Plan-B Theatre’s 12th annual Free Elementary School Tour production for 2024-25 academic year features EllaMental by Dee-Dee Darby-Duffin

Within a few days after third grader Martin Richards from Boston was killed in the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing, a photo which showed the boy holding a sign he created that read ‘No more hurting people. Peace’ went viral. He made the sign a year before, when an activist who was protesting the handling of … Read more

The birth of Utah’s tremendous art movement: Springville Museum of Art’s exhibition Salon 100: A Retrospective of 100 Spring Salons and the Students that Built Art City

When it comes to the founding of Utah’s tremendous art movement, its own “this is the place” moment occurred not in Salt Lake City nor Provo. Spanish Fork or Payson but instead in Springville, just about the same time as the town was being established in the 1850s. As Vern Swanson, retired director of the … Read more

Backstage at the 2024 Utah Arts Festival: Kids’ Art Yard to feature impressive array of hands-on activities focusing on the Great Salt Lake

In recent years, many artists and creative producers have been building a critical mass of public awareness about the Great Salt Lake and its existential crisis. In 2023, Ririe-Woodbury Dance Company premiered an evening-length dance theater piece, To See Beyond Our Time. Earlier this year, the Utah Museum of Contemporary Art presented an impressive multidisciplinary … Read more

Utah Museum of Fine Arts’ Pictures of Belonging exhibition impressively commands viewers to think anew about American modernism

In a 2007 essay, art historian ShiPu Wang wrote that the works of Asian-American artists “are more than painterly creations that exude ‘transcendental beauty’ beyond cultural boundaries.” He added, “Their meaning and significance constantly shift and expand under different sociopolitical circumstances, and they do not remain incontrovertible objects or artifacts.” In her 1990 book, Mixed … Read more

Finding Joy Together: Utah Film Center’s 13th Tumbleweeds Film Festival for Kids set for April 19-20 at Viridian Event Center

With an excellent slate of family feature- and short-length films from around the world with hearty, intelligent and imaginative stories, the Utah Film Center is geared up for the 13th Annual Tumbleweeds Film Festival for Kids on April 19 and 20 at West Jordan’s Viridian Event Center.  With the Salt Lake County Library as partners, … Read more

A brief but significant note: The omission of the history of slavery in The Lehman Trilogy

A friend who works in many roles in the performing arts community joined me for the opening of The Pioneer Theatre Company’s Utah premiere production of The Lehman Trilogy in The University of Utah’s new Meldrum Theatre. He agreed with the assessment in the accompanying review at The Utah Review, especially regarding the outstanding performances … Read more

Alam Khan, master of the sarod, set for SLC events sponsored by Mundi Project, India Cultural Center of Utah; Westminster Concert Series

Alam Khan was seven years old when he started learning to play the sarod, a 25-string instrument with no frets which comprises strings for performing melodies as well as sympathetic strings to create resonating drone-like sounds. The head of the instrument, which resembles a lute, is made from sheepskin and the neck is metal plated. … Read more

Sundance 2024: Marking 100 years of Utah film and television history

NOTE: This feature about 100 years of film and television in Utah is linked to the Part I curtain raiser for the Sundance Film Festival.  When James D’Arc came to Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah as a student, he already knew some of Hollywood’s most famous names such as John Ford and John Wayne … Read more

Four young newcomers to live ballet performance find their own connections to the timeless magic of Ballet West’s historic production of The Nutcracker

For many in Salt Lake City, one of the greatest sources of pride in the local performing arts scene has been Willam Christensen’s efforts to make the first American version of The Nutcracker. As The Utah Review documented recently in a historical feature, he transported this version from its San Francisco premiere in 1944 to … Read more

Mesmerizing portrayals of auras, energies of individual, place in Chie Fueki’s Doctorow Prize show at Utah Museum of Contemporary Art

In Chie Fueki’s portraits, the auras and energies emanating from the individuals are mesmerizing, a fantastic probe of a deeper understanding of one’s self as an aggregate of their environment, interests, identities and their interactions with a physical world. Personality tests, zodiac charts and quizzes about being introverted or extroverted might be revealing to some … Read more