Arts & Events

By: Georgia Diamond Gustavson As the University of Puget Sound’s theatre productions begin to draw near, Michelle Bank, junior and director of the Town Crier production “Happy B-Earth Day,” has been working hard to find Al Gore.   “He’s like the missing man of 2016, he really is,” Bank said. The play, written by Allie Lawrence, is one of six ten-minute pieces that will be performed in this year’s 15th annual Town Crier Festival. She is hesitant to reveal too much about the play, or to pinpoint its exact style, but...

By Daniel Wolfert It was as she gathered her notes and clippings for her Feb. 9 lecture at the University of Puget Sound that Susan Stryker – transgender woman, Ph.D. and associate professor of Gender and Women’s Studies at the University of Arizona – received an unexpected email from Michael Howerton, editor-in-chief of the San Francisco Examiner. Howerton’s email was a request for Stryker’s input on the question of gender neutral pronouns, an issue facing many newspapers and other public interest publications today. Torn between the use of the colloquial...

By Georgia Gustavson Back in Russia in 2012, Vladimir Putin was on every T.V. channel, flooding the media with his promising messages as the inevitability of his fixed “election” to the Russian presidency drew near.  One act that cut through all the noise and reverberated around the world, however, was a “punk prayer” shouted in the Cathedral of Christ the Savior, pleading to make Putin go away.  Donned in neon dresses and fluffy face masks, members of Pussy Riot traded their freedom for a singular moment of protest in recent...

It was another rainy, blustery night in Seattle, Washington. The wind was blowing especially hard, and what better place to find refuge than in an explosive, inclusive art show that could morph into a dance party? Held by Lion’s Main Art Collective, last November’s “Erasure” event was a huge and unique success. That night the Nuclear Exchange Studio and VCR gallery was turned into a vibrant space full of interdisciplinary art. There were both two and three dimensional visual pieces, performance art, video, music and dance. The variety of mediums...

Mary Lambert singing live on the University of Puget Sound. From the moment that Mary Lambert’s fingers first touched the keys of her onstage piano, her bubbly demeanor vanished, replaced by one of somber tenderness.  As she played sad, soft chords, her first words were not in song, but spoken word poetry: “Where did you come from bright star?/What heaven did you leap from, dear love?” They are the opening lines of her short poem entitled “Dear One,” and it is with this quiet and vulnerable piece that she opened...

It was a good problem to have. Trimble Forum was at maximum capacity. Dozens more people piled into the room as some of the facilitators grabbed an extra table. Overall, Tuesday night’s Bros and Breakfast talk was overwhelming, right down to the dense, delicious, cardamom-infused pancakes being served in the entryway. This event was just the beginning. Though the target audience for this event was masculine-identified people, all types were present and eager to participate. After everyone was settled in, Director of Student Conduct Frank Cirioni created the urgent, determined...