Eurydice by Sarah Ruhl is a modern retelling of the Orpheus myth as seen through the eyes of Orpheus’s wife, Eurydice (pronounced yuh-RID-ih-see). As performed by the SPSCC Theatre Collective, it is mystical, poetic and surrealistic. In the program, director Lauren Love wrote, “Ruhl’s imagination is thoroughly theatrical. She refracts her poetry …
By Alec Clayton Local nonprofit Wild Grief invites the community to gather around a virtual campfire on the evening of Saturday, Nov. 13 at 6:30 p.m. Wild Grief uses peer support and the healing power of nature to help people work through the feeling their grief is too heavy to endure. “By offering free, outdoor …
By Alec Clayton Billie Holiday was the heart and soul of jazz from the 1930s through the 1950s. She put that period’s violent racism front and center in some of her songs — undeniably and often uncomfortably, as demonstrated by her signature song’s effect on audiences. “Strange Fruit” is Abel Meeropol’s heartbreaking and powerful ballad …
By Alec Clayton Harlequin Productions’ Tenderly, The Rosemary Clooney Musical is much more than a musical revue. Yes, Meg McLynn as Clooney performs all the legendary singer’s greatest hits — “Hey There,” “Tenderly,” “Sisters,” “Come On-a My House” and more, often in unexpected ways — and costar Bruce Haasl as “The Doctor” sings as exquisitely as Harlequin …
By Alec Clayton Opening a new theatrical season after almost two years of being closed, Harlequin Productions is trying something it’s never before attempted: three plays in repertory, with overlapping schedules and each play to open one week apart and run concurrently for five weeks each. Marketing and communications director — and frequent Harlequin actor …
by Alec Clayton Tom Anderson is an iconic presence on Olympia’s art scene. The Park of the Seven Oaks by the roundabout on Harrison Avenue — That’s a Tom Anderson creation. The large, metal art pieces that fill the walls in the emergency room and chapel at Providence St. Peter Hospital — Those are also …
by Alec Clayton This year’s annual faculty and staff exhibition at South Puget Sound Community College is an eclectic mix of drawing, painting, sculpture and hybrids of those. It is work that is conceptually complex while maintaining aesthetic joy by artists who are more than talented — They are intelligent and in touch with the …
By Alec Clayton From Reefer Madness and Cannibal the Musical to lots and lots of Shakespeare, and performing in such diverse spaces as Olympia Little Theatre, the basement of the Elks Hall and the Midnight Sun in downtown Olympia, Theater Artists Olympia had its genesis in the early 2000s; and every time it looks like …