The crowd hushes. Torches spit and crackle against damp stone. Somewhere in the dark, a woman whispers a line everyone somehow knows, even if they have never read the play:…
The air is thick with smoke and violin. Light slashes across the room through wooden blinds, striping faces in amber and shadow. Glass clinks, low laughter ripples under the trumpet's…
The curtain lifts on a dim stage. A single banner hangs overhead, heavy with color and symbol. A drumbeat starts: slow, insistent. An actor steps into the light wearing a…
The iron gate is half rust, half memory. Paint clings to its scrolls in thin flakes, like the last bits of costume on an exhausted actor. Behind it, an old…
Fog hangs low over the Willamette, swallowing the tops of the bridges. Headlights slide along wet pavement. Brick, steel, timber, glass. So much of Portland still feels like a stage…
The paint smells faintly of linseed and damp plaster. A ladder leans against a raw brick wall. Somewhere outside, a bread line is shuffling forward in the cold, but inside…
A face appears from the dark backstage, half-finished. One eye circled in chalky white, the cheek streaked with vermilion, the lips only outlined. Overhead, a naked bulb hums and flickers,…
The glass is almost invisible. A pane, tilted at an angle, catching light that should not be there. Behind it, a hidden room glows. A figure appears where there was…
The paper crackles like dry leaves when you lift it. Ink has sunk into rough fibers; the photos have turned the color of weak tea. Margins are frayed where someone…
It begins as a rustle. Fabric against fabric. A cough caught in the throat. A moment where the air holds its breath. Then someone rises. A chair scrapes. Another body…