Josh Petersen

Even as artists cautiously look forward to a post-COVID world, plenty of creatives have found innovative ways to continue their work without gathering in-person. Still, these technological solutions often leave plenty to be desired. Netflix binges will never match the simple joy of crowding in a theater opening weekend; Instagram Live can’t replicate the buzz of in-person concerts; staring at a painting on a computer screen lacks the specialness of appreciating it in a gallery. 

Through Yonder Window, a production from the experimental theater group SONDERimmesive, may be tailored to social distancing, but it never feels like COVID-mandated sloppy seconds. Ditching the traditional stage, the show is performed on the upper level of a downtown parking garage. Audiences park and watch from their vehicles, with audio coming from car radios like a drive-in movie. Actors perform around—and interact with—the rows of parked cars in a hybrid of modern dance and pantomime. And in case you’re wondering, appreciative honks replace traditional applause.

The plot is a condensed, modernized and remixed take on Romeo & Juliet. The star-crossed lovers (Nadia Sine and Ed Corvera) are mostly the same, and this version adds more doomed affairs among the reduced group of characters: Nurse Maria (Mara Lefler,) Tybalt (Amber Golden,) Lady Capulet (Catherine Mortimer,) Friar Lawrence (Tyler Fox,) Mercutio (Martina Jorgensen) and Lord Montague (Joseph Wheeler.) This contemporary version of Verona has been decimated by an endless pandemic and generations of quarantine. (Sound familiar?) Over the perfectly paced hour-long runtime, narrative threads unfold simultaneously, and the original play’s events are shuffled, altered or discarded altogether. Maybe not every detail in the script by Graham Brown, Rick Curtiss and Catherine Mortimer is strictly necessary—I’m ready to permanently forget about pandemics, even in fiction—but plenty of the updates were genuinely clever. (I interpreted this Tybalt as an incel-adjacent bro radicalized by Reddit, which makes a weird amount of sense.)

On paper, the production’s artsier details may sound pretentious, but in the actual play is too playful to be self-serious. Car surfaces are used as backstage prop tables, and actors aren’t shy about coming right up to your window. Director and choreographer Brown’s expansive, appealingly loose staging feels improvisational—don’t expect anyone to face forward and give a soliloquy. Because all of the characters are on stage interacting at the same time, Through Yonder Window requires adjusted expectations from audience members. A pre-show message warns that you can’t take in every single detail, which, depending on your point-of-view, could be frustrating or liberating. It didn’t take me long to adapt to the show’s rhythms, and soon the constant motion became one of the performance’s greatest assets.

The novelty of the conceit is what stands out at first—as far as I’m concerned, more Shakespeare should be performed on a sunny spring night with a pickup basketball game nearby—but the production wouldn’t work without the performers. Taking on a unique acting challenge, the ensemble was fully committed to the production’s rule breaking. Because long stretches of the play don’t contain dialogue, the actors are tasked with carrying multiple story arcs almost entirely through movement. (There is an original score composed by Wachira Waigwa-Stone.) Despite, or maybe because of, these restrictions, the cast gave clear, emotionally resonant performances, taking the play’s well-established story in surprising new directions.
Through Yonder Window opens tonight and closes April 18. Tickets and more information are available online. Plus, the music is available on Spotify!

While you’re here, explore our latest print issue.

It started out like a typical art class. In 2017 Mateo Rueda, an art teacher at Lincoln Elementary in Hyrum, shared a box with prints of classical art with his classes of fifth and sixth graders. To his surprise, the box, which was already at the school library, contained some artworks with nudity. 

This incident ignited controversy that quickly reverberated beyond the quiet Cache Valley town. After parents claimed that Rueda exposed the students to pornography, he was contacted by police. (When a deputy arrived at the school, principal Jeni Buist was shredding the controversial prints.) Though Rueda, parents and school officials all differed on key details, he was soon fired, and the story made national and international headlines.

Rueda’s firing inspired playwright Matthew Ivan Bennett’s newest play Art & Class. Dramatizing the ripped-from-the-headlines story, Bennett found a riveting debate about art and culture that could explore Utah’s complex relationships with race and religion, gender and education. He decided to gender swap two of the play’s characters—in his play, the teacher is a woman and the principal is a man—to reflect the gender imbalances in public education. Bennett also chose to leave the sexuality of Leland, the principal, ambiguous, reflecting those stifled by a conservative political and religious culture. Despite the social issues that Art & Class tackles, Bennett hopes his play does more than discuss hot-button issues. “I could have written a diagnosis of social ills, but I thought the truth—as close as I can get —would be far more useful,” he says on Plan-B’s website. “Plan-B’s mission is developing socially conscious theatre. To be conscious, you must be honest.”

Like Rueda, Lucía, the teacher character, is an immigrant in a mostly-white community. Flo Bravo, who plays Lucía, says she relates to the character as an immigrant who has lived in the U.S. for 20 years. “It’s hard to be an outsider,” she says. “In a state like Utah, it feels like there’s no shortage of opportunity to stand out for all the wrong reasons.” Bravo says that the play reflected some of her ambivalence about being a Utahn in post-Trump America. “I don’t like that this play is based on a true story, but I’m glad Matt took such a disappointing event and turned it into a play that will hopefully start meaningful discussions across our state,” she says.

Art & Class was workshopped at four different theater companies over the past two years, including Plan-B and Pioneer Theater Company. Now it’s coming to life as an audio drama with Plan-B. This new format would be a curveball for any playwright, but Bennett has plenty of experience with audio-only productions. He wrote many of the radio drama collaborations between Plan-B and RadioWest, and now his play can be enjoyed, socially distanced, from anywhere. The production will be streaming on Plan-B’s website from April 15-25. Tickets are pay-what-you-can, but seriously, pay full price if you’re able to: local theater could use our support right now especially. 

Are you ready to get back to live performances? We are too. Follow our arts and entertainment coverage for the latest updates.

A cloud made up of the cloud — a mass of desktop files shaped to resemble non-digital fluffy formations. A surreal mountain landscape that turns into a layered crepe cake. A playful homage to 1950s garden magazines. These are just some of the inventive pieces by the current Artists in Residence at the Utah Museum of Contemporary Art.

By Annelise Duque

Since 2013, UMOCA’s Artist in Residence program has provided a crucial support system for local artists. Let’s face it: it’s not easy to survive as an artist in Utah. Yes, there’s plenty of local interest in the arts, but there are plenty of obstacles, too. It is still a relatively small community that doesn’t always have established networks for creators. The program provides artists studio space, workshops with other professionals and the opportunity to showcase their work in a dedicated gallery space at UMOCA. Basically, the goal is to build a strong community and keep great artists in the state.

The program’s current roster highlights the wide-ranging diversity of local artists. All of the residents are Utah-based, but their backgrounds, styles and mediums are all distinctive. The Utah art world is wide enough to include politically provocative ceramics from Houston native Horacio Rodriguez and abstract paintings by the Korean artist Yujin Kang, and, as the entire industry reels from the coronavirus pandemic, UMOCA is setting the foundation that allows these creatives to thrive.

For more Arts & Culture, click here.

Take a look in your pantry and you might see a smiling Black man in a bowtie adorning a bag of rice. Walk a few steps to your fridge and there’s a serene Native American woman holding a box of butter. Sort through that stack of old children’s books you’ve been meaning to give away, and you realize those classic Disney storybooks have some troubling details you didn’t remember. And tucked in the back of your closet, there’s a forgotten Sunday School picture with a Jesus that looks suspiciously … European.

After a year where many Americans reckoned with widespread issues of discrimination and systemic racism, a new exhibition shows how even the most mundane everyday objects can carry ugly racial stereotypes. Curated by the Kauffman Museum at Bethel College and hosted by The Leonardo, “Sorting Out Race” explores how the food packages we buy, media we consume and sports teams we cheer for perpetuate racist ideas both blatant and insidious. The exhibit displays items bought at Kansas thrift stores from 2010-2015. Noticing how many of these products contained problematic imagery, the curators bought them to educate the community and foster dialogue about race in America.

The exhibition, which includes explanatory notes about issues like stereotype threat and racial segregation, is sure to inspire debates about the exact boundaries between well-intentioned and harmful, homage and caricature. While some items are relics of the Jim Crow era, many are from the present day. (Uncle Ben’s, Aunt Jemima and Land O’Lakes, all featured in the exhibit, didn’t change their brand packaging until 2020.) The exhibition’s power comes from representing complex, difficult racial dynamics in the most ordinary way possible.

The exhibition is a collaboration between The Leonardo and the Utah Black Chamber, who selected the exhibition to spark discussions about race in Utah. “We have always wanted to facilitate dialogue about the things that matter,” explains Alex Hesse, The Leonardo’s Executive Director. Hesse says that pandemic-forced interruptions inspired The Leonardo to consider what role they should play in the community. This soul-searching led to the partnership between The Leonardo and the Chamber, who will collaborate with the museum on future exhibitions and programs. They are also working with other Utah small businesses, including A Mano Pasta and Ken Sanders Rare Books. (Sanders created a pop-up Black history bookshop in the museum and is hosting a monthly book club for members.)  

James Jackson III, founder and Executive Director of the Utah Black Chamber, says he never would have imagined an exhibition like this when he started the organization in 2009. Still, the collaboration with The Leonardo expands the UBC’s mission to build awareness and support Utah’s growing Black community.

Jackson, who grew up in Utah, remembers classmates making jokes about Aunt Jemima that made him uncomfortable. He says figures like Aunt Jemima “create careless stereotypes that distort reality and create negative labels.” He hopes the exhibit starts uncomfortable but necessary conversations about race, especially for young people. (The Leonardo hosts school groups and works with educators to provide access for students.) 

For Utahns, this exhibition feels especially timely. A summer of protests against both local and national police brutality compelled many white Utahns to more seriously reckon with their privilege. Meanwhile, local colleges and high schools are considering name and mascot changes to eliminate racist connotations and imagery. These of-the-minute debates only makes “Sorting Out Race” more relevant to visitors. “We wanted to respond to the times we live in and to our community’s needs,” Hesse says. 

“Sorting Out Race” will be at The Leonardo through April 14. The Utah Black Chamber will be hosting free panels about race in conjunction with the exhibition on March 16, March 30 and April 13. For more information on all of The Leonardo’s programs, visit their website.

Read more about Utah arts here.

Even before the pandemic, radio dramas were experiencing an unlikely renaissance. In the 1950s, many Americans traded their radios for television sets, but in the 21st century, thanks to changes in technology, an entertainment form that had been all but left for dead was suddenly back en vogue. Soon, fictional podcasts grew huge cult followings and attracted big-name stars, making this once-antiquated medium a bona-fide trend.

You might not have predicted it back in the 90s, but Plan-B Theatre can officially say they were ahead of the curve. This Salt Lake independent theater has been producing audio dramas for 25 years, including yearly partnerships with KUER’s RadioWest. This year, their decades of experience paid off unexpectedly as social distancing requirements have made normal theater performances impossible. Adapting to the times, Plan-B’s 2021 subscription series is made up entirely of audio dramas, available through “pay-what-you-can” tickets online. And while these may not be the productions the company initially hoped for, P.G. Anon, the first play in their audio-only season, naturally continues the company’s tradition of experimental, boundary-pushing performances. Welcome to local theater’s new normal—10 home recording studios across six ZIP codes, no cozy blackbox theater and audiences across the state enjoying the show through car speakers and headphones.

Billed as “a tale of fear, fury and reproduction,” P.G. Anon, a world premiere by Julie Jensen, contains three short acts centered on different women’s pregnancies. Pauline (April Fossen), who already has more kids than she can handle, is distraught to be pregnant late in life: “People see someone my age pregnant again and what do they think? They think of two old farts going at it,” she bemoans. Tiffany (Emilie Evanoff) has a troubled history with substance abuse, poverty and violence, and her pregnancy only makes these challenges more dire. And for teenage Sheila (Sydney Shoell), an unplanned pregnancy both limits her dreams for the future and illuminates the pervasive sexism around her.

P.G. Anon is set in three tumultuous years of recent American history: 2016, 1996 and 1991. In each act, characters listen and react to the day’s headlines with a mixture of disgust, rage, bemusement and resignation. I won’t spoil the specific news events that each narrative is tied to—though you may be able to guess if the 2020 news cycle hasn’t permanently ruptured your cultural memory—but each one is carefully chosen to represent the characters’ own reproductive anxieties and our country’s twisted relationship with sex, power and consent. I also won’t reveal the specific directions the stories take, or the exact connections between each of the characters, which is one of the narrative’s biggest reveals. Jensen’s vignettes are more interested in tone and character than tidy conclusions, though, taken as a whole, the three acts create a satisfying emotional arc.

The exact setting is never specified, but the details, from widespread religious conservatism to Trump-loving relatives to families with an eye-popping number of children, certainly fit the state we know and sometimes love. (Jensen, like all of Plan B’s playwrights, is based in Utah.) Jensen’s explicit references to historical events place the characters in a clear social context, and the subject matter alone is politically charged, especially as reproductive freedom and maternal ambivalence remain taboo subjects.

Still, the most memorable aspect of P.G. Anon is the production’s unique format, which allows the actors and creative team room to play and explore. Without a set, lighting or costumes, Sound Designer and Director Cheryl Ann Cluff and Sound Engineer David Evanoff are integral to the production. The pair included clever, simple production details: scene transitions are marked with a rhythmically ticking clock; interstitial news alerts interrupt and comment on the plot; sound effects like revving car engines mark changes in setting. The cast, most of whom are Plan-B regulars, have an added challenge relying on only their voices. (A four-person ensemble—Latoya Cameron, Lily Hye Soo Dixon, Tamara Howell and Tracie Merrill—plays characters both named and unnamed in all three acts.) Even with these limitations, the performances still make an impact. Shoell is a particular standout, bringing an authentic vulnerability to her role as a teenager searching for guidance after an unplanned pregnancy. Pandemic-inspired creativity may have changed how audiences experience Plan-B, but this hybrid of audio and theater proves that the company’s strengths—local detail, diverse voices and intimate storytelling—are still intact.

Read more about arts and entertainment in Utah here. P.G. Anon is streaming through Sunday, March 7 on Plan-B’s website.