Founded in downtown Olympia in 1980 by a group of artists dedicated to bringing their work directly to and fostering a dialogue with the community, the Artists’ Artists’ Gallery in Capital Mall celebrates 45 years of cooperative art this summer with live music and an opportunity to meet and talk with the artists, and view a wide selection of drawings, paintings, sculpture, jewelry and other artworks.
Up in the loft at Browsers Bookshop, genderqueer writer, filmmaker, and multi-media phenom Jonah Barnett will be performing a series of readings from their 2021 short-story collection “Moss-Covered Claws,” which mashes dreams and reality together in 11 macabre tales of speculative fiction: tales of anxiety-feeding demons, anti-fascists that travel dimensions, and the vengeful spirits of dead seabirds.
Olympia Family Theater’s new Magic Curtain Morning shows engage and delight toddlers and preschoolers. Each show runs no longer than 30 minutes, providing littles a playful introduction to the magic of live theater. The first show is “Little Red and the Dancing Wolf,” offering a new take on the old tale, running April 18, 25, and 26.
Aaron Lamb, director of Harlequin Production’s Is This a Room, has created a piece of moving, powerful theatre with a light and confident artistic hand. Jeannie Beirne’s set design, Savannah Van Leuvan’s lighting design and Keith Jewell’s sound design with its weird cover of the redacted dialogue rendering it unspeakably inaudible, accomplishes a trifecta. The strange stage set enables us to take in the equally strange encounter that occurred on June 3, 2017, when 11 FBI agents arrived unannounced at the home of Reality Winner (portrayed most affectingly by Olivia Finkelstein, in her Harlequin debut).
“How Much the Heart Can Hold” by Bryan Willis and Linda Kalkwarf will be performed one night only at Harlequin’s State Theatre. Inspired by the words of writer and artist Zelda Fitzgerald: “Nobody has ever measured, not even poets, how much the heart can hold.” Directed by Kathryn Dorgan, the play is a series of illustrative scenes tied together with readings of what Willis calls “snippets of wisdom, culled from a variety of writers and thinkers, that guarantee inspiration for lovers of all ages.”
The Funk Fest is seen by the organizers, Ecstatic Sound Collective, as “more than just music—it’s a celebration of community and culture.” To that end, downtown Washington Street will be transformed into a lively street party. This 2nd annual Olympia Funk Festival is an incredible lineup of talent coming to three Capital City venues—the Olympia Ballroom, the Olympia Center, and the historic Capitol Theatre!
Many of the South Sound’s best theater and visual arts critics write for OLY ARTS. We asked six of them to highlight some of their favorite visual and performance art shows from 2024, and we congratulate and celebrate the Olympia and Tacoma-area artists selected. Due to the limitation we put on the critics of no more than two or three shows, we are aware of and acknowledge that many great shows and artists were not picked. We are lucky to live in such a vibrant creative community.
Stephen Sondheim’s theatre-of-revenge “musical thriller” masterpiece, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street is at Washington Center’s main stage. Working from Victorian popular fiction (“penny dreadfuls”) and Christopher Bond’s 1970 play, it is presented in a limited run on Oct. 11, 12, and 13 as a collaboration by Harlequin Productions, Olympia Symphony Orchestra, and Masterworks Choral Ensemble.
Oly Arts Walk * Bucoda Spook-Tacular * Anna Schlecht * Tacoma Film Festival * Enterlope * Eileen Bochsler * OFT & More! You can read our 31st print edition here. It is hot off the press and distributed free in the area plus available online!
The new play Our House by Olympia’s John Longenbaugh is a charming little ramble through the lives of the house and its imagined inhabitants over the course of close to a hundred years. Our House breaks the rules in its own way and enlarges what theatre can be. By all means, find your way to Our House.