NOTE: This is the first of a two-part series about Plan-B Theatre, which just completed its 26th anniversary. Part 2 will preview the company’s 2017-2018 season. As audaciously experimental as Plan-B Theatre’s silver anniversary season was last year, the small theatre company in Salt Lake City set forth in its 26th season an original, rare, … Read more
To many outside of the working world of science, the most important work of discovery might seem mundane and inconsequential – especially when it was conducted by women. Margot Lee Shetterly’s 2016 nonfiction book Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Mathematicians Who Helped Win the Space Race (Harper … Read more
This flame that burns in my heart. Calls me to the heat of Samba. It is the glow that illuminates the darkness The light that clarifies my path. It is culture, art, and expression. It is magic brought from Aruanda. From black and white ashes From so much suffering of yore A phoenix was born … Read more
In the 21st century, cultural appropriation—like globalization—isn’t just inevitable; it’s potentially positive. We have to stop guarding cultures and subcultures in efforts to preserve them. It’s naïve, paternalistic, and counterproductive. Plus, it’s just not how culture or creativity work. The exchange of ideas, styles, and traditions is one of the tenets and joys of a … Read more
The great French philosopher Paul Ricoeur wrote that forgetting “remains the disturbing threat that lurks in the background of the phenomenology of memory and the epistemology of history.” Nostalgia is criticized because it signifies just how much of the “truthfulness” of the past can be sanitized and forgotten. The act of forgetting is a mistake, … Read more
Utah Opera’s 2016-2017 season has played to the moodier and dramatic side of human nature this year, and Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor is no exception. This tale of a woman manipulated into turning her back on true love and marrying another has tragic consequences. Utah Opera added more drama to the production with a last-minute cast … Read more
There is no question that Salt Lake City’s jazz scene will be electrified with an upcoming performance of Jim Crow’s Tears, a masterful musical of jazz verismo by Kris Johnson and book by playwright Gary Anderson. As summarized in the soundtrack review, published last December in The Utah Review, “It is a straightforward, robust, courageous … Read more
William Bernstein, a neurologist-cum-financial adviser who often works with clients having at least $25 million in investment portfolios, described his 2014 financial advice guide, the 7,000-word If You Can, as “eleemosynary.” Thoroughly charitable in keeping with eleemosynary’s definition, he wrote the guide, as he explains, “to help today’s young people invest for retirement because, frankly, … Read more
Pope Benedict XVI formally canonized St. Hildegard of Bingen in 2012 but her creative genius in the fields of music, theater, science, theology, medicine and mysticism have been appreciated for nearly nine centuries. In Plan-B Theatre’s newest production, written by Tim Slover and directed by Jerry Rapier, Virtue explores the fascinating story of the Benedictine … Read more
Ballet West has once again revived the timeless tale of The Sleeping Beauty for the February 2017 season run. Meant to appeal to audiences both young and old, the ballet is a traditional telling of the story of good over evil. After Princess Aurora is born, the fairies of Beauty, Joy, Kindness, Temperament and Wisdom … Read more