Author: Mark Arnest

“As You Like It,” which opens Thursday at TheatreWorks, may be Shakespeare’s most love-drenched play. “At the end, eight people are getting married, which I think is a record for Shakespeare,” said director Murray Ross. It takes time to get four couples together, and the twists and turns they take to get there make “As…

The region’s art lovers can glimpse a new side of one of the city’s foremost artistic couples starting Saturday, when an exhibit of new works by Betty and Murray Ross opens at the Business of Art Center.Of course, the Rosses – a painter/costume designer, and a theater director/playwright, respectively – have been fixtures in the…

Like most cities its size, Colorado Springs suffers from a disconnect in its visual arts scene: Artists live and work here, but don’t get exhibited much here.It’s a situation Roberto Agnolini, manager of downtown’s elegant and eccentric Bryan & Scott Jewelers, regrets.”People from here go to Chicago or Santa Fe to buy art,” he said.”But…

Colorado College’s new Edith Kinney Gaylord Cornerstone Arts Center has already been one star of the college’s Summer Festival of the Arts. Both the Summer Music Festival and the Extraordinary Dance Festival held performances in the new south theater.But no group stands to benefit more from the new space than the Vocal Arts Symposium, which…

Yelena Balabanova is one of the region’s best pianists, though you’ve probably never heard her. But if you’re a piano teacher in Colorado, you know who she is – her students shine at state and national competitions, and she’s also handled some of the administrative duties for Colorado’s music teachers association.Perhaps because her native language…

Stephen Scott’s office at Packard Hall reinforces every cliché about messy artists. There are piles of papers everywhere – one of them topped by a waste-basket that the composer and Colorado College professor thinks he used as a percussion instrument once – and the walls are plastered with pictures and maps. “I have ideas of…

The hallways connecting the three studios – aligned in a row on the west side of Sunrise Methodist Church – are filled with aspiring dancers. The summer intensive program has begun at The Ballet Society of Colorado Springs.”They’re here from 9 a.m. until 8 p.m.,” said Patricia Hoffman, who founded the school in 1997 and…

As he looks west toward Pikes Peak, across a triangular glass corridor, Tom Lindblade already looks at home in his new office at Colorado College’s Cornerstone Arts Center.Sort of.”I don’t have a place for the gong,” the chair of the college’s drama department said. “What’s an office without a gong?” VENUE: Cornerstone’s largest theater space…

By day, Lynne Hastings works for Premiere Global Services, a teleconferencing company where she’s worked since 1996 and where she’s a team leader for an audio production unit. By night, she’s one of the region’s best actresses – her scene with Leah Chandler-Mills in TheatreWorks’ fall production of “Doubt” may have been the theater season’s…

The Gazette’s second State of the Arts section is a look at how music, dance, theater and the visual arts are faring in the Pikes Peak region. This year’s theme – “On the Move” – reflects movement, both figurative and literal, in the local arts scene. Cottonwood Artists’ School is moving its huge collection of…