Bright colors, extravagant sets and life-sized animal puppets compose the background of Disney’s “The Lion King,” which transports audience members to Pride Rock. The U.S. National Tour of the show directed by Julie Taylor opened on Jan. 9 at the Hult Center for Performing Arts.
A fist-sized necklace hangs around Jimmy Snyder’s neck. The tiny, intricate beading forms an eagle with its wings open wide against a baby blue sky, a stark contrast to the rich green fields with people riding canoes along the river pictured below the bird.
Classic rock 'n' roll plays in the background of the timeworn shop. Sawdust covers the floor and planks of wood adorn the walls.
It’s the 90th year of operation for the Very Little Theatre. What better way to celebrate than with a rendition of the classic “Dracula.” The play is based on the 1897 classic novel written by Bram Stoker and directed by Stanley Coleman. Throughout the performance, the actors ensure there is…
Whether you’re looking to plan an inexpensive date night or just wanting to escape the heat for a few hours this weekend, look no further than Summer SOUP’s rendition of “Wondrous Strange.”
The topics of gun control and domestic violence are coming together in the one-woman show “Natural Shocks,” on Saturday, April 21 at the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art. A direct reference from William Shakespeare’s famous Hamlet, Act III scene, “To be or not to be…,” where he says,“The heart…
The play “We Are Neighbors” tells the captivating stories of real immigrants living in Lane County and their experiences with belonging, loss and new beginnings. It’s a half-hour one-act play in which a continuously revolving cast of local amateur and professional actors read from a script. …
In the play, “The Father,” viewers see the world through the eyes of André, a man struggling to come to terms with Alzheimer’s disease. The set morphs slowly and subtly. Furniture disappears, walls shift and the color of André’s pajamas fades. Soon viewers start to wonder: “Are we in André’s…
When Kevin Dempsey first came to the University of Oregon in 2014, he knew he wanted to follow a theatrical path. That led him straight to the School of Music and Dance.
University Theatre’s final production of the 2016-2017 season is ending the school year not with a fizzle but a bang. Playwright Anne Washburn’s 2012 creation, “Mr. Burns, A Post-Electric Play,” is a bold and unabashedly weird piece of art that follows survivors of a nuclear apocalypse as th…
University of Oregon’s last play of the 2016-17 season will be playwright Anne Washburn’s daring show “Mr. Burns, a Post-Electric Play.” “Mr. Burns” follows a group of survivors after global disaster as they recount “The Simpsons’” episode “Cape Feare.”
Eularee Smith believes in the value of the everyday child. With a background in music education and special education, she noticed the shrinking of arts programs in public schools and decided to act on it. She has worked in both public and private education for 45 years and is now the execut…
Russian Through Theater is not your average language course. Instead of sitting in a classroom conjugating verbs, students create a play based on a selected work of Russian literature. Throughout winter term, students learn about different authors, create a full-length play and rehearse in R…
Thursday, Feb. 16: Play Reading: “The Fruit Stand” by Sravya Tadepelli at Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art (1430 Johnson Ln.), 4 p.m., free
University Theatre’s most recent production, Aphra Behn’s Emperor of the Moon, was a fresh and wonderful take on Restoration-era theatre from the 1600s. Due to its use of Early Modern English, Restoration theatre has a reputation for being difficult to comprehend. This version of Emperor was…
University Theatre’s second play of the season, The Emperor of the Moon, presents a modern twist on comedy from 1687. Playwright Aphra Behn is known in the theatre world as the female Shakespeare — she wrote in the middle to late 1600s and made a career out of playwriting before many women c…
Romeo and Juliet, arguably William Shakespeare’s most famous work, is a hard play to successfully produce. It’s not an easy task to stage this play in a genuine and fresh way because of the challenges Shakespeare’s language presents. When done well, it can be transcendent; when not, it can flop.
This weekend, Springfield’s Wildish Community Theater will host a performance of William Shakespeare’s classic play Romeo and Juliet. The theater will be decorated with a three-quarter sized replica of London’s Globe Theater, which is where Shakespeare first premiered Romeo and Juliet more t…
Theatre is an art form that has been around for thousands of years with its origins in Ancient Greece. The theatre’s counterpart, film, has had a relatively short history with the first movies being made in the late 1800s. Filmmakers and TV producers have been adapting theatrical works like …
Friday, Dec. 2: Fall Dance Loft at the Dougherty Dance Theatre (1484 University St.), 8 p.m., students $5, general $10
Riley Mulvihill, director of Pocket Playhouse’s most recent production, Dark Knight: The Musical, says it’s Batman’s time to shine. Pocket Playhouse is a student-run theatre company, and as Mulvihill told the Emerald in an interview at the green room of Villard Hall, “Spiderman already has h…
James Joyce’s The Dead, the first of five University Theatre shows this season, is not simply a musical, according to director Michael Malek Najjar. Instead, it lives in a world between a play with music where the plot is portrayed mainly through dialogue, and a musical like Cats where the m…
Thursday Oct. 27: “Motoring Out of Time: Histories of Technology and Development in Tanzania” at Knight Library Browsing Room (1501 Kincaid St.), 12-1:15 p.m., free
Each school year brings a new season of theatrical productions to the University of Oregon theatre department. Past pieces have included classics such as Shakespeare, the French playwright Moliere and musicals like the notorious Bat Boy. Last year, Michael Malek Najjar directed Scorched, a c…
Featured: Monday, Sept. 12 — Carl Verheyen Band at WOW Hall (291 W 8th Ave, Eugene, OR 97401)
Take a tour of the prop room under Robinson Theater in the Miller Theater Complex and enjoy all of the old treasures stored there.
Have you ever watched Star Trek and wondered: “Why is no one singing? Why is no one dancing?” If so, you’re in luck.
Editor’s note: An earlier version of this story said that the online campaign known as Gamergate was collectively behind some reports of harassment against women in video game culture. The instances are from a select few people, not necessarily the ethos of the movement as a whole.
Looking to add a little bit of culture to your weekend?
The house lights fall, only to be replaced by brighter lights illuminating the stage. The bright colors of costumes bounce off huge video projection screens; a masked stage chorus sings as piercing live gunfire interrupts. Scorched is not your typical play. It is full of fantastical elements…
The opera Orfeo ed Euridice put on by the School of Music and Dance will open its musical adaptation of the Greek myth Orpheus and Eurydice, directed by Dr. Karen Esquivel this weekend.
The house lights fall over the audience as the show is about to begin. The stage lights up and the crowd claps excitedly as the first actor walks out, dressed head-to-toe in grand Renaissance garb, transporting everyone back in time, and setting up the entire show for what’s to come.
It’s a story we’re all familiar with: A young girl is cursed into a deep sleep until a prince’s kiss wakes her from her slumber.
On Oct. 24 at 7:30 p.m. and Oct. 25 at 2 p.m., dancers from the Eugene Ballet Company will be performing The Sleeping Beauty, a ballet composed by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky. Tickets for the performance, which will take place at the Hult Center for Performing Arts, range from $29 -59.
Imagine this: It’s a Friday night and you’re dressed to the nines with all of your friends in tow. In suits, hats, pearls and heels, you leave ready to jump back in time for a theater performance unlike any other. The lights fall, and the curtain rises to reveal actors poised in front of mic…
If you want a complex, nuanced drama about the most legendary rock band of all time, you’ll come out of In My Life, Tom Maher and Andy Nagle’s musical tribute to the Beatles, disappointed. Ditto if you’re a casual fan and want to learn the story behind the band’s meteoric rise and bitter bre…
The first play of the theater season comes directly from the creative mind of University of Oregon theater graduate David Rodriguez. “Sonrisa Del Coyote” is a bi-lingual one-act play that won the 2015 New Voices Playwriting Contest, and found its way to the Pocket Playhouse stage for fall. B…
The Beatles’ personalities are nearly as legendary as their music. Listen to any of the countless flubbed takes available on the Internet and you’ll hear them joking and ribbing each other, often in less-than-savory language. These snippets of conversation were part of an ongoing studio dram…
Plywood and smeared spackle were the backdrop for a Tuesday night rehearsal in the Robinson Theater. Dressed in jeans and sneakers, actors cartwheeled, danced and unicycled across the half-finished set. Several twirled brightly-colored, opened umbrellas.
From May 7-9 at 8 p.m., the University of Oregon Department of Dance will be presenting their Spring Student Dance Concert 2015. Held in the Dougherty Dance Theater, it will present the works of nine emerging artists.
“Every time I go back to the village, I have to completely step out of being in a western culture and that mindset, because when you go back to the village, life is at a completely different pace.”
The lights came up at the Pocket Playhouse Thursday afternoon to a sparse office set, sickly-sweet ‘elevator music’ playing in the background. In the Pocket’s production of “Waiting,” directed by Sarah Etherton and written by Ethan Coen, purgatory takes on this unusual form.
Do you sing show tunes in the shower? Are you an avid theatre junkie? Or are you maybe planning a trip to New York City sometime soon? The chances are good that your bucket list includes seeing a play or musical on show business’ most famous circuit.
Just about anyone could tell you the story of Hansel and Gretel, if you asked them. Boy and girl get lost in forest. An evil witch almost eats them for dinner.
Thursday night, the lights on Oregon Contemporary Theatre’s intimate downtown stage came up to reveal a modest, slightly cluttered living room scene. Buckets and bowls were scattered over the set, knick-knacks lined the bookshelves, and the patterned furniture was covered with crinkly plasti…
On April 16, University of Oregon’s University Theatre will open its production of Sila in the Hope Theatre on campus. The play combines themes of Arctic culture and climate justice activism to raise questions about the future of our planet and the human community.
Set aside, for a moment, what do you think a ballet should look like. Replace the twinkling classical music with an album by The Who. Replace the tutus with dancing pinball machines.
When Alex Mentzel was just 11 years old, he came across an ad on Craigslist for a small role in a feature film. He auditioned, and was cast alongside Morgan Freeman and Greg Kinnear in Feast of Love.
