Friday, June 9, 2023
Smiley face
a person on stage wears a white shirt over their head with their hand in the air

Maine’s fringe theater festival rolls on, opens June 1

The trees have leafed out, people have started jumping in the ocean, and PortFringe, Portland’s irrepressible and joyous summer performing arts festival, is about...
An Atlantic Puffin on the water

Into the Wild: Answering autocomplete questions about Maine wildlife

Feeling prematurely nostalgic about its imminent replacement by AI, I checked in with my old pal Google the Search Engine to see how it...

Variegated metal: Manuel puts his guitar out front in ‘Underneath’

In industry circles, quite a bit has been made of the disappearance of the instrumental hit. After decades of Billboard toppers and songs that...
Portland's Maya Williams (ey/they/she) is a religious Black multiracial nonbinary suicide survivor and currently the seventh poet laureate of Portland, Maine. Their debut poetry collection, Judas & Suicide, is available in May from Game Over Books.

Beyond doubt: Maya Williams’ debut poetry collection is a force to be reckoned with

Do you read the obituaries? If you do, you know there’s really only one specific thing that people die of: cancer. We are often...
pickleball court

Game On: Searching for pickleball

I want to talk about pickleball's rise in Portland. I also want to state my firm stance that Portland needs more options for public...
girl in butterfly wings beamingly smiling

A place to be a kid: The country’s oldest children’s theater celebrates its 100th...

A hundredth birthday is a big one, and Maine’s children’s theater is the longest-running in the nation. The folks at the Children's Museum and...
the four members of Thanks to Gravity play keyboards, drums and guitars in a brightly lit room

Heavy Things: Thanks to Gravity release first album in two decades

Do college kids still get together in dorm rooms to take bong hits, turn off all the lights except for the Christmas strings around...

Art Seen: Maine Art Gallery at 65

The roots of the modern art scene in Maine were planted in the 1940s and 1950s, largely by artists themselves. The Skowhegan School of Painting...
Portland artist Liza Victoria, aka Lisa/Liza, stands with her back to the camera facing a forest of bare trees and a blue sky patched with clouds

Sense of a Mending: A new record from Lisa/Liza that is out of time

It is the rare performer who doesn’t cultivate at least a couple personalities. The act of going on stage, putting oneself on display, for...
Corbin Burke cuts Deering educational technician Jean-Claude Butera's hair after school.

Game On: Corbin Burke makes the cut

This spring, you can catch Corbin Burke darting towards the lacrosse goal for Deering High School. Next fall, he’s juking out defenders on the...