It’s the end of the year, and the numbers game is in full swing. Top Five lists (handy to count on the fingers of one hand). Top Tens (double your digits, double your fun). The best of this, the best of that, the movies or books or songs we should feel ashamed, the drumbeat often makes us feel, if we didn’t see, read, or hear.
Here at ArtsWatch, we like to play the numbers game, too. But we see it less as a competition than as a cultural road map. What were the stories or events that gave the year 2015 its distinctive flavor in Oregon? How was the year shaped, as Oregon ArtsWatch’s writers and editors saw it?
It’s been a year when the venerable Portland Opera took its first steps toward reinventing itself as a summer-festival company (the new format kicks in fully in 2016) and the even more venerable Oregon Shakespeare Festival raised an international ruckus by commissioning contemporary “translations” from 36 playwrights of all of Shakespeare’s plays: Sacrilege!, the cries rang out. The argument between traditionalists and impatient new-music advocates sometimes seemed to drive a wedge straight into the heart of the classical/serious music world, too.
Meanwhile, the Fertile Ground festival of new works grew even bigger, filling the city’s stages with fresh theater and dance, from rough drafts to staged readings to full-blown productions; and premieres later in the year such as Artists Rep’s Cuba Libre drew enthusiastic crowds. Music festivals in places like Astoria, Jacksonville and Eugene continued to prosper, spreading the cultural wealth around the state. PICA’s TBA festival once again pumped a little outside blood into the city’s scene.
