Art and Performance Spring 2023

EverOut's Top Picks for Spring 2023 Arts Events in Seattle

Our Top Performance, Visual Art, Literary, Film, and Music Picks for the Season

Ballet Unbound

Pacific Northwest Ballet Pushes Itself to the Limits with Boundless

Person of Interest: Rohini Jayanthi

Laughing Through Life’s Hardships

Obsessed by Northwest

Why David Schmader Watched Every Single Movie Ever Filmed in Washington and Oregon

The Flood Is Coming

Jónsi’s Multisensory Exhibition Will Hit You Like a Wave

Art & Performance: Spring 2023 Pickup Locations

We’re Back in Print! Looking for a Copy of Our Latest Art & Performance Issue? You Can Find One at the Following Locations.

The Stranger's A+P Is Back

The Most Comprehensive Guide to the Spring Arts Season Returns Online and in Print

Solaris Is About a Black Woman

Will Book-It Repertory Theatre’s Adaptation Catch What Others Have Missed?

Floating on a Sea of Vapors

Emily Counts’s Surreal Sculptures Capture Women’s Magical Powers

Person of Interest: Josh Okrent & CM Ruiz

Bringing Life to Seattle’s Vacant Spaces

Good as Hell

Legendary Drone Band Earth Finally Receives Their Hero’s Welcome

Bananas Are Creepy Yellow Fingers Full of Blood

A New Poetry Collection Tells the Whole Story

We distributed our last physical edition of The Stranger on March 11, 2020. The world has since turned upside down several times over, but you already know that. To be back in your hands now feels like somewhat of a miracle. Or maybe a fever dream.

We got here with a smaller team and fewer resources. We had to work twice as hard with half as much. And, if I may, I’m pretty fucking proud of us! I’m proud of Seattle, too. Because while we were working day and night to claw our way out of the online-only underworld, so was Seattle’s arts community. Our musicians, artists, actors, writers, weavers, movers, and shakers all worked tirelessly to reignite a spark that seemed to all but fizzle out when the virus catapulted humankind into survival mode.

Things have been coming back to life in fits and starts for a while now, it’s true, but there’s something about spring that always makes everything feel brighter and more alive. And this season, Seattle’s artists aren’t just coming out of hibernation bleary-eyed and bumbling—they’re sprinting toward the light at the end of the tunnel to take back what the past three years have stolen from them. 

In March, local filmmaker Clyde Petersen premieres his long-awaited documentary, Even Hell Has Its Heroes, at Copenhagen’s International Documentary Film Festival. The film is not just about the legendary drone band, Earth; it’s also a love letter to Washington state and all the cinematic scenery that inspires the band’s meditative music. The Pacific Northwest Ballet is breaking out, too, bringing to the stage—live and in person!—Penny Saunders’s Wonderland, which was only performed virtually during the pandemic.

In June, ceramicist Emily Counts will mount her largest show to date at Museum of Museums. Her surreal sculptures of people and body parts—some life-sized!—celebrate the women in her life who instilled in her a sense of magic and curiosity. And the folks at Nii Modo have taken on one of their biggest achievements, too, having converted the former Bartell Drugs on Third Avenue into a huge new event space for concerts, art shows, and the beloved Punk Rock Flea Market.

This is also just the beginning of The Stranger’s return to print—we’re already planning more special issues for summer and fall, so expect to see us on the streets again soon. Of course, we’re always writing about the best art shows, performances, readings, film screenings, and concerts at thestranger.com, too. As I like to say to anyone who unwittingly says to me, “I used to love reading The Stranger”: We’re not dead! We’re just online.

But there’s nothing like print media. We love it, and we know you love it, too. It feels good to be back.

Megan Seling

Arts Editor, The Stranger

Pacific Northwest Ballet rehearsal photo by Kristen Marie Parker.

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