Three new excellent fall releases from Torrey House Press: Desert Cabal, Mostly White, The Delightful Horror of Family Birding

Three new releases for the fall from Utah’s Torrey House Press signal this publishing house’s earnest expansion of the literary voices for the environmental and conservation movement. When considered together, two nonfiction releases (Desert Cabal by Amy irvine and The Delightful Horror of Family Birding by Eli J. Knapp) and the novel Mostly White by … Read more

Repertory Dance Theatre’s 53rd season to open on new, classic notes of Spirit of Manifest Diversity

Entering its 53rd season, Repertory Dance Theatre (RDT) always has been at the modern dance forefront in expressing the complexities of the past and the ever-shifting contemporary present. In the 1960s, the idea of Manifest Destiny still dominated the mindset of the American West although it was being obscured increasingly by the civil rights movement … Read more

Original video game idea turned into a play, Plan-B Theatre’s Zombie Thoughts slated for Utah schools fall tour

At 11, Oliver Grey Kokai-Means already can claim that a play he created and wrote with his mother, playwright Jennifer Kokai, is being produced and will be viewed by thousands over the next month and half in Utah. Zombie Thoughts is the sixth play of Plan-B Theatre’s Free Elementary School Tour (FEST), which takes the … Read more

Red Desert’s experimental music program excellent, highly absorbing stretch of artistic entrepreneurialism

Just how adventuresome and experimental can Salt Lake City’s performing arts scene become? More so than some might expect. In the last few years, there have been numerous examples suggesting just how Utah’s pioneer legacy is translated and transformed into boundary-busting expressions. Per capita, Salt Lake City stacks up competitively to much larger metropolitan centers … Read more

Following Asia cultural tour, Ririe-Woodbury Dance Company’s 55th season opens with Splice concert

In between its 54th and 55th seasons, the Ririe-Woodbury Dance Company traveled in May to Mongolia and South Korea, as part of DanceMotion USA℠’s cultural diplomacy program. In Mongolia, the dancers and company staff taught master classes in contemporary dance and improvisational technique at a state university as well as the police academy. In South … Read more

Cosmopolitanism over provincialism: Riot Act’s Mopey Wrecks takes all the right risks

Want to know what it really means to take enormous risks in the arts? Exhibit A: The just concluded premiere production of Riot Act’s Mopey Wrecks, a play written and directed by Whit Hertford as adapted from Anton Chekhov’s Three Sisters. In their original form, Chekhov’s plays can confound a director’s tendencies, which might emphasize … Read more

Utah Film Center announces Artist Foundry to support independent filmmakers, acquires assets of Avrec Art House

As much as the Utah Film Center has served as a major Intermountain West cultural institution of exhibition for independent cinema, especially in documentary storytelling, it also has cultivated its function as a strategic touchstone essential for augmenting the creative filmmaking sector of the state’s film industry. Today, the center announced a major new piece … Read more

Breaking News! 7th annual Rose Exposed to highlight The Rose’s six resident companies in premieres of thematically connected short works

We rely on skilled journalists and editors to make sense of a volatile news cycle. Forty years ago, Umberto Eco wrote about the artist who protests through form in The Open Work. In part, he suggested that the artist, while rejecting the current order and system, also accepts the world in its crisis terms. The … Read more

The sounds of the desert: Ryan Ruehlen’s GeoRhythmic Drift Music installation set to open at Utah Museum of Contemporary Art

The desert is a vacant cochlea, a geographical chamber of bone, in which waves propagate from the base freely distant sound brought close to my hearing. The vehicle was now perched in an alcove of short, pinyon pine, amidst a vast solitude and harsh stillness. Soaking in the yellow grassy plain, I paced around laying … Read more

A dark buddy comedy, hilarious solo show on LDS musicals, dance company piece, high school performers’ take on social media memes highlight Great Salt Fringe Festival

NOTE: This is Part II of reviews of shows from the 2018 Great Salt Lake Fringe Festival. For Part I, see here. Austin Archer’s Marty Has Cancer – Prufrock Productions Every performance of this play sold out or had standing room only, which likely makes it one of the most successful productions ever presented at … Read more