This month’s Premiere on Film Row will feature the opening reception for The Elaborate Collaborate, an art project at IAO Gallery, 706 W. Sheridan Ave. (featured in the April 22 issue of Oklahoma Gazette). Premiere is a family-friendly event held monthly on the third Friday of each month. There will be film screenings, live music, art openings and food trucks.
Local artists Romy Owens and Kelsey Karper wrangled more than 50 local artists to take part in this intricate exquisite corpse installation. The installation also includes a video component. The actual public opening is Friday, but as it is an ongoing project, the pieces will have changed many times before the public opening.
Carpenter Square Theatre, 800 W. Main St., will perform one of the more unusual, quirky dark comedies on any stage in Oklahoma at Premiere. Based on one of Shakespeare’s stage directions (The Winter’s Tale) Exit, Pursued by a Bear is a revenge comedy set in Atlanta. The theme is domestic abuse, so it is definitely rated PG-13.
The Lauren Gunderson play will entertain adults and mature teenagers, as Gunderson relies on an array of comic tropes and clever dialogue to soften the edges of domestic abuse without compromising the message. The highlight might well be the plan to leave honey and meat around the couple’s living room so the abuser will be mauled by a bear — thus, the title — but the dialogue is funny throughout.
A few of the metro’s best female singer/songwriters will be featured in the Cellar Door Music Showcase at The Paramount OKC, 701 W. Sheridan Ave. Country, roots, new grass, pop and acoustic genres will be well represented by Willow Way, Annie Oakley and Allie Lauren. The show starts at 8 p.m. There is a $10 cover for this show.
The grand opening of Jack Fowler Art World Headquarters on the second floor of The Paramount is also during Premiere.
If Alfred Hitchcock had been alive to helm any season of Mad Men, the set would likely have looked much like The Paramount’s second floor. Antiquated office equipment and supplies, signage and phone nooks are scattered throughout, generating an eerie ambiance, as if an office-based slasher film is about to break out.
Fowler moved in to his studio July 1, but Premiere will be the first official open house for the artist, who specializes in pop art portraits and abstract, linear landscapes.
“I’ve been a working artist in my house for years, which means I’ve nearly destroyed my home,” he said. “I moved everything in here so that I could have a working studio.”
For Premiere, Fowler will have a selection of his work on display, and while he tends to work with acrylics, he will also have one sculpture and a few small-scale ink and paper pieces.
Premiere is free to attend, but some activities or openings might have separate charges.
Editor’s note: Jack Fowler is an editorial cartoonist and freelance writer for Oklahoma Gazette.
Print headline: Act three, Premiere on Film Row offers everything from movies to live music the third Friday of each month.
