Going to Shadowbox Live can be a humbling experience. The troupe’s so-called “metaperformers” are so busy, ambitious and talented that you can’t help feeling like a lesser species in their presence.

For a prime example of what they’re capable of, see Broken Whispers, an adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby that transforms the title character into a lesbian and tells her story through a combination of narration, dance and song. Radically changing a literary classic sounds like a dangerous endeavor, but the production is put together with such skill and ingenuity that it’s a wonder to behold.

And that’s just one of the shows currently being staged at Shadowbox. When you consider that the average troupe member juggles multiple productions with behind-the-scenes duties and even waiting tables, it’s hard not to conclude we’re dealing with a higher order of being here. 

Fortunately for our egos, every once in a while the Shadowboxers put on a show that proves they’re only human after all. Such an animal is Shadow Zone, the troupe’s annual Halloween-season production.

Do Italian musicians feel things differently?

Only one of these questions popped into my head at a very recent Friday Woodlands Tavern happy hour when the monstrously good guitarist Rick Collura and his Blue Cats played like the muddy waters of the Mississip coursed through their veins. I mean, baby, they were up to their necks in blue electric mud, churnin' out deep-pocketed groove like tax exiles in France. Groanin' and moanin' they had me, I confess. Where did their music end and my metabolism begin? It was a delta-Chicago-Vulcan soul-mind meld of the highest order. A rarity these days, what with all the roots doctors of music leaving no inheritors of the genre behind for what reason. Fuckin' millenials.

Nevertheless, I felt like I was in the catfish's stomach by the third song.

On Tuesday, September 13th, the Lantern published an interview with President Michael Drake that misrepresented the details and events of and surrounding the #ReclaimOSU occupation last spring. We, as a coalition, have several corrections and rebuttals to President Drake’s comments:

Referring to the threats of expulsion against protestors at the ReclaimOSU protest, President Drake claimed that “it never would happen.” However, Dr. Drake has a history of upholding these same draconian measures against student activists. As Chancellor of The University of California Irvine, Drake threatened students who became known as the Irvine 11 with arrest and expulsion. After peacefully disrupting a speech by an Israeli ambassador, students were suspended from school and given three years of probation.

Standing Rock is the focal point of a struggle between the indigenous people of the United States and the big oil industry. Energy Transfer Partnership is building the Dakota Access Pipeline that will transport Bakken fracked oil to the Gulf of Mexico and then likely sold outside this country. The pipeline is planned to go right under the Missouri River just one half mile upstream of the Sioux Reservation. The Missouri is the main source of water for the people on the reservation, as well as approximately 13 million people downstream.

Via social media, I was shocked to see video footage of natives being attacked by guards with pepper spray and vicious dogs as they tried to peacefully defend their sacred burial grounds from bulldozers. I became resolute that I wanted to go to the Standing Rock Reservation in North Dakota.

On September 8th I arrived in North Dakota. As I drove down route 6 into the reservation, I started to see small camps along the road next to areas that had been disturbed by bulldozers. A little farther and I saw hundreds of flags lining a long road into the camp. The land was covered in tepees and bright colored tents.

Attack of the Mixed-Use Monsters

Across Columbus and its suburbs mixed-use developments, which often include high-end condos, parking garages, office space, retail and entertainment, are either up-and-running, under construction or being proposed with each new week.

Some of these developments work for certain neighborhoods, especially if the development utilized a property that was either vacated or in need of investment, developments in Grandview and Franklinton, for example.

But cramming a mixed-use development into an already established and historically unique neighborhood is a different beast altogether. A recent case-in-point is the development that replaced Clintonville’s Olympic Pool, a summer hangout cherished by several generations of kids and parents alike.

Even in Upper Arlington there are some residents who see the coming invasion of high-density, mixed-use development as a gamble that not only could cause too much commercialism and increased density, but worse, demolish a community’s soul and character.