Performing Arts in Utah covered in 15 Bytes, Utah’s art magazine.
In Salt Lake City, one of the most pleasingly brave and authentic events I have the pleasure of attending is 12 Minutes Max, staged by Paul Reynolds and Salt Lake City Public Library (Main Library) every third Sunday at 2 pm in its ground-floor Tessman auditorium. Each month, […]
The Great Salt Lake Fringe Festival is back once again to bring the art of theater performance from the fringes of society to the center of downtown Salt Lake City. Shianne Gray and Jay Perry, co-directors of the festival, put together 24 live performances to be enjoyed for […]
After a two-year Covid hiatus, the Utah Arts Festival has returned to downtown Salt Lake City, June 23 – 26, with six stages, more than 170 artists and 200 performances. Here’s a taste: Artists of all mediums show off their talent, ensuring you’ll be able to find […]
The 7th annual Salt Lake City Performance Art Festival is fast approaching, and the festival’s founder, Kristina Lenzi, has curated 24 presenters whose works are appropriate for all ages, visually and conceptually interesting, and unrehearsed. Lenzi demands that “unrehearsed” remain an emphasized component and descriptor of these works. Unrehearsed, […]
Last weekend, Deseret Experimental Opera staged “Life Relegated,” a rock opera written by Jacob Rosenzweig and realized with a community of local musicians and dancers. The location was an out-of-the-way address inside The Gateway — the old Urban Outfitters, now a vast cement hall. It was filled for […]
Anne Cullimore Decker’s home on the East Bench of Salt Lake City is a lot like Anne Cullimore Decker herself: elegant, gracious, artistic. One of Utah’s premiere dramatic artists, she’s worked in theater, opera, television, and film. Decker’s life is an inspiring journey through a commitment to art, […]
There is one topic du jour that seems repetitive: devout Mormons, lapsed Mormons, non-Mormons, all appear concerned lately (belatedly) with LGBT rights in the LDS Church. Books like the Mormon mystery His Right Hand by Mette Ivie Harrison, so many newspaper articles and letters to the editor, and […]
Night after night, a young white woman watches news broadcasts about police violence against African- American citizens. Although she lives far away, she is moved to act against the brutality she sees on the screen by joining the protest effort. The year is 1965—but it could just as […]
Picture a young child coloring: they smile in delight at picking out just the right crayon or enthusiastically grab a random one from the floor; they fill the page with broad strokes of vibrant color without any regard for the lines (assuming there are any); and an infectious […]
Early in Salt Lake Acting Company’s production of “Streetlight Woodpecker,” the protagonist Benji (played by Stefan Espinosa) mistakes the pecking of a neighborhood woodpecker for the sound of distant machine-gun fire. Benji, who has just returned from active duty with debilitating injuries, struggles to readjust to his hometown […]
If you’re planning on attending Ballet West’s production of Romeo and Juliet this month, you might notice the company has hired a new maestro: Tara Simoncic. Artistic Director Adam Sklute has brought her in over the past several years for projects, but she was appointed as the orchestral […]
Been there, done that. Many of us have, I’m sure. “I don’t know the title or the author but I can kinda tell you what the cover looks like. Can you find it for me?” “Well, why can’t you call Barnes and Noble to see if they […]
In PYGmalion Theatre’s excellent Buyer & Cellar, you have Barbra Streisand as herself; a quick cameo by her husband, James Brolin (in search of frozen yogurt with sprinkles); her down-on-his-luck employee, Alex More (recently fired as Disneyland’s Mayor of Toontown for telling a child where to put […]
If you are familiar with the irreverent, bawdy, ever-so-absurdist humor of Mel Brooks’ films and plays, you will instantly understand the kind of wild ride the Grand Theatre’s The New Mel Brooks Musical: Young Frankenstein promises its audience. For those uninitiated into the 1974 cult film, the story […]
Pozdnyshev did it in the conservatory with a knife. We learn that much early on in “The Kreutzer Sonata,” Eric Samuelsen’s world-premiere one-act play, a superb adaptation (and condensation) of Tolstoy’s 1889 novella about murder and madness. Combined with a spellbinding performance of much of Beethoven’s Violin […]
The novel and (actually, several) films of The Talented Mr. Ripley are readily available in Salt Lake, but until this week the play has not been. A first step in rectifying that omission was made on Monday night, when Weller Booksworks, as part of both its Free Play Reading Series and the Utah Humanities Book Festival, staged a free reading in the bookstore. Although presented without costumes or scenery and only minimal action, the actors prepared as they would for any staging, rehearsing and working together to develop characters and impart the right voices.
“I saw the best minds of my generation” (Janis, Jimi, Jim, Kurt, Amy, the kid who lived around the corner) “destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked, dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix, angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to […]
