This was one of those weeks when the events of the outside world -- the drama with nuclear reactors in Japan, the institution of a no-flight zone in Libya -- creep into our theaters, galleries and concert halls. Sometimes a play is so involving that it acts as a momentary escape from international news, and that's how Artists Repertory Theatre's production of Jack Goes Boating worked for me. Not that the relationship issues at stake in Bob Glaudinin's romantic comedy aren't important themselves: We know from experience that our personal lives go on regardless of the events in Japan or Libya, and that those events go hardest on the personal lives on people a lot like us. But still, this is an indirect connection.
Other times, we may be watching a dance performance, as I did Saturday night, and experience a sudden mental newsreel -- of file footage of Tomahawk missiles or fresh video from the one of the tsunami's many disaster areas. In this case, I think the dance itself, Sarah Slipper's Black Ink for Northwest Dance Project, inspired that jolt of memory.
Those were two of the shows I saw this weekend. The third was an improvisation by Linda Austin set on and around and even under an installation by Kurt Burkheimer at Disjecta, an art space in the Kenton neighborhood. It took me on an entirely different course altogether, as Austin's work often does.
