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The year is 2088. Your name is Amitjyoti ("Amy") Ferrier. You've been assigned by the Venturis Corporation to salvage AI hardware from its seemingly empty station in earth orbit, specifically the strategic L1 point en route to the moon. Aiding you in your retrieval efforts is an augmented-reality device that
Features
Readers, you don't just like Alma Mater, the new performance-and-dining space between South 13th and 15th on Fawcett, you like like it, perhaps even love it. Well you should, because whether you're an art junkie, foodie or music aficionado, this space offers something for everyone. Maybe that's why you voted
Stage
Olympia's a town that adores musicians, and it's played parent, host and/or teacher to more than its fair share of name-brand performers. Beat Happening, Beck, Bikini Kill, Kurt Cobain, Kimya Dawson, The Fleetwoods, Courtney Love, Krist Novoselic, Sleater-Kinney -- all have deep connections to Washington's capital city. It's also the
Arts
Every year since 2001, the Olympia Comics Festival has played host to renowned graphic authors and artists alongside homegrown beginners. Casey Bruce and Frank Hussey, owners and operators of Oly comics shop Danger Room, pride themselves on running the oldest alternative-comics event of its kind in the Northwest. "It really started
Music
Music erases distance. There are about 4,600 miles between Liverpool, England, and northeastern Texas, but those vanished when 9-year-old Dave Walser first encountered the Fab Four on The Ed Sullivan Show. It was early 1964, and even Walser knew his life had just changed. "I'd been playing guitar since I
Music
By the late 1970s, thanks to American Graffiti, Grease, Happy Days and the televised doo-wop of Sha Na Na, nostalgia for the 1950s had bloomed in pop culture. As any Beatlemaniac, Deadhead or Trekker can tell you, idolatry for the '60s and ‘70s never waned. If anything, then, 1980s revivalism
Arts
Put one way, this summer marks the 60th birthday of one of the South Sound's most legendary residents. Put another way, this mythic figure spans millennia. Indigenous tribes of the Pacific Northwest told tales of wild men in the woods, from the Lummi Ts'emekwes to the Chinookan people's mountain skookums
Music
The Weekly Volcano was pleased to speak with Robert Musser, founder and conductor of Tacoma Concert Band, in advance of a concert celebrating his impending retirement. First, however, a simple question: What's the difference between a concert band and an orchestra? "It's just a different sound," Musser explained. "The orchestra is
Attractions
Everyone knows the end of August brings three weeks of entertainment to the Washington State fairgrounds, which is among the largest state fairs in the country. Less well known, perhaps, is the shorter Spring Fair, which has arrived every April since 1990. It may be less expansive than its older
Music
The last time most of us thought about the harp -- and chances are that opportunity wasn't recent -- our most likely associations were uptight chamber music or supplies from Saint Peter to the newly inorganic. Maybe not, though. Maybe you're one of those lucky connoisseurs who are hip to
Stage
When Ludwig van Beethoven died in March of 1827, possibly from cirrhosis of the liver, he'd been in poor health for years. Despite that, he managed to finish several string quartets and his now-beloved Ninth. The finale of that symphony, an allegro familiar to anyone who ever watched Die Hard,
Stage
"I love Chekhov because he's one of the greatest playwrights ever, and his work is really great for training actors," said Marla Elliott, a faculty member specializing in drama at The Evergreen State College in Olympia. "He creates stories and plays in which there are no villains and no heroes,
Arts
Most people can't remember old phone numbers or grade-school teachers with whom they spent five days a week, but there's a good chance they can identify dozens of Star Wars action figures, Atari 2600 games or their first Cabbage Patch Kid. Though we didn't always buy them, toys were the
Stage
And one and two and ball change, kick. Each year since 2010, dance troupes from all over Western Washington have come together to show off every little step they take on one expansive stage, The Washington Center. Organizing the 2018 Olympia Dance Festival program is Ken Johnson, artistic director for
South Sound Cinema
Nearly everyone who's ever so much as mumbled a line as Third Tree From the Left in a grade-school production of The Lorax dreams of accepting an Oscar. Still, rare are the opportunities working adults get handed by life to dress to the nines, walk the red carpet, credit Mom
Stage
However 2017 may have treated you, Sam Miller had a banner year. "I bought a house," he agreed. "I have a great job as a social worker, working in Tacoma. I got that job in 2017." Then there's his thriving side career as Olympia's pre-eminent standup comedian. "I'm really happy with where
Stage
Sure, it's called The Washington Center for the Performing Arts, but it's more accurate to say it's the center of Olympian culture. The Center occupies the former real estate of the vaudeville-age Liberty Theater, which opened in 1924 and was renovated two-dozen years later as the Olympic Theater cinema. Then, when
Music
When editor Bill White assigned this article, he added, "Try not to cry when describing some of the music." He was cracking wise, of course, but he was closer to the truth than he knew. Return with us now to those totally tubular days of yesteryear, specifically the early 1980s. It
Stage
It's become a cliché to say this, but Georges Bizet's Carmen is an opera custom-made for people who say they don't like opera. It's an opéra comique -- a form in which choruses and arias are separated by spoken dialogue, ancestral to American-style musical theater -- based on a short
Music
Despite our admiration for Americana, roots and other traditional forms of music, Washingtonians sometimes fail to give country-western music the respect it deserves. Still, tickets are going fast for the upcoming Miranda Lambert concert at the Tacoma Dome, so we know there's an enthusiastic crowd of readers out there amped