Authors: Parker Scott Mortensen
Damn These Heels 2018: Sisterhood
Sisterhood is co-parenting without romance. Sei (played by Gigi Leung as her older self and Fish Liew as her teenage self) and Ling (Jennifer Yu) are two Chinese women without any romantic attraction to each other. … read more
Damn These Heels 2018: 1985
1985 is Adrian’s story of moving through his hometown one last time. Having contracted HIV from his now-deceased boyfriend while living in New York, Adrian struggles to reconcile his relationship to his god-fearing family with his knowledge that he is sick, that he will almost certainly die. … read more
Damn These Heels 2018: The Misandrists
The Misandrists is the most frustrating movie I’ve seen in a while. I got whiplash trying to understand whether the film was celebrating women or only pretending to—satirizing with camp or offering an actual worldview. … read more
Review: The Aliens
The Aliens is a performance that’d be subtle enough for TV but is still connective enough for theatre. “Half of this play … is silence,” writes playwright Annie Baker, and it’s true. It works in this production because the audience is so close. … read more
Chiura Obata: An American Modern
An American Modern has a lot of firsts. It’s the first touring exhibition of Chiura Obata’s work that includes work from all decades of his working life. It’s also the first time his works have been presented as a collective retrospective in Japan, since they’ve only shown in fragments before and not always translated. … read more
Selective Nature: Nancy Rivera
Nancy Rivera has wrestled with this boundary of the real since her days completing her MFA at the University of Utah. Her work centered around the cyanotype processes, a cameraless form of photography that exposes a photosensitive iron solution onto a surface and then dries it in a dark room. … read more
Six Artists: BDAC’s Summer Gallery
I’ve been to the Bountiful Davis Art Center (BDAC) many times, but this particular gallery opening felt special. It was a warm Friday night, one of those soft Utah nights that hint at true summer. As those nights of heat near, BDAC offers six new exhibitions that explore abstraction, mediation, color and more. … read more
Downtown Play: Quarters
Shaken but not deterred, Quarters’ initial growing pains seem healthy, indicative of the people who have worked to bring this experience to Salt Lake City. Whether you love skeeball or Street Fighter, cocktails or Pabst, Quarters wants to include you. … read more
Speaking Volumes: Transforming Hate
This is political, personal and requires you to confront yourself. It’s hard, and it’s a space we should all try to live in more earnestly. Speaking Volumes: Transforming Hate runs until June 2 at the Springville Museum of Art. … read more
Film Review: Lean on Pete
Lean on Pete’s initial imagery, that of a boy and his horse trekking across the desert, plays into the romanticized conception of an America that doesn’t exist now and probably never did. … read more