New York! Not able to make it to Frankenstein: A Cabaret in January in Portland? Come hear a preview at Postcrypt Coffeehouse on Columbia Campus this coming Friday, December 4th @ 9:30. Laura Dunn plays the crypt with Kendy Gable, previewing songs from the upcoming folk opera.

The next Broken Planetarium is Mortified. Inspired by the podcast, and that Frankenstein who looked in horror at what he made, we are looking to examine how we perceive our own art. Take something that you have created that now embarrasses you and bring it to share. You can bring

About Frankenstein: A Cabaret From the producers and writer of last year's The Snow Queen: A Folk Opera, Frankenstein is reset in the changing and charged atmosphere of contemporary Portland. The story of Mary Shelley's monster comes alive through eerie folk music, contemporary dance, and cabaret

A sandwich is often named after its insides. Tolkien didn't write about no Upper or Lower Earth. And who is happier in a triple spoon than Lucky Pierre? This month we celebrate the middle, the median, the filling. Write a novel set at midnight, about a middle manager

After a July hiatus, the next Broken Planetarium will be Friday, August 7th. 6:00 pm potluck/ 7:00 pm start. The theme is copycat. Take someone else's idea that you've loved, and like a cat, bat it around in your paws while it suffers, then

The next Broken Planetarium is Sunday, June 28th. The theme is pro-pocalypse. In a world, where too many film previews start with "in a world" and then show an apocalyptic setting, how can we envision a positive future? How is a positive future possible if we never see

The next Broken Planetarium will be Friday, May 29th at 7:00. The theme is stowaway. Let's not keep art and life as separate spheres. Don't have your day job and then your night of unpaid nude fluting. Where can art stowaway in your daily life?

The next Broken Planetarium will be Saturday, April 25th at 7:00 (potluck) and 8:00 (start). The theme is Origin Story. For millennia, religion had the monopoly on where we came from: from a rib, a misogynistic swan, a scoop of clay, a bossy finger, or a crazy dance.

The next Broken Planetarium will be Saturday, March 14th @ 7:00. The theme is close encounters with your younger kind. What would you do if you encountered your five year old self? What would you say? This month, make a piece of art that would speak to your five year

Many of you who have been coming to the planetariums have seen the poems I was working on last spring for this chapbook. I am so excited to tell you that Spider Blue has been published by Dancing Girl Press. Thank you for all your support, edits, courage, and co-mentorship.

The next Broken Planetarium is Saturday, February 21st at 7:00 pm (potluck) 8:00 pm (start). The theme is Making the Monster. We are a group that celebrates the making and the creating, but what happens after its over? Mary Shelley's Frankenstein says to his maker, "

The theme is dark and dirty! Create out of your sexy shadow. Create something that examines what parts of you that are kept underground, making out with Hades while your mom weeps through the winter. Write a burlesque featuring those misogynist literary characters you secretly want to do (HEATHCLIFF, anyone?

Collaborate! Complicate! Work with a partner in a different genre than your own, and create a piece that tells a famous story from another side. Write Birth on the Orient Express, paint Mona Lisa's derrière, animate a cartoon where the roadrunner finally gets shot and eaten for thanksgiving,

The theme is "love to hate it." Create something inspired by a hatred that holds a special place in your heart. Like Juliet crushing on a capulet in a hawaiian shirt, make your one horny adolescent longing spring from your one hate. Paint Jack Johnson's handsome

The theme is The Excreta Exhibit. Put on display what you usually throw away.Like the janitor James Hampton building a throne room out of gum wrappers, shards of metal, and broken lightbulbs that he found at his work (The Thrown of the Third Heaven of the Nation's

The theme this June is Hamartia Party-a. What is your tragic flaw? Describe it, talk to it, fight it, celebrate it, or draw it nude like Leo DiCaprio to Kate Winslet in Titanic. Whether you translate it as sin, error, flaw, or "missing the mark," make a party

Theme this month: Think of a smell that you evokes strong memories for you (the garbage of the seafood restaurant you lived above in Chicago, the smell of sunshine on your cat's belly, peanut butter tins left melting in the sun, the hemp-Chapstick breath of your high school

Dear Planetos, The theme is "teach in." Bring in a five minute presentation on an art or craft you know well and demonstrate how it is done. Along with the demonstration, bring in something you've made that illustrates your craft. For instance, write a sonnet about

"Where we're going, we won't need roads." Doc from Back to the Future eases Marty Mcfly's mind in this scene, reassuring him with this comment that the DeLorean will land safely because there are no roads. From The Cantebury Tales to Kerouac,

The theme is distraction: This month make something out of what distracts you. Turn your texts into performance art, paint your daydreams, turn your to-do list into a poem, write a love song to your inner critical voices, write a play based on something you found on reddit, or make

The prompt this January is Ekphrasis: Respond to a piece of art in a genre you do not work in. Make a painting of a Cure Song, bake a cake based on Anais Nin's erotica, write a song responding to Edward Gorrey's drawings, write a poem

The theme is Wanderlust: write about a place you have never been as if it is your beloved. Use the words cataract, drift, and silly putty. Wanderlust: A strong desire to travel; an orgasm caused by a rolly-bag; a metamorphosis of psyche caused by changing locations; a runaway train never