Stage
Lakewood Playhouse's Little Shop of Horrors may have two more weekends of shows before it ends its run, but once it does, that will mark the end of the theater's 79th season. Save for some classes over the summer, Lakewood Playhouse has nothing to do but begin preparation for its 80th season, beginning in
Music
It seems, looking back, like a foregone conclusion that punk and folk music would become intimate bedfellows. The two genres have long existed on each others' peripheries, with each style aspiring to a sort of pure aesthetic, stripped away of unnecessary embellishments and the staid trends of popular music. Add on
South Sound Cinema
Welcome to Three Easy Pieces, where I examine a specific bit of pop culture, from its birth, to how it looks today. As summer looms, I prepare myself for a few months of living a life of quiet perspiration. Like an anti-Superman, I find myself weakened by Earth's yellow sun,
Stage
Story-wise, Macbeth is about as straightforward as they come, especially as it concerns William Shakespeare's work; not only is it Shakespeare's shortest tragedy, but it follows a quite linear line of A to B to C, working with economic momentum toward its predestined path of death and destruction. Its themes
Music
I think a lot about two particular bands, the qualities they share and the different ways in which these qualities are portrayed -- in one corner, we have the Band, and in the other, we have the Traveling Wilburys. The Band, of course, started out as Bob Dylan's backing band, before
Stage
For a certain generation of people, seeing the 1986, Frank Oz-directed Little Shop of Horrors was likely their first exposure to the magic that a musical can possess. Starring Rick Moranis and Ellen Greene, along with oddball supporting turns from Steve Martin and Bill Murray, Little Shop of Horrors took a mostly forgettable B
Music
We're living in times of absolute insanity, as I'm pretty sure most people are aware. For a while, waking up every day to check the news seemed to carry with it the same feeling of panic and dread that action heroes probably face when they're trying to decide whether to
Music
In the Pacific Northwest, it can sometimes feel like no one ever truly leaves for good, especially in Washington. If you're an artistic type, there exists a healthy cycle of rising up through the local ranks, cutting your teeth on the strange and occasionally prickly scene, before uprooting and going
Music
Over the years, in writing about music, I've found myself returning again and again to a particular quote. On the special features of the DVD for Stop Making Sense, David Byrne has an absurdist segment where he interviews himself. When one of Byrne's doppelgangers notes that Byrne has a bad voice,
Stage
The best thing that the Changing Scene Theatre Northwest's production of Bent does is take its time getting us to know and like its characters before plunging them into horrific situations. Once we get to the really awful stuff, we've spent enough time with decent people to truly feel the impact of
Music
For a period of time that seemed to last forever, but what actually amounted to probably less than a decade, starting in the mid-'00s, a virus known as folk-pop spread across the land. What started in indie circles, with musicians donning denim, adopting saccharine harmonies, and affecting a certain performative
Music
In High Fidelity, the socially clueless -- but culturally knowledgeable and smug -- music nerd, Rob, muses on the "subtle art" that goes into crafting the perfect mix tape. "You gotta kick it off with a killer, to grab attention, and then you gotta take it up a notch, but you
South Sound Cinema
Welcome, once again, to Three Easy Pieces, where I examine a specific subsection of pop culture from its birth, to how it exists today. This month, I'm thinking about comic book adaptations for adults. The subgenre experienced its biggest heyday in the ‘90s and early ‘00s, but with Deadpool and Logan showing that there's
Music
For a lot of us, when we're young, I think it's a fairly common experience to absorb music in a very surface-level way. Your parents play you songs, which tend to be upbeat and inoffensive, and you latch on to certain sentimental songs, but the notion of music achieving a
South Sound Cinema
It's a baked-in factor of independent film for directors to "steal" shots. Lacking the budget that would allow for a production to get permits and shut down a city street, for instance, a small crew would run out, shoot a couple takes with their actors, and get out before cops
Music
Olympia's a small town with an overactive arts scene, and as such, the event of a music venue shutting down can have a seismic effect. Such was the sad case when Obsidian abruptly shuttered its doors late last year. The café and performance space was frequently responsible for bringing in
Stage
Before you've even begun to formally experience the performance of Tacoma Little Theatre's production of The Pillowman, you must first find your seat. As you do, you will notice a man onstage, sitting in a drab cell, with a black hood over his head. The sensation of the audience finding their
Music
It will never stop fascinating me to track how music fans' perceptions and preconceived notions change over time - with accepted truths contradicting each other with as little as a decade of time separating them. For instance, in the 2000 film American Psycho, when Patrick Bateman delivered a monologue about how
South Sound Cinema
Another month, another edition of Three Easy Pieces, where I explore a pocket of pop culture from its birth through where it sits today. This month, I'm thinking about postmodern film noir. In the decades following film noir's heyday in the ‘40s and ‘50s, filmmakers took the genre's touchstones --
Music
It's one of the many odd ways we have of processing music that we arrive at comparing the sounds we're hearing to the relatively ineffable feeling we get from the various seasons. Of course, humans have spent centuries at a loss for words, reaching out into the darkness to say