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We Need Art to Survive
Welcome to the Mercury’s 2026 Spring Arts preview!
5
TABLE OF CONTENTS The Trash Report . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 Arts trash!
Lloyd Center Mall: Save or Raze? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .9 The hub’s growing community wants some say in its future.
I
t was staff writer Lindsay Costello who inspired this issue’s theme. During a new year discussion about our team’s goals, she mentioned: “More and more, I am realizing that we need art to survive.” The phrase seemed deeply relevant, working in two ways: We need art to survive for our personal enrichment and enjoyment. We need art to survive for its own longevity, so it can be around for us and those who come after us. 2025 was difficult for everyone— seriously, show me whose life has been made easier by the second Trump presidency; even his allies are anxiety-sweating through their sheets—but the chaos of sudden, massive cuts to National Endowment for the Arts and other government programs shook arts and culture institutions who had come to rely on and take pride in that funding. “Once you hit that high standard, it’s a signal to other funders that you’ve made it,” Brian Weaver, artistic director at Portland Playhouse, told the Mercury for a piece in this guide. His theater learned their grant was cancelled on opening night of a show. An even larger theater, Portland Center Stage (PCS), is still trying to close the gap, trying to raise $9 million by June. This spring, both Playhouse and PCS will team up to stage a Tony-nominated Broadway show which reimagines Hamlet— Shakespere’s sulky prince of Denmark— as a queer, Black southern kid at a backyard cookout. Fat Ham is a test to see if this sort of collaboration can prove profitable for both companies and if audiences can accept endings that celebrate joy over tragedy. Because we need art to survive. Look into the gaze of the child on the cover of this issue. She’s proud. She’s hopeful. She’s getting a little bored with standing in first position. It’s Mercury reporter Taylor Griggs at age three! With her permission, we seized upon this photo for its truly monumental vibes.
NEA Chaos—One Year Later . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 Griggs is an incisive journalist, but there’s an undeniably creative side to her, too. In her youth, she tried out different performing arts ( ballet was short-lived) and gravitated towards those that involved singing with others. “I think there’s something particularly special and meaningful about creating art with other people,” Griggs said. That’s one of the things that drew her to profile a group of graphic designers working to open a downtown design library called Volumes. News editor Courtney Vaughn also contributed to the issue, writing up a profile of queer wrestling variety show House of Danger. Asked about her love for the sport, she said: “Pro wrestling isn’t a typical sport. In the eyes of many non-enthusiasts, it’s not even a sport, but for those who watch and participate, it crosses the athletic threshold into something that’s equal parts physical, theatrical, and magical.” It‘s ordinary enough for those on the culture team to profess our devotion to the local arts scene— it is our bread and butter. So to have the news team join this spring charge felt aligned with what we’re trying to put down. Art is an avenue to joy, conte m p l at i o n , teamwork, and much more. You don’t have to have an art focus to benefit. Reporter Jeremiah Hayden saw something interesting in the book he reviewed for this issue. When we handed him Kevin Sampsell’s new n ove l — s u r p r i s i n g l y, o n l y Sampsell’s second—we had no clue we were handing our homelessness and housing reporter a work he would hail for its refreshing, intentional view of street life. “Sampsell’s book, like much of the literature I love, serves as a place to challenge common sense and look at the world through fresh eyes,” Hayden noted. “Is that not what art is supposed to do?” Suzette Smith, Mercury Arts & Culture Editor
Five local arts organizations on coping with cancelled National Endowment for the Arts funding.
Art Snack . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 News bites from Portland’s arts and culture scene.
David Hockney Sees the World Backward . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 Portlander Art Museum visitors can trace the renowned artist’s evolution.
Jessie Rose Vala Mourns in Neon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 A local sculptor channels her feelings of ecological grief into The Pollinators.
What IF? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 Cooley Gallery unites three artists, including a former nun.
Big Walk Made Me Dizzy, and I’d Go Again! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 Panic invites fans to play the new video game in its own offices.
Find Your Passion for Graphic Design at Volumes . . . . . . . . 19 This isn’t a library where you have to be quiet.
From the Mouths of Baby in the Night . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 Kevin Sampsell’s new novel shows the world through the eyes of a toddler.
Ryan Gosling Sci-Fi and Other Spring Films to Watch . . . . . 21 Movies that rush in like a lion and out like Sheep Detectives.
Fat Ham Serves Up a Spin on Shakespeare . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 The Pulitzer Prize-winning play is a Black and queer spin on Hamlet.
A Mirror Shines Like a Kaleidoscope . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25 Sam Holcroft poses questions about making art under authoritarianism.
Queer Joy in the House of Danger . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .27 This wrestling circuit is a fusion of comedy, drag, and genderfluid fun.
The 2026 Geniuses of Comedy—Announced! . . . . . . . . . . . 28 Ten of Portland’s funniest stand-up talents!
Third Angle Recorded 1000 Airplanes on the Roof . . . . . . . . 31 It’s the first ever complete recording of Phillip Glass’ science-fi music drama.
Breakfast in a Bookshop . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32 A low-key obsession with Literary Arts Cafe revealed.
The Fault in Our Stars . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33 The only horoscopes column in the universe.
Do This, Do That Spring! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34 Shows, readings, music, and more!
Savage Love . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38 Quickies.
Artsy Fartsy Fun Page . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
6 THE MERCURY’S SPRING ARTS ISSUE
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THE TRASH REPORT
G
BY ELINOR JONES
ARTS TRASH
setting. Apparently the arrest
powerful. Imagine the two of them catching you doing something bad and staring you up and down. What if one of them raised an eyebrow? What if they both did? What if both of them raised both eyebrows? Honestly, I’d rather set myself on fire. Unrelated, but I’m going to put it right here—some rich guy wants to date Nicole Kidman now that she’s single again. Yeah, I bet he Nicole does! But so what? Nicole Kidman VI TT Y Kidman doesn’t need to date a T OR ET IO -G ZUN rich man! If there is anyone who I N O C E L OT TO conflicted—there is some innate doesn’t need to date a crusty, entitled tribalism where I feel pride in my rich man, it’s Nicole Kidman. She is a stunc o u n t r y p e o p l e , b u t a l s o I h a v e a ning divorced woman who, by the way, is p e n d i n g a p p l i cat i o n fo r Ca n a d i a n already rich. She needs to date a hot man. A citizenship, and I want them to be my young, hot idiot, who could crush countrypeople, and I worry that a soda can in his armpit. if I don’t mourn their loss I Give this woman a Smith w i l l j i n x my a p p l i cat i o n . Jerrod or GTFO. Also, I just completed my second watch-through of Heated Rivalry and Canadian hockey is my passion.
ood day, arts babies! Welcome to the happened a while ago, but it was only just reported on. I Trash Report: Arts Trash. I am your kind of assumed Addison Rae got famous by having dumpster docent, Elinor Jones, kicking v e n t u r e c a p i t a l i s t parents who bought her off this high-brow edition with some Instagram followers, but that is not the case low-brow commentary. Would you like at all—her dad is a flasher in a muscle tee to gossip with me? If not, simply turn the page; named Monty Lopez. S h e i s m u c h m o re there’s plenty to read in this FREE news maga- charming now. zine that you may enjoy if you’re too good for this Winter Excellence section, which again, was provided to you at no Team USA beat Canada in hockey for the first t i m e s i n c e 1 9 8 0, a n d I ’m cost. But if yes, read on! We’ll have fun. :)
The Royal Treatment
from his four weddings, and it ain’t him—but nice try. Imagine if Tony The jobless old man formerly known Hawk was actually in the as Prince Andrew was arrested Epstein files though? Our last week for “misconduct unproblematic wheely in public office” stemming king? I’d rather see Mr. from his connection to famed pedophile and Rogers’ name in there. Trump’s longtime good friend, Jeffrey Epstein. Andrew is the first royal to be arrested in f o u r c e n t u r i e s , and not only that, he Lots of white men was arrested on his up to no good these birthday! You know days! I mean, that’s that an adult man who not shocking, but the fact they’re facing still expected to be called Prince consequences is. Actor a “Prince” definitely still Andrew celebrated his birthday, and Shia LaBeouf was arrested CH TY R IS asked the guys at jail if they’d at a bar in New Orleans during JAC KS O N - G ET hurry up with his mug shot so he Mardi Gras for being a belligerent could be home in time for cake and pres- asshole, trying to get into bars without ents. Or if this would be delayed, perhaps a shirt on or any money, trying to be a they could ring his staff, and have them celebrity bartender without being asked, bring his presents down to the nick? fighting, and calling people the F word. While Andrew is the only person to be He was quoted as saying: “those f——-s arrested due to being named in the files put me in jail. I’m a Catholic.” And while so far, there has been other fallout. For Mardi Gras is supposed to be about example, Jimmy Fallon had to back out getting out one’s party wiggles before Lent, you can’t just go around of the pasta sauce collab with friend Tommy Mottola because punching people and claiming Mottola’s name appeared Catholicism like a literal some 600 times in the get-out-of-jail free card. Epstein files. Oh no! Not If it functioned as a real the Jimmy Fallon and Purge we’d see a lot Tommy Mottola pasta more bank robberies sauce collab—the thing in February. There are that this world needed some parameters, my guy. And finally on this, most!!!!!!!!!!!! Shia the Page Six article says Another tidbit from the LaBeouf E OR LE IC AN FF S PA O Shia looks “glum” in his mug Epstein files: Someone tried to S RISH SHERI F F loop in American skateboarding shot, but I actually think he looks treasure Tony Hawk, and he came back great; people can get far in this world and said “no ma’am, you do not come for with symmetrical faces. me.” His name was referenced for allegedly Elsewhere in the Louisiana, the father of having held a wedding on Epstein’s island, pop star and influencer Addison Rae was but Hawk brought forward all the receipts arrested for exposing himself in a public
Other Men Being Arrested
Local Trash
Cardi B played a show at the Moda Center last week This Olympics has and afterwards she gone by so quickly! went on Instagram I’ve barely gotten to and said we were her cover it. In brief, my loudest show yet, and favorite things that she was not familiar happened: Alysa Liu’s gorgeous comeback with our game. LOL. Okay, Alysa and gold medal win. The what’s funny about this is I Liu Olympians used up all the saw a blurb about her talking ZU Y NIN TT O C E L OT TO - G E condoms in three days due to about Portland on Instagram and I made a mental note to mention it here, “higher than anticipated demand.” But most of all, the Norwegian biathlete who and I clocked it as her thinking that we confessed to cheating on his girlfriend in a were “cool.” But when I went back to it, post-event interview in hopes of winning she did not say we were “cool,” she said her back. LOL. She 100 percent cooked up we were “loud” which is an important this plan over drinks with her girlfriends distinction. She was either compliand then told you she’d maybe think about menting us or negging us, and either way, taking you back if you made some sort of please and thank you. grand gesture on television, because she The Quad God Ilia Malinin posted wanted you to embarrass yourself because in support of saving the Lloyd Center she hates you and then you did it. She is not ice rink. Okay, well, then come over here and start doing back flips on it. Posting taking you back. Dumbass. isn’t enough. A peacock doesn’t charm a hen without showing off his beautiful feathers, after all. Pearl Jam’s Eddie Vedder recently Thank you for gossiping with me, and I revealed on a podcast that he relapsed hope you enjoy the rest of this newspaper. into smoking ciggies early in Covid and then his buddy Martin Short bullied him Artfully, into quitting. Martin Short could probably quip anyone out of just about any habit, I’d think. And that he’s dating Meryl Streep now just makes him even more
Bullying Works!
8 THE MERCURY’S SPRING ARTS ISSUE
MARCH 2026
9
Should We Save Lloyd?
The growing community taking hold in the mall wants to have some say in its future. BY JOE STRECKERT
T
his might be the last year for Lloyd the Portland Design Commission dis- plans should be based on current use and one or more seasonal ice rinks in the Center. There’s a plan for what’s cussed Urban Renaissance’s plan for the sentiment rather than public opinion from future, but there’s no guarantee. And Save next, but a community that’s grown property. The developer’s presentation of years ago. Lloyd advocates are quick to point out in the mall in recent years isn’t the plan took about 30 minutes. It was fol“I feel like a lot of the opportunities for that seasonal ice rinks are very different happy with it or the process of lowed by three hours of public comment. input at the city level are almost after-the- from anything year-round. deciding Lloyd Center’s future. Every member of the public who spoke fact,” says James Lucas Jones, the owner of Members of the Save Lloyd movement Urban Renaissance, the real estate was there to oppose the plan. Brickdiculous Shop & Gallery, a store that say they’re not opposed to new developd e ve l o p m e n t g r o u p ment. Henderson that partly owns the is open to knocking mall, has a vision for down structures like empty anchor what comes after demstores or unused olition. The group’s parking lots for Lloyd Center Central new construction, City Master Plan wipes but wants to keep the venerable mall enough of the mall from the map in favor so existing tenants, of development that will be familiar to most events, and commuPortlanders: an internities aren’t entirely secting street grid with pushed out. green space and mixedLikewise, business owners curused architecture. rently at Lloyd One of the plan’s Center aren’t naive central points is that about low rents Lloyd Center is “inward persisting forever, facing ” and “auto-oriregardless of when ented.” The current or if a wrecking ball structure interrupts the street grid and continuarrives. “I think a lot ity of the neighborhood, of us would be willand shows the outside ing to pay more,” says world massive concrete Lambi. “With what walls instead of humanwe’re paying now the scaled shops and apartmall isn’t financially ments. Future developsustainable.” Lucas ment would potentially Jones adds, “I think change that, replacing everyone in the mall is also going to be the Lloyd Center “superPDX INSECTARIUM paying much higher block” with a more con- Love Bugs was a Valentine’s Day bug-themed drag show, the sort of thing you could only have at the mall. rents elsewhere.” ventional grid. However, many of the people and busiAccording to Matt Henderson, the owner specializes in Lego toys. According to Lucas He notes that solutions like graduated nesses who have made Lloyd Center their of Virtua Gallery and one of the founders Jones, the meeting with the design commis- rents or annual applications for incubator workplace and/or third place are not of Save Lloyd, Urban Renaissance’s char- sion “felt like a train that was already mov- spaces haven’t been available to tenants, acterization of the mall as underused is ing.… It didn’t feel like an opportunity for but cites them as a potential way for the happy with the plan. The Save Lloyd movement is a coali- unfair. He notes that their data about mall the public to comment on it. It felt like an mall to raise revenue. tion of business owners and fans of the use and public opinion about the mall was opportunity to be placated.” A representative from Portland’s Permall who’ve turned the retail space into a taken when Lloyd Center was at what he “There are so many smart people on the mitting and Development bureau stressed kind of community center, one that hosts calls “a historic low point.” Henderson says team. That they can’t find a way to preserve that, while the city’s Design Commission events like Beyblade tournaments, mall any of it seems preposterous to me,” Lucas is tasked with making a decision on the walking, and bug-themed drag shows. elements it has authority over within Jones added. According to Daylynn Lambi, the direcA big sticking point for the Save Lloyd the plan, the board doesn’t decide demfolks: the lack of year-round ice rink in olitions or whether features like the tor of ILYouth2, a youth arts program, resistance to demolition grew out of an the proposed plan. “Oregon is an ice des- skating rink will persist into the future. initiative for businesses to all be open ert,” says Krista Catwood, co-creator and Its reviews are limited to matters listed at the same time at least one day of the leader of the Food Court 5000, a weekly in Portland’s zoning code that consider week. That paved a way for grassroots, retro mall-walking group that gained things like infrastructure, transportation, national attention and even landed Cat- and the capacity for future development. horizontal community organizing, which then became a movement to save the mall. that public sentiment, as well as usage of wood an appearance on The Kelly Clark- It doesn’t directly decide which buildings Save Lloyd supporters have collected the space, has changed quite a bit. The son Show last fall. According to Catwood, rise and which fall. signatures, encouraged community mall is much more active than it was when there are only five ice rinks in the region. members to contact elected officials, and Urban Renaissance conducted research. Urban Renaissance’s plans include the We’ll have more on this story as it unfolds— showed up in force on February 4, when According to Henderson, any development potential for future developers to install read it at portlandmercury.com.
Every member of the public who spoke was there to oppose the plan.
10 THE MERCURY’S SPRING ARTS ISSUE
MARCH 2026
11
NEA Cuts: One Year Later
Five local arts organizations on coping with the chaos of cancelled National Endowment for the Arts grants. BY ABE ASHER ILLUSTRATION BY ALYSSA ALARCÓN SANTO
W
hen Donald Trump reassumed the presidency in January of 2025, arts organizations around the country anticipated changes at the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA)—particularly those the president accused of having a “woke agenda.” But they were not prepared for the chaos that would quickly develop. Last spring, numerous organizations, including in Portland, received emails stating that their NEA grants—provisionallly approved before Trump took office—were canceled. Portland Playhouse, a longtime recipient of NEA money, learned about the fate of its grant on opening night of its spring show, John Turner’s Come and Gone. Now, nearly a year later, a wide array of Portland theaters, museums, and dance companies are trying to get by without NEA support they’d counted on for years, amid a broader federal decline in support for the arts. Here’s a look at how several of them are navigating the current landscape.
Portland Playhouse
Prior to last year’s opening night grant cancellation, Portland Playhouse had received NEA funding for ten consecutive years—a feat that served as a clear signal of the theater’s quality, said artistic director Brian Weaver. “Ten years ago when we got our first NEA grant, it was a really big deal—and it leads to other funding, because once you hit that high standard, it’s a signal to other funders that you’ve made it,” Weaver said. Weaver said the theater is preparing another grant application this year and is attempting to tailor it to fit the NEA’s new, nationalistic priorities—all while staying true to a vision that is “intentionally antiracist.” In the meantime, the theater is counting largely on individual donations to fill the gap left by the NEA and a decrease in state funding.
Artists Repertory Theatre
Aiyana Cunningham, managing director of Artists Repertory Theatre (ART), was at a conference in Minneapolis last spring when news began landing in her colleagues’ inboxes that their NEA grants would not be paid—an experience she called “chilling.” ART itself did not have an NEA grant canceled, but the theater had been a consistent recipient of NEA funding before
that—recieving eight grants between 2007 and 2022. Now, however, the days of that kind of support appear over. Cunningham said the loss of NEA funding is just one piece of a larger problem facing the city. “If Portland wants to continue to have this identity as a very rich cultural creative DIY landscape, our leaders need to step up and try to find a way to fund the arts better here,” she said. “Collectively, we need to find a way to do that.”
Portland Center Stage
Like many other arts organizations in the city, Portland Center Stage (PCS) had an NEA grant canceled last spring. That did not come as a shock. The real shock came when, several months ago, the theater received word that the NEA had approved a separate grant application of theirs—$35,000 to support a new play festival celebrating, as luck would have it, LGBTQ+ playwrights. But Edwina Kane, director of development, said the theater isn’t counting on any future NEA grants—especially given the departure of the NEA program officer they previously worked closely with.
PCS has a larger operating budget than many other local arts organizations and has received significant support from the city and state. Still, they’ve had to make cuts to staff hours and the size of a production even as they’ve raised nearly $7 million as part of an emergency fundraising campaign. “We’ve cut back as far as we can until we hit the point of diminishing returns,” Kane said.
Portland Institute for Contemporary Art
Each September, Portland Institute for Contemporary Art (PICA) hosts its TimeBased Art Festival—often with NEA support. The agency had initially been approved for a $30,000 grant for last year’s showcase, but it was, like many others, canceled. “The award was for our flagship program, and with our modest organizational budget, the effect was felt instantly,” said Reuben Roqueñi, PICA’s executive director. The City of Portland awarded PICA a grant of $10,000 following the NEA cancellations, but the organization nevertheless had to scale the festival back and ulti-
mately did not invite a larger company that was set to participate. PICA’s application to the NEA for this year’s Time-Based Art Festival was rejected.
Oregon Humanities
As much as cuts in NEA funding have hurt local arts organizations, the situation facing Oregon Humanities last spring was even more dire: Oregon Humanities received 40 percent of its annual operating budget from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), making the abrupt elimination of that funding a crisis. “Unlike NEA, where they had some kind of process, they just ended everything,” Ben Waterhouse, the communications director and editor of Oregon Humanities magazine, said. “That meant we laid off four staff, we had everyone working reduced hours for a while, [and] we had to scramble to find other funding sources.” Oregon Humanities received help from organizations like the Mellon Foundation and is hopeful a lawsuit will help restore its NEH funding in the near future, but nevertheless had to cancel its annual public program grants and remains in operation with a reduced staff. ■
12 THE MERCURY’S SPRING ARTS ISSUE
Art Snack
News bites from Portland’s arts and culture scene. BY SUZETTE SMITH
I
t’s spring, and all the theater companies are letting us know what they’ll be showing in the fall and next year. Why do they do that? One, budgeting. Two, it encourages people to buy season tickets. And I never understood the idea behind season tickets until someone pointed out that if you can form a buffer of friends, you don’t have to sit next to someone annoying at the theater. Now I’m looking to assemble a ragtag group of misfits, but I need someone else to organize it, and I want to sit on the aisle. Sometimes I need a snack. So let’s snack!
Your 2027 Plans
Broadway Portland’s season announcement is out, and in 2026-2027 it’s bringing Alicia Keys’ Hell’s Kitchen, Hadestown, and The Outsiders, among other shows— including one franchise people fall on a spectrum of feelings about: from wizard robe in the closet to she who shall not be named. Oregon Symphony also dropped their list—without one single Liszt. That was a classical music joke! In all seriousness, I’m assembling a spacenerd team of people who like aura for Holst’s The Planets and Ravel’s Boléro.
Siren Song
In February, Portland Center Stage announced the cast of its current production, Lizard Boy, and who is that in the role of Siren? Are we so fortunate to see/hear local music royalty Lo Steele perform “Terrible Ride”? Rounding out the three-person cast are Benjamin Tissell (we loved him in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?) and Milo Marami who served as understudy to the show’s creator Justin Huertas. For the uninitiated, indie rock musical Lizard Boy debuted at Seattle Repertory Theatre in 2015. The story takes place in a fictional Seattle, 20 years out from a dragon attack. And that dragon crawled out of Mount St. Helens, so it feels like Portland has a little skin in the game. What’s not to love here? The songs are good, the story is gay, and this cast is very promising.
Between Two Nudes
Every year, nudists, the nude-at-heart, and the nude-curious all eagerly await the World Naked Bike Ride date announcement. Well, this year there are two. And there were two big n’ naked Portland-located bike rides last year, too. Portland World Naked Bike Ride—the originals, celebrating 22 big annual nude rides in 2026— announced Saturday, July 25th as their big buff date. The newer group, dis-
World Naked Bike Ride Portland spear-headed the popular Emergency World Naked Bike Ride in October 2025. tinguished by putting Portland at the end of their name, will hold a ride on Saturday, August 8. Both rides are sizable and may shut down traffic for blocks in their wake, as both are not only sweet-cheeked exhibitionism but protests against oil dependency and celebrations of body positivity. The OG Portland World Naked Bike Ride (IG: pdxwnbr) is arguably the summer’s massive ride, but World Naked Bike Ride Portland (IG: worldnakedbikerideportland) spear-headed the popular Emergency World Naked Bike Ride in October 2025, so they may now have a more substantial draw. Follow either ride for updates on starting spot and time.
Owner Foucault’s
In a shocking twist, Mother Foucault’s Bookshop will buy its dang building after all (!)—through its newish literary nonprofit L’École Buissonnière. A February release from the group said purchase of Nathaniel West Building No. 1 “was made possible by the generous support of donors and the Portland literary community.” When we wrote about the attempt in July, the shop’s owner Craig Florence (also L’École Buissonnière board chair) said he had until the fall to raise $300,000 for a downpayment. The GoFundMe
campaign shot to $10,000, then seemed to stall. However, for the last few months, donations trickled in—including several anonymous contributions in the thousands. And now a readjusted goal of $55,000 seems close at hand. A L’École Buissonnière representative said most donations were raised offline, but that the full downpayment had been secured. The group plans to host programming on the building’s third floor. Art studios and gallery space Society—which made Lindsay Costello’s year-end art show list—are already in place on the second level.
Local Laurels
Portland author Renée Watson won the Newbery Medal for her 2025 book All the Blues in the Sky, which tells the story of a teenager grieving the death of a close friend. Watson expressed gratitude to “every anchor that has supported me as I navigated my own grief these past few years. What a profound gift to love someone enough to grieve them. What a deep comfort to have been loved…. There is much to rage against and also, there is so much to celebrate.”
Cooking with Class
Local food aid charity Feed the Mass just
ELAYNA YUSSEN
bought the former Portland Airbnb headquarters—the historic Blagen Block building located next door to the White Stag Building. At an open house in February, we saw not only how whimsically Airbnb had been living, but the turnkey spaces that Feed the Mass plans to fill with co-working offices and room rentals for mission-aligned organizations, especially smaller local nonprofits. That’s the initial plan to use the space, but in mid-March, expect the addition of cooking classes to the building ’s programming. This is actually a return to the vision founder Jacobsen Valentine began with, as Feed the Mass started out to provide education around cooking to support health, community, and self esteem. “This building is here so young people can learn,” Valentine said, “so parents can learn, so folks changing careers can learn, so neighbors can learn: how to cook, how to build, and how to start again.” A major goal of the Nourish building is a first floor market where fresh produce and ready-to-go meals will be available for purchase. The team is pushing to have that up and running by the end of summer. There’s even more art and culture news to snack on at portlandmercury.com
MARCH 2026
13
Changeling
For a limited time, Portlanders can trace David Hockney’s evolution across 60 years of artworks. BY LINDSAY COSTELLO
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avid sees the world backward,” says Doug Roberts, a Los Angeles art dealer and longtime friend of David Hockney. Roberts was appearing on a panel about the artist, as part of Portland Art Museum’s (PAM) new exhibition tracing 60 years of Hockney’s work. He meant it as praise. Hockney, whose sunny California scenes somehow simmer with loneliness, has built a career on challenging how we see. He embraces new artistic technologies, elevates everyday objects, and believes that perspective isn’t fixed in a work of art—actually, it begins with you, the viewer. Walk into David Hockney: Works from the Collections of Jordan D. Schnitzer and His Family Foundation and you’ll notice that challenge. The space behaves like a Hockney composition, playful and a little disorienting. Brilliant blue walls break up the exhibition rooms, installed at unexpected angles and punctured with cutout apertures, like camera viewfinders. David Hockney occupies two museum levels; it’s an expanded version of a touring show organized by the Honolulu Museum of Art, and compiles more than 200 Hockney pieces pulled from Schnitzer’s holdings. The show spans six decades of Hockney’s career, showing special attention to his print works and technological experiments. You’ll see all of the subjects that feel quintessentially Hockney, but this exhibition demonstrates that his greatest throughline isn’t pools, or portraits, or even California light. It’s his ability to adapt. The 88-year-old artist—and yes, he’s still working—approaches every new tool with fresh curiosity. Xeroxed prints, Polaroid snapshots, and iPad drawings share the stage with lithographs and etchings. The exhibition begins upstairs where a visual timeline traces Hockney’s youth in a Yorkshire mill town, his graduation from the Royal College of Art, and his move to Los Angeles in the ’60s, up through last year’s major retrospective at the Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris. Early etchings and aquatints line the walls alongside his theater designs and eerie, Grimm fairy tale-inspired illustrations. A standout from this period is Hockney’s
“Illustrations for Fourteen Poems from C.P Cavafy” (1966-67), inspired by the work of the lesser-known Greek poet, whose verses speak frankly of queer love. Hockney released the series—which depicts tender, full-frontal male nudity—in the wake of Britain’s ’67 decriminalization of homosexuality. The etchings forecasted a recurring theme for Hockney: loneliness tangled with intimacy and desire. On the show’s lower level we explore
“Art endures because humans endure.” Hockney’s dualities—presence and solitude, tradition and machine. We sense the grief of his losses; in the ’80s and ’90s, the artist lost several friends to AIDS and other friends to cancer. His everyday subjects—empty chairs, an ashtray, a Panama hat—carry a softened mourning. Installed alongside his 1998 dachshund etchings, which fill an entire wall, the viewer sees an
cameras mounted to Hockney’s Jeep. Seams are visible, and each frame is slightly off-kilter. “My Mother, Los Angeles, Dec. ’82” (1982) represents one of Hockney’s most enduring experiments. During this period, he began assembling what he calls “photo joiners,” arranging dozens of snapshots in an active composition that replicates how the eye might experience a portrait sitter. The practice evolved into what Hockney calls “photographic drawings,” complex digital compositions built of hundreds or thousands of images—several of which are also on view in this show, including “Perspective Should Be Reversed” (2014). The idea of reversed perspective remains Hockney’s central thesis. Put simply, you are the vanishing point. Rather than gazing toward a distant horizon, Hockney’s goal is that your eye moves through the image the way it moves through space. To this end, he has embraced technology as a tool, but it’s hard to travel through an exhibit of Hockney’s continued adaptations and not wonder what the artist thinks of AI-generated work. Will he embrace it as well? L.A. Louver gallery director © DAVID HOCKNEY Kimberly Davis, speaking on the panel, artist seeking domestic tenderness. Elsewhere, the exhibition remains feels he’d be against it. “I can’t imagine defined by his experimentation. David David would be happy with AI,” she said. Hockney includes many of the artist’s more “His eye, hand, and heart are still in his art.” recent iPad drawings, including those creIt’s true. Hockney’s sense of composition ated in Yosemite in 2010. The composi- and color feels totally singular, impossible tions explode with scribbled skies, violet to replicate. “Technology has always concliffs, and yellow halos of foliage. Hock- tributed to art,” he has notably said. “The ney’s electric green landscapes look freshly brush is a piece of technology, isn’t it? But tools don’t make pictures. People have to rained upon. In the PAM sculpture court, several make them.” iPads are installed for viewers to create Art endures because humans endure, their own compositions. It could come off and for Hockney, technology represents a as product placement but it’s quite earnest. guiding ethos of open-mindedness held in The iPad’s glowing screen has allowed tandem with precision. If he sees the world Hockney to draw at any hour; his prints are backward, maybe it’s just that he’s lookconstrained only by the width of a large for- ing more carefully. In this exhibition, the mat printer. viewer is asked to do the same. Some of the exhibit feels a little mischievous, like a refusal of contemporary min- David Hockney: Works from the Collecimalism. On the lower level, a collection tions of Jordan D. Schnitzer and His Famof lo-fi photocopied prints hang in ornate ily Foundation is on display at the Portframes. Similarly, Hockney’s nine-screen land Art Museum, 1219 SW Park, through video installation “Woldgate Woods, Win- Sun July 26, included with general admister” (2010) stitches together a moving col- sion, hours and more info at portlandartlage of a Yorkshire landscape, made from museum.org.
14 THE MERCURY’S SPRING ARTS ISSUE
Neon and Natural
Jessie Rose Vala channels her feelings of ecological grief into The Pollinators. BY MELISSA LOCKER
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hen you walk into Jessie Rose from endangered orchids and insects to the Vala’s show at Chefas Proj- treatment of women. “I’ve always been natects, you’ll quickly realize: urally more figurative in the work I make, These aren’t your average and that’s always been female characters or ceramics. Instead of raku female-like hybridity,” she says. “While I’m fired pots or pastel hand-thrown vases, not academic, and I don’t know everything Vala’s work transforms clay into mission about eco-feminism, I think statements about the state of the world. Combining sculptural ceramics with neon and metallics, Vala’s pieces feel chimeric, bringing in elements of earth, animal, and the human form to deliver a discourse on humanity’s disruption of the natural world with a side of myth-making. In short, it’s really fucking cool. “The show is called The Pollinators,” she explains from her studio in the woods outside Eugene. Much of the work draws from her interest in nature, and the pieces in the show reflect on the important work of the planet’s endangered pollinators—but there’s also a read of them as hybrid creatures JESSIE ROSE VALA with some aspects of the female “The Mutualism of Dendrophylax Lindenii” face and form. “They’re kind of strange and a little monolithic,” Vala says. there are just core things about how we “They are kind of moth-like and plant-like treat women and children that are shitty. and relate to endangered species. But they How we treat other animals in our environalso have neon coming out of their eyes.” ment is shitty, and we are all caught up in Vala grew up with an appreciation for this really poor way of being and thinking.” the lush greenery and towering trees of That sense of loss and injustice courses the Pacific Northwest. Her father was a through Vala’s work. “There’s so much grief landscape architect with an activist bent, in the world,” she says, “particularly with the loss of our ecologies. There is so much grief, and in our culture, I feel like there’s not that much space for it. With grief, the only way to get to the other side is to walk into it and fully be there. That’s when there can be a deepening and enriching growth.” So with The Pollinators, Vala has channeled that grief into and through her hands, creating gloriously hybrid shapes of plants, femme forms, and animal bodies that feel taking her to protests seeking to protect natural while looking wholly unnatural. old-growth forests. It’s clear this left an The result isn’t sorrowful, but someimpact, as Vala’s work meditates on the how triumphant—and also kind of metal. natural world and what humans have “They are metal,” Vala says, laughing, “but done to it. the glazes also just have a lot of metallics “I feel like there’s always a through- in them.” line in my work of being really concerned over our current system of capitalism, our The Pollinators shows at Chefas Projects, extractive economy, and the degradation 134 SE Taylor, Suite 203, through Sat that happens to our planet and our bodies,” April 4, gallery hours and more info at she explains. That throughline can lead stephaniechefas.com.
“They are kind of moth-like and plantlike. But they also have neon coming out of their eyes.”
MARCH 2026
What IF?
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Cooley Gallery unites three artists, including a former nun. BY LINDSAY COSTELLO
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hat does it mean to write in space? At Reed College’s Cooley Gallery, new director and curator Derek Franklin thinks about it, bringing together three eloquent artists who take language into form. IF pairs serigraphs by Sister Corita Kent, a Roman Catholic nun who eventually left the order to devote herself fully to anti-war, pro-love Pop art, with sculptures by key Northwest School figure and longtime Portlander Hilda Morris. Kristan Kennedy, Portland Institute for Contemporary Art’s artistic director and curator of visual art, rounds out the show as its sole living artist. Upon entry, Kent’s “IF” (1965) lures the eye upward. The serigraph—a silkscreen print in fine art parlance—hangs high on the wall with a subtle vulnerability. Two orange letters hover toward the composition’s top edge, as if pushing to transcend the picture plane. A feeling of possibility emerges through the conjunction and its visual form. Morris’ sculptures feel a little vulnerable, too. She worked in cement and metals, and pieces like “Centaur’s Laugh” resemble scar tissue stretched over bony armatures. Her forms read as letter-like—“Morris does not write so much as extend the act of writing into air,” the exhibition statement suggests. Yet “Centaur’s Laugh” also registers as a delicate, continual line of movement, gestures mapped and frozen in space. Bleached, knotted, inked, and slashed, Kennedy’s 2017 textile works drape from dark nails, overlapping to cover an entire wall. The linen hangings are visual palimpsests, telling layered stories of artistic pro-
cess. They also provide the show’s conceptual scaffolding, holding Kent’s direct prayers and Morris’ metal gestures in a soft, colorful balance. Another Kennedy work, “Floor Thing” (2016), stretches across the gallery floor, dyed, sprayed, and mysteriously stained. The piece feels like the aftermath of a studio session; Kennedy’s textiles are sites of action and resolved works all at once. An unattributed leather pouch and a handful of rocks rest atop “Floor Thing” like a protective amulet. Curiously, wide sections of gallery walls are left empty, while several of Kent’s more text-heavy pieces are installed behind a desk in the lobby. The works pull from devotional and pop culture worlds, borrowing lines from 17th-century metaphysical poet Richard Crashaw, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and A Boy Named Charlie Brown. “The text in that one is really great,” the gallery attendant said as I ducked behind the desk to look at Kent’s “help or something ” (1967) more closely. They were right. The piece transcribes poet Gerald Huckaby’s “The Rumored Lovechild,” but its most emphatic proclamations—“Help!... OR SOMETHING” in wavering red, “I LOVE” in bold serif down one side— embody the show’s central ethos. If art is an act of address, or maybe even prayer, then the artist’s work is to reach past themselves—to stretch, gather, and strain toward connection. IF is on view at Reed College’s Cooley Gallery, 3203 SE Woodstock, ThursSun 12-5 pm through May 17, FREE, reed.edu/cooley.
Installation view, IF at Reed College’s Cooley Gallery.
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COURTESY OF COOLEY GALLERY
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16 THE MERCURY’S SPRING ARTS ISSUE
MARCH 2026
17
Panic Invites Players for a Big Walk While we await the release of House House’s new video game, you can always go play it in Portland. BY SUZETTE SMITH
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ig Walk made me motion sick, but I want to play it again. The new video game invites players into an open world setting where they can talk to their friends, solve puzzles, explore, or—dare we say—kiki? We got a chance to demo the game at the Panic office in downtown Portland, and soon so can you. Starting March 9, Panic is inviting fans to come play it in their studios. You remember this game’s developers, House House, from their smash hit Untitled Goose Game (2019)—also published by Panic—wherein one plays as a mischievous goose with the power to “HONK” at and prank foolish townsfolk. The two games don’t have much in common in terms of visuals or play experience. Big Walk’s renderings are vibrantly colorful. The puzzles your avatar collaborates on have a playground modernism feel—bright, primary colors and rounded, soft edges—but the world surrounding them mimics idealized nature, with moving grasses, delicate trees, and glorious sunsets. All open world games are inevitably compared to Nintendo’s 2017 groundbreaking hit Breath of the Wild, but a similar feeling of awe was palpable when we exited the starting area and happened upon the valley we were about to explore. We did so at night, but were carrying pink light-up balls that lent the green grasses magical two-toned hues. Still, there’s mischief and humor present in the game. You’re not exactly pranking your friends (you could!), but you can pick up their avatars and carry them on your shoulders or dropkick them. The blobby little figures look like bi-ped ants walking upright, with their tri-section bodies and rounded noses that move and expand every time a player speaks. Talking is a major part of Big Walk. And the game’s proximity chat may be its defining feature. When your avatar walks away
“How do we get the City Council to play Big Walk?” from the others, your voice becomes quieter and vice versa. This means when you’re lost, you can really get lost. “It feels so awesome to find people again,” said Cabel Sasser, Panic co-founder and one of the hosts of our demo session. Finding a lost teammate was an experience I provided my demo-mates over and over
HOUSE HOUSE
Panic and House House sound excited to hear what players call these avatars. Our team called the ball object that one is holding (right) a nubbin. again, as I evidenced my tendency to wander off. It was difficult not to want to simply tromp off and explore the valley—described by Panic as an island, though we only saw one small area of it. Sasser estimated that the game contains at least ten to 15 hours of puzzles for groups of friends to unravel. Once that’s finished there isn’t a plan to add more islands or downloadable challenges. The experience is meant to be finite, which one might identify as something most Panic games have in common. Goose Game, Firewatch, Herdling—every Panic game I’ve played could be finished in about a weekend. It seems a little unlikely a group of friends could make plans to hang out for ten hours straight, so the idea seems to be that Big Walk should be played in a few sessions. Only the game’s host needs to remain the same from play to play, unless the group wants to start over. New players can join existing playthroughs, and Big Walk could even serve as a meet-up spot for those who want to chat and also do something with their hands. The challenges my team unraveled required all of us working together (think ropes course, but we never actually did a ropes course). Sasser said the obstacles scale with the number of players, and Big Walk can accommodate groups of any-
HOUSE HOUSE
where from two to 12. Idea alert: How do we get the City Council to play? Asked about the inevitability of Big Walk being used for team building endeavors, Sasser mused: “The goal was not additional, increased capitalism, but instead having quality time with your friends.” He then added, “I’ve joked about wanting to do [remote] meetings in Big Walk. I feel like that would be better in many ways—maybe harder to share a file, but more entertaining.” If anything, participants would have to stay engaged. An avatar abandoned falls asleep—as we found out when I left to walk around the office looking for Dramamine. The first person view of my avatar—no defined names given the blobs just yet, Panic hopes players will create lots of fun terms—
was probably the main thing that made me dizzy. It was potentially my own fault for jerking my vision around in circles, as I tried to see everything. Panic’s staff expanded my frame of view, and it helped immensely. It also helps to focus on the dot at the center of your screen, which players use to select. Further advice: Play in a lit space. Sit back from the screen. Motion seems a little smoother with keyboard and mouse. Panic plans to offer in-studio Big Walk sessions right up until the game finally hits computer and Playstation platforms, and since the release date has yet to be announced, that could be for some time. Grab three friends—or people you at least sort of know—and sign up to play Big Walk at bigwalk.game
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MARCH 2026
19
Speaking Volumes
Whether or not graphic design is your passion, there might be something for you at the Volumes Design Library. BY TAYLOR GRIGGS
MICHAEL ELLSWORTH
Volunteers at Volumes, left to right: Michael Ellsworth, Trish Chua, Marcus Praneetpolgrang, Jasmine, Amon Watson, Chase Travis, Quinn Richards.
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ichael Ellsworth wants to make the often-opaque world of graphic design accessible and collaborative. The co-founder and creative director of Seattle-born studio Civilization, Ellsworth has spent his career working to bring design to the masses. His next project, the Volumes Design Library, is a culmination of that work—and it opens in downtown Portland this spring. Ellsworth’s vision for the Volumes Design Library is simple: The library will host a large collection of design-focused books, magazines, and ephemera, running the gamut from graphic design to architecture to fashion. While visitors won’t be able to check out materials—many are rare— guests will be encouraged to take photos or use the library’s scanners. And Volumes isn’t a library where you have to be quiet. Guests will be encouraged to yap. “It’s going to be a little bit of a trial by fire to see how that all works. But I’m up for an experiment,” Ellsworth told the Mercury. Ellsworth moved to Portland in the aftermath of the pandemic, taking part in the remote work revolution. Prior to 2020’s shut down, Civilization hosted an annual lecture series, bringing designers from around the world to speak at the Seattle Public Library. Ellsworth got
involved with the Kemeny Lecture Series hosted by the Portland State University (PSU) graphic design program as a way to get out in the world and socialize with other creative, design-minded people. He sees the library as a continuation of that work. An avid collector of design books and magazines, Ellsworth said he has long dreamt of opening a dedicated design library. When he discovered an airy, window-lined space on the second floor of downtown Portland’s historic J.K. Gill Building was available, the pieces started to fall into place. Volumes will be located up a flight of stairs from Design Portland’s digs on the building’s main floor. While Design Portland was previously the umbrella organization in charge of the now-defunct Design Week Portland, the co-directors behind the urban design series City of Possibility recently assumed stewardship of it. Author, educator, and art director Briar Levit may be the most recognizable name on the team working to crack Volumes open for the public. A longstanding professor of graphic design at PSU and co-director of the People’s Graphic Design Archive, among her countless other projects, Levit says the People’s Archive will maintain dedicated space in Volumes, which sounds groundbreaking for the
“crowd-sourced virtual archive of inclusive graphic design history.” Levit said she thinks there’s value in browsing through materials in the physical world, which graphic designers don’t always get the opportunity to do. “A lot of folks don’t get to libraries as much anymore,” Levit told the Mercury. “It takes a focused, special space like this for people to remember that there’s a kismet that happens when you’re looking through the stacks that you just don’t get online.”
Volumes isn’t a library where you have to be quiet. Another Portland graphic designer working with Ellsworth, Quinn Richards, stressed the importance of escaping the online algorithm. “We increasingly live in a world that’s synthesized and algorithmic,” she said. “The hope with the library is that you can get exposed to inspiration that you maybe had no idea even existed.” The founders’ vision for Volumes is stridently inclusive and unpretentious. In Ellsworth’s view, Portland’s design community is open and collaborative—he called it an “all ships rise” culture—so it wouldn’t
make sense to make the library stuffy and self-important. “I really want this to be a place of accessibility for this stuff. A lot of these books are expensive, and people don’t want to touch them,” Ellsworth said. “I want people to touch them.” Levit said graphic design isn’t a subject that stays in its lane, opening the door for anyone to get involved or become interested in it. “Graphic design history is like the receipts of history. Everything, every invoice or poster is telling the story of the past. It could relate to war, protest, the social mores of the time,” Levit said. “You can always find the intersection of your interests in graphic design. There’s an entrance for everyone, because it touches everyone.” Those working on the project aren’t concerned about attracting visitors of a certain design pedigree.They want to build a community space that communicates their love of design. “I’m reaching out to the community to help, because I really want [Volumes] to be supported,” Ellsworth said. “I want people to want to be here and be a part of it.” Volumes Design Library is expected to open in late spring 2026 at 426 SW Harvey Milk. Find out more at volumeslibrary.org.
20 THE MERCURY’S SPRING ARTS ISSUE
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UPCOMING FEATURED EVENTS
From the Mouths of Baby in the Night
I’m jealous that the two-year-old in Kevin Sampsell’s new novel has late night dinner options. BY JEREMIAH HAYDEN
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ony Ventura, the main character of Kevin Sampsell’s surreal novel Baby in the Night, doesn’t have the words or the context to understand his surroundings; he’s only two years old after all. “It was like my brain really wanted to but my mouth didn’t know how yet or maybe just didn’t try hard enough,” Tony says of learning how to talk. But as the first-person narrator, Tony is well-suited to describe his world in fresh ways. He can’t lean on stereotypes; he can only learn about the world as he perceives it, tabula rasa. This makes for a compelling story about a boy searching for his departed father, who he believes is the Moon. Tony shows childlike compassion for people living in poverty, including his own mother, as cynicism hasn’t yet damaged his world. Baby in the Night is Sampsell’s second novel, a surprisingly slight number, considering the author and micropress publisher’s prolific and varied output. While he’s likely best known for his 2010 memoir
“When we find stuff to hate it means we’re becoming more like grown-ups.” JIMMY PARDO
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A Common Pornography and the 2013 This Is Between Us, Sampsell is also a fixture at Powell’s City of Books, where he introduces most author readings. Sampsell’s new novel draws themes from the 1955 children’s book Harold and the Purple Crayon, in which a young boy draws the night world he wants to interact with. Tony too escapes into the night sometimes, where he encounters a “slumber party” in
K. B. DIXON
an alley and Dylan—a homeless, teenaged cousin with green, then orange, dyed hair who shows Tony around, takes him home, or out for doughnuts on occasion. Dylan shares his story with Tony over a day-old doughnut. A string of bad luck, beginning in a broken childhood, keeps Dylan in fight or flight mode as he tries to get by. He describes his circumstances as a result of some choices, sure, but also an absurd sequence of events—involving bowling alley drug dealers and a man with a chimpanzee who briefly takes him in, only for Dylan to lose that housing too. Tony listens without judgement. He’s the same with La-La, a woman who orders him a quesadilla while in search of his mother, and with others who pass by during his late night excursions. Through his innocence, readers have a chance to approach the relationships, loves, and undeniable community with curiosity, something too often destroyed by the limitations of words or learned heuristics. Baby in the Night isn’t exactly a comingof-age story—the character only ages from two to four. But in his search to understand how his father came to be the Moon, Tony learns a lot, like “when we find stuff to hate it means we’re becoming more like grownups.” Or, how everyone deserves to clear the obstacles placed in front of them. “I learned something about myself that day, but I wasn’t sure exactly what,” Tony says after a doctor removes a cast from his broken arm. “Maybe that I belonged in one piece, or that I could be healed from anything.” Maybe so, Tony. Maybe so. Kevin Sampsell appears in conversation with Kimberly King Parsons at Powell’s City of Books, 1005 W Burnside, Wed March 18, 7 pm, FREE, all ages.
MARCH 2026
Spring Breakers
Upcoming movies that rush in like Ryan Gosling sci-fi and out like Sheep Detectives. BY DOM SINACOLA
ANTHONY KEO
MARCH
Project Hail Mary
Directors Phil Lord and Christopher Miller serve up fresh sci-fi sap for the first day of Spring. Trapped on a spaceship headed for a distant star, no idea how he got there, a “science teacher” somehow named “Ryland Grace,” played by ceaseless banter machine Ryan Gosling, must remember his past to save humanity’s future.
APRIL
The Super Mario Galaxy Movie
There’s a lot that’s grotesque about the amount of money this sequel will make, but personally, I’m most appalled by the continued celebration of Chris Pratt’s stolen Italian valor.
The Christophers
We’re blessed to live in a time when Steven Soderbergh takes four to five weeks per year to generate approximately two motion pictures. In the second quarter of 2026, expect Soderbergh’s next offering, The Christophers, written by the creator of Bill & Ted and starring Ian McKellan and Micaela Coel, two actors who, like their director, are as fascinating as they are reliable.
stays employed with Normal, the latest bad dad splatter-actioner from writer-actor business duo Derek Kolstad and Bob Odenkirk, who last paired for the Nobody movies. This is just what Bob Odenkirk does now, I guess.
Michael
Instead of doing something productive— like directing another Equalizer movie— Antoine Fuqua helms this Michael Jackson hagiography. While it’s possible Michael won’t gloss over the pop icon’s controversies, we all know in our hearts what this movie will be. Prepare for rote biopic refuse!
MAY
The Sheep Detectives
Talking sheep raised on Agatha Christie novels investigate the murder of their shepherd (Hugh Jackman). Doubtful if the sheep are licensed law enforcement, but still: SCAB (sheep cops are bastards).
I Love Boosters
Faces of Death
Writer-director Boots Riley follows up Sorry to Bother You with a cadre of shoplifters who take on a fashion mogul (Demi Moore). Riley has good politics, so the studio wanted me to let you know it’s actually praxis to see this in a chain theater.
Blue Heron
As Werner Herzog once intoned about the titular Grogu, “I would like to see the baby.” Will audiences “like to see the baby” come May?! To quote Herzog again: “What we do as filmmakers is immaterial. It’s only a projection of light. And doing that all your life makes you just a clown.”
In a bit of unintentional viral marketing, the original uncensored trailer for Daniel Goldhaber’s remake of the infamous 1978 atrocity exhibition was pulled from YouTube for violating terms of service. Undoubtedly, tales of public puking and preview screening walkouts will follow.
I loved Sophy Romvari’s reflective autofiction debut so much that it ranked #2 on my favorite films of 2025, despite its nebulous US release date. Perhaps the first nice thing to happen in 2026, it’s coming to local theaters in April!
Normal
Ben Wheatley, great filmmaker who hasn’t touched greatness in 10 years,
The Mandalorian and Grogu
Stop! That! Train!
Starring Ginger Minj and Jujubee as stewardesses on Stank Rail, a high-speed train heading for disaster, Stop! That! Train! features an ensemble from the Drag Race universe, including Ru herself as the perfectly named President Gagwell. Good luck, director Adam Shankman, and DON’T fuck this up. ■
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22 THE MERCURY’S SPRING ARTS ISSUE
HIDDEN WOMEN of
ROME
Travel back to 17th-century Rome for a powerful concert of beautiful voices and rich music. Hear dramatic sacred works once sung by highly trained nuns, plus music by Corelli and Scarlatti. Some pieces haven’t been heard in 300 years— bringing long-forgotten women and their extraordinary artistry back into the spotlight.
MARCH 14 7 PM
Sanctuary Hall at First Congregational
MARCH 15 3 PM
Kaul Auditorium at Reed College
BOX OFFICE: 503-222-6000 | PBO.ORG
MARCH 2026
23
Serving Up Fat Ham
The Pulitzer Prize-winning play is a Black and queer spin on Shakespeare’s Hamlet. BY JOE STRECKERT
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hakespeare’s Hamlet can be a lot of things: A sad boy who can’t make up his mind. A philosopher plumbing the mysteries of the human condition. A guy with some really weird feelings about his mom. Simba from The Lion King. In Fat Ham, playwright James Ijames reimagined the prince of Denmark as Juicy, a queer Black southern kid who’s studying to work in HR. Instead of a gloomy Danish castle, the action takes place at a backyard cookout, celebrating the marriage of Juicy’s mother and uncle. Laertes has become Larry, Ophelia is Opal, and Horatio is Juicy’s friend Tio. Fat Ham debuted in Philadelphia in 2021, originating as a digital production during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. It then moved on to an Off-Broadway production, an extended Broadway run that netted five Tony nominations, and productions by the Oregon Shakespeare Festival and the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford-upon-Avon, among others. In 2022, it won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. This spring, Fat Ham makes its Portland debut as a co-production between Portland Center Stage (PCS) and Portland Playhouse. Far from the first collaboration for either company, PCS has previously partnered with local production company Boom Arts and Playhouse has co-produced shows with St. Paul’s Penumbra Theater and Passinart, a historically Black theater company in Portland. But this collaboration is different. “For us this feels like we’re leveling up,” says Charles Grant, Playhouse producing director and director of Fat Ham. “In many of our co-pro situations we are the larger theater.” This production formalizes relationships that already existed between the two theater companies. “There’s a longtime and rich dialogue between artists and artistic staff at both theaters,” says Marissa Wolf, PCS artistic director. “There’s a lot of shared programming interests and values alignment. We’re always seeing each other’s work.” For instance, prior to his time at Playhouse, Grant acted in and was assistant director for multiple PCS productions. PCS and Playhouse collaborated on the casting and design of Fat Ham. Both theaters are pouring money into the production, and both will benefit from ticket sales. For some new talent, this project is a debut at both theaters at the same time. Accord-
ILLUSTRATION BY HARRISON FREEMAN
ing to Grant and Wolf, choosing Fat Ham for their collaboration was a mutual decision that meshed well with the strengths of both theaters. “We’ve found great success at PCS in adaptations,” says Wolf. “That’s been a really exciting way to introduce audiences to new voices, new lenses and perspectives on classic, well-known pieces.” For Grant, selecting Fat Ham is also consistent with Playhouse’s mission to
“For us this feels like we’re leveling up.” acknowledge Black voices. “For us as Portland Playhouse, being in the King neighborhood, being in the former Mount Sinai Baptist Church,” says Grant, “every time we’re season planning we always want to be intentional about representing the very neighborhood we exist in. I like to say that it’s a historically and presently Black neighborhood. It’s one of the places where you can walk around in Portland and see people like me.” Grant’s history with Shakespeare is one of self-discovery. “When I was in high
school, I looked at Shakespeare and I was like ‘this isn’t a place for me.’ I was reading it, and it wasn’t connecting,” says Grant. “It wasn’t until I started to embody it and letting the text live inside of me that I thought ‘oh, not only is there something here for me, there’s something I can bring.’” Fat Ham is written in contemporary language, but Juicy uses Shakespeare’s words and his knowledge of Hamlet to meditate on his situation. “In the play, we get both modern text and Shakespearian soliloquy spread throughout the text,” says Grant. “There are moments where Juicy steps outside of his world and it’s Shakespeare’s text that lets him discover something new about himself and the world around him.” Grant characterizes soliloquies as the character’s way to “get the audience on his side,” about decisions he has to make and actions he must take. For Grant, Hamlet and Juicy torment themselves because they constantly put others first. “I think of Hamlet as a tortured people-pleaser,” says Grant. “Juicy can see the world around him in a different way. He wants to connect. He wants everyone to live their authentic journey. However… that comes at a cost to self.” In this co-production, Juicy is portrayed by Isaiah Reynolds, whose previous PCS
credits include Sweeney Todd and Choir Boy. “He embodies that softness and that ease and wanting the best for everyone and wanting to see people as they are,” says Grant. Wolf and Grant are quick to point out that Fat Ham isn’t just a one-to-one retelling of Hamlet. It’s an adaptation, but not quite the same story. “Fat Ham draws from Hamlet, but ultimately—in the most full and profound way—refuses a tragic ending,” says Wolf. “What happens if we stand back up from death and choose love, celebration, and connection? And particularly choose Black and queer joy?” Grant is trying not to let Fat Ham’s high-profile runs in New York and Stratford-Upon-Avon get to him. “I’m definitely the artist that doesn’t like to take in too much of other productions beforehand,” he says. “As a director, I like to be able to listen to my own artistic voice and sensibilities and trust those instincts… I try to remind myself, and this group of artists, that it’s not going to do us any service if we try to copy and paste what’s been done.” Fat Ham plays on the main stage at the Armory, 128 NW 11th, April 19-May 17, $2598, tickets and showtimes at pcs.org/fat-ham.
24 THE MERCURY’S SPRING ARTS ISSUE
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MARCH 2026
25
A Mirror Shines Like a Kaleidoscope
The questions Sam Holcroft poses about making art under authoritarianism are certainly timely. BY JOHN RUDOFF
Left to right: Leif Norby, Jonathan Thompson, Kushi Beauchamp, and Joshua Weinstein in Third Rail’s A Mirror.
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hese are deeply worrisome times. Stability, democracy, countries, our neighbors—all seem less permanent than they once were. Sam Holcroft’s complex and frightening 2023 play A Mirror reflects this uncertainty. The play isn’t timely, nor is it meant to be. It’s more like a kaleidoscope—as is our current, fractured reality. We can look at this play and ask ourselves: Where do we stand? As artists, allies, soldiers, or simply as moral agents. That’s a big lift, but this is a big play. The audience barely knows when the play begins. We are guests at a wedding, but the event feels fraught, covert, and dangerous. Bride Mei (Kushi Beauchamp) and groom Adem (Jonathan Thompson) appear, but just as quickly vanish. The scene shifts and Adem is being interrogated by government functionary Čelik (Leif Norby), whose charge is to vet the work of playwrights and determine if they align with the interests of the ruling
regime. Adem is a humble former soldier and mechanic turned playwright. Mei too is a former soldier and now the assistant to Celik. As Adem goes from nervous to terrified, over the course of the interrogation, his interrogator begins to show gradual curiosity toward him. Norby’s skilled portrayal leads us to wonder what motives lay beneath Čelik’s actions. Čelik demands Adem write uplifting propaganda for the benefit of the audience. “ What are they there for?” the interrogator asks. “To be reminded of the petty imperfections of their everyday lives? Or—to be transported, moved, entertained—and in the end, elevated. Inspired to look at their own lives in a new light.” Bringing in Bax (Joshua Weinstein), a playwright in the regime’s good graces, Čelik proposes that they will teach Adem to write a play properly. Bax has just written a thrilling and uplifting work about
a recent military engagement, and the four of them begin to perform the script— which involves Mei acting out a full manual of arms with an umbrella. It turns out that the retelling describes a battle Adem actually fought in, and his truthful remembrances soon collide with
“How much cooperation is possible between an artist and outside opinions?” Bax’s agitprop. Bax’s play has heroism, noble death, and even a national anthem, but Adem remembers the obscene, gruesome reality of war. Čelik replies to Adem’s objections, saying “we’re trying to push you beyond the surface details, to something deeper.” The
JOHN RUDOFF
irony, of course, is that they’re actually trying to keep Adem’s narrative in line with the government’s. Much of the journey of Holcroft’s play exists in the volley between Čelik and Adem. The audience follows it back and forth. Is trying to dig below the surface an artist’s self-indulgence or his job? Is the surface all there actually is? A Mirror asks how we look for the truth of a work of art—in this case a play. Do we compare it to reality or try to evaluate it in other ways? How much cooperation is possible between an artist and outside opinions before the work loses moral or artistic authority? Here in the post-truth United States, these conflicts are genuine. The play, though not at all easy, is highly recommended. Third Rail Repertory presents A Mirror at Coho Theater, 2257 NW Raleigh , through Sun March 15, $7-$60 .50 , thirdrailrep.org, 16+
26 THE MERCURY’S SPRING ARTS ISSUE
MARCH 2026
27
Queer Joy in the House of Danger
Portland’s queer wrestling circuit is a fusion of comedy, drag, and genderfluid fun. BY COURTNEY VAUGHN
Kylie Karma (left) takes on Clancy Kramer, AKA Clemente Danger, during a February wrestling match.
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n the top floor of the Swan Dive in Southeast Portland, wrestlers are grappling, slapping, and slamming each other around in a dimly lit room. From a modest stage, comedians crack commentary. The crowd chants together and waves homemade signs. The only thing missing is the overt hetero-performative energy that typically punctuates a wrestling match. It’s the latest installment of the House of Danger Queer Wrestling Variety Show, the brainchild project of Clancy Kramer, who wrestles as Clemente Danger. Kramer was already training locally to learn foundational grappling skills before discovering T-boy Wrestling–a LA-based indie production geared toward trans wrestlers. “The original thing was I just wanted to find some people to practice with who were sort of at the same level as me, so we could all build up together,” Kramer explains. T-boy Wrestling has since dissolved its operations, but appetite for the concept lingered. Excitement crystalized into inspiration and before long, Kramer was curating
Portland’s very own queer-centered, indie wrestling production. Kramer was also getting interested in the local stand-up comedy scene. It didn’t take long before she melded the two. Other live performance elements, like “draglesque,” fit nicely under the variety show label. In early February, House of Danger put on its third show, featuring four matches.
Pro wrestling is already heavily queer-coded. Kramer took on Kylie Karma in the second half. Karma whizzed around in a hot pink dress and sneakers, long brunette curls whipping around with every kick. Mid-match, Karma acquired aluminum baking sheets, swatting Kramer in the face with the disposable kitchen goods. Kramer recovered, responding with a powerbomb–a quintessential wrestling move where an athlete hoists an opponent above their head before slamming them down on the mat.
The move looks violent and downright dangerous, particularly for amateur wrestlers working outside the confines of a real ring. But for all the fresh energy and rough-around-the edges production value, House of Danger athletes have clearly been training. “Our matches are only about seven minutes each, but it’s seven minutes of using your whole body,” Kramer says. “You’re absolutely exhausted, soaking-wet sweaty when you come off the mat.” The burgeoning group of about eight athletes (10 if you count new recruits) trains at a dojo in North Portland once a week. Outside of practice, they rely on the magic of old wrestling videos on YouTube for guidance on how to execute moves. For Princesa Payaso (“clown princess”), classic lucha libre matches are a primary source of inspiration. Luchador wrestlers are known for perfecting the art of agility and speed, showcasing acrobatic dives off the top rope. “For me, what I get out of it is an incredible sense of queer liberation and community,” Payaso explains. In many ways, pro wrestling is already
LINDSAY STRECKER
heavily queer-coded—high-drama story lines and over-the-top theatrics paired with bright, eccentric costumes (for the uninitiated, search “Nature Boy Ric Flair” circa 1987), and the undeniable physicality of the scripted sport that sees people pressed against each other in compromising positions. But subtext aside, mainstream pro wrestling has yet to fully shed its hypermasculine and gender-normative tropes. “I definitely feel like a huge part of the reason I wanted to gear it toward the queer community is pro wrestling as a whole is really geared toward a young boys crowd,” Kramer tells the Mercury. “It’s been marketed to straight men for a very long time.” That’s why Kramer and Payaso say House of Danger transcends Portland’s quirky entertainment space into territory that’s affirmative. For Payaso, the variety show “just brings a little bit of joy into the chaos of the world.” House of Danger Queer Wrestling Variety Show takes place at Swan Dive, 727 SE Grand, Thurs March 19, 8 pm, $15, more info @littlebabydanger on Instagram, 21+
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Meet the 2026 Mercury Undisputable Geniuses of Comedy! Ten Of Portland’s Shiniest Stand-Up Talents, With Special Guest Matt Braunger!
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BY WM. STEVEN HUMPHREY
t’s no secret that Portland is a veritable hotbed of comedic talent. Thanks to local audiences who support comedy in all forms, the city’s stand-up scene has become one of the best in the nation. So not only are we blessed with a solid base of long-standing talent, comedy newcomers also have plenty of opportunities to build their skills in a welcoming, encouraging community. And that’s why, since 2016, the Port-
land Mercury has been throwing the biggest, most laugh-filled comedy show of the year: The Undisputable Geniuses of Comedy! We want to show YOU the wide array of talented folks that make up Portland’s amazing comedy scene— from the cream of the crop, to the newon-the-scene talent that we predict are going to make a big splash in years to come. And the 2026 crew of Geniuses (coming at you on Friday, March 27 at
Revolution Hall) is one of our best lineups ever, featuring stand-up, drag artistry, wild stuff that defies description, and our very special guest headliner, the fabulous MATT BRAUNGER! But trust me when I say, you better snap up those tickets quick at merctickets.com, because with a lineup this hot, this show WILL sell out! Now let’s meet your 2026 Mercury Undisputable Geniuses of Comedy….
YOUR HOSTS, ADAM PASI AND NARIKO OTT! We’re doubling up the fun in this year’s edition of Geniuses, with not one but TWO hilarious hosts. Former top winners of the annual “Portland’s Funniest Person” contest as well as prior Geniuses inductees, Pasi and Ott have a very long list of accomplishments, including being the current hosts of the fall-down funny monthly show Topic Thunder, in which comedians present brand-new material based on the latest news of the day. (If you like your news skewered and spit-roasted, this is the show for you!) Pasi and Ott will be giving you a taste of Topic Thunder at this year’s Geniuses, as well as showcasing their wild, unpredictable, and hilarious stand-up sets.
KATE MURPHY! No surprises here: We love Kate Murphy! You may remember her as the host of the Mercury’s I, Anonymous Show, the HUMP! Film Festival, as well as co-hosting our local (and very evil) live game show, Two Evils. Along with being a recurring finalist in Portland’s Funniest Person competition, she’s been featured in far too many fests to include here, but… okay fine, here are just a few: the Hell Yes Fest, The NW Women’s Comedy Festival, as well as the Pacific Crest Comedy Fest. Murphy is adored by the comedy community and Portland audiences for her razor sharp, adorable, and hilariously bizarre observations on modern life. It bears repeating: We love Kate Murphy! (And you will too!)
SUPER SPECIAL GUEST,
MATT BRAUNGER! We are as pleased as punch to welcome former Portlander and nationally beloved comedian Matt Braunger to this year’s Geniuses show. Born and raised here, Braunger cut his teeth on Portland stages before becoming a headliner (and soon after, a national treasure) in 2007. Since then he’s been named as one of Variety’s Top 10 Comics to Watch, and was a cast member of Fox’s MADtv while also making appearances on such popular shows as Agent Carter, Superstore, Bojack Horseman, Happy Endings, Conan, the Late Show with David Letterman— all while simultaneously touring and recording numerous comedy specials and albums. On stage, Braunger is an animated, master storyteller who also happens to be an expert at spotting those little, true absurdities of life that will make you cry with laughter, “Goddammit, Matt! You’re right again!”
MARCH 2026
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GEOFF TATE! Getting his start in the Cincinnati comedy scene, Geoff Tate has been making a big name for himself both in Portland and nationally. Touring with Mike Birbiglia and Tom Segura, Tate is also well known on the festival circuit, performing at Bonnaroo, SF Sketchfest, SXSW, while also recording… [blinks, checks notes] more than a dozen comedy albums? And we’re just getting started, because Tate has also guested on some of the biggest podcasts, including WTF with Marc Maron, The Todd Glass Show, Doug Loves Movies, and lots more. As for his stand-up comedy, he’s been called “wildly funny, with a cunning sense of dry wit,” while having a “knack for mining his own personal history for big laughs,” and is “a Star Wars-loving, sometimes drug-taking, hilarious guy.” And who are we to disagree?
VIRGINIA JONES! JULIAN GRAY! If you’re a lover of fun, entertaining stories that take a lot of hilarious twists and turns, you’ll flip ass over teakettle for Julian Gray, a comedian, writer, and self-proclaimed “pop-a-shot connoisseur” who’s making his Geniuses debut this year. A regular at Helium Comedy Club, Gray has opened for a multitude of nationally touring comedians, and has been wowing audiences on the festival circuit, including the Limestone Comedy Festival, LA’s Bergamot Fest, and the Houston Riot Comedy Festival. But telling hilarious stories is where Gray really shines, whether it’s about eating 322 times at Olive Garden, the vagaries of sleep paralysis, or the inherent danger of pairing an original Four Loko with a Crunchwrap Supreme. (Maybe we’ll get him to demonstrate his pop-a-shot prowess.)
A 20-year stand-up veteran, the experience really shows with Virginia Jones. Her comedy is whip-smart, dry as a bone, and she delivers devastating punchlines with an unforgettable glare. Placing second in the most recent Portland’s Funniest Person competition, she’s also worked with such comic luminaries as Maria Bamford, Jackie Kashian, Laurie Kilmartin, Kevin McDonald, and Eddie Pepitone—all of whom know a thing or two about the necessity of a great opener. Jones is a regular on the festival scene, having been invited to Bumbershoot, the Bridgetown Comedy Festival, Boston’s Women in Comedy fest, and has appeared at the SF Sketchfest a whopping four times. Plus, she’s not only appeared on Portlandia, and CNN’s History of Comedy, but she also somehow wound up on an “Australian tap dance commercial.” Color us SOLD.
JEWELS FIELD! A hot up-and-comer on the scene, Jewels Field was raised on a steady comedy diet of Mitch Hedberg and Adam Sandler (she’s seen Big Daddy approximately 1,000 times). As a result, Fields has an absolutely delightful (and confidently awkward) way of starting with an average observation and then immediately transporting it into an absurdist multiverse. For example, here’s the biography Field submitted for this article: “Jewels spent her early life in a school for exceptionally gifted children, starting at age 5. When her mother met with the school’s director to discuss her admission, Jewels found pepper spray in her mom’s purse and promptly maced herself.” Sounds exceptional to us!
MX. DAHLIA BELLE! Hilarious and as she puts it, “the best sort of mess,” we’re thrilled to welcome comedian Mx. Dahlia Belle to the Geniuses stage. Best known for her appearance on the popular Netflix special Hannah Gadsby’s Gender Agenda, Belle is known for being a comedic Swiss Army knife—simultaneously demonstrating sharpness, softness, vulnerability, hope, and (of course) a neverending stream of wicked wit. Her writing has been featured in Cosmopolitan, The Guardian, The Stranger, and Portland Mercury, and you may have witnessed her comedy prowess at the NW Black Comedy Festival, Upper Left Comedy Festival, SF Sketchfest, and the Here To Pee Tour. But perhaps one of her greatest honors was being included in Out magazine’s list of “11 Trans Comedians Funnier Than Dave Chappelle”—and when you see her in action, you’ll believe it!
AND DRAG ARTISTRY FROM
PEACHY SPRINGS!
Fans of local bingo need no introduction to Peachy Springs, who has hands-down earned the title of Portland’s foul-mouthed “Queen of Bingo,” as well as being honored as the second place winner of Portland’s “Best Drag Queen.” Boasting a razor-sharp wit and a braying laugh, Springs will be bringing lots of surprises to the Geniuses stage—and while we don’t want to give anything away, you can count on a hilarious, filthy, and absolutely glamorous good time!
What a lineup, amirite? So don’t be the fool that misses the 2026 edition of the UNDISPUTABLE GENIUSES OF COMEDY—Friday, March 27, 8 pm, at Revolution Hall! But hurry, hurry… since this show will almost certainly sell out, get those tickets lickity-split at merctickets.com. It’s guaranteed to be an undisputable evening of top-notch hilarity!
30 THE MERCURY’S SPRING ARTS ISSUE
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MARCH 2026
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Through Glass Darkly
Portland’s Third Angle made the first ever complete recording of Philip Glass’ 1000 Airplanes on the Roof. BY NOLAN PARKER
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he power of place and context are not lost on Third Angle New Music. Founded in 1985, the Portland nonprofit curates site-specific experiences featuring music by young composers and venerated 20th century legends, often commissioning brand new pieces for their performances. For example, in January, Third Angle tucked musicians into the nooks and crannies of Central Eastside experimental playground Hopscotch, using the venue as a concert hall for four different versions of Steve Reich’s Counterpoints. On March 6, Philip Glass’ Orange Mountain Music record label released a recording of 1000 Airplanes on the Roof, a 1988 “science fiction music drama” composed by Glass, with libretto written by David Henry Hwang. Recorded by Third Angle between October 2023 and March 2024, this is the first ever complete recording of the one act piece. While the recording doesn’t directly capture the two live performances Third Angle premiered in 2023, those were some special shows. The approximately 80-minute work was staged under the Hughes H-4 Hercules “Spruce Goose” airplane in the hangar of McMinnville, Oregon’s Evergreen Aviation & Space Museum. T h i rd A n g l e e n l i s te d a c c l a i m e d actress-vocalist Ithica Tell to read Hwang’s libretto, which follows a character called M—a distinct nod to Kafka’s single-letter antiheroes—around New York City as they descend into a shame spiral of depersonalization, becoming suspicious of themself and those around them. The role has been played by different genders, but Third Angle framed M as a queer Black woman. And Tell read with nuance and conviction, moving throughout the multi-leveled staging as if actually pounding New York pavement. Coupled with the ethereal otherworldly vocals of Arwen Myers’ soprano, the effect was devastating. Third Angle artistic director Sarah Tiedemann describes the music of 1000 Airplanes as “a gateway into the deeper subject matter of the piece,” drawing correlations between M’s experiences to disorienting oppressions we continue to endure today, from masked agents disappearing Black and brown community members to our trans siblings losing the rights to their own bodies. Chunks of M’s life and memory are missing, and they grasp not only for the meaning of their own life but that of human existence itself. Interpretations of M’s experience range from alien abductions to mental health crises or assaults facilitated by roofies.
SARA WRIGHT
Acclaimed actress-vocalist Ithica Tell recorded the libretto. “No, I’m not a psychopath. But yes, I am disturbed,” M exasperates themself, thinking in circles. Is M crazy if they’re the only one able to see through the long centuries of violent capitalism, no one else around them seems to care about or even notice? Or is M crazy because of their refusal to take part in a system of violence that most (in the US) seem content to live within? Performing 1000 Airplanes in the museum’s hangar overtly framed the sci-fi melodrama with its vastness, nodding to
the piece’s title. But the most dramatic place-based underscoring of the performances were its sunsets.Tiedemann says she researched the sunset times for both evenings of the performances, so that “as M is descending into the darker corners of her mind, the sun was setting in the background, giving [Third Angle] the opportunity to illuminate the plane.” The in-studio recordings that followed include not only Tell’s reading, but also a second disc with an instrumental ver-
SARA WRIGHT
Musicians from the 2023 performances, left to right: Nikolas Caoile, Yoko Greeney, John Nastos, Sarah Tiedemann, Sean Fredenburg, Arwen Myers, Maria Garcia.
sion of 1000 Airplanes. The hope is, Tiedemann explains, that the listener will be given two albums: One with Tell’s reading of Hwang’s libretto for a focused, true-to-composition listening experience and the other to be enjoyed as a more casual, libretto-less sonic landscape. When asked what next for Third Angle’s production of 1000 Airplanes, Tiedemann responded: “Each step of [1000 Airplanes] has been so all-encompassing that all of us at Third Angle have been holding on for dear life.” Now that the album is out in the world, Tiedemann and crew can start thinking about how to get the performance back in front of people live, alluding to another potential set of Portland performances and a possible European run. “The challenge logistically is that I want it to be an immersive experience every time Third Angle performs it,” she said, “requiring so much more infrastructure to set up in each location. We’re always seeking supporters who would like to help us put these larger projects together.” Orange Mountain Music released Third Angle New Music’s production of Philip Glass and David Henry Hwang’s 1000 Airplanes on the Roof on Fri March 6. Find it at orangemountainmusic.com. More about Third Angle at thirdangle.org.
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Breakfast of Bibliophilians A low-key obsession with Literary Arts Cafe revealed. BY SUZETTE SMITH
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here are few things in this life that French butter they use to make it. motivate me as much as a good If you have to put a breakfast sandwich breakfast sandwich. Ever since on a croissant, this is the way. The salty litPortland’s best breakfast sand- tle situation low-key exploded with flakes at my touch. The fluffy square wich—Random Order’s of baked egg at its center B-list: a perfect combination of caramelized onion, contained more heft than egg, cheddar, and the pastry surroundchipotle aioli ing it. This isn’t a sandwich to hold securely encased as you run for the in a firm bolo— bus. In fact, the became a casualty of the pandemic, I cafe serves it with have been questing a perfectly-meafo r a n e w n o s h t o sured side salad of lovely greens and light, replace her. In 2024, Literary Arts opened Shakshuka lemony dressing. a bookstore on the ground floor Literary Arts’ other sandof its new SE Grand headquarters, and an wiches—chicken salad, grilled cheese, and offhand comment by its executive director a seasonal veggie option—arrive on sourAndrew Proctor—made amidst conversa- dough so good the whole bakery behind it tions of seismic retrofitting is called simply Good Dough. and multi-year fundraising The Good Dough bread also accompanies campaigns—had me thinkthe Turkish eggs— ing only of sandwiches. It is humbling to hear poached and served my own recorded voice with herbed yogurt—which breathlessly exclaim are my favorite “ breakfast sanditems on order. wiches” at Proctor’s As a longstanding mention of someshakshuka fan, I thing the shop’s cafe was excited to see it could one day carry. on the menu, but found I launched into a short the cafe’s approach more rant about how Portland, for all its virtues, is greatly lacking Prosciutto, egg, lemony than I like. Still, shakand cheese in this area. shuka is a perfect breakfast food, “Bacon, egg, and cheese, man. and it’s difficult to find at eight in Come on,” Proctor agreed. the morning in Portland. I value that. “People always put it on a croissant or If you’re a fancy coffee person, the Spice something,” I complained. Cabinet has pink peppercorn in it, which “That’s no good. You need gives an actual pepper bite withstrong bread—strong bread out overpowering the other to withstand the heat good things present: carand the grease,” he damom, licorice, ginagreed. ger, and coconut. And then I held Literary Arts cafe onto that converopens at eight in the sation for about morning and the bookstore doesn’t two years. open until ten, so Over the summer, Literary Arts while you stand in line Cafe opened with a looking at a shelf of cool shortened menu of cofbooks you were meaning fee drinks and pastries. By to pick-up, can you actually Turkish eggs winter, lunch was in, breakfast acquire them? Yes, you can just was up, and that prosciutto, egg, buy them at the coffee counter. and cheese was served on a croissant. The irony is not lost on me, but I must admit it Literary Arts Cafe, 716 SE Grand, everyis an incredible croissant. Jen’s Pastries day, 8 am-8 pm (snacks only after 4 pm), recently raised its cost due to the pricey literary-arts.org
MARCH 2026
33
The Faults in Our Stars
The only horoscope column in the universe. BY ANTHONY HUDSON “Like sands through the hourglass, these are the stars of our lives…” - Nostradamus
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urs is an unprecedented time in astrological studies. Astrologers are setting themselves on fire in the streets. Conjunction-junctions are appearing with functions unseen since the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Civil War, French Revolution, and the (First) American Revolution. Saturn’s move into Aries was supercharged by the Lunar New Year’s Fire Horse, riding in on a solar eclipse and spurring a time of massive transformative change. But more important than that—let’s gaze at what the skies have in store for you, personally.
And the fun part is learning which buttons on your Tamagotchi shell do what: which feeds, which poops, and which makes you scream out everything you’ve bottled up for years (Larry!).
Leo (July 23-August 22)
You’re a shining star, Leo, but you could try a little harder. Look at your fellow Lion, Madonna, and all she’s done: Did you move to New York with only $35 and launch a five-decade career? Did you
gies for every possible moral and menial task, then maybe—just maybe—you wouldn’t still be a virgin, too. Try more plaid.
Libra (September 23-October 22)
Oh, I’m a Libra and I’m so concerned with balance and beauty and harmony. I ’m j u s t so well-adjusted and peaceful and conflict-averse! Go outside and beat a man up. He probably deserves it.
Aries (March 21-April 19)
Little Ram, congratulations on alienating your colleagues, and all with an email you wrote from under a blanket on the couch. You should reward yourself for all that hard work you took credit for by revenge quitting. Gatekeep yourself and show them who’s not girlboss anymore!
N NE W TO AT TY M
Stupid Ex Larry Gemini (May 21-June 20)
You’re cute like a little hermit crab, or a Tamagotchi, all bundled up in your emotions.
Capricorn (December 22-January 19)
Ah, the Sea Goat: disciplined, dependable, and as practical as a goat swimming the ocean. Those weird panoramic goat eyes might make you a steely navigator, but be cautious of Pete Hegseth’s drones up above, out of sight.
Aquarius, are you an air sign or a water sign? You’re supposed to be air, so what you doin’ bailing all that water? You wanna be the girl with the most cake? Well, guess what? That’s Courtney Love, and she’s a Cancer. A real water sign! You need to commit.
Dear Taurus, who am I to argue with you? I’m not here to point out that you’re wrong, or that you haven’t thought through your new plan to become wonderful by swapping out Zoloft with lead-heavy protein powders. Because you’re right. It’s all going to work out.
Cancer (June 21-July 22)
Responding to a noise complaint at 3 am, police encountered five drunk, self-identified “Woo Girls,” each born under Sagittarius. Upon threat of sobriety tests, officers were subjected to a nonconsensual game of Twister, torn apart, and eaten alive. Go Sagittarius!
Aquarius (January 20-February 18)
Taurus (April 20-May 20)
You know when you can tell an astrologer had one bad experience with one specific star sign and now they only write unfairly one-sided forecasts for that entire population? Yeah, that. Fuck you, Gemini.
Sagittarius (November 22-December 21)
make it okay for women to talk about sex? Did you portray Breathless Mahoney in Warren Beatty’s Dick Tracy (1990)?
Virgo (August 23-September 22)
You’re well-mannered and a good friend. But if you weren’t such an anal-retentive spendthrift who relied on self-devised methodolo-
Scorpio (October 23-November 21)
L i s t e n , S c o r p i o. You’re hot. But you can’t coast on looks, charm, and vampiric sexual prowess alone. The OnlyFans looks a little lackluster. Try more collabs, feet pics, filming from inside the hole? Wait, no don’t block me I’m renewing right now….
Pisces (February 19-March 20)
No, Pisces, I meant your astrological sign, not a divine one—and no, I don’t want ketamine. Yes, I would love to try aura photography. Wait, what? Psychedelic yeast caused the Salem Witch Trials? Were you serious about that ketamine? Oh, it’s a lozenge? What’s hhhhhappening to my lllllleggggggsssssssss? Anthony Hudson is a Grand Ronde and Siletz artist, writer, and former clown. His first book, Lamp Back: Plays and Other Grievances—collecting nearly a decade of Carla Rossi performances and more—is being published this fall by Northwestern University Press.
34 THE MERCURY’S SPRING ARTS ISSUE
DO THIS, DO THAT
MARCH
2026
The City’s Coolest Art and Cultural Events This Spring BY LINDSAY COSTELLO, NOLAN PARKER, AND SUZETTE SMITH
Jacqueline Novak March 21, Aladdin Theater
JASON KEMPIN - GETTY IMAGES
support art made by and within queer community at a time where it’s more urgent than ever.” (Back Door Theater, 4319 SE Hawthorne, $25 or pay as you’re able, fusetheatreensemble.com, mature audiences) SUZETTE SMITH
Minidoka on Our Minds THROUGH JUNE 14 A24
Seven Films by Kelly Reichardt THROUGH MARCH 22
(FILM) Clinton Street’s monthlong series for March centers the Pacific Northwest’s director supreme Kelly Reichardt, working near through her entire filmography. Novelist and Reichardt’s frequent artistic collaborator Jon Raymond, will attend three screenings (Wendy and Lucy, Meek’s Cutoff, Showing Up) and offer post-viewing Q&As. If you missed Reichardt’s The Mastermind (2025), you’ll have another shot on March 22. (Clinton Street Theater, 2522 SE Clinton, cstpdx. com) LINDSAY COSTELLO
Riot Queens
ETHAN FEIDER
THROUGH MARCH 29
(THEATER & PERFORMANCE) You don’t know about the Compton Cafeteria Riots—we don’t live in San Francisco, and they don’t teach enough queer history in school—but maybe you should. In 1966, a group of trans women stood up to police who were targeting and harassing them, in an all-night restaurant in the Tenderloin neighborhood called Gene Compton’s Cafeteria. Someone allegedly threw a cup of coffee in an officer’s face. What happened next? Prolific playwright Mikki Gillette penned Riot Queens to bring us up to speed, based on her own extensive research. As Mercury critic Jenna Fletcher wrote in a review last summer: “Gillette’s plays offer the rare opportunity to
(Japanese American Museum of Oregon, 411 NW Flanders, $8, jamo.org, all ages) SS
Mundo de las Mujeres MARCH 11-21
(THEATER & PERFORMANCE) For the third year, Milagro Theatre celebrates playwriting and performance by Latina/e women with its Mundo de las Mujeres festival. For fans of staged readings, Mia Torres directs two—Erlina Ortiz’s Las Mujeres on
(COMMUNITY) Between August 1942 to October 1945, the US government forcibly moved over 13,000 Japanese Americans to a concentration camp in Minidoka County, Idaho, as part of a nationwide order to incarcerate Minidoka on Our Minds those the government deemed “alien Through June 14, Japanese American enemies” during World War 2. Minidoka Museum of Oregon War Relocation Center became the main destination for interned persons from Alaska, Oregon, and Washington. A new exhibition Minidoka on Our Minds explains the history of the site and presents it with artworks made by survivors and their descendants. For example, sculptures by Mira Nakashima were made with wood gathered by Ed Abe, a man who died collecting it during a snowstorm at Minidoka in 1942. COURTESY THE JAPANESE AMERICAN MUSEUM OF OREGON
MARCH 2026
stark, massive Stamped From the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America, which changed contemporary culture’s thinking on racism from a view that rooted it in personal prejudice to something continually reinforced by policy and power structures. His bestselling memoir How to Be an Antiracist showed readers the impact of prejudice across vast facets of our lives. Now Kendi’s newest work digs into great replacement theory and its many ghastly visages, which have existed through history but rarely been revealed revealed with the incisive gaze that Kendi wields. (Revolution Hall, 1300 SE Stark, 7:30 pm, $55 tickets include a copy of the book, powells.com, all ages) SS
March 11 and Alexis Scheer’s Laughs in Spanish on March 18. Andrea Menchaca Hall’s stand-up special Speaking American is the main event on March 21. (Milagro Theatre, 525 SE Stark, $5 + pay what you will, milagro.org) SS
Dies Irae, Desirée MARCH 13-15
(MUSIC) If the words “classical music” don’t tend to grab your attention, consider that Third Angle New Music’s curatorial flavor trends toward experimental takes on the form. So far, their 40th anniversary concert series has explored the works of minimalist pioneer Steve Reich from inside Hopscotch’s interactive art exhibits, and brought a string quartet and clarinet ensemble to the World Forestry Center. Maria Finkelmeier and Brady Evan Walker’s UFO-laden chamber opera Dies Irae, Desirée is next on the docket, in which a YouTube streamer-turned-cult leader claims to communicate with aliens. Cast members Sarah Tiedemann and William Pyle also play flute and saxophone among other live instrumentalists. (Vault Theater, 350 E Main, Hillsboro, $30-$40, thirdangle.org, all ages) LC
Trans Town PDX 2026 MARCH 29
Born in Flames MARCH 13-15
(FILM) Fans of Octavia Butler and Ursula K. Le Guin will dig Lizzie Borden’s dystopian docu-fiction Born in Flames (1983), which imagines the fractured aftermath of a revolution that didn’t keep its promises. The director’s guerilla approach blends real news footage with direct-action feminism; don’t blink and you’ll catch Kathryn Bigelow in a small role. (5th Avenue Cinema, 510 SW Hall, 5thavecinema.com) LC
The Siren Theater Improv Giants MARCH 14
(COMEDY) Whether performing or watching, improv is not for the faint of heart. When it doesn’t click, it really doesn’t click. But when it does? Goddamn it’s magical, and can hit heights seldom seen when attending the theater. Some of the best improv I’ve seen in Portland comes from the minds of the Siren Theater Improv Giants, featuring Shelley McLendon, Nicholas Kessler, Tony Marcellino (formerly of the legendary PDX group the Liberators) and Jed Arkley (Whiskey Tango). Alone, each member of this fantastic foursome are hilarious—together they combine to become a veritable Transformer of hilarity—so if you want to increase your chances of witnessing magic? These Giants are an extremely good bet. (Siren Theater, 3913 N Mississippi, 7:30 pm, $10-$20, sirentheater.com, 14+) WM. STEVEN HUMPHREY
Red Carpet Awards Watch Party w/ Ry Bred MARCH 15
(FILM) Finally, a chance to whip out the actor-pun cocktail names you’ve been saving up all year. That is, should you wish to host your ungrateful friends at a home Oscars watch party. Another option: Get out there and judge the actor-pun cocktail names of any of the fine moviehouses throwing their own Academy Awards soirees. Tomorrow Theater will have a pink carpet (!) and hilarious local queen Ry Bred providing commentary for…FOUR HOURS of speeches, play-off music, and celebrity outfits, projected on the theater’s big screen. (Tomorrow Theater, 3530 SE Division, 4 pm, FREE with RSVP, all ages) SS
La Llorona MARCH 18
(FILM) Few films manage to fuse folkloric terror with social ethics—in fact, though it’s billed as horror, Jayro Bustamante’s La Llorona (2019) might
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COURTESY CHEFAS PROJECTS
Emily Wise: Meet Me at the Mothership THROUGH APRIL 4
(VISUAL ART) The motto of Emily Wise’s artistic output might be “the longer you look, the more you find.” Wise’s last two exhibitions at Chefas Projects, Hair of the Banshee and Hands that Hold the Melting Rope, populated neon-hued acrylic compositions with cool girls, Irish banshees, and shadowy flora. Meet Me at the Mothership brings together more of Wise’s lucid dreams in painting form. Inspired by a recent experience in Utah’s desert terrain and envisioning the multivalent mothership as a “cosmological, terrestrial, and corporeal” figure, the show asks an interesting question: What is the maternal quality, exactly? Wise’s women scroll TikTok and witness mythical, light-spilling eggs in pursuit of the truth. (Chefas Projects, 134 SE Taylor Ste 203, stephaniechefas.com, all ages) LINDSAY COSTELLO be in a category all its own. A retired general implicated in the Guatamalan genocide of native Maya communities cowers like a baby in his mansion as protests rattle the walls. But don’t worry. A supernatural force—the vengeful kind—penetrates his barricade. Note: La Llorona is not the schlocky The Curse of La Llorona, also released in 2019. Bustamante’s film is an atmospheric and far superior demand for justice. (Hollywood Theatre, 4122 NE Sandy, 7:30 pm, $12, hollywoodtheatre.org) LC
Jacqueline Novak MARCH 21
(THEATER & PERFORMANCE) Novak is a comedian interested in pursuits of the spirit—past life regression, Jungian dream analysis, Women Who Run with the Wolves. She blends amla powder into her smoothies, prioritizes beauty in the home
(vintage Christmas blow molds), and channels self-optimization at all costs (through her Hobonichi planner). Yes, she’s particular and product-craving and also a podcaster (she co-hosts Berlant and Novak with fellow genius Kate Berlant), but Novak’s mind spins so quickly that you, too, will get caught in its centrifugal force. Her Emmy-nommed 2024 special Get On Your Knees was, on the surface, “about blow jobs,” but actually offered a dense philosophical exploration of sexual firsts. What will be the target of Novak’s obsession this time? (Aladdin Theater, 3017 SE Milwaukie, 8 pm, $50.14-$73.75, aladdin-theater.com, all ages) LC
Ibram X. Kendi MARCH 21
(READINGS AND TALKS) Historian and author Ibram X. Kendi won the 2016 National Book Award for his
(COMMUNITY) Portland’s biggest Trans Day of Visibility celebration showcases the community’s talent, economic power, and joy. The day kicks off with an afternoon resource and mutual aid fair offering free haircuts, a market, food demos with vegan street-food champions Mis Tacones, jewelry making with Ally Lea, and Narcan training with No More Dead Friends. After the fair, a ticketed fundraiser hosted by two of Portland’s funniest comedians, Mx. Dahlia Belle and Ally J Ward, brings laughs and live music before the party moves to White Owl where Drag Race alumna Lexi Love headlines a lineup of “local legends.” All proceeds go to Werq Together, a nonprofit that offers peer support services, relocation assistance for folks fleeing hostile states, and trans-owned affordable housing. Show up and support this indomitable and inextricable part of the Portland community. (The Redd on Salmon, 831 SE Salmon, 2-9 pm, tickets $25+ or free for trans community members, instagram.com/transtown.pdx) BRI BREY
Amal El-Mohtar in Conversation wit Kelly Sue DeConnick MARCH 29
(READINGS AND TALKS) Amal El-Mohtar is that rare kind of writer who can build robust speculative worlds, then permeate them with gentleness and poetry. Having won Hugo and Nebula awards for her 2019 novella This Is How You Lose the Time War, El-Mohtar shifted to short stories with Seasons of Glass and Iron. The forthcoming collection (out March 24) compiles fairy and folk tales told through letters, journals, and reference materials. She’ll chat about it with comic book royalty Kelly Sue DeConnick. (Powell’s City of Books, 1005 W Burnside, 7 pm, $37.73, tickets include a copy of the book, powells.com, all ages) LC
Apple Hunters! MARCH 31-APRIL 26
(THEATER & PERFORMANCE) Closing out a season of producing works by women playwrights with ties to the Pacific Northwest, this staging of Apple Hunters! also concludes a six-year residency of Mellon Foundation playwright-in-residence E.M. Lewis at Artists Repertory Theatre. If you liked other works by Lewis—Magellanica (2018), True Story (2023), among others—make it your beeswax to see this one. Set in rural Washington, Apple Hunters! follows four lifelong friends on a quest for a potentially extinct apple cultivar. You know that these apple metaphors are really about being a man and friendship. (Artists Repertory Theatre, 1515 SW Morrison, $5-$60, artistsrep.org, all ages) SS
FKA twigs / Brutalismus 3000 APRIL 4
(MUSIC) Lady in the streets, freak in the beats chameleonic artist FKA twigs bares it all with every release, her late-2025 album Eusexua being no exception. Though I’m partial to her more experimental
36 THE MERCURY’S SPRING ARTS ISSUE
Guitar Repair $89.99 Set Ups
OPEN 11–6 EVERY DAY 4701 SE DIVISION • 1834 NE ALBERTA • tradeupmusic.com
MARCH 2026
early work, twigs’ output the last few FKA twigs years has largely April 4, Moda Center been remix-ready Theater of the Clouds festival anthems, the deeper cuts of which fit in nicely with any mixtape you’re pulling together for a crush. The only time I’ve seen twigs was at Seattle’s Moore Theatre on her Magdalene tour, back in her swordplay and pole dancing days—one of the best live shows I’ve ever witnessed. Let’s see what she’s got in store for us this time. (Moda Center Theater of the Clouds, 1 N Center, 8 pm, $50+, rosequarter.com, all ages) NOLAN PARKER
Amy Bay: oh deeear mee APRIL 4-MAY 10
(VISUAL ART) Amy Bay’s latest solo exhibition continues to pull at the artist’s recurring conceptual thread: floral painting as a radical act. In the past, Bay’s compositions have zoomed in on ripe flora exploding from all angles, occupying each painting’s entire frame; her works have also functioned as feminist critiques of art history’s anti-flower stance and homages to all things decorative, patterned, and lush. In Bay’s 2024 exhibition The Book of Love, her petaled meditations focused on the comfort of these motifs—her latest, oh deeear mee, unfolds as a more mysterious “lamentation and celebration,” filling both of Nationale’s exhibition spaces with monotypes, works on paper, and paintings inspired by decorative floral wallpapers. (Nationale, 15 SE 22nd, nationale.us, all ages) LC
Twin Peaks, in entirety STARTING APRIL 5
(FILM) That gum you like is going to come back in style, and by “that gum,” we mean “David Lynch’s entire Twin Peaks series.” The Pacific Northwest’s damn finest (sorry) cultural export will screen in entirety at Clinton Street Theater, “for the first time in history,” they claim—how has nobody done this before?? The year-long(!) program will open with Twin Peaks’ extended pilot “Northwest Passage,” obviously, followed by the second and third episodes all screened in one sitting. Laura Palmer is blue-lipped and wrapped in plastic, but you knew that. Time for a revisit. (Clinton Street Theater, 2522 SE Clinton, $20, cstpdx.com) LC
cohesive than his last album-turned-Broadway-musical American Utopia, WITS? continues Byrne’s toeing the line between pure pop bliss, Studio 54 style, and the avant garde of Max’s Kansas City. All the while, he’s still critiquing us, himself, and the powers that (shouldn’t) be—though in a brighter tone than we’ve heard from the ATLANTIC RECORDS broad-shouldered cutie in a minute. Is the hopeful cheer coming from his recent marriage or the ever-elusive contentment of elders? Hard to say, but it feels good. (Keller Auditorium, 222 SW Clay, 8 pm, $104.22+, portland5. com, all ages) NP
Portland Panorama APRIL 9-19
(FILM) Those who miss the now-defunct Portland International Film Festival (PIFF) will want to keep their eye on Portland Panorama. Returning for its second year, the fest is keeping after the idea of a multi-venue showcase of new international cinema and films from the Pacific Northwest. At time of press, we knew only that the kickoff film—screening April 9 at Cinema 21—would be Costa Rican drama Abril, in which writer and director Hernán Jiménez also co-stars. The other star? Heated Rivalry’s François Arnaud. Oh, I see. NOW you’re interested. (Various locations, $15 per screening, passes $150-350, portlandpanorama.org) SS
The Glass Menagerie APRIL 18-MAY 20
(THEATER & PERFORMANCE) Well, if it’s going to be a Tennessee Williams play, it’s going to be about declining Southern gentility splattering extravagantly into full-blown decay. And if it’s going to be produced at Shaking the Tree and directed by Samantha Van Der Merwe, we’re more than likely going to see visuals we’d never expect. Williams coined the term “memory play” to describe The Glass Menagerie, as he felt his central character’s recollection of his mother and sister should be understood as subjective and non-realistic. This all leaves so much fertile ground for Van Der Merwe to move in, and we can’t wait. (Shaking the Tree Theatre, 823 SE Grant, $12-48, shaking-the-tree.com) SS
Sunn O))) APRIL 25
APRIL 7-8
(MUSIC) Indicative of his entire 50+ year career, David Byrne isn’t afraid of asking the tough questions on his new album Who Is The Sky? More
(MUSIC) Not that this has anything to do with Seattle drone monoliths Sunn O))), but imagine the deep shame of finding out you’ve been mispronouncing the name of one of your favorite bands for years. Anyway, on April 4 Sunn releases their first album in seven years (the longest time between Sunn releases to date))). “Glory Black,” the album’s first single, washes through your skull with vibrations most dark, then drops off around the 3:30 mark, dissolving into heavy, sparse piano. Are Greg Anderson and Stephen O’Malley getting soft as the band approaches their Pearl Anniversary? Not likely… Check out the show without ear protection and LMK how that goes. (Roseland Theater, 8 NW 6th, 8 pm, $47.50+, roselandpdx.com, Don’t peek! Puzzle on p. 39. 21+) NP 6 7 , 5 6 & + 2 0 3 2 5 1 2 7 $ 8 3 $ , 5 5 8 % % ( 5 & + , & . ( 1 ( & 2 0 $ 7 ( 5 $ 6 6 ( ; < 9 , 6 2 5 $ % / ( $ & ( 7 + ( 2 1 , 2 1 2 % $ 0 $ $ 1 ( : 6 * 7 3 $ < 5 2 / / & $ 5 5 ( 3 ( ; ( 6 ( % 2 1 < $ 5 ( 3 7 $ 7 $ ; % 5 ( $ . ( 7 $ / ' 5 < / < 0 $ 0 $ ( 0 , 7 , 5 $ 7 $ 1 6 3 5 , 1 * ) 2 5 : $ 5 ' 6 2 5 % ( 7 ( ( 5 , ( 7 ( $ 0 6 $ ' , 2 6
David Byrne
SHERVIN LAINEZ
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JUSTIN YAU
Making Earth Cool Earth Day Celebration 2026 APRIL 25
(COMMUNITY) Sunnyside Environmental School and Making Earth Cool (among other Gaia-luvving organizations) bring some environmental joie de vivre to Southeast Portland. The group’s annual Earth Day celebration “serves as a poignant reminder that we are mere specks within the grandeur of the greatest masterpiece ever created.” Okay true! Although we are but flecks of stardust darting across our majestic planet, the event gives us all something to live for: gigantic puppets, live music, crafts, and a secular “Earth Ceremony.” All are invited to dress up as their fave flora or fauna and strut the Sunnyside neighborhood. (Sunnyside Environmental School, 3421 SE Salmon, 11 am-3 pm, FREE, makingearthcool.com, all ages) LC
38 THE MERCURY’S SPRING ARTS ISSUE
Savage Love BY DAN SAVAGE
Quickies 1. My boyfriend swears he’s cut. I say he’s totally uncut. He insists he was circumcised as an infant. How do I convince him? Some circumcisions are “tight” (all of the foreskin removed) and others are “loose” (most of the foreskin left intact). The looser the circumcision, the more “uncut” a man’s cock might appear. So, it’s entirely possible your boyfriend was circumcised as an infant but that his cock—if his circumcision was loose—more closely resembles uncut cocks you’ve admired in porn and encountered IRL. P.S. For the record: Your boyfriend should not have been circumcised in infancy. No infant should be. 2. What’s the best song about cheating? I nominate “One Way Out” by the Allman Brothers.
7. Getting an AI boyfriend… is that cheating? I’m allowed to have an actual boyfriend because my marriage is open and we’re (zzzzz) poly, so it wouldn’t be cheating if I got an AI boyfriend. Pathetic? Yes. Cheating? No. While someone in a monogamous relationship might be tempted to argue that the non-existence of their AI boyfriend—at least in corporeal form—means it’s not cheating to get one, their monogamous partner would probably disagree. 8. How do I ward off the opinions of friends who disapprove of the age gap in my current relationship? (I’m a 33-year-old man, my partner is a 23-year-old woman.) A romantic relationship between two people who did not experience gestational concurrency—a romantic relationship
might be interested in and respond to messages from guys who express interest in you. To meet guys IRL, you go places and do things: join clubs, volunteer for community groups, find a few good “third places” where you feel comfortable—cafés, gyms, libraries—and frequent them. You should also seek out services and social groups serving the neurodivergent community in the city where you live. 10. If you accidentally used silicone lube on a silicone sex toy just once, should you toss the toy to be safe? “Most silicone toy manufacturers and reputable retailers advise against combining silicone lube with silicone toys, as the lube can bond with the toy and degrade its surface,” said Searah Deysach, the owner of Chicago’s beloved sex-toy shop Early to
There are so many greats—“Heard It Through the Grapevine,” “The Piña Colada Song,” “Don’t Hurt Yourself ”—but in the category of “Best Song About Cheating,” my vote would go to “Torn Between Two Lovers” by Peter Yarrow and Phillip Jarrell as performed by Mary MacGregor. (The tech-savvy, at-risk youth made me include one of the above songs — can you guess which it was?)
4. If you post X-rated stuff to “close friends” on your Instagram, do you need to ask your friends before you add them? Yes. 5. Can one person be the primary partner of two different people? No. 6. Tips for a first foursome? Clean sheets on the bed, hand towels and lube on the nightstand, four pints of ice cream in the freezer.
12. I’m having trouble staying fully hard while waiting for the bottom to “open up” before penetration. Advice? If opening up the bottom doesn’t make and keep your dick hard… and if a few self-administered strokes once the bottom is open don’t get you hard enough to penetrate him… you could ask the bottom to do a little advance work, e.g. lube himself up and have a plug in before you get there. Personally, I think opening up the bottom is a top’s responsibility—you should regard it as privilege and a pleasure—but if all you wanna do is walk and dump your load in some gaped dude, there’s no shortage of bottoms looking for tops like you on the apps. 13. After hearing so many stories about people who didn’t discover their kinks until they got a kinky partner and something clicked, I figured that would be how I discovered mine, if I have any. But my partner is vanilla. Can two vanilla people just randomly try kinks to see if something clicks? How would that work? Could it work? Vanilla sex is great, but I find myself wondering if that’s all there is, my friend.
3. I’m interested in exploring a D/s sexual dynamic, but I have no experience and I don’t know where to start. How do I explore? “The best thing you can do now is to identify the tone of D/s that excites you most,” said Lina Dune, host of the “Ask a Sub” podcast. “D/s is a big umbrella, but if you can tell someone that as a sub you want to feel like someone’s secretary or like a raccoon they’ve trapped on their back porch or like their most prized houseplant, then you’re that much closer to living out the fantasy—and if you need any additional help on either side of the slash, the ‘Ask A Sub’ podcast is here to enable your highest filth.”
relationship? Is he allowed to get pegged by other women? And has this boy—your best friend’s boyfriend—expressed any interest in being stolen from his girlfriend? P. S. Unless your best friend is a cuckquean who gets off on her boyfriend hooking up with her friends—unless she was on the other side of that bathroom door masturbating—you’re a lousy best friend.
between two people who were not in utero at the same time—is inherently problematic. To be truly egalitarian, there must be a period of significant fetal overlap. And while I would argue that your current relationship (and my current relationships) should be grandfathered in, no relationship with an age gap greater than eight months should be allowed going forward. P.S. Just kidding. Tell your friends to google “consenting adults” and “fuck off ” in that order. P.P.S. For the record: relationships with significant age gaps should come in for a higher degree of scrutiny from family and friends and the older partner should welcome that scrutiny. If the older partner is defensive about this scrutiny, that’s a red flag. Also: you should google “Dan Savage” and “campsite rule.” 9. As a gay/neurodivergent man, how do I get on the apps and meet other men IRL? The same way neurotypicals do: you post some recent pictures on dating/hookup apps and put what you’re looking for in your bio. You send messages to guys you
“I’ve spoken to countless clients who were able to explore new kinks—things they had never even considered before— JOE NEWTON with established partners; many found Bed. “But we have found that silicone lube they love D/S dynamics or foot play or tying does not always damage silicone toys. So, someone up,” said Certified Sex Therapist if you accidentally combine the two and Claire Perelman. “But it can be daunting to your toy shows no visible marring or sticky figure out where to start with exploring kink spots, you should be fine. No need to toss and BDSM. Finding kinks that might turn your toy out! But if you are still concerned, you on—especially starting from vanilla you can throw an unlubricated condom on sex—can feel overwhelming, but it can also the toy—most lubricated condoms use sil- be a surprisingly hot exploration. To help icone lube—to be extra safe.” people on that journey, I created Un-Vanilla Your Sex Life, a consent-centered guide full 11. I just went to a cabin for a friend’s birth- of therapist-backed reflections, questions, day. We all got super drunk and put on and activities that can help you explore lingerie and we all made out. I can’t stop kinks on your own or with a partner.” thinking about my best friend’s boyfriend… who I pegged in the bathroom while every- 14. Where do I find the sapphic orgies? one was partying. I’ve been fucking him in the bathroom of his job every day since and They’re in Berlin and they’re in porn and I would like to steal him for myself. Bide they’re in porn made in Berlin. my time or go for it? At this party where everyone got drunk, put on lingerie, and made out… were other people slipping away from the group to hook up in bathrooms and bedrooms? Or were you and your best friend’s boyfriend the only ones who spent time alone? Another possibly relevant detail you omitted: Are your best friend and her boyfriend in an open
GOT PROBLEMS? YES, YOU DO! Email your question for the column to mailbox@savage.love! Or record your question for the Savage Lovecast at savage.love/askdan! Podcasts, columns, and more at Savage.Love
MARCH 2026
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Demonstrate your civic knowledge by connecting each famous Portland public art butt to its name! Help mommy and daddy’s art tax money get into the hands of the artists that need it! BUT WATCH OUT… don’t let it disappear forever into some mysterious city bank account!
Paul Bunyan
Chinatown Guardian Lion
Portlandia
Kvinneakt Joan of Arc
Thompson Elk
SEAN TEJARATCHI
Jump Starts BY NATE CARDIN
39. Biweekly or monthly expense for an employer 42. Hot Wheels toy 43. “___ you kidding me?” 44. Former partners 45. Monthly magazine focused on African American news and culture 47. Incentive from the IRS
DOWN
32. Baby bird that hoots
1. Tender skin spots
33. Give a speech
2. Peaceful pause
34. Scold harshly
3. ___ zero (status of having no unanswered emails)
35. Tests that help high schoolers earn college credits
4. Steal from 5. Acronym that sometimes includes A for Arts 6. Prickly desert plants
40. Gave the pink slip 41. ___ of the Fire Horse (2026, in the Chinese Zodiac)
17. Earth-friendly prefix
49. K-12 school fundraising org.
18. Yoga surface
50. List-ending abbr.
46. “Kapow!”
19. Historic periods shorter than an eon
7. Palindromic “What’d you say?”
51. In a deadpan manner
8. Big name in nail polish
53. Mother’s spouse, sometimes
49. Fire lover, briefly
9. PC alternative
52. Pumps iron at the gym
10. Seattle’s ___ Place Market
54. Company that made Pong
21. “I’m too ___ for my shirt / so ___ it hurts”
12. Live-in child carer
23. Sun-blocking hat part
11. “... but maybe I’m wrong” 14. Yellow plastic bird used as a comedic prop
1. ___ the pot (causes drama) 6. Take a noisy bite, like PacMan
ACROSS
57. Give off 59. 401(k) alternative
27. Up to the task
61. Catch some rays
29. Versatile blackjack card
62. How to shift our clocks in March ... or a hint to what can precede the circled words
31. “CIA Realizes It’s Been Using Black Highlighters All These Years” satirical news source 33. “Becoming” author Michelle
67. Fruit-flavored frozen dessert 68. Spine-tinglingly creepy
13. Aired on TV again
48. Spots on a radar screen
15. All-night dance party
55. “It’s-a-me!” Nintendo character
16. Oreo and Nilla Wafers company
56. South American mountain range
20. “Just Say No” or “Just Do It!”
58. Gait between walk and canter
22. Sweet potato
60. Length x width, for a rectangle
24. Hutch’s 1970s TV partner
69. Microsoft videochat app that replaced Skype for Business
25. “Say it ain’t so!”
63. Furious wrath
37. “___ Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band”
26. Short Instagram video
64. Portland Trail Blazers’ org.
28. Way in
65. Jewel
38. One in a gym set
70. “Hasta la vista!”
30. Bit of high jinks
66. Marry
36. All over again
BUTT SERIOUSLY ANSWERS: 1. Thompson Elk 2. Kvinneakt (AKA “Expose Yourself to Art”) 3. Portlandia 4. Joan of Arc 5. Paul Bunyan 6. Chinatown Guardian Lion
ANSWERS ON P. 37