thursday 14 Patchwork Players THEATER—The Patchwork Players performs a repertoire of one-act plays to help raise funds for Circle of Friends, a Sisters-based program that connects healthy adult mentors with vulnerable children. Drinks will be available to sample and purchase from Bend Distillery’s line of Crater Lake Spirits. So raise a glass to community theater […]
Theater
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Erupting in Laughter
A sitcom as hot as lava
Most plays are written to fit snugly into a genre so they’re easier to market to an audience. Comedy. Drama. Tragedy. Historical. But local playwright Suzan Noyes’ new show, Hot Spot in Pompeii, is a mash-up, a delightful breath of fresh air that takes a screwball romantic farce and plops it smack dab next to […]
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Another Generation, Same Issues
Redmond High examines parallels with The Laramie Project
When Matthew Shepard was kidnapped, tortured, and bound to a fence post outside of Laramie, Wyoming, on a freezing night in October 1998, today’s teenagers were either yet unborn or still in diapers. The 21-year-old’s death and the trial that followed attracted worldwide media interest and emboldened the nation to fight bigotry and hatred. Nearly […]
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F-U-N-N-Y
Use that in a musical?
Ten years ago, 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, an interactive musical, stormed Broadway, capturing six Tony nominations and a Grammy nomination for its songs. The performance is a perfect storm of improv comedy, theatrical flare and gleeful musical numbers. This month, the musical is being staged for the first time in Central Oregon. Recently, […]
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Speak to Me
The Language Archive catalogues love languages
Julia Cho’s The Language Archive is a play of ideas. While the characters are all well drawn, it is the ideas and themes that Cho really seems interested in exploring and, throughout the play, the audience is led between them gracefully. George (Stuart Hicks) is an academic who works for an archive dedicated to the […]
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An Open Book
Comedian Ian Harvie and his raw comedy
Ian Harvie was just a regular 30-something guy, working as a web developer in Portland, Maine, when an unexpected piece of mail dramatically changed the course of his life. The postcard for a standup comedy-writing workshop set Harvie on a path that would take him to the stage and the screen with some of the […]
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Second-to-Last Comic Standing
Ralphie May talks Kinison, cocaine and the end of the world
Ralphie May walks between the raindrops. Some critics think he’s racist, sexist and likes using the word “retard” a little too much. But the man who came just short of winning the first season of “Last Comic Standing” lives a blessed life with a beautiful wife, two gorgeous kids and his own damned bus to […]
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Southern Gothic
Glass Menagerie opens at CTC
Tennessee Williams’ The Glass Menagerie is not easy theater. The play forces its audience members to step into a family life so intimate and revealing that it can shed light on our own situations we might not be comfortable examining. It is easy to draw comparisons to one’s own familial relationships and either find ourselves […]
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The Dolce & Gabbana-logues
Love, Loss and What I Wore opens at 2nd Street
Love, Loss and What I Wore is a gutsy proposition of a play. It focuses exclusively on stories of women, some hilarious, some bittersweet and heartbreaking, all told through the outfits and accessories they wore at the time. It is simply staged, with images of some of the dresses projected around the cast of five […]
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Top 5 Moments in Local Theater
Les Misérables (Tower Theatre) “From the sumptuous and layered opening notes of ‘At the End of the Day,’ it was very apparent that the months of rehearsal have created not just an excellent piece of theater, but an event unlike any on the Central Oregon stage.” —Jared Rasic, Shakespeare in the Park “With witty fools, […]