So sorry. Art Scatter has been experiencing technical difficulties. Mr. Scatter was in the far-flung parts of the state hanging with people who raise peacocks and donkeys. His absence meant he couldn’t run interference with the Large Smelly Boys, who at times can be chihuahuas for attention.
Then Mr. Scatter got back and wrote about mules [...]
Cultural types who complain that the mainstream media never pay attention to the arts just haven’t been reading the news pages, where it’s theater, theater, theater, hour after hour, day after day.
No figure in history is more honored in our news coverage than the revolutionary Russian set designer Grigori Potemkin, and his ingeniously adaptable Potemkin [...]
It’s not often that a person starts a full-fledged organization with a casual flick of a typing finger, but I appear to have done just that in an August 27 post in which I defended my fondness for a good chick flick.
I found myself typing the following throwaway sentence:
“Yes, I like the movies of Nora [...]
Muleskinner Blue Skies: The Wallowas in summer as seen from the Hells Canyon National Recreation Area. Wikimedia Commons.
While all you young buckaroos are heading into cowboy country for the 99th annual Pendleton Round-Up and Happy Canyon Pageant starting Wednesday, Mr. Scatter will be stuck inside of Portland with the Round-Up Blues again. I’ll be missing [...]
So much going on in town, so little time. So VERY little time, when you’re on the road.
TBA? For a lot of people in Portland, PICA’s orgy of the experimental and unusual is the biggest arts deal of the year. Looks like I won’t catch any of it. Which is why, Dear Reader, you won’t [...]
Above: Macbeth (Peter Macon) confronts a ghostly apparition in Ashland. Inset below: Diana (Emily Sophia Knapp) meets with Bertram (Danforth Comins). Photos: Jenny Graham/Oregon Shakespeare Festival/2009.
One of the advantages of visiting the Oregon Shakespeare Festival as late as I did this year is that every production (and I saw all nine still running in [...]
Seriously. That’s how it all started.
I was minding my own business, blissfully enjoying the summer sunshine and occasionally writing goofy off-topic stuff for a blog that isn’t even mine.
Sure, I had plans. Big plans. I had planned to apply for unemployment benefits just as soon as summer ended.
But before then I was going to be [...]
Today, after a matinee performance of All’s Well That Ends Well, the extended Scatter Family leaves Ashland and the Oregon Shakespeare Festival for dinner, bed and breakfast at the old Wolf Creek Tavern north of Grants Pass before a Labor Day drive back to Portland.
And by coincidence, today I have an essay in the books [...]
Above: Truffaldino, the servant of two masters (Mark Bedard), takes a break from his dizzying existence. Inset below: The old tightwad Pantalone (David Kelly) is overjoyed at the prospect of receiving more gold. Photos: Jenny Graham/Oregon Shakespeare Festival/2009.
Every season at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival needs its lark, that well-turned show of comic wordplay that, while [...]
Above: Vilma Silva is soon-to-be-dumped Queen Katherine and Elijah Alexander is the charismatic king in “Henry VIII.” Photo: Jenny Graham/Oregon Shakespeare Festival/2009. Inset below: Portrait of Henry VIII by unknown artist, in the manner of Hans Holbein the Younger, ca. 1540.
I have breakfast, lunch and dinner with Henry the Eighth. Not that I let it [...]