World premiere dance concert, performances by veteran fringe artists close Great Salt Lake Fringe Festival

As the third annual Great Salt Lake Fringe Festival wrapped up this past weekend, there was ample evidence showing how the event is developing the enduring presence and value that will lead to more choices of original, ambitious entertainment. Last week, The Utah Review highlighted four shows and this week’s sampling of four performances from … Read more

Great Salt Lake Fringe Festival finds some true gems in its 3rd year

In its third year, the Great Salt Lake Fringe Festival continues to develop solidly with excellent potential. As a creative incubator, it remains true to the ideals of that first independent festival 70 years ago in Edinburgh, where four criteria are essential: no prior professional performing arts experience required, no juried selection, no pretentiousness or … Read more

Overcoming the echo chamber emerges front and center in Plan-B Theatre’s (in)divisible

Being a conservative in the arts has also been great for me because those in the arts give me a full environment to hear other perspectives. Being close to those with different viewpoints has opened my mind and sometimes changed it (and sometimes reinforced it), but either way it’s been an expanding experience. I sometimes … Read more

Leaps of faith highlight Plan-B Theatre’s forthcoming 27th season

NOTE: This is Part Two of a series about Plan-B Theatre, which offers a glimpse of the four new productions for the 27th season. For Part One, see here. “We want a beginning of the story. And we go as far ahead in the future as we can. We want an end to the story. … Read more

Retrospective: Plan-B Theatre’s 26th season filled with original, rare, essential plays by Utah writers

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

Pygmalion Theatre Company’s production of Silent Sky celebrates women who were light years ahead in astronomy

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

Plan-B Theatre sets to explore the culture of memory in Morag Shepherd’s Not One Drop

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

Pygmalion Productions Theatre prepares to stage Lee Blessing’s Eleemosynary

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

Sold out Virtue from Plan-B Theatre is saintly

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

Plan-B Theatre’s Virtue explores remarkable 12th century legacy of St. Hildegard of Bingen

Mulier in ecclesia taceat ‘Let women keep silence in church.’ In its newest production, Plan-B Theatre’s Virtue, written by Tim Slover, promises much more than a fascinating story about a Benedictine abbess from nearly nine centuries ago whose exceptional achievements presage the ideal of the Renaissance individual. In capturing the essence of St. Hildegard of … Read more