Behind the scenes: Spy Hop’s award-winning PitchNic program set for Nov. 7 premiere of 22nd edition of four student produced films

PitchNic, one of Spy Hop Productions’ most exciting programs, returns for its 22nd edition this year and this year’s class of young Utah filmmakers is looking to build on a legacy where more than 95% of films that have been produced in the program have gone on to be screened at and win awards at … Read more

The strength of acknowledging how representation matters in music: NOVA Chamber Music Series’ 2024-25 will be exciting from start to finish

Pianist Kimi Kawashima is well known to NOVA Chamber Music Series audiences as a frequent guest artist and now she has taken on a larger role, as the series’ new artistic director. She succeeds the members of the Fry Street Quartet, who will continue curating the Utah Museum of Fine Arts (UMFA) Gallery Series as … Read more

Immigrant’s Daughter Theatre, Lil Poppet Productions offer dynamite interpretation in stage adaptation of Stephen King’s Misery

Misery, one of Stephen King’s best novels, is about an author’s deepest terror as he desperately tries to figure out how to stay alive, while he is imprisoned in the home of the woman who calls herself “his number one fan.” When the 1987 novel was adapted three years later into a film, directed by … Read more

Sterling cast propels excellent Utah premiere production by Pioneer Theatre Company of Joshua Harmon’s Prayer for the French Republic

“History, as nearly no one seems to know, is not merely something to be read.  And it does not refer merely, or even principally, to the past,” James Baldwin wrote in a 1965 essay for Ebony magazine (titled, The White Man’s Guilt). He added, “On the contrary, the great force of history comes from the … Read more

Fascinating portal into history, memory, preservation of Native American artistic, cultural heritage: Russel Albert Daniels — Wild Roses at Material Art Gallery

Perhaps the most significant impact of contemporary Native American artists is that their output affirms that their respective Indigenous cultures and people will always be here and the media in which they create their art, by reflecting upon their experiences in contemporary society, means they are always breathing life into their cultures. A multidisciplinary photographer … Read more

‘One cannot fight what one cannot see’: Plan-B Theatre’s Full Color pops with heart, wit, poetry, intellectual depth, soul-bearing emotion

At the opening of Full Color, Plan-B Theatre’s 34th season opener, the setting is pleasant and inviting: eight people enjoying each other’s company and feeling comfortable at home, outside a tent in nature. As each person shares a story, the production’s epiphany expands organically, one narrative at a time. While the audience is welcomed to … Read more

Ballet West gives Val Caniparoli’s Jekyll & Hyde riveting, spine-tingling Utah premiere

One of numerous striking boundary-busting scenes in the riveting  Ballet West production of Val Caniparoli’s Jekyll & Hyde occurs just past midpoint in the second act. Hyde (David Huffmire) commandeers the attention when he arrives at Deacon Brodie’s Tavern, the after-hours refuge for the sophisticated Victorian gentlemen to indulge their libertine pleasures whatever they might … Read more

Fascinating, engaging parallels in art history: Utah Museum of Fine Arts’ inspired twin bill of Blue Grass, Green Skies, Photo-Secession

Double exhibitions have become a specialty well mastered at The Utah Museum of Fine Arts (UMFA) and the latest examples produce one of the most fascinating engagements with art history in a fresh perspective that resonates effectively with contemporary visitors.  Blue Grass, Green Skies: American Impressionism and Realism from the Los Angeles County Museum of … Read more

Not the ordinary Gothic fiction fare for Halloween: Ballet West’s 61st season set to open with Val Caniparoli’s psychological thriller Jekyll and Hyde

Three years after Robert Louis Stevenson’s Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde was published, Oscar Wilde, in his 1889 The Decay of Lying: An Observation, wrote, “the transformation of Dr. Jekyll reads dangerously like an experiment out of the Lancet [the famed British medical journal].” As English literature scholar Anne Stiles explained in … Read more

Eight BIPOC playwrights and eight doppelgängers: Plan-B Theatre’s 34th season set to open with Full Color

Between 2010 and 2020, Utah’s population grew at a faster rate than in any other state and more than 52% of that growth occurred in minority populations. Today, more than 1 in 4 Utahns identify as Black, Indigenous or People of Color (BIPOC), compared to 1 in 5 in the 2010 U.S. Census. As the … Read more