Well timed with pride festivals and parades slated around Puget Sound upcoming, Seattle-based film director Drew Emery is coming to the Lynwood Theater with his film “Inlaws and Outlaws” this weekend.
The film’s been described repeatedly as “honest and heartfelt,” and also as a look into the “heart of love” in reviews ranging from the Seattle Times to Variety. It made its first big splash at the Seattle International Film Festival a few years ago and continues to pick up momentum.
Its premise — What do you get when you fall in love? — immediately conjures that Elvis Costello and Burt Bacharach duo on the “Austin Powers International Man of Mystery” soundtrack. While its structure — a true stories project — reminds me a lot of the confessions room from reality shows like “The Real World.”

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Celebrating its 10th anniversary, Port Ochard’s Academy of Dance will be presenting a special annual performance recital titled “Back to the Future” with shows at 4 p.m. and 7 p.m. June 14 at the South Kitsap High School auditorium, 425 Mitchell Ave. in Port Orchard. In honor of the company’s 10 years in business, students will be performing resurrected favorites. Info: www.myacademyofdance.com or call Jennifer (360) 710-1752.

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Denver playwright Josh Hartwell’s slice of life drama, “Contrived Ending,” is an intimate look at the crisis of the 20-something generation in today’s world, through the vehicle of a “Clerks” meets “Empire Records” at the movie theater type of comedy.

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The Bremerton Community Theater’s latest production, which hit the boards this weekend, makes clear that it’s often best to leave work at the office.
Especially when it’s the morning of your daughter’s wedding day and your “work” just happens to take the form of a sexily dressed, kinky little flapper girl who’s invisible to everyone else, but only has eyes for you, so to speak. Thus is the complicated situation that a successful British advertising agent named Timothy Westerby (played by the well apt Charlie Birdsell) finds himself in after bumping his head in the Ray Cooney farce “There Goes the Bride.”

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Concert listings for Kitsap County, starting Thursday, June 12.

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There are people who do some of the most important work in the world, despite meager salaries and an often thanklessness and emotionally stressful work environment, all for the love of it.
They’re called teachers.
So it’s good to see that two retired Northwest art teachers are getting a bit of due appreciation and enjoying their time in the sun at local art galleries this month.

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For more than 30 years, Mike Lawson was an engineer at the Bremerton Naval Shipyard, working his way up to the highest civilian rank in the nuclear engineering program.
Now, he writes books at Tully’s.

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The world of a 12-year-old exists on an ever-shifting plane of mundane, of-this-earth pursuits.
And dreams.
“I just go into this trance,” Catherine Edwards said. “I adore it.”
The thing, or rather, pursuit that transports Edwards into such a state is none other than her cello, an instrument that she saw her mother play as a tot and that she begged to try for herself practically as soon as she was able to ask.
Edwards’ story of musical discovery mimics that of four other young musicians who will appear at Bainbridge Performing Arts on Sunday in the next Declassified Chamber Music concert.

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Birthdays ending in zero or five tend to up the ante. So Ovation! Musical Theatre, on the cusp of its fifth, wants to celebrate big.
“We’re having a party for ourselves, that we’re inviting the community to,” co-founder Marijane Milton said.
Ovation, run by a board of directors and a dedicated group of volunteers, is typically extremely disciplined about staging its shows. After all, it’s lasted this long in large part through diligence and frugality.
“All bootstraps,” said co-founder and board member Peter Denis of the group’s humble origins. “That was the thing of it. We’re ardent, we’re creative, and we have no money. How can we do something fantastic?”
But on Saturday night at the Bainbridge Commons, they’ll let loose a little bit with “Saturday Night Safari – Singers Gone Wild.”

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Mark Lovejoy isn’t trying to freak his viewers out.
“Not startle, per se, but the work is more offbeat than a lot of photography, for better or worse,” he said.
Lovejoy’s showing of surreal, weird, unexpected, and just plain manipulated photographs, a collection aptly titled “Photographs Strange and Different,” will be on display at Arts Studio beginning June 7.

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There’s something almost indescribable about being in the presence of greatness. And I have been in that presence.
Greatness, thy name is Neil Peart.
For two hours and 40 incredible minutes, I stood, mouth agape, watching as a 50-something year old man took drumming to an almost extraterrestrial level.

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