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The Blockhouse 6 results
The MidWay Music Festival is back in B-town with more than 30 women-featured acts. But this year it’s more than just a series of concerts. It’s a nonprofit organization, MidWay Music Speaks, that celebrates and connects women in music and fights for gender equity on stage. | Photo courtesy of MidWay Music Festival

Guest Column: MidWay Music Fest Fights for Gender Equity On Stage
Rachel Glago
The MidWay Music Festival is back in B-town with more than 30 women-featured acts. But this year it’s more than just a series of concerts. It’s a nonprofit organization, MidWay Music Speaks, that celebrates and connects women in music and fights for gender equity on stage. Writer Rachel Glago has the score. Click here to read the full story.
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Members of the Blockhouse Bar Call & Response House Band before a show. | Photo by Chaz Mottinger

‘Wednesday Is Jazz Night’ — A Conversation with Drummer Ben Lumsdaine
Jim Manion, Chaz Mottinger
With Bloomington’s jazz pedigree, it’s fitting that one of the hottest acts in town is a jazz band. On Wednesday nights at Blockhouse Bar, the Call & Response House Band features local and national jazz artists. Jim Manion, music director at WFHB, talked with C&R leader and drummer Ben Lumsdaine about the weekly jazz series. Click here to read the full story.
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Block parties, summer fairs, art shows, theater, music, comedy, and festivals galore — these define a Bloomington summer. And that’s just the first weekend! | Courtesy photo

B-town Summer Kicks Off with Busy Weekend June 1-3
Benjamin Beane
Block parties, summer fairs, art shows, theater, music, comedy, and festivals galore — these define a Bloomington summer. And that’s just the first weekend! Writer Benjamin Beane gets us going with a sampling of the events and activities on the first weekend in June. Click here to read the full story.
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The conference, festival, and symposium called Wounded Galaxies 1968 intersects with Bloomington’s orbit next month. The event looks at the tumultuous year 1968, which included the Chicago protests and riots during the Democratic National Convention. (Pictured here is an anit-war march prior to the convention in 1968.) Wounded Galaxies organizer Joan Hawkins says the event will be more than a museum piece: “We want to confront the whole concept of revolutionary aesthetics, and ask, ‘Where do we go from here?’” | Photo by David Wilson, Creative Commons

Big Mike’s B-town: Wounded Galaxies, Where 1968 Intersects with 2018
Michael G. Glab
Wounded Galaxies 1968 — a conference, festival, and symposium including art exhibits, film screenings, and music performances — intersects with Bloomington’s orbit next month. LP columnist Michael G. Glab spoke to Joan Hawkins, a founder of the group that’s organizing the event. While Wounded Galaxies looks at the tumultuous year 1968, Hawkins says the event will be more than a museum piece: “We want to confront the whole concept of revolutionary aesthetics, and ask, ‘Where do we go from here?’” Click here to read the full story.
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Bella Bravo's 100-percent-local theater production of their play "As Bad As They," about opioid addiction, will be showing Friday, June 30, at The Blockhouse. | Photo by eric molina from New York City, United States [CC BY 2.0], via Wikimedia Commons

Behind the Curtain: ‘As Bad As They’ [a play]
Jennifer Pacenza
Bella Bravo’s play As Bad As They explores the darkness of opioid addiction and the impulse of nonaddicts, especially loved ones, to exert a new form of control over the addict. And it’s a comedy. In her column, Behind the Curtain, Jennifer Pacenza calls this timely play “local theater as a form of activism.” Click here to read the full story.
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The locally made film "Above the Fruited Plain" exemplifies “independent, do-it-yourself filmmaking that the coasts aren’t creating,” says Jessica Levandoski, co-founder of Middle Coast Film Festival. A leading force for filmmaking in the Midwest, the festival will screen 82 films at five venues July 28–30 in Bloomington. | Photo courtesy of "Above the Fruited Plain"

Local Film at the Heart of Middle Coast Film Festival
TJ Jaeger
A leading force for filmmaking in the Midwest, Middle Coast Film Festival will screen 82 films at five venues July 28–30 in Bloomington. Among them is locally made Above the Fruited Plain, which festival co-founder Jessica Levandoski says exemplifies “independent, do-it-yourself filmmaking that the coasts aren’t creating.” Click here to read the full story.
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