Entertainment and Performing Arts
See also: Music of OregonLike most large cities, Portland has a range of classical performing arts institutions which include the Oregon Ballet Theatre, Oregon Symphony, Portland Opera and the Portland Youth Philharmonic. It also has quite a few stages similar to New York's Off Broadway or Off-Off-Broadway such as Portland Center Stage, Artists Repertory Theatre, Miracle Theatre, Stark Raving Theatre, and Tears of Joy Theatre. Portland hosts the world's only HP Lovecraft Film Festival at the Hollywood Theatre.
Portland is home to famous bands such as The Kingsmen and Paul Revere & the Raiders, both famous for their association with the song "Louie Louie" (1963). Other widely known musical groups include The Dandy Warhols, Everclear, Pink Martini, Sleater-Kinney, The Shins, Blitzen Trapper, The Decemberists, and the late Elliott Smith. The city's now-demolished Satyricon nightclub is well known for being the place where the late Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain and Hole frontwoman Courtney Love met each other; Love had grown up in Portland for most of her life. In recent years, a number of indie music bands from Portland have been touring nationally.
According to the New York Times, the dozens of karaoke bars in Portland make it not just "the capital of karaoke" in the United States, but "one of the most exciting music scenes in America.
Widely recognized animators who hail from Portland include Matt Groening (The Simpsons) and Will Vinton (Will Vinton's A Claymation Christmas Celebration). Dan Steffan, cartoonist-illustrator for Heavy Metal and other magazines, lives in Portland.
Filmmaker Gus Van Sant (Good Will Hunting (1997), Milk (2008)) is also a Portland native. Actors from Portland include Sam Elliott and Sally Struthers.
Recent films set and shot in Portland include Gone, Extraordinary Measures, Body of Evidence, What the Bleep Do We Know!?, The Hunted, Twilight, Paranoid Park, Wendy and Lucy, Feast of Love, Untraceable, My Own Private Idaho, and Coraline. An unusual feature of Portland entertainment is the large number of movie theaters serving beer, often with second-run or revival films. A notable example of these "brew and view" theaters is The Bagdad Theater and Pub.
The IFC sketch comedy series Portlandia, starring Fred Armisen and former Sleater-Kinney member Carrie Brownstein, shoots on location in Portland, satirizing the city as a hub of liberal politics, organic food, alternative lifestyles and anti-establishment attitudes.
Other TV shows which have shot in the city include Leverage, Under Suspicion, Grimm, Nowhere Man and Life Unexpected.
Read more about this topic: Culture Of Portland, Oregon, Culture and Contemporary Life
Famous quotes containing the words performing arts, performing and/or arts:
“More than in any other performing arts the lack of respect for acting seems to spring from the fact that every layman considers himself a valid critic.”
—Uta Hagen (b. 1919)
“And no one, it seemed, had had the presence of mind
To initiate proceedings or stop the wheel
From the number it was backing away from as it stopped:
It was performing prettily; the puncture stayed unseen....”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)
“These modern ingenious sciences and arts do not affect me as those more venerable arts of hunting and fishing, and even of husbandry in its primitive and simple form; as ancient and honorable trades as the sun and moon and winds pursue, coeval with the faculties of man, and invented when these were invented. We do not know their John Gutenberg, or Richard Arkwright, though the poets would fain make them to have been gradually learned and taught.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)