Adam Goldthwaite?s character ?Prophet,? who will take the stage in this weekend?s ?Inside/Out? performance, draws a crowd on campus.
All forms of artwork will collide this weekend as the UO Cultural Forum presents its biggest event of the season, bringing Inside/Out to the McDonald Theatre.
Inside/Out, which opens today and runs through Saturday, is a festival that combines many artistic genres from visual art to dance, film, poetry and theater. The festival took 10 months of planning and will include 30 dancers, 50 painters and sculptors, 15 poets, five bands, seven actors and three filmmakers.
Inside/Out is also presented by Experiment, a group of local artists from the University and Eugene communities.
There was a smaller Inside/Out performance in 2001, hosted by the Campbell Club co-op. This year is the first year that the Cultural Forum has been involved, and the event has grown.
UO Cultural Forum Visual Arts Coordinator Mary Rasmussen said the purpose of this event is to fuse all forms of art together in two shows. Promoters also want to feature the artwork being created in the local community and the surrounding area.
“This event is to promote the arts from every genre,” UO Cultural Forum National Music Coordinator Alexis Stevens said. “It’s a collaboration of many different art forms. The overall theme is the coming together of opposites.”
Stevens said more than one performer will be onstage at a time combining different art forms. For example, she said, while a poet is speaking, there will also be an art performance and film playing in the background.
“When different artists come together, it forms a conversation of all art,” Rasmussen said.
Each night has a different theme, and Friday will celebrate the wedding of the sun and the moon. Promoters want people to dress in formal wear. On Saturday, the theme will be the sun and moon’s wedding reception, and promoters want people to wear “freaked-out gear” or ecstatically extreme ensembles.
“We split up the nights because it’s a juxtaposition between two arts, the formal and the informal,” Rasmussen said. “Each night will appeal to different people.”
Friday night, promoters scheduled more “classical” art, such as academic poetry, ballroom dance groups and chamber music. Saturday will feature more “extreme” art, such as fire dancers, performance art and experimental music. Friday night’s headliners will be Mood Area 52, a local Eugene seven-piece tango band. Stevens said the band is a diverse group of people playing instruments such as the accordion, violin and saxophone.
“They fit the mood for Friday night,” Stevens said. “There will be tango dancers dancing to their music, and they fit the marriage setting.”
For Saturday’s “Carnival” theme, Madigan Shive of the San Francisco band Bonfire Madigan will be performing solo. Shive is a cellist and vocalist who plays a folk-punk mixture. Shive will be flying in from her European tour and this will be her only show in the United States. Cultural Forum Regional Music Coordinator Nathan Hazard said Shive writes all of her songs, and she combines chamber music with stylized vocals.
“I think that talent like Madigan doesn’t come through the Eugene area all the time,” Hazard said. “She is a genius of our generation.”
Other performances will include Champagne Syndicate, a local funk blues band, DJ Silver, a techno hip-hop artist, Eugene Capoeria Team, a martial arts group and the Eugene Highlanders, a local bagpipe band. In addition, the Olympus Mons will be performing tribal music and the University’s Hawaii Club will be chanting and dancing.
Stevens said she hopes Inside/Out will be an excellent vehicle for local artists to expand their audience.
“This production shows what young people can do to promote the arts and be creative,” she said.
The doors open both nights at 7:30 p.m. and the shows begin at 8 p.m. Tickets for one night cost $9 for students and $12 for the general public. Two-night tickets are $13 for students and $15 for the general public. The tickets are available at Fasttixx outlets, the EMU Ticket Office and some Safeway locations.
E-mail reporter Danielle Gillespie at [email protected].