While You’re (mostly) In: Go out to play, explore modern love, meet an Olympia hobbit
A day at the museum
The Hands On Children’s Museum is reopening once again. The museum was closed from March until August and had to shut down again in November to comply with tightened restrictions aimed at slowing the spread of the coronavirus. With Thurston County’s move into Phase 2, the museum at 414 Jefferson St. in Olympia, is welcoming visitors beginning Friday, Feb. 12. Only about 35 families at a time can visit to facilitate social distancing, and other protocols aimed at maximizing safety remain in place. Admission prices range from free to $14.95 per person for a two-hour visit, and reservations are a must. Find out more online, or call 360-956-0818.
Dating games
Has anyone else notices a mini-trend (trendette?) in online theater: the dating lives of gay men. The Washington, D.C.-based Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company has critics buzzing over “Hi, Are You Single?” Definitely for adults only, Ryan J. Haddad’s autobiographical one-man show explores the complicated realities of looking for love as a man who’s both gay and living with cerebral palsy. (When he comes out to his mother, she tells him, “Now you’re different in two ways.”) The show is by turns raunchy (Haddad performs part of it with his pants around his ankles) and deeply moving. It’s available to stream through Feb. 28. Tickets are $20.99. Closer to home, the University of Washington Tacoma is staging a miniseries version of “The Book of Andy,” Michael Mejia’s 2016 play about a gay man who isn’t sure he wants to marry and decides to talk to all of his ex-boyfriends in hopes of figuring it out. The university is presenting the show, updated for the COVID-19 era, in four episodes streaming at 7 p.m. Saturdays, Feb. 13-March 6. Recommended for ages 16 and older, the play is free, with registration required. The episodes will be recorded, so you can watch later, too.
From Middle Earth to South Sound
If you think hobbits exist only in fantasy fiction, it might be time to think again. One of the race of brave yet home-loving small people, described by J.R.R. Tolkien in “The Hobbit” and “The Lord of the Rings,” can be seen roving in and around Olympia — including at the West Olympia Food Coop — in the fanciful video for “I Sit Beside the Fire and Think,” released in January. OK, it’s presumably a human being in costume, but it seems that stranger things have happened in the past year. In any case, the hobbit’s identity is unknown. The Olympia- and Santa Cruz, California-based musicians who made the 2016 album “From Wilderland to Western Shore,” a compilation of Tolkien lyrics set to original tunes, didn’t want to reveal their names. In response to an email asking for details about the video, filmed mostly in Olympia and the Skokomish Valley, one in the mysterious band responded, “No one wants to go on the record and have this video as their Google legacy.” Despite the video’s charming hobbit and beautiful scenery, the intent was serious, according to the video description on YouTube: “These words were composed by Bilbo Baggins in Rivendell. We sing them now as a way to reach out to our sundered communities, nourish our memories and mourn for all that is lost forever.”
Freelance writer Molly Gilmore discusses arts, entertainment and more with 95.3 KGY-FM’s Michael Stein on “Oly in a Can” from 3 to 4 p.m. Fridays.