Downtown is slow and ragged, though things are picking up gradually. Like so many cities in the United States, Portland is undergoing a very slow crawl out of the pandemic years: To borrow the lyrics from an old Duke Ellington tune, people don’t get around much anymore. But first, let’s take a look at some of the potholes along what’s been, after all, a decidedly bumpy road. The year had other feel-good stories, too, from the success of Beaverton’s sparkling new Patricia Reser Center for the Arts and Studio Abioto’s triumph there in January to the still-running late-year successes of the big exhibits Africa Fashion and Black Artists of Oregon at the Portland Art Museum. Wade McCollum gives a brilliant performance,” playwright and legendary drag performer Charles Busch raved, and it’s tough to get a better endorsement than that. “A highly entertaining and beautiful show. In Triangle makes New York gorgeous, Max Tapogna writes for ArtsWatch about McCollum’s and Horn’s preparations for opening night, and the show’s positive critical response. And the play, a solo show about the larger-than-life trans trailblazer Kenneth/Kate Marlowe, has hit the Manhattan spotlight, but it was born in Portland. The actor is Wade McCollum, a Portland favorite years ago in the likes of Hedwig and the Angry Inch and Bat Boy: The Musical who’s gone on to success in New York and London’s West End. The playwright is Donnie, also known as Don Horn, founder of Portland’s Triangle Productions. In one of the feel-good stories of the year, a playwright and an actor from Oregon spent November and December in an off-Broadway theater, pulling in Manhattan audiences and enthusiasm for a show called Make Me Gorgeous! But before we throw it onto the scrap heap of history let’s take a look at what happened during the past twelve months, specifically in the realms of arts and culture, and more specifically in the arts and culture of Oregon.

Well, yes: Here from the vantage point of New Year’s Day 2024 it is yesterday.

Twenty-twenty-three? That’s so yesterday! “Make Me Gorgeous!” star Wade McCollum, left, and writer-director Donnie at the post-opening night party in New York.

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