Public Radio Confidential

Garrison Keillor, Nov 5 at 7:30 at Newmark Theatre
Radiolab Live: Apocalyptical, Nov 20 at 8 at Keller Auditorium

We’re giving away two pairs of tickets to Radiolab because we think it’s time you met our new public radio boyfriend. 

SMALL TOWN, BIG SCREEN

If anyone can save Our Town (Nov 14–Dec 1) from the doldrums of high school cafeteria theaters, it’s experimental performance troupe Liminal. The company will start out true to Thornton Wilder’s script, with a bare stage, but then layer on music, closed-circuit live video, and other multimedia magic until we’re immersed in Liminal’s trademark multisensory world. 

beach tunes

On Portland Smiles, 11 local bands cover the Beach Boys’ cult record Smiley Smile track for track: Typhoon adds strings to “Whistle In,” Radiation City gets dreamy for “Little Pad,” and there’s even a chiptune/metal version of “Fall Breaks and Back to Winter.” On November 15, a release concert will take over the East Portland Eagle Lodge. Beach costumes encouraged!

HEAD TRIP

Richard Strauss’s Salome (Nov 1–9) requires several things: singers powerful enough to belt through the score’s Wagnerian brashness, an audience courageous enough to brave its bloodthirsty tale, and a human head. For its new, contemporary reimagining, Portland Opera turned to Christina Kortum’s Ravenous Studios, which works regularly with Grimm, to replicate the head of bass-baritone David Pittsinger (John the Baptist) with silicone. The end result will be so lifelike, we pity celebrated soprano Kelly Cae Hogan, who, as Salome, must kiss it.