The Stranger's Spring 2023 Art + Performance Magazine

JÓNSI’S SEAWEED-SCENTED, MULTISENSORY FLÓÐ (FLOOD)

We distributed our last physical edition of The Stranger on March 11, 2020.

The world has since turned upside down several times over, but you already know that.

To be back in your hands now feels like somewhat of a miracle. Or maybe a fever dream.

We got here with a smaller team and fewer resources. We had to work twice as hard with half as much. And, if I may, I’m pretty fucking proud of us! I’m proud of Seattle, too. Because while we were working day and night to claw our way out of the online-only underworld, so was Seattle’s arts community. Our musicians, artists, actors, writers, weavers, movers, and shakers all worked tirelessly to reignite a spark that seemed to all but fizzle out when the virus catapulted humankind into survival mode.

Things have been coming back to life in fits and starts for a while now, it’s true, but there’s something about spring that always makes everything feel brighter and more alive. And this season, Seattle’s artists aren’t just coming out of hibernation blearyeyed and bumbling—they’re sprinting toward the light at the end of the tunnel to take back what the past three years have stolen from them.

In March, local filmmaker Clyde Petersen premieres his long-awaited documentary, Even Hell Has Its Heroes, at Copenhagen’s International Documentary Film Festival. The film is not just about the legendary drone

band, Earth; it’s also a love letter to Washington state and all the cinematic scenery that inspires the band’s meditative music. The Pacific Northwest Ballet is breaking out, too, bringing to the stage— live and in person!—Penny Saunders’s Wonderland, which was only performed virtually during the pandemic.

In June, ceramicist Emily Counts will mount her largest show to date at Museum of Museums. Her surreal sculptures of people and body parts—some life-sized!—celebrate the women in her life who instilled in her a sense of magic and curiosity. And the folks at Nii Modo have taken on one of their biggest achievements, too, having converted the former Bartell Drugs on Third Avenue into a huge new event space for concerts, art shows, and the beloved Punk Rock Flea Market.

This is also just the beginning of The Stranger’s return to print— we’re already planning more special issues for summer and fall, so expect to see us on the streets again soon. Of course, we’re always writing about the best art shows, performances, readings, film screenings, and concerts at thestranger.com, too. As I like to say to anyone who unwittingly says to me, “I used to love reading The Stranger ”: We’re not dead! We’re just online.

But there’s nothing like print media. We love it, and we know you love it, too. It feels good to be back. ■

Megan Seling Arts Editor, The Stranger

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Clyde Petersen’s long-awaited documentary, Even Hell Has Its Heroes, about Northwest drone-metal pioneers Earth, makes its world premiere in Copenhagen this spring. The film is long, slow, and methodical. And that’s what makes it perfect.

Author and former Stranger columnist David Schmader shares some of the cinematic secrets he uncovered while researching his new book, Filmlandia: A Movie Lover’s Guide to the Films and Television of Seattle, Portland, and the Great Northwest.

Jas Keimig visits Emily Counts in her Fremont studio as she prepares for her largest show yet, Sea of Vapors, which premieres at Museum of Museums in June. Her ceramic sculptures are surreal, vibrant, and witchy. Just don’t call them whimsical.

The Pacific Northwest Ballet opens up its rehearsal studios to Rich Smith and photographer Kristen Marie Parker as the company prepares for its spring production, Boundless. There’s sweat, fire, busted feet, and dancers doing the worm.

You’ll never look at a banana the same way again after reading Rich Smith’s interview with Paul Hlava Ceballos. His terrific new collection of poems, banana [ ], tells the shockingly bloody history of the breakfast staple.

Sigur Rós singer and guitarist Jónsi tells Jas Keimig about his multisensory installation, FLÓÐ (Flood), showing at the National Nordic Museum through July. It features fog scented with seaweed that he harvested from the North Atlantic and Pacific Oceans himself!

Get better acquainted with four folks who are breathing new life into Seattle’s arts scene—Josh Okrent and CM Ruiz of Nii Modo, comedian Rohini Jayanthi, and Timber! Outdoor Music Festival founder Kevin Sur.

You didn’t think we’d make our grand return to print without a crossword puzzle, did you? Have a little fun on our Art + Performance game page!

COVER ART

Pacific Northwest Ballet rehearsal photo by Kristen Marie Parker www.kristenmarieparker.com

Editorial

EDITOR

Rich Smith

ARTS EDITOR

Megan Seling

SENIOR STAFF WRITERS

Charles Mudede, Jas Keimig

STAFF WRITER

Hannah Krieg

EverOut

HEAD OF CONTENT

Jamie Reed

MUSIC CALENDAR EDITOR

Audry Vann

FOOD & DRINK CALENDAR EDITOR

Julianne Bell

Art & Production

ART DIRECTOR

Corianton Hale

ASSOCIATE ART DIRECTOR

Anthony Keo

Advertising

REGIONAL SALES DIRECTOR

James Deeley

SALES OPERATIONS MANAGER

Evanne Hall

SENIOR ACCOUNT EXECUTIVES

Ben Demar, Katie Phoenix

Events & Media

EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR

Tracey Cataldo

MARKETING & PROMOTIONS DIRECTOR

Caroline Dodge

DIRECTOR OF VIDEO PRODUCTION

Shane Wahlund

PODCASTS

Nancy Hartunian, Jesse Cramer

Business

PRESIDENT

Robert Crocker

COMPTROLLER

Katie Lake

Technology & Development

VP OF PRODUCT

Anthony Hecht

LEAD DEVELOPERS

Michael Crowl, Nick Nelson

TECH SUPPORT SPECIALIST

Grant Hendrix

Bold Type Tickets

DIRECTOR OF SALES

Diana Katz

CUSTOMER SOLUTIONS MANAGER

Kevin Shurtluff

CLIENT SOLUTIONS REPRESENTATIVE

Campy Draper

CUSTOMER SOLUTIONS REPRESENTATIVES

Eleanor Stavinoha, Taffy Marler

Circulation

CIRCULATION MANAGER

Kevin Shurtluff

Publisher

Robert Crocker

GOOD AS HELL

Legendary Drone Band Earth Finally Receives Their Hero’s Welcome

BY MEGAN SELING

Clyde Petersen knows his movie isn’t for everyone. Even Hell Has Its Heroes is an almost two-hour documentary shot exclusively on Super 8 mm film to celebrate a band that made a name for themselves in the early 1990s by writing 30-minute drone metal songs.

“This is a slow-ass film,” Petersen wrote in an email when sending along the screener link. “Prepare yourself.”

Slow, yes, but the pacing has a purpose. Even Hell is a deep dive into the history of Earth, a band founded by Dylan Carlson in 1989 in the damp, depressing trenches of the Pacific Northwest. At times they sound like what you might hear if you could amplify the noises of a decaying animal. Thick, wooly, unrelenting—reaching to the heavens but at an indeterminable pace. Again, not for everyone.

But with a couple of releases on Sub Pop— an EP in 1991 and their debut full-length, Earth 2: Special Low Frequency Version, in 1993—Earth cultivated a small but ardent fan base and earned somewhat of a reputation for being your favorite band’s favorite band. Kurt Cobain, one of Carlson’s closest friends, was a fan, and Kill Rock Stars founder Slim Moon credits Carlson for grunge’s accidental aesthetic.

“I felt like Kurt was really influenced by Dylan, [he] loved his provocative ‘fuck off’ kind of attitude and his fashion sense,” Moon is heard saying over grainy, handheld footage of Cobain-related landmarks. “Dylan and Mark Arm were the first two dudes that I knew of that wore flannel all the time. When I met Kurt, he was more of a denim jacket kind of guy. To me, if you trace it all back, it was really Dylan’s fault that the world wore flannel.”

It’s those revelatory moments, those slight rewrites of long-believed history, that make watching Even Hell Has Its Heroes feel less like the exhaustive slog Petersen warned it would be and more like the slow unraveling of one of those crepe-paper surprise balls. As you unroll the layers, little treasures reveal themselves one at a time.

Earth has had a revolving door of band members and supporters over the years, and Petersen introduces us to nearly two dozen of them. We first meet Earth’s drummer, Adrienne Davies, who joined the band in 2000 and has been an anchor ever since, when she and Carlson pose outside of the tiny Wayside Chapel in Sultan, WA. We ride the ferry to Orcas Island to visit Sub Pop founder Bruce Pavitt. We stop at goofy landmarks, including the giant cowboy hat and boots in Georgetown’s Oxbow Park and the Stonehenge replica at the Maryhill Museum of Art in Eastern Washington. The Northwest had a hand in Earth’s creation, too.

Only three guitars were harmed in the making of this movie.

Jonas Haskins, who played baritone bass for Earth from 2006 to 2008, recalls his time with the band while rowing a boat around Rattlesnake Lake using guitars as oars.

“You can tell a lot about a person by the way they row a boat.”

Wait, what?

“There is absolutely an element of magical realism in the film,” Petersen explained.

“Jonas Haskins and I traveled to Rattlesnake Lake in the wintertime. I did not consider the fact that the lake would be much lower than it is in the summertime. The adventure that ensued involved dragging a heavy dinghy across deep mud for what felt like an hour to arrive at the lake shore. At which point Jonas still had to row the boat across the lake with these incredibly heavy electric guitar-oars, which were getting waterlogged and heavier by the moment. He was a real good sport about the whole thing. I think it’s one of the most beautiful scenes in the film. Also, you can tell a lot about a person by the way they row a boat.”

It’s a beautiful scene and the perfect encapsulation of Earth’s existence. The trudg-

ing, the persevering, the compelling of instruments to bend to an artist’s esoteric will. Even so, the film’s most poignant moments come when Carlson himself speaks.

In 1994, Carlson purchased the gun Cobain used to take his own life. Carlson has never said much about it publicly, and his name is still mentioned in conspiracy theories that continue to captivate hardcore Nirvana fans across the internet. In Even Hell, Petersen makes room for Carlson to finally respond.

“For better or for worse, something I’ve had to carry around and deal with over the course of Earth’s history was my personal friendship with Kurt Cobain, and the unfortunate circumstances surrounding his death,” he’s heard saying over black-andwhite Earth concert footage. “I’ve never really talked about it. As a musician and someone in the public eye, there’s still certain things in your life you keep private, and grief, to me, is one of them.”

The rest is best heard from Carlson himself, in his own words, at his own pace. It’s a moment Petersen could’ve easily turned into a headline-grabbing spectacle, “content” that soldiers in the streaming wars would’ve paid a pretty penny for.

“Cobain’s Gun-Buying Best Friend Finally Speaks!” But Even Hell Has Its Heroes isn’t that kind of documentary. It’s a rebellion against that kind of documentary.

“It is not uncommon in documentary

filmmaking to encounter a predatory nature in the relationship between filmmaker and subject,” Petersen explained. “There seems to be a mentality that you can’t be friends with your subject, but I disagree. … For [Carlson] to be able to share his grief was a powerful thing to be a part of. This particular situation was discussed as an opportunity to share their experience in the really hard loss of a best friend, to say their piece, and to maybe be able to set some of that grief down. We already had a basis of trust from working together, but he also had to trust that I would care for him more as a friend than for his story.

“In many ways, this film was a deep collaboration with the members of Earth,” Petersen added. “It was an honor to be trusted in helping tell their story. Documentary is a strange activity. You can work with what you are given, you can bend it to your own will to create false narratives, or you can just acknowledge that there is no real objectivity to be found and move forward together making something that is artful and creative and that, in the end, is hopefully more than the sum of its original parts. Embracing weirdness as normalcy. That was the approach we took.”

The film’s not for everyone. All the more reason everyone should watch it anyway. ■

Visit evenhellhasitsheroes.com for the latest screening information.

OBSESSED BY NORTHWEST

Why David Schmader Watched Every Single Movie Ever Filmed in Washington and Oregon

BY MEGAN SELING ILLUSTRATIONS BY PAUL HOPPE

To research his new book, Filmlandia: A Movie Lover’s Guide to the Films and Television of Seattle, Portland, and the Great Northwest (out on Sasquatch April 18), author and former Stranger columnist David Schmader watched a total of 187 movies and 15 television shows, all of which were at least partially filmed in the Pacific Northwest.

“If it got a theatrical release, I would watch it,” he told me. “That meant, like, even a one-time screening at Seattle International Film Festival.”

It wasn’t as easy as sitting on the couch and hitting play. Some films were close to impossible to track down—physical media mecca Scarecrow came to the rescue several times over—and to uncover the entertaining factoids peppered throughout the book, Schmader had to go back to the pre-streaming Dark Ages. “This feels like churning butter now, but I went back to Netflix discs in the mail because I wanted commentary tracks.”

The workload was a grind, but the final product is a dream. Filmlandia is a quick, joyful read that’s as much a love letter to local film and television icons such as Lynn

Shelton, Megan Griffiths, and Irene from the Real World as it is to the Pacific Northwest’s (mostly) sparkling scenery. And oh, boy, is this corner of the country filled with weird little treasures.

Did you know the gay porn series Seattle Bareback Boyz—where “young, hairless, and markedly thin guys have sex without condoms in and around Seattle,” writes Schmader—was immortalized on an episode of Chris Hansen’s To Catch a Predator? And the scene-stealing babysitter in Sleepless in Seattle was played by a local woman named Amanda Maher, who, Schmader writes, “was discovered waiting tables at the legendary health-food restaurant, Gravity Bar, and hired for what is still her one and only film credit.” Fun facts abound!

Ahead of Filmlandia’s release, Schmader (and his handsome dog, Pierre) hopped on a Zoom call to talk a bit about what he uncovered during his hundreds of hours of research.

You’re a big film buff; you reviewed tons of movies for The Stranger over the years. Did you discover any movies in the research process that you missed the first time around?

I’m a film buff, but I spent the ’90s only

watching movies where Björk got executed at the end, so there’s this whole world of fun movies I never got to see! I never got to see Practical Magic, I had never seen Overboard. Who had time to watch Overboard? I was watching Seven Samurai! Now I’m over that. I’m like, “Life is short. If not now, when Overboard?” Say Anything—I didn’t know what a fucking beautiful movie that is. The supporting characters are so impressive, and it’s deeper than it has any right to be. That was a happy surprise.

The one that really knocked me out was called Late Autumn. It’s this triple production from South Korea, the United States, and China. It’s about this woman who’s released from prison for a weekend to go to a family funeral and has, like, a Before Sunrise experience with a gigolo. They just have this dreamy 24-hour date that involves tons of the Seattle Center when they were dismantling the Fun Forest, so it has this spooky-ass feel. They make such beautiful use of it. It’s a movie I’d never heard of; I’ll never forget it. I hope everyone will see it.

Now that you’ve seen literally every movie ever filmed in the Northwest, are there any local stories or experiences that haven’t been immortalized in film that absolutely deserve to be?

Thank you for asking this question, Megan Seling, I have an answer for you. [ Laughs ] It was in 2006 when the New York Dolls released their triumphant reunion album, One Day It Will Please Us to Remember Even This, and they came and played El Corazon. In that tiny room, in the audience, were Mary Kay Letourneau and Vili Fualaau. I wasn’t there, and I want a movie of that entire experience. It seems like a Warhol installation.

That’s amazing! How did you hear about that?

It was a Last Days tip! I’m still not over it, as you can tell. I’m ready to go back. Where’s my time machine?

Historically, Seattle hasn’t taken advantage of film programs as much as it could have—you write about this in the book, the Vancouver switcharoo. Movies are set in Seattle but filmed elsewhere, like Canada. The City did recently launch the new Film Commission, but that’s coming along while the local film community keeps taking hits. Cinerama’s still closed, the

Grand Illusion announced their lease will soon be up. Can this course be corrected? What do you see happening?

You know what gives me so much hope about “Can that be corrected? Will film ever come back?” We somehow have wound up listening to radio shows as our primary entertainment these days with podcasts. Somehow we reached a phase of history where we’re like, “I want the information, but I want to be able to do other things with my eyes.” So it might just take a certain period of time where we realize that going to a room with other people, watching a huge movie with a good sound system and not being allowed to push pause, not being allowed to look at your phone, like, that will become important again.

That’s so true! I always thought podcasts killed radio, but really they just shifted its platform. So, along the same lines of the question about moments in Seattle history that need to be immortalized, I also have to ask: If somebody were to make a movie about your time in the Pacific Northwest, who would play you, and what are a few Seattle landmarks, past or present, that would be included? They would have to dig up Fred MacMurray and somehow rejuvenate his corpse and he would play me. Places? Ham grab [The Mezze plate at Barça’s happy hour that Stranger staffers would get after work and literally fight over], of course. There used to be this lovely museum of wang called Basic Plumbing—it’s now Lost Lake. Re-bar, that’s where I met my first boyfriend and did my first show. It’s where I met Dan Savage. It’s where I broke up with my first boyfriend. I can’t believe it’s a dueling piano bar now. One more is Bailey/Coy Books, the gay bookstore for everyone. I have way more alumnus feelings about that than I do about my college. Those are the people I learned how to be a grown-up with. ■

See David Schmader at Third Place Books Seward Park May 4, Joketellers Union at ClockOut Lounge May 10, and Town Hall May 17.

Film Picks

Seattle Jewish Film Festival

The Seattle Jewish Film Festival is one of the longest running in the Pacific Northwest and one of the largest Jewish film festivals in the country. This year’s “cinemanna” includes screenings of Where Life Begins, a romantic drama following an ultra-Orthodox Jewish family in the bucolic Calabrian countryside, and the short film program Saying Kaddish, which was curated by Seattle-based author, playwright, and programmer Warren Etheredge. Viewers have the option to attend events in person or watch virtually from home. Various locations (March 11–26)

Make Believe Seattle Film Festival

The inaugural Make Believe Seattle Film Festival aims to “shine a dark light on the energy that courses through the PNW’s veins”—in other words, they’ll bring horror, sci-fi, and animated movie magic to our fantastical region. The genre film festival, which was juried by Chris Devlin (screenwriter of 2022’s Texas Chainsaw Massacre), Sara Fetters (lead film critic at Seattle Gay News), and others, will offer up a diverse range of programming for newbies and film buffs alike. We’re stoked for buzzy Sundance comedy Aliens Abducted My Parents and Now I Feel Kinda Left Out and Poundcake, a horror satire about a serial killer stalking straight white men. Spoopy! Various locations (March 23–26)

Linoleum

“Radically average” (The Atlantic) comedian Jim Gaffigan stars in this surreal, sci-fi-tinged comedy-drama, which follows the host of Above and Beyond, an Ohio public access science show, as he navigates the aftermath of a satellite crash near his home. Sounds like a midlife crisis in the making, so naturally, he decides to use the satellite’s parts to build a rocket ship and zoom into outer space. Relatable! According to the Hollywood Reporter the film’s “final minutes...are startling in their heartwrenching effectiveness,” so expect an astronomical reveal. SIFF Film Center, Uptown (Opens Fri March 24)

ByDesign Festival 2023

MARCH 17–26

As Stranger senior staff writer Charles Mudede has written, “One of the richest institutional collaborations in this city is that between the ByDesign Festival and Northwest Film Forum. Here, two arts that are very similar, film and architecture (both are capital intensive), meet in the theater.” This year’s hybrid edition of the cross-cultural festival promises a “broad, inclusive” selection of thought-provoking films, performances, and interactive activities. As of press time, this year’s lineup has yet to be announced, but expect to explore the cross-sections of design, capitalism, built environments, and collective identity with flicks similar to last year’s offerings. (We loved eerie documentary Americaville, which visited the Chinese replica city of Jackson Hole, WY, and Robolove, a brain teaser on humanoid robotics.) Northwest Film Forum, Capitol Hill

Neptune Frost

MARCH 29–APRIL 2

Multitalented artist Saul Williams’s punky sci-fi vision comes to life in Neptune Frost, a turbulent, Afrofuturist thrill ride. The musical film blends thoughts that William explored in his 2016 album MartyrLoserKing with input from co-director Anisia Uzeyman, a Rwandan-born artist. The flick follows a gaggle of miners-turned-computer hackers in the Burundi hilltops and sends a powerful message of technology’s capacity for progression and radical change. We’re enamored by the cool character names, like “Tekno” and “Psychology,” but the film’s quirks and artistic displays of bravura aren’t just for show—Neptune Frost is grounded in anticolonialism, anticapitalism, and liberation. It’s important that films like this exist. Presented by Black Cinema Collective, Wa Na Wari, and Northwest Film Forum, this screening celebrates Saul Williams’ The Motherboard Suite performance at Meany Center; the artist will be in attendance for a film discussion at the April 2 screening. Northwest Film Forum, Capitol Hill

Cadence Video Poetry Festival 2023

Programmed in collaboration with artist Rana San and Seattle writer Chelsea Werner-Jatzke, this experimental festival explores the boundaries of video poetry through screenings, workshops, and discussions. In celebration of National Poetry Month, the hybrid festival honors video poetry as both a literary genre and a complex visual landscape, facilitating opportunities for critical and creative growth within the medium. Northwest Film Forum, Capitol Hill (April 27–May 7)

National Film Festival for Talented Youth 2023

This forward-thinking fest spotlights fresh work by emerging filmmakers, with a focus on work by young women, BIPOC, LGBTQ+, and others from traditionally marginalized communities. If this year’s hybrid offerings are anything like the 2022 lineup, the youth will continue to hone in on society’s most critical issues—look out for films that grapple with climate change, gender, Indigeneity, and more. Various locations (April 27–May 7)

Silent Movie Mondays

Honoring the fascinating history of the Paramount Theatre, which opened its doors in 1928 with a screening of the silent comedy Feel My Pulse this silent film series continues on May 8 with a screening of the 1926 Beatrice Lillie-led film Exit Smiling The zippy comedy was the debut of droll character actor Franklin Pangborn, and it was also Lillie’s first, and only, silent film role. (One Letterboxd reviewer describes Lillie as having “some real Greta Gerwig vibes.”) Christian Elliott will perform a supplementary score on the theater’s Mighty Wurlitzer pipe organ; don’t miss the pre- and post-screening film discussions with Anne Francis of Broadway Across America. Paramount Theatre, Downtown (Mon May 8)

Translations: Seattle Trans Film Festival

One of only nine trans film festivals in the world, TRANSlations: Seattle Trans Film Festival offers a hybrid showcase of trans-centered features, short films, and special events. In an effort to increase accessibility, all films are subtitled for this year’s fest. We’re stoked for the selections curated by lead programmer Anto Astudillo, a Chile-born experimental filmmaker “rooted in theater and martial arts.” Various locations (May 4–7)

Seattle International Film Festival 2023

Known as the largest film festival in the United States, SIFF features the best in buzzy international and independent cinema from across the globe. Though it’s been scaled back somewhat from its pre-pandemic glory (262 films played at last year’s festival, compared to upward of 400 in 2019), it’s still impressively grand and one of the most exciting and widely attended arts events Seattle has to offer. This year’s festival, the 49th annual, will present in-person screenings at eight venues citywide from May 11–21, followed by a week of virtual programming on the SIFF Channel. Various locations (May 11–28)

FLOATING ON A SEA OF VAPORS

When I first saw Emily Counts’s work, it hit me like a tidal wave. I remember the moment clearly—I went to studio e gallery during the vaccine-less summer of 2020. The gallery was hosting a joint show by Ko Kirk Yamahira and Counts and there were so many beautiful pieces to take in. But what caught—and kept—my eye were two of her ceramic vases in the back of the space.

One was painted a lacquered chocolate color and the other a matte pink. Both had round handles on one side and golden symbols sprinkled all over. Their handles intertwined as if the vessels were bravely holding on to one another, facing the future. Titled “Making Love,” the work’s simplicity is exactly what made these two objects feel alive. Not only alive but in love. I wanted to cry.

Immense excitement flooded back to me as Counts welcomed me into her studio, a low-ceilinged space on the bottom floor of another artist’s hilltop Fremont home. Light streamed in through the space’s only window, making her vibrant ceramic apples,

flowers, arms, and heads scattered around the workroom pulsate with life. These bits and pieces of sculptures will fit together to form the bulk of her upcoming show, and her largest exhibition to date, Sea of Vapors

The show is an ambitious exploration of time, decay, self, and the women in her life, but it also marks a truly impressive expansion of Counts’s already intricate and incredible art practice, a mark of an artist on the grind to grow and traverse new areas of creativity.

“Lately, a lot of artwork that I’m making is about transformation—growth and decay—within the natural world and how I see that process within our bodies reflected back in nature, so I’m working with wilting flower forms and these sort of bitten or decaying fruits,” she said. “I’m thinking about beauty and the process of aging, both in nature and within human bodies and within my own body.”

Born and raised in Seattle, Counts left the soft mosses of the Pacific Northwest for the mists of the Bay Area to attend California College of Arts and Crafts. There, she picked up a degree in painting but soon

found herself limited by the form. She began experimenting with other materials like wood and foam when one idea led her back to ceramics, and slowly, the medium became her primary focus. After spending some time in Portland, Counts eventually made her way back to Seattle, where her ceramic practice has grown to one that consistently exceeds expectations of what the medium can do.

“[Counts] just keeps expanding and developing,” said Dawna Holloway, director of studio e and Counts’s representation in Seattle for the past several years. “She is voracious

“One of my least favorite words is whimsical.”

in her ability to have an idea to get excited about, exploring that idea, and then producing an extremely bountiful amount of work.”

Counts’s work consists of references to childhood, the natural world, and her

own personal life. Her compositions are surreal, yet playful—nothing is quite as it seems. Looking at her creations reminds of me reading tarot cards. With both, there’s a divination and magic inherent to each card or sculpture. Counts’s spindly spiders and cobwebs? The duality of childhood joy (Charlotte’s Web) and fear (fangs!). The droopy, larger-than-life flowers? A subtle hint at her past life as a florist. Phones, chains, interlinked vessels? Connection or disconnect. She undeniably has her own codex of symbols that appear throughout her work that won’t inhibit your understanding, but add to it.

For example, witches—or wizards, as Counts sometimes likes to call them— consistently pop up. They are dressed in cozy-looking sweaters, decorated with colorful flowers, and sometimes donning intricate crowns. She often nestles tinted light bulbs into these powerful figures, giving them a lamp-like glow that extends their bodies onto the walls and table, but their faces are all rearranged—a nose where a mouth should be, eyes stacked on top of one another. “It’s just me trying to find

Emily Counts’s Surreal Sculptures Capture Women’s Magical Powers

BY JAS KEIMIG

something that’s beautiful,” she explained. “It’s my search for an aesthetic positioning of the features that are more interesting.”

Though her femme figures are fantastical, they are all directly inspired by the women in Counts’s life—her mother, her grandmother, her great-grandmother, her late best friend, herself. She integrates her loved ones’ hairstyles into her work, like her great-grandma’s tight curly perm or her own blunt bangs. But more broadly, Counts sees these witches as specific women in her life who are magical and artistic, qualities they’ve passed down to her.

“It filtered down to me both in an emotional and genetic way to create the identity I have as an artist, my passions, my abilities,” she said.

These illuminated witchy, wizard figures served as a major inspiration for her upcoming show. Counts has been working on this exhibition for the past year and it’s an ambitious vision, incorporating not only ceramics but soft sculpture and video art. It’s also Counts’s largest—and most immersive—show to date. A challenge she’s ready to take head-on.

The True Space at Museum of Museums will be divided into two rooms. In the exhibition’s main room will be an enormous boat carrying 10 passengers who are on a journey through time outside of time. Each of these passengers is nearly life-sized— directly inspired by the same women in Counts’s life—with bodies made of ceramic, wood, colored acrylic, and tinted light bulbs. Some have vampire fangs for eyes, others are seated and holding flickering candles. Some have wooden, geometric, leg-shaped pedestals for their ceramic torsos, others are draped in hand-dyed velveteen cloaks that make them appear all the more impressive. With them are their possessions, like soft sculpture fruits and flowers, as well as other objects like oversized ceramic lipsticks.

The boat is aimed toward a smaller room where a grandmother wizard queen is waiting for her visitors. From a sketch Counts shared with me—Counts meticulously sketches her projects before making them— this sculpture will be double life-size with a massive flowing dress, a giant crown made of flowers, and thorns with a spider embla-

zoned on her abdomen. The loose narrative, she told me, is that these 10 figures are on a journey to see this queen who “embodies a great wisdom, as if they’re going to meet a part of themselves.” While it’s not really the afterlife, it’s not not the afterlife. Boats are symbols of eternal voyages, after all.

“There is a matter-of-factness [to her pieces]—a look inside her world, her brain, and her experience that is immediately communicated to the viewer,” MoM director and fellow artist Mary Anne Carter wrote to me over email about Counts’s work in Sea of Vapors. “Visual art is almost always an attempt to relay something that words fail, and she manages to deliver that message in a way that feels both immanent and expansive.”

Looking at these figures in Counts’s studio left me in a quiet, reflective state; there’s a strange, attractive power to the way she’s shaped the figures’ hands and bodies, a specificity to their faces and hairstyles. And the color! Sea of Vapors is colored in shades of deep yellow, peach, mauve, lavender, bright orange, gold luster, and hints of denim blue. It’s a dreamy combo.

“One of my least favorite words is whim-

“It’s just me trying to find something that’s beautiful.”

sical,” said Counts as we examined her Sea of Vapors figures. It’s a word that’s often used to describe her work and, at first glance, one could mistake her sculptures—brightly colored, adorned with flowers, feminine—as put together with whimsy. But look closer and you’ll see it’s just the opposite: thoughtful, curious, grounded in memory with a sense of place. There’s a real heft to Counts’s work that’s thrilling to take in.

“[Sea of Vapors] is really about this composite figure that holds myself and holds these other women that are so meaningful to me,” she said. “I always hope, despite it being so personal and about my own experience, that there’s a lot of places people can attach to or connect with.” ■

See Sea of Vapors at Museum of Museums June 2 through December 31.

PHOTOS BY BROOKE FITTS

Visual Art Picks

Kelly Akashi: Formations

JUNE 17–AUG 31

Los Angeles-based artist Kelly Akashi is well known for her fluid forms and focus on craft—she vacillates between analog photography and old-school techniques of candle making, bronze casting, and rope making. Organized by the San José Museum of Art, this exhibition includes nearly a decade of the artist’s boundary-pushing work, which tends to meditate on time, materiality, and lineage. Make sure to see “Conjoined Tumbleweeds,” a newly commissioned bronze cast of plants collected from Poston, AZ, where members of Akashi’s family were incarcerated in a Japanese American internment camp during World War II. Frye Art Museum, First Hill

Ikat: A World of Compelling Cloth

The ikat resist-dye process is no easy feat—it’s an intensive ritual of pattern calculation and threadtying that takes time, patience, and dedication. Yet the resulting cloth pattern can be delightfully off-kilter and inexact; Wikipedia calls ikat “blurry.” This impressive exhibition features over 100 ikat textiles from Africa, Asia, Indonesia, and elsewhere, and offers visitors the opportunity to “walk into an ikat” devised by indigo dye experts Rowland and Chinami Ricketts. Seattle Art Museum, Downtown (March 9–May 29)

Hidden Worlds: The Films of LAIKA

Calling all puppet lovers! Hidden Worlds: The Films of LAIKA will invite visitors to peek behind the scenes of screen faves like Coraline, The Boxtrolls, and the forthcoming Wildwood created by Oregon stop-motion animation studio LAIKA. The exhibition will grant “unprecedented access” to the film studio’s advanced production techniques, complete with puppets, set displays, and sneak peeks. Museum of Pop Culture, Uptown (Fri March 17–summer 2024)

Jónsi: FLÓÐ (Flood)

Complete with seaweed, mist, and fog, the immersive new artwork by Jónsi (Jón Þór Birgisson, lead singer of the dreamy Icelandic post-rock band

Sigur Rós) will highlight the ecological similarities between sister cities Seattle and Reykjavik. The installation will include field recordings and other sonic elements that “simulate the experience of a wave traveling the length of the gallery,” and a melodious soundtrack created by Jónsi will echo throughout the space. National Nordic Museum, Ballard (March 17–July 30)

Strange Weather: From the Collections of Jordan D. Schnitzer and His Family Foundation

Contemporary art lovers, don’t sleep on this one. Exploring the boundaries between the body and its environment, Strange Weather: From the Collections of Jordan D. Schnitzer and His Family Foundation features works spanning the last five decades by art mega-stars like Kehinde Wiley, Kiki Smith, Wendy Red Star, and Alison Saar. With an eye toward the climate crisis, the exhibition is a rare opportunity to see how some of the country’s most influential artists are thinking critically about ecological issues and humanity’s place on the planet. Bellevue Arts Museum (March 25–Aug 20)

Sarah Cain: Day after day on this beautiful stage

Sarah Cain will present a site-specific project commissioned by the Henry for their East Gallery, which engages with the double-height space

COURTESY OF FRYE ART MUSEUM

Joey Veltkamp

MAY 18–JULY 1

Queer folk artist Joey Veltkamp gravitates to fiber arts—in recent Bellevue Arts Museum solo exhibition SPIRIT!, he combined images and text from his Bremerton home in cheeky works that referenced everything from roadside signs to retired ferries. This new selection of “soft paintings” maintains his narrative-based, humorous style with imagery of ice cream cones, flowers, and clowns. Greg Kucera Gallery, Pioneer Square

through a series of paintings, furniture pieces, and other “architectural interventions.” The Los Angeles-based painter and installation artist draws from diverse aesthetic inspirations, blending abstract expressionist, graffiti, and pop music references to create a color-drenched, kaleidoscopic point of view that’s incredibly fun to observe. Henry Art Gallery, University District (April 1–Aug 27)

Celebrating Pacific Northwest Artists: 25 Years of the Neddy Awards

This exhibition celebrates a quarter century of Cornish College’s prestigious Neddy Awards, which were created in honor of Ned Behnke (1948-1989), a deaf Seattle artist and teacher of hearing-impaired students. The show will spotlight Washington State contemporary art talent with a curated selection of pieces created by past grand prize award recipients. Curated by acclaimed writer, public speaker, and contemporary art interlocutrice Negarra A. Kudumu, the show offers a comprehensive look at some of the most

COURTESY OF GREG KUCERA GALLERY AND THE ARTIST

significant Northwest artists of the last 25 years, including Wa Na Wari co-founder Inye Wokoma and interdisciplinary storyteller Priscilla Dobler Dzul. Museum of History & Industry (MOHAI), South Lake Union (June 4–Sept 5)

SOFT TOUCH

The latest group show at Museum of Museums makes a promise that most exhibitions cannot: Visitors are welcome to sit, stand, or recline in the gallery “cushioned by a patchwork of futon mattresses, shag carpets, and curtaining.” Sounds cozy! SOFT TOUCH offers a comprehensive look at explosive contemporary trends in textile art and soft sculpture, with works by more than 35 artists who are using fibers to think about interwoven themes of identity, humanity, and nature. Museum of Museums, First Hill (through Aug 31)

She Bends: Redefining Neon Legacy

If you’re keeping an eye on contemporary art trends, you may have noticed that women artists are making waves in neon, a traditionally male-dominated art form. She Bends: Redefining Neon Legacy traces the history of the medium from its initial use in commercial advertising to its emergence as a boundary-pushing presence in fine art. Visitors will learn more about the women and gender-expansive artists at the forefront of the “master/apprentice” art form (Sarah Blood, Carissa Grace, Kacie Lees, and others) and explore how neon skills are being passed on to younger, more diverse artists. Museum of Glass, Tacoma (through Oct 7)

Scan for full event listings on The Stranger’s calendar, EverOut.com

COURTESY OF MUSEUM OF MUSEUMS

COURTESY OF THE ARTIST DANIELLA THACH

Soloist SarahGabrielle Ryan gets low while corps de ballet dancer Lily Wills flips out in the background in rehearsals for Penny Saunders’s Wonderland.

BALLET

Corps de ballet dancers Zsilas Michael Hughes and Noah Martzall try to find the right shape, as principal dancer Angelica Generosa peeks out from behind.

Pacific Northwest Ballet Pushes

Itself to the Limits with Boundless

BY RICH SMITH

BOUND

Soloist Madison Rayne Abeo stretches and tapes her toes ahead of a grueling day as principal dancer Lesley Rausch cools off in the -20 °F shade of Abeo’s gaze.

PACIFIC NORTHWEST BALLET

resident choreographer Alejandro Cerrudo walked into the dance studio with a Spotify playlist, some loose ideas, and not much else.

A little more than two weeks before its world premiere, his contribution to Boundless, a program of boundary-pushing ballets that will run at McCaw Hall from March 17–26, didn’t have a title, a firm setlist, or, for that matter, a set. “I could tell you what I have in mind for stage production, but it would be a lie,” he said in an interview shortly before the rehearsal. As for the steps to the dance? “Eh, I like the dancers to dance through sensations rather than steps,” he said. He had developed a few sequences, sure. And he had a rough idea of what he wanted to see—his hallmarks in works such as One Thousand Pieces and Silent Ghost

PHOTOS BY KRISTEN MARIE PARKER

Music of Respighi, Bologne, and Dvořák

Caitlin Kelley, violin Sunday, June 25 at 2:00 PM

and

Paris Friday, April 7 at 7:30 PM

Stravinsky

Chanel’s

TOWN HALL SEATTLE

Soloist Ezra Thomson watches on as corps de ballet dancers Clara Ruf Maldonado, Kuu Sakuragi, and Audrey Malek hop through a passage in Jessica Lang’s Let Me Mingle Tears with Thee. Corps dancer Malena Ani waits in the wings for her big leap.

include gyroscopic tumbling, surprising spectacles, and lots of soft intimacies all arranged to music you’d actually listen to. But his plan was not to have a plan. He wanted to “keep it open.”

As the company’s first resident choreographer, Cerrudo’s developed a trusting relationship between himself and the dancers that affords him the space he needs to play. “It allows us to work more freely and prevents us from falling into what we already know,” he said. PNB’s dancers seemed to embrace that approach.

When he strolled into the unseasonably sunny studio in late February, soloists Leah Terada and Christopher D’Ariano had something they wanted to show him. They’d spent a good part of the morning working out ways to basically stand up in a very cool way.

Panting and sweating, they ran through a complex routine. Cerrudo appeared to like the moves, but he directed them to try a few simpler variations before tabling it and moving on to the next sequence, which featured D’Ariano lying on his back and pushing up Terada by her hips as she held a midair plank

at an angle, as if she were diving into him headfirst.

As she held that position, Cerrudo asked Terada if she could “worm”—that is, undulate her body like a worm, but with no resistance. After a few attempts, she could do it smoothly. The adjustment turned a straight line into a ripple, amping up the scene’s sensuality and sense of fluidity. He asked her to execute the tough move three times, and she obliged with a knowing smile.

Cerrudo’s seat-of-the-pants staging style isn’t uncommon in the world of contem -

porary ballet. Lots of choreographers use improv and adjust their steps based on the kinds of dancers working at a given company. But his strategy of pulling the dance from the dancers themselves pushes them to their physical and creative limits, and, in turn, pushes the art form forward.

Celebrated New York-based choreographer Jessica Lang runs a much tighter ship, but the work she’s creating in Let Me Mingle Tears with Thee tests the limits of ballet in its own way, and the results look no less promising.

Soloists Leah Terada and Christopher D’Ariano tumbling through a challenging sequence in Alejandro Cerrudo’s untitled piece. Even after all their work, he might end up cutting it. “Today, it’s still there,” he said with a laugh over the phone two weeks before opening.

The dance emerges from Giovanni Battista Pergolesi’s composition of a 13th-century Latin hymn called “Stabat Mater.” The first half of the song tells the story of Mary mourning her son at the foot of the cross, and the second half opens it up for the rest of us to shed a tear for the Lawd. “Who would not weep if he saw the mother of Christ in such sorrow?” a singer asks, inviting the audience into the grieving circle.

Sounds like an old-fashioned story ballet, right? Not exactly. Lang destabilizes identity by casting all the dancers as both Mary and Jesus, having them swap roles throughout the show. When Mother becomes Son and vice versa, the griever becomes the grieved, literally embodying the empathetic response while also subtly underlining the cyclical

nature of loss. Clever costume design and a sleek, modern set foregrounds the contemporary movement, as dancers transform into fire or burst into the pure joy of salvation.

But it’s that notion of radical empathy that drew her to the material in the first place, partly because she sees herself in it.

After more than two decades of creating dance all over the globe, she’s developed a “hyper-empathetic” approach to working with dancers. “I observe them, I see their highs and their lows, and when they move, I feel their movements—I can see it and I can feel it,” she said.

That empathy came through in a recent rehearsal. “Fire! Fire! Fire!” she said to a group of young corps de ballet dancers sprinting across the studio floor and el -

egantly flailing their arms in imitation of flames. After several attempts, the steps seemed to challenge the dancers at the expense of projecting the idea of holy fire. A few gentle adjustments later, and the sequence worked out smoothly but looked just as impressive.

Of the three choreographers on the program, Penny Saunders actually has to rein in her piece for Boundless. Wonderland, her riff on Alice’s trippy world, debuted at PNB in 2020. The video performance featured dancers in circus-chic costumes haunting McCaw Hall’s peak-COVID carcass. They escape the invisible walls of the stage, dancing in the opera boxes and in the orchestra pit for no one but themselves.

Two years and a couple of mRNA vaccines

later, and now Saunders must find a way to retain that sense of dancers-dancing-everywhere-all-at-once, but she has to keep them more or less in the auditorium. Very early in the rehearsal schedule, there was some loose talk of stashing dancers in the box seats, but decisions were still being made.

No matter which tack she chooses, real-life Wonderland is bound to radiate the same melancholic magic as its digital companion did a few years back. And if the dancers have as much fun with it as they did in the studio while working to translate the movements from the screen to the stage, then it might just steal the whole show. ■

See Boundless March 17 through 26 at McCaw Hall.

SOLARIS IS ABOUT A BLACK WOMAN

Will Book-It Repertory Theatre’s Adaptation Catch What Others Have Missed?

BY CHARLES MUDEDE

The astronaut arrives at a space station above an ocean that almost entirely covers a planet called Solaris. The ocean, which was discovered 100 years before, might be one giant organism that has some form of consciousness, and the space station that orbits it houses three scientists.

The arriving astronaut is Kris Kelvin, a psychologist. His journey from Earth to Solaris took 16 months. He needs a shower. But the space station is a mess, and one of the researchers, his mentor Dr. Gibarian, committed suicide just hours before he docked. One of the remaining two scientists, Snaut, appears to have gone mad; the other, Sartorius, is locked up in his cabin. A window provides a view of the extraterrestrial sea.

The novel, Solaris, is by Stanisław Lem, a Polish science fiction writer who lived long enough to express an opinion of Steven Soderbergh’s Hollywood 2002 adaptation of it. He did not like the movie, nor did he much care for the 1972 Soviet, but art-house, version by Andrei Tarkovsky. (He called the greatest director of the 20th century a durak—idiot.) It seems both directors missed what the author thought to be the deepest point of the novel. For the majority of the novel’s professional commentators it’s ex-

pressed in this exchange between Snaut and Kelvin, whose mind has been sent spinning by the presence of his dead wife, Hari (or Harey), on the space station—she died young

“Are humans experimenting on the alien, or is it the other way around?”

on Earth; she committed suicide because Kelvin no longer loved her:

“We head out into space, ready for anything, which is to say, for solitude, arduous work, self-sacrifice, and death. Out of modesty we don’t say it aloud, but from time to time we think about how magnificent we are.

In the meantime—in the meantime, we’re not trying to conquer the universe; all we want is to expand Earth to its limits. Some planets are said to be as hot and dry as the Sahara, others as icy as the poles or tropical as the Brazilian jungle. We’re humanitarian and noble, we’ve no intention of subjugating other races, we only want to impart our values to them and in return, to appropriate their

heritage. We see ourselves as Knights of the Holy Contact. That’s another falsity. We’re not searching for anything except people. We don’t need other worlds. We need mirrors.”

The ocean—or whatever that living, turning, rising, and falling thing is—is unknowable because all humans can really know is a human universe. We do not explore the stars. We can explore only ourselves. We did not land on the moon; we landed on our words, dreams, and passions. And our belief that mathematics is the language of the universe is nothing but foolish. Newton or Einstein or Hawking didn’t have access to a form of knowledge that’s nonhuman, that’s truly out there, that will continue to be true long after the sun expands and sterilizes earth.

Numbers—like language, like the passions—don’t transcend the limits of our form or manner of thinking, which, as the German philosopher Kant pointed out long ago, is shaped by the way the human (and animal) mind is fixed to order events in space and time. Solaris’s living sea appears to have a mathematical system (if it can be called that) that humans, who have been visiting and writing about the strange planet for generations, cannot crack.

This is the standard reading of Solaris, and aspects of it can be found in both mov-

ies, which represent the sea as mysterious. Are humans experimenting on the alien, or is it the other way around? Why do the dead among the scientists appear on the ship? Tarkovsky certainly goes as far to see the space station’s specters (or “guests”) as projections of human memories. In this way, he returns to a key theme in his most important work, Zerkalo (Mirror). Soderbergh’s version emphasizes the beloved Hollywood trope of the broken family (think Close Encounters of the Third Kind). His Solaris is about the sea mysteriously reuniting Kelvin with Hari—and he grants them a child, but all of this in an alien form (think A.I. Artificial Intelligence).

But the heart of Lem’s novel is not found in the famous declaration, “We don’t need other worlds,” but in the elucidation (or clarification) of the passage it concludes, which is the description of the first “guest” who Kelvin sees in the space station.

I stood rooted to the ground. From the far end of the side passage, a huge Black woman was coming toward me with an unhurried waddling gait. I saw the whites of her eyes glinting, and at almost exactly the same moment, I heard the soft slap of her bare feet. She had nothing on but a skirt that glistened yellow, as if it were made of straw. She had

Stepping through the door, floating in a most peculiar way.

ALEXA PITT

straw. She had massive pendulous breasts, and her black arms were as thick as a normal person’s thighs. She passed three feet from me without so much as a glance and walked off, her elephantine rump swaying like one of those steatopygic Stone Age sculptures found in anthropological museums. At the place where the corridor curved, she turned to the side and disappeared into Gibarian’s cabin.

This Black woman does not appear in Tarkovsky’s movie (she is replaced by a young and white woman in a dainty nightie) or in Soderbergh’s, though the latter does have a Black woman on the space station (she is played by Viola Davis; she is a scientist, Dr. Gordon). The Black woman in the novel has two appearances: the one in the passage, and one next to the corpse of her host, Kelvin’s mentor Gibarian. Very little is written about this striking figure, the steatopygic Black African. Most scholars, like the directors, want nothing to do with her. But without her, the novel and mirror passage (which is really not about mirrors) makes little sense. All meaning is found in her sudden and brief appearance.

What she makes clear is the guests on the station are not tied to their hosts romantically or directly. Gibarian has certainly never had a romance with the kind of woman exhibited in anthropological museums. Some have speculated that she is Gibarian’s dark sexual fantasy. The old white scientist really wants to fuck a large Black woman, the ur-female. Another interpretation reads her as a spook—meaning the function of her largeness and Blackness and distinct un-Europeaness is to give white readers a jolt of fear. But these interpretations miss the mark. Lem was not, on both accounts, so vulgar; his goal as an artist was to create works that stood high above pulp science fiction. Reread the mirror passage carefully and fit it with the first description of the Black guest and this becomes clear: the novel is about the science of colonialism.

What do humans really want on Solaris? Is it something as metaphysical as mirroring human Dasein or even to do with God, who

Kelvin goes on and on about when his reason finally collapses? No. The scientists are there because their discipline is not about accumulating knowledge for knowledge’s sake.

Another aspect of the novel missing from both movies (though it is hinted at in Soderbergh’s) is the cost of the station and the endless experiments on Solaris. Indeed, humans are losing interest in the planet because it’s busting the budgets of several space agencies. This connection of colonization with scientific research is indeed the subject of a 1979 book, Science and Colonial Expansion: The Role of the British Royal Botanic Gardens , by Lucile Brockway. As I have written before, Britain’s Kew Gardens wasn’t just about the

“We did not land on the moon; we landed on our words, dreams, and passions.”

accumulation of knowledge; it was, at its core , about “the commodification of the powers and properties of plants.” To better understand steatopygic Black women, one should not turn to the stars or look in mirrors but instead read Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. Kelvin is that novella’s Captain Marlow, and Gibarian is its Kurtz, the ivory trader whose mistress is, significantly, a nameless “savage and superb, wild-eyed and magnificent” Black woman. And this finally gets me to the point of the article. Will Book-It Repertory Theatre’s adaptation of Solaris, written by David Greig, follow the films and exclude Gibarian’s Black woman and focus on the metaphysical mirrors mumbo jumbo? Or will it be true to the real-word substance of the novel, the colonization of space, and the imperialism of science? I do not want to find out until the curtains open. ■

See Solaris June 14 through July 9 at Book-It Repertory Theatre.

Performance Picks

110 in the Shade

Since 2014, Reboot Theatre Company has experimented with funky interpretations of established works through innovative casting and design modifications, and the results can be pretty transformative—last year’s Jesus Christ Superstar offered a unique twist on the relationship dynamics of Jesus, Mary, and Judas, history’s most dramatic throuple. This time around, director Scot Charles Anderson reimagines the ’60s-era production 110 in the Shade with a closer examination of the gender dynamics at play. The story follows Lizzie, an independent woman in a small, drought-stricken Western town. While being pressured to marry the recently widowed sheriff, Lizzie encounters a stranger with a curious promise to make it rain. Seattle Public Theater, Green Lake (March 16–April 9)

Moisture Festival 2023

A true testament to the popularity of underground cabaret entertainment in Seattle, the longstanding Moisture Festival has fostered circus performers, comics, burlesque dancers, and musicians for years, and now claims to be “the world’s largest comedy/variety show festival.” The month-long fest offers eye-popping events from the (relatively) mild-mannered to the racy and scantily clad end of the spectrum, including the risqué, adults-only Libertease Cabaret. Broadway Performance Hall (March 23–April 16)

Hairspray

It always seems to be up to the teens to challenge outdated, discriminatory bullshit. Enter Tracy Turnblad, a teenybopper who lands her dream role on

The Stranger ’s Calendar

Event listings by

Latrice Royale

FRI APRIL 7

“Jesus is a biscuit! Let him sop you up!” Two-time RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars competitor and congenial diva extraordinaire Latrice Royale will request that you “excuse the beauty” for this glam musical comedy performance celebrating her 30th year in show biz. (We hope to hear some piping-hot industry tea.) Neptune Theatre, University District

an American Bandstand-inspired variety show and becomes an overnight sensation, but is disgusted by the show’s racist practices. Based on the cult ’88 musical comedy by cherished slimeball John Waters, this rendition of the Tony Award-winning musical Hairspray proves that “you can’t stop the beat.” It was directed and choreographed for new audiences by unflappable Broadway duo Jack O’Brien and Jerry Mitchell, and features RuPaul’s Drag Race season 11 contestant Nina West (aka Andrew Levitt) as a shimmery Edna Turnblad. Paramount Theatre, Downtown (April 4–9)

La traviata

Giuseppe Verdi’s elegant tale of high-class grandeur and tragedy follows a courtesan who seeks love among the fashionable elites of Paris while facing a deadly illness. This interpretation of La traviata by Francesca Zambello includes costuming by Tony-winning designer Jess Goldstein and Seattle Opera debut performances by Armenian soprano Mané Galoyan, South African soprano Vuvu Mpofu, and tenors Rame Lahaj and Duke Kim. McCaw Hall, Uptown (May 6–21)

Takahiro Yamamoto: NOTHINGBEING

Portland-based choreographer Takahiro Yamamoto’s investigative new dance performance, created in collaboration with composer Samita Sinha and artists Anna Martine Whitehead and David Thomson, ponders possibilities for embodied “presence of nothingness” through improvisational movements and meditations on surrender. The phenomenological inquiry relates to Yamamoto’s experience as an immigrant in the United States, where he has found a “tendency for the collective consciousness not to pay attention to events or situations unless a bigger and dire incident has taken place.” (If you need examples of what Yama-

moto’s talking about, just check your Twitter feed.)

NOTHINGBEING holds contemplative space for questions of unity, connection, and the social self, so head to a performance if you’re feeling unmoored. On the Boards, Uptown (May 18–21)

Les Misérables

This fresh staging of Alain Boublil and Claude-Michel Schönberg’s Tony-winning testament to love and survival was described as “a reborn dream of a production” by The Daily Telegraph. Former theater kids shouldn’t miss the musical adaptation of Victor Hugo’s 1862 novel Les Misérables, which is set against the tumultuous backdrop of 19th-century France. The 5th Avenue Theatre, Downtown (May 24–June 17)

Margaret Cho: Live and LIVID!

Margaret Cho is a household name, so listing all of the accolades that the trailblazing comedian, actress, and LGBTQ+ activist has acquired over her three-decade career feels unnecessary. If Cho’s brand of dry, unapologetic, and often crude comedy appeals to you, you probably already know it and have followed her work for years. She’ll return to the stage with more candid, sure-footed thoughts on everything from world politics to womanhood for this performance. Neptune Theatre, University District (Sun June 4)

A Midsummer Night’s Dream

George Balanchine’s cheeky adaptation of A Midsummer Night’s Dream promises chaotic sprites, misplaced affections, love potions, a 12-foot spider, and a hybrid donkey-man with a fairy girlfriend. The Pacific Northwest Ballet production has brought Shakespeare’s impish romantic comedy to the stage for 25 years; they’ll return again with costumes in pastel rainbow hues and an enchanted forest setting that evokes the charm of our neck of the woods. McCaw Hall, Uptown (April 14–23)

Lydia and the Troll

Playwright Justin Huertas blends fantasy and folklore elements with real Seattle landmarks to create pure Pacific Northwest magic in Lydia and the Troll (“Never turn your back on a Justin Huertas song,” says the Seattle Times.) The production follows a singer-songwriter whose writer’s block—and life circumstances—have her feeling stuck, but a chance encounter with a strange figure may lead to untold sacrifices. Seattle Repertory Theatre, Uptown (May 5–June 4)

Scan for full event listings on The Stranger’s calendar, EverOut.com

BANANAS ARE CREEPY

YELLOW FINGERS FULL OF BLOOD

A New Poetry Collection Tells the Whole Story

BY RICH SMITH

Seattle poet Paul Hlava Ceballos spent eight years researching bananas—not just because he likes them (which he still does), and not just because the fruit connects him to the cultures and topographies of Ecuador, one of the so-called “banana republics” from which his family hails, but also because the story of the banana tells “the story of the Americas,” as he put it in an interview with The Stranger Using a collage of government documents, news reports, racist tweets, photos, and video stills that he found down his rabbit hole, Ceballos tells his version of that story in banana [ ] (University of Pittsburgh Press). The depth of his dive and the quality of his ear and eye earned him a nomination this year for a National Book Critics Circle award— not too shabby for a debut full-length poetry collection.

“The fact that the most ubiquitous fruit in the US is often NOT thought of as bloody was sad!”

He begins the book with a bunch of short lyric poems that focus on US state violence and negligence toward Latinx people, linking the contemporary injustices to the Spanish plundering of the Incan empire. Then in the title poem, “banana [ ]: A History of the Americas,” he widens his scope with a focus on corporate violence in the global south. After giving us enough reason to pick up our pitchforks and torches, he closes out with a restorative portrait of a beautiful, strong, funny, complicated mother figure who thrives and blossoms in the face of oppression. In a chat last month, we talked about how all of that fits together—and where to buy bananas that don’t totally rely on exploiting Latin American laborers.

I eat a banana every morning. But now when I look at the bunch on my sill, I only see five yellow fingers filled with blood. Is that part of what you were hoping to accomplish here? Kind of!

Well, many Latin American banana workers have been killed as a result of companies like Dole or Chiquita desiring more land to grow crops. Partly the need for land to grow bananas is due to the fact that it’s a monoculture—actually, a clone of the same

banana that we eat. This lack of diversity makes it more susceptible to disease but more easy to advertise, ship, and sell.

So companies try to expand farms to where people have been living for centuries, or force people to join their farms by controlling local markets.

The people who tried to unionize or fight for control of their land were erased twice— once as they were killed, often by paramilitaries with direct financial links to major US banana companies, and a second time as they were forgotten.

Sorry, Rich, this is dark! But the fact that the most ubiquitous fruit in the US is often NOT thought of as bloody was sad!

Yeah, so much of mass fruit and vegetable harvesting is covered in blood, sweat, and imperialist geopolitics. The grocery store is a war zone.

Right, the banana is just a symbol for an extractive economic method—for the ex-

traction of resources by the global north from the global south. And not just resources, but labor as well, which is directly connected to immigration and a national consciousness. But I hope to make it clear in the book that I am culpable, too. It’s not that because I am from a minority group or have connections to people in resource-rich areas of the world that my conscience is clear. I can go out and buy 10-cent bananas any time I want.

Wait—do you still eat bananas?

Yeah, I try to get the fair trade ones, but if they’re not available, then it’s a whole thing.

Where do you go?

Central Co-op! Of course, they’re the best. I feel like I can trust them to curate my food for me, so I don’t have to do a web search on every food item I buy.

All those thoughts on extraction remind me of what you do in the book: cutting, pasting,

and rearranging. You use a lot of cutting imagery in the poems, and you collage texts and images from elsewhere to create most of the book. Why take that tack with this subject?

I think culpability has something to do with that, too. Like, maybe my voice isn’t the most important in this topic. But because of my position as an artist in the US, I can be more vocal about it. So, I wanted to include as many other people’s voices as possible.

As for the photos, I just cut out workers as they were from history or botanical books. So I tried to preserve them as much as possible. But, like their voices, there weren’t a lot of images of them in media! So what remained was just bits and pieces. Even trying to preserve what was available meant just preserving what was cut out by the companies that originally wrote the stories.

You do so much preservation work in this book. What stood out to you?

When I wrote the section of the banana poem that I consider the “say her name” section, which lists the names of banana laborers and union workers killed in the past decade by paramilitaries (often with known links to the major banana corporations), I felt like it was an important archive to show. In fact, it’s the only such list of assassinated banana workers I’ve seen in my years of research.

But it was a dark place and a horrifying rhythm to be caught in, writing it.

Yes, and yet you close the book with a lyrical meditation on your mom, Irma, and her story of immigration.

I was uneasy having an arc that led to a kind of catharsis. I don’t want to give a sense of release or ease to the reader about oppression that is still ongoing. But it was important to have my family be in there, and I thought moving toward love was the answer.

Actually, it’s how the research and writing occurred for me. I found banana laborers and other workers that I liked through the research. So the move was toward a type of caring-for.

A kind of repair felt necessary, especially after the dark historical journey that we took to arrive at the end. ■

The National Book Critics Circle Awards are at the New School Auditorium in New York on March 23.

TASHA NICOLE URIA

ANATOMY OF A PAUL HLAVA CEBALLOS POEM

BY RICH SMITH

Though the bulk of Paul Hlava Ceballos’s banana [ ] (University of Pittsburgh Press) presents long poems that collage government documents, primary and secondary history texts, tweets, photos, and video stills into an

epic about the ongoing plunder of Latin America and the resilience of the people who resist it, he also includes a number of more traditional sonnets and elegies that wouldn’t look out of place in an anthology of 19th-century English poetry.

There are a handful of sonnet forms, but this one most closely resembles a Shakespearean or English sonnet. The poem contains fourteen lines, three quatrains with a “turn” after the second one, an argument about some aspect of the world, and a final couplet that resolves the poem’s problem. Each line (more or less) features five sets of paired syllables that (more or less) maintain an iambic beat; that is, an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable, as in the word around. And though he abandons the form’s prescribed end rhyme scheme, he does regularly rhyme within the lines. In the first stanza, for instance, easy rhymes with sweeping, and sight rhymes with night. But give him a break, he’s mopping!

Ceballos wrote the poem while working at the Madison Park Starbucks down the street from the tennis courts. “I would mop the floor of this giant place most nights, so it gave me a lot of time to count beats in my head,” he said.

Of course, like any good poet, Ceballos puts his own little spin on the form to push the art forward. To explain how he does that, I popped open the hood on one of my favorite poems in the book, “Sonnet to the Country Club Ladies at a Madison Park Cafe,” and took some notes. 1 2 3 4 5 6

True to form for a sonnet, the first stanza sets up Ceballos’s argument, which goes something like this: Well-off city-dwellers like these tennis moms use liberal-minded clichés to justify their participation in a system that exploits workers, but those clichés obscure the fact that shit work under capitalism actually is shit. It’s true that scrubbing toilets and sweeping up breadcrumbs is dignified work, but if you’ve ever scrubbed toilets and swept breadcrumbs, it doesn’t feel that way all the time. As the poem’s narrator mentions later, he doesn’t get to enjoy the stars (a symbol for celestial beauty), and scouring sinks and toilets sucks no matter how you look at it.

Sonnet1 to the Country Club Ladies at Madison Park Cafe2

“Every job is dignified” is easy to say to someone sweeping up your breadcrumbs. Mere tolerance scrubs from sight the labor that complicates your latte3. The night-shift’s

stars burnish skies for no one, such as me.

I know how wiping a stained sink basin and scouring a public toilet’s wide mouth will draw a person’s eyes down like a monk4 who smolders over a lit match. I once heard a sage from China folded maxims into cranes to float them down the river. He knew the porous paper made them sink.

Tonight, I’ll sign my name with a wet mop5 until I make the floor below us shine6 .

— Paul Hlava Ceballos

After the eighth line, Ceballos makes a “turn” from his initial argument, beginning to see the dignity in his Sisyphean task of keeping the cafe tidy. He compares his work to a monk toiling away by match light and a Chinese philosopher who practices a task that reminds him of life’s fleeting nature.

Aside from producing a striking image, the phrase “I’ll sign my name with a wet mop” recalls the epitaph etched on the headstone of another legendary sonneteer, John Keats. His tombstone reads, “Here lies One whose Name was writ in Water.” A nice little wink.

The image of a sparkling cafe floor in the final couplet stitches back to the earlier image of the stars in the sky that do not shine for workers on the night shift. With this final flourish, the poet resolves the problem he presents in the first stanza: Every job might not be “dignified,” but every worker possesses dignity, and he dignifies his work— whether that be mopping a cafe or writing a new version of an old sonnet—by putting his soul into it, by leaving his signature in some way. In his case, he transforms his mop work into a starry night. ■

Lindy West: Every Castle, Ranked

THURS APRIL 6

Lindy West, The Stranger’s former film editor and the brilliant wordsmith behind the essay collection Shrill: Notes from a Loud Woman, is nothing if not discerning. In this live show, she’ll revisit the magical castles of her childhood daydreams, which now appear to be nothing more than creaky old military forts for rich dudes. The fortysomething will lead the audience on a “hilarious, bittersweet journey through her own disillusionment,” which promises a pit stop to discuss the history of toilets. Sign us up! Neptune Theatre, University District

Michelle Zauner

Japanese Breakfast frontwoman Michelle Zauner will visit Seattle in celebration of her acclaimed memoir, Crying in H Mart, which reflects on her upbringing in Eugene, OR, and her mother’s terminal cancer diagnosis. The New York Times bestseller, which is currently being adapted into a film, was described as “warm and wholehearted” by the Seattle Times. Seattle Arts & Lectures at Town Hall Seattle, First Hill (Thurs March 30) The

Ari Shapiro with Dan Savage: The Best Strangers in the World Tour

Ari Shapiro, award-winning, Portland-raised NPR journalist and host of All Things Considered, will head to Seattle for this conversation with our very own Dan Savage in celebration of Shapiro’s new tome, The Best Strangers in the World. The “witty, poignant book” (Ronan Farrow), which follows Shapiro as he globe-trots in cool leather jackets, chats with Obama on Air Force One, and hits the pavement with social justice activists, serves as a testament to the journalist’s passion for connection. Alan Cumming described Shapiro as “a beacon of idiosyncratic frankness,” which is as strange and wonderful an endorsement as they come. Town Hall Seattle, First Hill (Mon April 3)

Word Works—Jonathan Escoffery: Earning Your Readers’ Attention

Hugo House’s Word Works craft talks continue with this engaging discussion on capturing readers’ attention, led by 2020 Plimpton Prize for Fiction winner Jonathan Escoffery alongside wordsmith and Seattle University assistant professor Juan Carlos Reyes. In Escoffery’s 2022 novel If I Survive You, which follows the experiences of a Jamaican immigrant family in Miami, “the ‘you’ his characters are trying to survive is America itself” (NPR). Makes sense! We’re stoked to hear more about Escoffery’s approach to holding readers’ interest, which is grounded in sly humor and relatability. Hugo House, Capitol Hill (Fri April 14)

Anastacia-Reneé: Side Notes from the Archivist

Formidable poet, genre-crossing artist, TEDx speaker, podcaster, and former Seattleite Anastacia-Reneé will drop by her old stomping grounds in celebration of Side Notes from the Archivist: Poems, a funky, feminist new collection that illuminates Black femme culture through coming-of-age poems set in ’80s Philly. Elliott Bay Book Company, Capitol Hill (Fri April 14), Third Place Books Seward Park (Thurs April 27)

Masha Gessen

Russian-American journalist Masha Gessen, author of the National Book Award-winning The Future Is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia and Surviving Autocracy, will head to Seattle for a discussion of their journalistic coverage of the current political unfoldings in Russia. Gessen, a trans nonbinary person, is also an activist covering LGBTQ+ issues throughout the world. Seattle Arts & Lectures at Town Hall Seattle, First Hill (Mon April 17)

BRAD CURRAN

“Bill! Bill! Bill!

Matt Baume: Hi Honey, I’m Homo! Sitcoms, Specials, and the Queering of American Culture

Cultural critic, pop culture YouTuber, and former Stranger staff writer Matt Baume will head to Elliott Bay in celebration of the release of his new book, Hi Honey, I’m Homo! Sitcoms, Specials, and the Queering of American Culture, a deep dive into the “subversive” queer comedy storylines that transformed the American sitcom and continue to shape cultural attitudes toward LGBTQ+ folks today. Elliott Bay Book Company, Capitol Hill (Thurs May 25)

Ocean Vuong

Ocean Vuong made major waves in the literary world in 2019 with On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, an epistolary novel reflecting on loss, memory, and family; he’s also an award-winning poet whose collection Night Sky with Exit Wounds won the T. S. Eliot Prize in 2017. Vuong will discuss his second poetry book, the New York Times-bestselling collection Time Is a Mother, during this visit to Seattle. Pro tip: Before the event, listen to Vuong’s tear-inducing, pre-pandemic March 2020 interview with journalist and podcaster Krista Tippett, in which he casually says things like “I want to take off the shoes of my voice, so that I can enter a place with care, so that I can do the work I need to,” and “When the apocalypse comes, what will you put into the vessel for the future?” Third Place Books Lake Forest Park (Tues June 6)

Scan for more event listings on The Stranger’s calendar, EverOut.com

TOM HINES

THE FLOOD IS COMING

Jónsi’s Multisensory Exhibition Will Hit You Like a Wave

BY JAS KEIMIG

Icelandic artist and musician Jónsi is riding a big wave to Seattle. No, not a literal wave, but a figurative one composed of sound, scents, and images.

Though best known as the singer and guitarist for his post-rock band Sigur Rós, Jónsi also has a robust visual art practice. He pulls from his interest in perfumery and music to create installations that engage multiple senses— sight, sound, smell—and he’s making his US museum debut this spring at the National Nordic Museum in Ballard with FLÓ Ð (Flood) , a site-specific installation that will plunge you into the depths of the ocean.

Meditating on climate change and the relationship between Seattle and Reykjavik—sister cities since 1986—the installation will simulate the experience of a wave moving across the gallery. Choral music and field recordings will play in the background as fog and the scent of seaweed—harvested from the North Atlantic and Pacific Oceans and distilled into a tincture by Jónsi himself—disperse through the space. I’d expect nothing less from an artist known for his sad, angelic vocal style.

“What really drew me to [Jónsi’s art] was his ability to create a multisensory— almost synesthetic—experience through his works,” said the National Nordic Museum’s Leslie Ann Anderson, director of collections, exhibitions, and programs who curated FLÓÐ “It’s work that is contemporary, it addresses very important subject matter, it’s cutting edge, but it’s also very accessible. I love that you could enter this exhibition and immediately— equipped with no information—understand you’re being transported to a place.”

Weeks before Jónsi was set to come to town to debut his installation, I called him up to get the lowdown on his burgeoning art career, the connection between Reykjavik and Seattle, and the big wave that will kill us all.

You’ve had a long, illustrious career as a musician. What spurred you to dip your toes into the art world?

I’ve just been surrounded by artists all my life. Iceland is a tiny community full of musicians and artists. So if I wouldn’t have done music, I would have probably been doing some art stuff. The only thing I could do in school was painting and drawing. Then slowly music took over, but now I’m kind of dipping my toe into that [art] pool.

From what I’ve been reading about your work, sound is a real throughline in the art you make. How did your work as a musician influence your work as a visual artist?

I guess a lot. It’s a different space. [As a musician], you’re used to playing concert venues and big arenas, so it’s kind of interesting to take music and dissect it. With a gallery space, you can do what you want and really control the sound. Because with shows, you’re usually in and out of different

“My thing now is the big wave and how we’re all gonna die and everything is gonna flood.”

venues, but [with galleries] you have a space for a few months and you can design it however you want. I’m also into spatialization of sound, where you have a lot of speakers in

different places in the room, so you can get this surround sound kind of thing. I’m really into that at the moment.

There’s this beautiful combination of natural and unnatural in a lot of your pieces. Where do you draw inspiration from?

From nature. Nature is just always the perfect art form. There’s not many false moves in nature. I take a lot of inspiration from that if I’m doing something sculptural. It comes from some geometric natural shape or flowers or some kind of natural formation. In addition to your career as a musician and visual artist, you’ve also launched a career in perfumery. What kicked off that interest?

The more people I talk to about perfumery and scent, I feel like everybody is kind of obsessed with it, but it’s very hard to get access to and know where to start, how to do it. Everything seems so complicated. I

mean, for me, I started maybe over 10 years ago with essential oils then slowly got into aroma molecules. You can really do detailed stuff with that. I have been kind of obsessed with it all my life, but for the last 10 years, I’ve been doing a deep dive into scents or creating perfumes or scents for exhibitions and stuff like that.

My shows usually have a scent aspect to them. I’m trying to trigger a lot of senses in people. You have music or some soundscape for your ears, something to look at with your eyes, then something to smell with your nose. I love triggering as many senses as possible, so if you come into the gallery space, you have something to be moved by.

FLÓÐ (Flood) at the National Nordic Museum is site-specific to the museum. I know you’re still in the middle of fabricating everything, but what’s the concept behind the show?

I’m still making it, as you mentioned, but I think the main inspiration is probably the big wave. Everybody on social media and Instagram is scrolling and you see all this news of natural disasters, wildfires, floods, crazy climate change, change in weather systems, and stuff like that. So I think my thing now is the big wave and how we’re all gonna die and everything is gonna flood.

So biblical! I know. Exactly. [Laughs] So we have to create some ark together… no. It’s gonna be a sound installation with probably 30 or 40 speakers around the room based on the big wave.

I’ve never been to Iceland. How do you see Seattle and Reykjavik in relation to one another?

I was talking to Leslie [Ann Anderson] at the Nordic Museum, she was telling me that Seattle and Reykjavik are sister cities. I hadn’t even thought about that, but I guess they are pretty connected: rain, depression, grayness… and all the good, creative energy that comes from that. You have to be inside a lot and create something to be happy. And also just the ocean, the fisheries, boats, and stuff like that. And there’s going to be a scent piece that is pulled from both Seattle and Reykjavik, right? What are the throughlines between those two cities and smells?

It’s basically just the ocean. I wanna do some kind of seaweedy apocalyptic smell. [Laughs] It doesn’t sound pleasant, but I haven’t done it yet. ■

Experience FLÓÐ (Flood) March 17 through July 30 at the National Nordic Museum.

Don’t worry. Jónsi’s big wave won’t kill you, probably.

PAUL SALVESON

Music Picks

Matthew Whitaker

MAY 23–24

The New Jersey-hailing organ and piano prodigy Matthew Whitaker has been playing for the majority of his life, earning endorsements from Hammond and Yamaha as a teen before heading off to Juilliard’s Jazz Studies program, where he is currently in his third year. Now, at just 22 years old, this guy has already released three full-length albums and two film scores, in addition to performing on world-renowned stages like at the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, Carnegie Hall, the Monterey Jazz Festival, and the Newport Jazz Festival. Are you feeling bad about your achievements yet? Jazz Alley, Belltown

Carmina Burana

Acclaimed conductor and New Jersey Symphony Orchestra director Xian Zhang will conduct the Seattle Symphony, the Northwest Boychior, and several operatic powerhouses in a performance of Carl Orff’s masterwork, Carmina Burana Based on a 13th-century medieval poem about love, lust, and indulgence, the piece has become a pop culture staple with its epic opening piece, “O Fortuna,” which has appeared in everything from the 1981 film Excalibur to commercials for Applebee’s and York Peppermint Patties. Plus, look forward to performances of Rossini’s classic William Tell Overture and contemporary composer Qigang Chen’s L’éloignement Seattle Symphony at Benaroya Hall, Downtown (March 30–April 2)

Seattle Metropolitan Chamber Orchestra presents

The Music of Couture: Stravinsky and Chanel’s Paris

If you’ve ever needed a reason to wear a tweed suit, here it is. The Seattle Metropolitan Chamber Orchestra will transport you to Paris in the 1920s with a spirited concert exploring the world of iconic (and controversial) fashion designer Coco Chanel. The show will kick off with a performance of the dramatic piece The Soldier’s Tale by Stravinsky (who was a rumored lover of Chanel), followed by Germaine Tailleferre’s whimsical Image, Darius Milhaud’s lively The Creation of the World and Bohuslav Martinu’s jazz-infused La revue de cuisine Town Hall’s Otto Bar will be open throughout the

JOSÉ FELICIANO

MARCH 16 - 19, $56.50

THE COOKERSBILLY HARPER, EDDIE HENDERSON, DAVID WEISS, GEORGE CABLES, CECIL MCBEE & BILLY HART, JALEEL SHAW

MARCH 21 - 22, $36.50

JOSHUA REDMAN TRIO FEATURING LARRY GRENADIER AND MARCUS GILMORE

WOOTEN & THE WOOTEN BROTHERS APRIL 6 - 9, $50.50

FARKA TOURÉ APRIL 11 - 12, $38.50

MARCH 23 - 26, $40.50 JAZZ FUNK SOUL HEADLINING SOLO ACTS EVERETTE HARP, JEFF LORBER AND PAUL JACKSON JR. COME TOGETHER AS A CONTEMPORARY JAZZ SUPER GROUP APRIL 13 - 16, $38.50

JONATHAN BUTLER

MARCH 30 - APRIL 2, $38.50 ELIANE ELIAS APRIL 20 - 23, $38.50

AN EVENING WITH ERIC KRASNO & STANTON MOORE / KRASNO/MOORE PROJECT

APRIL 4 - 5, 2023, $38.50

OMAR SOSA & SECKOU KEITA SUBA TRIO APRIL 25 - 26, $36.50

7)

Fatoumata Diawara

Jas Keimig once compared Grammy-nominated singer-songwriter Fatoumata Diawara’s captivating vocal range to Sade, noting her unique voice that “skips like a rock over water across different registers.” She will get the crowd on their feet with her futuristic blend of traditional Malian folk, Wassoulou music, R&B grooves, and fuzzed-out electric guitars that led her on tour with fellow genre-blending heavies Gorillaz last fall. Meany Center for the Performing Arts, University District (Sat April 15)

night so you can pretend you’re at a real speakeasy. Town Hall Seattle, First Hill (Fri April

ALUNE B

RAHILL ASHRUFF

SRJO Presents: Thad Jones

100th Birthday Celebration

Celebrate what would have been the 100th birthday of prolific writer, composer, arranger, trumpeter, and band leader Thad Jones as the Seattle Repertory Jazz Orchestra performs music from throughout his life and explores his legendary contributions to the genre. Anticipate tunes from his early years as a soloist in the Count Basie Orchestra as well as his time in the Village Vanguard Orchestra and beyond, including longstanding jazz standards like “A Child is Born,” “Three and One,” and “The Elder.” Benaroya Hall, Downtown (Sat April 22)

Nils Frahm

On his latest album, Music for Animals German composer and musician Nils Frahm follows in the footsteps of the patron saint of ambient music, Brian Eno. Along the lines of Eno’s 1978 albums Music for Airports and Music for Films, Frahm trades his usual piano for an electronic palette in order to create atmospheric works titled things like “The Dog with 1000 Faces” and “Seagull Scene.” Frahm’s shows are regularly sold out, so don’t miss the chance to experience his moving compositions that land at the intersection of ambient, electronic, and modern classical music. Paramount Theatre, Downtown (Thurs April 27)

Andrea Bocelli

Are you looking to wow your mom this Mother’s Day? Leave it to the world-renowned, dulcet-toned, Italian opera crooner Andrea Bocelli with a larger-than-life arena concert featuring songs from his wide-ranging repertoire. Look forward to a soothing blend of early fan favorites, traditional arias, weepy love songs, and tracks off of his latest album, Believe Climate Pledge Arena, Uptown (Sun May 14)

HONK! Fest West

This free, family-oriented festival gets you in on the brass, percussion, and street band “global renaissance.” Dozens of bands across various musical styles (including punk rock marching bands, European klezmer groups, Maracatu sounds, and more!) will take to streets and parks around Seattle as they jam out in celebration of this democratic and ebullient musical genre. Various locations (June 2–4)

Seattle Men’s Chorus: Disney Pride in Concert

The Seattle Men’s Chorus will kick off Pride Month with a family-friendly, Disney-themed concert featuring more than 200 choral singers, a 25-piece orchestra, and projections of memorable scenes from your favorite Disney and Pixar movies. Expect to hear songs from classics like The Little Mermaid, The Lion King, and Mary Poppins, plus contemporary favorites like Coco, Zootopia and Wreck-It Ralph along with solo performances and personal anecdotes that explore themes of love and acceptance. Paramount Theatre, Downtown (June 9–10)

Belltown Bloom 2023

This all-ages music festival will showcase an abundant bouquet of indie bands with headliners including grunge trailblazers L7, Russian feminist protest and performance art group Pussy Riot, Philly-based punk band Mannequin Pussy, and local rock stars Thunderpussy (we are starting to see a theme here). Plus, look forward to plenty of local highlights like dreamy indie rockers La Fonda, cinematic rock soloist Byland, and psychedelic dream pop ensemble Coral Grief. The Crocodile, Belltown (May 5–6)

Scan for more event listings on The Stranger’s calendar, EverOut.com

GIOVANNI DE SANDRE COURTESY OF LEITER VERLAG.

CHARLES PETERSON

ESPRESSOBUZZ

PERSON

OF INTEREST

JOSH OKRENT + CM RUIZ

Bringing Life to Seattle’s Vacant Spaces

BY MEGAN SELING

Josh Okrent and CM Ruiz have been making something out of Seattle’s nothing for more than five years.

The founder of the Punk Rock Flea Market and director of the traveling art gallery Nii Modo, respectively, joined forces in 2017 and have since transformed at least half a dozen buildings caught in development limbo into temporary but vital art centers with the primary focus of serving local, underrepresented, and inexperienced artists.

They’ve hosted pop-up art shows and concerts in the old Big Wheel Auto Parts shop on Stone Way and anything-goes flea markets at the Promenade Red Apple Market on 23rd Avenue. They even tried to make good use of the Seven Seas building, aka the Lusty Lady, on Second Avenue.

“It’s an incredible building—six stories tall, right on the waterfront, with a million little nooks and crannies,” said Okrent. “But no matter how much we put into it, we just couldn’t make it safe for large public events. The fire department shut that one down before we got too far along.”

Their current home is the old Bartell

Drugs space on Third Avenue. From those headquarters, they plan to run the spring installment of Punk Rock Flea Market from April 1–2 and the three-day music festival, RX Fest, from April 14–16.

“We’re not able to have bands and a market simultaneously at the current space, so we’re staging a separate concert in support of PRFM with a truly amazing lineup,” says Okrent. “Lots of incredible local bands—Elvis Batchild, Appaloosa, Land of Wolves, Beautiful Freaks. Two stages, all ages, and just $30 for a three-day pass.”

Does this mean downtown Seattle is alive and well? I had to find out.

How much work goes into prepping a new space, especially one as big as the old Bartell’s? That’s a lot of square footage!

Josh: It can vary widely. The current Bartell’s space is huge, but it was a relatively easy build-out. Bartell’s was apparently a really responsible tenant and left us a nice clean shell to work with. The old Red Apple space at 23rd and Jackson nearly killed us. We had to strip out all of the old grocery shelving, decommission the refrigerators, bring in power and

PERSON OF INTEREST

ROHINI JAYANTHI

Laughing Through Life’s Hardships

BY MEGAN SELING

You wouldn’t know by watching her perform, but Rohini Jayanthi has only been in the stand-up comedy game for about 18 months. She shares stories about growing up in India as a queer daughter with conservative parents with the cool confidence of a seasoned performer. By day, she’s a machine learning scientist at Netflix—“Not a real scientist!”—and she got into the funny business on a whim.

“I was bored out of my mind [during the pandemic] and received an email from Tasveer about a workshop called Desi Girls Comedy Project,” she told me. “I still remember being ecstatic just for getting selected for the workshop. It left a lasting impact on me. For the showcase, we performed at Broadway Performance Hall to conclude the Tasveer Film Festival 2021. After that, I challenged myself to continue comedy to break the pattern of quitting once things get boring or difficult. Whether I want to be more invested in comedy is a discussion I regularly have with myself. But for now, I’m happy with how things are going.” And things are going well. She’s opened for

water, and strip decades worth of food grime from the floors… We worked around the clock for five weeks. It was basically endless. We survived it thanks to an incredible outpouring of volunteer support, but I don’t think we would ever take on a project like that again.

CM, you’ve made killer show posters for hundreds of bands, from Murder City Devils to Pussy Riot. Your work has even been on the cover of The Stranger! Is there a band you’ve been dying to design for but haven’t yet?

CM: I’ve had my work on two Stranger covers! I want to design albums for more grown-

Hari Kondabolu, and she’s shared stages with other local greats including Andy Iwancio and Juno Men. In April she’ll perform at the Babe Cave comedy showcase at Here-After with Iwancio, Jill Silva, Cara Rosellini, and Fat Cats Improv. You should go! Unless you are her parents—her parents are not invited.

In your set, you’ve talked about how your mom had a hard time accepting that you’re gay. Surely that was a heavy experience, but you make it funny! Is comedy how you process life’s hard shit?

Yes! I’ve always struggled to cry in difficult situations. Instead, the knot in my throat comes out as a joke. Sarcasm and irony come easy, but most people don’t know that I love doing physical comedy and impressions. Growing up, my parents would repeatedly ask me to do impressions. My dad is probably the inventor of dad jokes and my mom laughs quite easily, so I had a good audience at home. However, after turning a basic human impulse into my hobby, some days I want nothing to do with it. When I hear, “Why did the chicken cross the street?” I say, “Because the walk sign was on.”

up music. I love garage rock, but I listen to a lot more than that. R&B. Jazz. You know those iconic Blue Note Records covers using collage and typography? It would be amazing to be part of a series like that. If Keith Sweat, Earth, Wind & Fire, or Sudan Archives need a new album cover, I hope they call me.

People have been debating downtown’s status for years. It’s dead. It’s coming back. It’s dying again. It’s alive again. Which is it?

Josh : We’re loving the new and improved Seattle. This strange post-COVID moment where people feel safe to come outside but sick of working from a downtown cubicle is a rare opportunity to bring some DIY action back into the center of Seattle where it belongs. We both remember a time when central Seattle had cheap living and unpredictable art and great concert venues. We would do anything to have the OK Hotel back. I don’t mind one bit saying adios to Nike Town if it means we get the 2023 equivalent of 619 Western.

CM: We can see the future from the epicenter of the Urban Doom Loop. It looks hopeful.

Visit punkrockfleamarket.com and follow Nii Modo on Instagram at @niimodo for the latest event listings.

You have some very funny material about your parents’ relationship. Did you tell them they’d be mentioned in your act?

Oh, no! They know nothing. My parents are actually very proud of my hobby and have asked repeatedly to watch my videos. I’ve worked very hard to ensure that never happens.

Where do you like to perform in Seattle?

I love Here-After, the Rendezvous, and Broadway Performance Hall. I’ve always had a good time at Here-After and gotten to know touring comedians. Rendezvous hosts the open mic Comedy Nest, where I performed onstage for the first time. The community there has been incredibly welcoming. It kept me going whenever I wanted to stop. Broadway Performance Hall was

my very first non-open-mic performance. It’s a bigger venue and can feel daunting, but also exhilarating. When you hear the huge roar of laughter, that’s what every comedian wants.

Other than the Babe Cave show, are there any other local comedy shows you’re looking forward to?

I’m looking forward to Joketellers Union (especially the Beacon Hill news segment), Safeword, Flock!, and Socially Inept, a tech roast show. I’d also recommend checking if the Disabled List has its monthly show coming up. Their recent festival was outstanding!

See Rohini Jayanthi perform as part of the Babe Cave comedy show on April 5 at Here-After.

CM Ruiz and Josh Okrent at Nii Modo. BROOKE FITTS

Rohini Jayanthi doesn’t back down from sticky situations.

BROOKE FITTS

KEVIN SUR

Heading into the Wild

BY MEGAN SELING

Bumbershoot, Capitol Hill Block Party, Day In Day Out, Belltown Bloom… Seattle is silly with spring and summer music festivals, and each one brings with it its own impressive list of performers.

Timber! Outdoor Music Festival is different. It was started by Artist Home founder Kevin Sur in 2013, just a few years after Artist Home co-founded Doe Bay Fest, another popular, outdoor, nature-forward festival experience. While most of today’s local music festivals take place in the city—hot blacktop, little shade, lots of crowds—Timber! lives about 45 minutes outside of town in Carnation, WA. The bucolic surroundings are as much a part of the experience as the bands, which this year include Jeff Tweedy, the King Khan & BBQ Show, Black Belt Eagle Scout, and Guerilla Toss, among others.

“When we started, there were far fewer festivals, and festivals like Doe Bay Fest and Timber!, whose intimacy was deliberate, didn’t exist,” said Sur. “Our inspiration literally came from doing the opposite of what larger festivals were doing—to celebrate experience over profit and create events that we ourselves would love to be at.”

That’s why Timber!’s lineup is as stacked with artists as it is with adventures—there’s tree climbing, stargazing, hiking, and even bat-watching with the experts at Bats Northwest. What other music fest offers that? Well, other than SXSW, with its giant bat colony that lives under Congress Avenue Bridge, I guess.

This year’s lineup is so good! What do you do as a talent buyer/festival curator to ensure that Timber! stands out from other festivals?

THANK YOU! We just stay true to ourselves and our intentions. We want Timber! to be a place that elevates artists who need to be seen, in lieu of just trying to book what is most popular. We’re proud to have provided the first festival stages for countless bands that people in our region, if not the

entire country, are now familiar with—the Head and the Heart, Deep Sea Diver, Travis Thompson, and so many more. We want people to have unforgettable memories, and falling in love with an artist for the first time is just one of the ways we foster that.

You also offer yoga, stargazing, hiking, tree climbing… Why is it important to incorporate those surroundings into the experience for festivalgoers?

We share a reverence for the natural world, and we aim to create an event that represents who we are, so incorporating that comes naturally. Additionally, we don’t like how little space people typically have at music festivals, where one can feel like herded cattle. By creating a space in which people can “choose their own adventure,” but also have the ability to disengage and choose their own pace by hiking a trail or sitting on a beach, we’ve found that most people walk away from Timber! feeling more energized than they did walking into it.

Do you have a favorite local hiking trail or place to go to get out of the city?

Definitely Olympic National Park. From Shipwreck Coast, where you can fall asleep to the sound of the ocean every night, to the Enchanted Valley and Hoh River Trail, whose beauty has brought me to tears. The Olympics are my go-to.

What’s your favorite thing to cook over a campfire or camp grill?

As a native Hawaiian, I LOVE “local food” and cooking a lot of staples of Hawai‘i on the grill and in the campfire. One of my favorite moves is to take the skewers made for s’mores and instead use them to cook kalbi short ribs or chunks of huli huli chicken over a campfire. Delicious!

Experience Timber! Outdoor Music Festival July 27–29 at Tolt-MacDonald Park in Carnation, WA.

PERSON OF INTEREST

BROOKE FITTS

Because things are about to get actual crazy.

But Is It Art? BY BRENDAN EMMETT QUIGLEY

ACROSS

1. Periodontist’s study

5. Leg day muscle

9. Barbecue brand

14. Totally adrift

15. In tuneful unison

16. Madder than all infinite levels of mad

17. 1990 Grammy Awardwinning song for Best Rap Performance

19. Initial venture

20. Something hastily put together

21. Like celebrities whose time has passed

23. “Burnt Norton” poet

24. Turntable speeds, briefly

26. Camera lens part

29. Galaxy, e.g.

32. Full of

35. Figure seen on Renminbi

36. “When the ____ Breaks”

37. Band torn by some athletes

38. Crude container

41. Bother

42. John who plays guitar with Dead & Company

44. Dunkin’ purchase: Abbr

45. Lip

46. File menu command

50. Outlook status

51. One on a coffee run, likely

52. Line of credit?

56. “The Fisherman and His Wife” writers’ surname

58. ____ theory

59. Butcher block?

61. Rules outlined in the Ten Commandments

64. Unopposed incumbent’s opponent

65. Garden for nudists

66. “____ Rice’s Mayfair Witches”

67. Uber alerts

68. DJ’s equipment

69. Color strip in a sidecar

DOWN

1. Roof feature

2. Hardly surprising

3. Golden Ball winner in the 2022 World Cup

4. Parked it on the couch, maybe

5. Place where people are in tents

6. Buzzing activity

7. Sweetie

8. “I need food, badly”

9. Router’s offering

10. Tending to break down

11. Wasted questions?

12. No. on the Uber app

13. Her lightsaber’s color is yellow

18. Android ____ (driving companion app)

22. Drug on sheets

24. Iranian scratch

25. Walked with heavy feet

27. Champagne chillers

28. Goes looking for

30. Meas. taken with calipers

31. Stately tree

32. Skate park features

33. “It matters to me”

34. Large fruit bat, by another name

38. Morsel not used in dinner

39. Wander about

40. Spraying weapon

43. Running man?

45. Waterproof lock protector?

47. Sideline reporter ____ Oliver

48. Like fancy car tires

49. Sci-fi characters that are typically eaten on moonless nights

53. Inventor of the game Poohsticks

54. Vacuous

55. Gym freebie

57. Exotic French-speaking getaways

58. Like some memes

59. Hamilton’s here: Abbr.

60. Bad guy

62. “An ____, on the Death of Mr. Henry Purcell” (John Dryden poem)

63 Brief moment

BEN HORAK LARA KAMINOFF

LAURA DILLAWAY

REBECCA A. LYMAN in honor of her mother, Eloise B. Armen