Art doesn’t always serve to expand one’s mind or represent complex ideas or culture. The context in which people present art influences how viewers perceive it. Picasso said painting “is an instrument of war, an offensive and defensive weapon against an enemy.” Sometimes art can be used maliciously, as the Nazis did in the years leading up to and throughout WWII.

The potential of art to be used as propaganda is the foremost issue in the new documentary “Hitler vs Picasso and The Others.” The Broadway Metro theater in Eugene is showing the film during a special one-night-only event on Wednesday, April 4 at 6:45 p.m.

The film tells the story of how the Nazis looted museums and people’s personal art collections across Europe. It describes how the regime portrayed many stolen works of art and their artists as a threat to its autocratic, white-supremacist society. Hitler, who was an aspiring professional artist in his younger years and rejected by Vienna’s Academy of Fine Arts twice, deemed modern works “degenerate art” and banned them across the empire.

The documentary revolves around five exhibitions, starting with the 1937 Nazi-curated Munich exhibit called “Degenerate Art,” which travelled to 12 cities in Germany and Austria. The exhibit intended to propagandize residents of those cities and cast 650 works of stolen art as contrary to Nazi ideals of Aryan beauty. The Nazis contrasted their framing of so-called “degenerate art” with the “Great Exhibition of German Art,” which glorified the appreciation of art they saw as purely Aryan.

The film then shifts to the story of the French-Jewish art collector and gallery owner Paul Rosenberg, who was a friend of great artists such as Picasso and Matisse, whose work was confiscated by the Nazis. In 1910, Rosenberg opened a gallery called “21 rue La Boétie” in Paris, but in 1942, the Nazis stripped Rosenberg of his French citizenship and took every piece of art in his collection. Rosenberg’s granddaughter and Huffington Post Editorial Director, Anne Sinclair, tells his story in the film.

The final set of exhibitions featured in the film take viewers to present-day Germany. In 2010, German customs officials stopped a train to Munich for a random passenger check. Cornelius Gurlitt, the son of one of Hitler’s primary merchants of stolen art, Hildebrand Gurlitt, was on the train and questioned by the officials. They ultimately discovered that Gurlitt was still hiding works by Monet, Picasso and Matisse in his apartment. This section of the film focuses on two paired exhibitions in Bern and Bonn, Germany featuring the works that Gurlitt had kept hidden.

“Hitler vs Picasso and The Others” will leave viewers with a greater understanding of how the Nazis used art to shape their wretched national identity. The stories of struggle and loss during the Nazi reign featured in the film offer a fascinating, new look at a familiar part of history.

Viewers can buy tickets here or purchase them at the Broadway Metro theater located at 43 W Broadway, Eugene. The official trailer for the documentary can be viewed here.

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The documentary “Acts and Intermissions” by filmmaker Abigail Child isn’t really a documentary. It’s more of a biographical poem about a woman whose biographers have called “The Most Dangerous Woman in America.” The film is an erratic montage through the life of anarchist Emma Goldman.

On March 14, the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art held a screening of the 2017 experimental documentary. The event was part of the Schnitzer Cinema film series programmed by JSMA curator of media arts Richard Herskowitz. Following the film screening, there was a Skype Q&A with Child.

Goldman was born to a Jewish family in the Russian Empire (modern-day Lithuania) in 1869. She immigrated with her sister to the U.S. in 1885, settling in Rochester, New York where she worked as a seamstress in a clothing factory.

The conditions in the factory were poor. She worked 10-hour days. And she became increasingly aware of the rising tensions between laborers and elites in various American cities. All these factors planted the anti-authoritarian seeds that would lead to Goldman being ironically dubbed “Queen of the Anarchists.” As a key figure in the development of anarchist political philosophy, she plotted the botched murder of industrialist and steel magnate Henry Frick. Her attempts to convince people not to register for the recently instated WWI draft jailed her for two years. Those activities motivated Congress to pass the Espionage Act of 1917.

Child wanted to make a film that reflected who Goldman was. “I asked myself: ‘How can I create something with anarchist form,’” Child said during the Q&A session following the JSMA screening. “It needed to be without hierarchy and without a beginning or end.”

Viewers experience Goldman’s early life and most influential years through her eyes. In the film, quotes from Goldman’s personal journals make up all the narration, which is conducted by a Russian voice actor. Many of her words are typed onto the screen and accompanied by clicking sounds of a typewriter. These journal entries show her internal struggle to make known the plight of the laborer. Her intellectual struggles shed light on her personal battles with love as well as her understanding of injustice.

Visuals in the film reinforce Goldman’s abstract way of thinking. Clips show packed city streets, factory workers, protests, riots and police violence from both early 20th century and present-day New York City. Sequences go from short, quick cuts that correspond to the more turbulent, protest-filled times in Goldman’s life to longer, slower cuts that reflect her personal relationships and romantic interests.

Child brought viewers further into Goldman’s world by casting actors to play her and other anarchist pioneers. They have no lines, are dressed in clothes from her period and are filmed in black and white. These reenactments, along with real photos of Goldman, make viewers feel like they are in a room with some of the world’s first anarchists.

The visual juxtaposition of clips from Goldman’s era and present-day serve as a jarring reminder that people are still dealing with deeply-rooted class disparities. Scenes showing protests and police violence from both eras look alarmingly similar. The film makes viewers asks themselves: “How far have we come in 100 years?”

“While I was working on the film, I was continuously surprised by how many parallels there were to today,” Child said.

“Acts and Intermissions” is not available to stream online. But the film will continue to be screened in various locations around the U.S. including the Ashland Film Festival in southern Oregon in April 2018. Visit Child’s website for details about upcoming screenings.

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Love them or hate them, on a burger or in a salad, mushrooms are one of the most sustainable foods people can eat.

With Oregon’s wet, temperate climate, which is ideal for mushrooms, the state plays a key role in the industry. But according to University of Oregon senior environmental studies major Becca Marshall, commercial wild mushroom pickers in Oregon may not be getting the support they need from forest managers to continue growing the industry.

Earlier this year, the Humanities Undergraduate Research Fellowship awarded Marshall a $2,500 grant to conduct her research into how forest management policies in the Willamette National Forest affect wild mushroom pickers.

“I got into this research because I was personally interested in mushrooms,” Marshall said. “The idea that the mushrooms we eat are just the fruit of this potentially huge underground network.” Marshall finds it fascinating that the single largest organism in the world is the parasitic honey fungus in Oregon’s Blue Mountains.

A significant part of her research is gathering data by talking with as many mushroom pickers as she can to understand if they face unnecessary barriers in their work. She says has learned that pickers often face difficulties getting the correct permits and sometimes they are not notified of crucial Forest Service road closures in a timely manner. She says that people in the industry also worry about timber-centric management activities that destroy the best mushroom patches like tree thinning and clear cutting.

Mushroom cultivation doesn’t require high amounts of land or water, and it has a low carbon footprint. According to a study conducted by the research and advocacy group Environmental Working Group and the environmental firm CleanMetrics, farmed salmon and beef emit 5.4 and 12.3 pounds of carbon dioxide respectively for every pound consumed, where as a pound of cultivated mushrooms only emits 0.7 pounds of carbon dioxide. The mushroom industry in the U.S. is also rapidly growing as more people have expanded their palates to include the fungi and demand abroad is increasing, according to a report by Zion Market Research.

Marshall’s project, which is now in it’s second term, is primarily concerned with understanding how well forest managers follow environmental justice guidelines set out in the National Environmental Policy Act to manage for the cultivation of non-timber products such as mushrooms. Under these guidelines, managers must try to recognize the cultural, social and economic impacts any proposed action may have, and they must allow for the public to be included in a dialogue about policy.

Marshall says that many mushroom pickers in Oregon are immigrants from Southeast Asia or Central America or are first generation Americans. She says they bring with them a rich cultural tradition and knowledge of mushrooms.

The mushroom industry is also seasonal, and many pickers are migrant workers. They follow the “mushroom trail,” which starts in British Columbia in the late summer, follows warmer weather in Washington and Oregon in September and October and ends in California in December where many of them spend the winter.

Oregon has a long history of producing timber products, but the seasonal nature of the mushroom industry and language barriers between pickers and managers, inclusive dialogues about policy are often hard to achieve.

But Marshall says the National Forest Service could be trying harder to include the voices of people in this lucrative industry. “Harvesting mushrooms and other non-timber forest products provide an economic alternative to timber, which is something I think the Forest Service should focus on to create greater biodiversity within the forest and to manage it more equitably for everyone. Not just focusing on managing for powerful timber companies” Marshall said.

Marshall says the Forest Service primarily manages for timber and often disregards the economic benefits a thriving mushroom industry can bring.

“I’m not trying to demonize the Forest Service,” Marshall said. “They also face challenges that make supporting the pickers hard.” The Forest Service has a budget that changes annually so they don’t always have the stability necessary to maintain connections the with mushroom picking community.

Marshall says she hopes that her research will illuminate the predicaments many mushroom pickers find themselves in to earn a living in this culturally-significant and economically-beneficial industry. She wants the Forest Service start researching how they can better support the mushroom industry on their own.

“As of now, my long-term plan is to pursue a career in sustainable agriculture research and policy,” Marshall said. After graduating UO, she wants to take the skills she has learned in her research to the Peace Corps community gardens and agroforestry program in West African country The Gambia.

Correction: An earlier version of this story stated that mushrooms do not contain any protein. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, white mushrooms contain 0.6 grams of protein for every 18 grams.

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The play “We Are Neighbors” tells the captivating stories of real immigrants living in Lane County and their experiences with belonging, loss and new beginnings. It’s a half-hour one-act play in which a continuously revolving cast of local amateur and professional actors read from a script. On March 6, the University of Oregon student group No Lost Generation brought the play to campus at the EMU Redwood Auditorium.

The play is the shorter, touring version of the play “Now, I Am Your Neighbor,” which the Community Alliance of Lane County (CALC) and the Minority Voices Theater showed three consecutive nights last September at Eugene’s Very Little Theater. Both plays are adaptations of a play CALC originally produced 20 years ago as part of the “We Are Neighbors” project with the Network for Immigrant Justice. The original project intended to tell the stories of immigrants living in Lane County using the play, a photography exhibit and a quilt.

Therese Picado, the director of the EMU performance, said all three shows in the fall were sold out. “By the second and third night, we had people lining up two and a half hours before the show,” Picado said.

To create the new play, CALC and other members of the project conducted dozens of interviews with residents of Lane County who are immigrants to the United States. The interviewers sought to understand what it’s like to be an immigrant living in Lane County.

Local playwright Nancy Hopps wove together common themes and experiences from the interviews into a fictional narrative set in a private room of a local restaurant where the main character Elena works during the day and is having her 21st birthday party.

Many of the actors in the play have personal connections to the issues that it addresses. The actors discussed their connections to those issues during a Q&A session with the audience following the play.

“I’m a first generation American and my parents left Mexico under some pretty dark circumstances,” said Isabel Smythe Hernandez who plays Elena. “When someone reached out to me about potentially being in this play I thought, ‘I have to do this. I have to do something to help make these voices heard.’”

Throughout the play, characters reminisce about their home countries, which include Guatemala, Germany, Palestine, China, Madagascar, and Syria. They reflect on their largely supportive, but sometimes ignorant new community in Eugene, and discuss their struggles coming to Eugene, navigating immigrant law and dealing with the Trump administration’s decisions on policies like Deferred Action for Childhood Arrival (DACA).

The plot advances as Jorge, Elena’s DREAMer friend from Guatemala, becomes worried that his mother hasn’t showed up to the party with the birthday cake. Unable to contact his mother on her phone, Jorge reaches out to her boss. He informs Jorge that officers from Immigration and Customs Enforcement showed up and took away two employees, one of whom may have been Jorge’s mother, who is undocumented.

“I can’t believe this country is becoming a place where the government asks people for their papers,” says Miss Schormüller, Elena’s third grade teacher whose parents survived the Holocaust.

The underlying tension of not knowing what happened to Jorge’s mother contrasted sharply with the cheerful party. That tension was palpable for viewers.

“I thought it was really powerful how throughout the play you’re constantly wondering what happened to Jorge’s mom,” said UO sophomore Momo Wilms-Crowe, who is a member of No Lost Generation. “I think having that sense of anxiety is a day-to-day lived experience of many immigrants.”

No Lost Generation’s mission is to help educate UO students about the current refugee crisis in the Middle East and North Africa through events like this play.

“I thought this play communicated exactly what some of our goals are,” said No Lost Generation member and UO senior Natalie Tichenor, who organized the event with CALC. “It’s about creating a dialogue, connecting members of the community and celebrating diversity.”

The play is available to be produced free of charge at schools, places of worship and community events. Anyone can inquire about booking the play by contacting Therese Picado at therese@picadocurtis.net.

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Artists Kehinde Wiley and Amy Sherald unveiled their elaborate attempts to represent the legacies of Mr. and Mrs. Obama at Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery in Washington D.C. on Feb. 12.

The portraits have received mixed reviews to say the least. According to University of Oregon art history professor James Harper, experts in his department have similarly wide-ranging opinions about the portraits.

Wiley’s portrait of Mr. Obama depicts the president sitting confidently before a background of plants representing flora of Hawaii, Kenya and Chicago. It’s a busy background, and Obama looks as if he is being consumed by the intricately-painted plants behind him. His expression is focused and alert, but his slightly furrowed brow makes him look concerned. The portrayal of Obama is representative of how he looks today.

“When I looked at [Mr.] Obama’s portrait, it felt sort of sinister,” Harper said. “It’s like when things are new and fresh and then they start to decay and ivy creeps in. I thought that he looks kind of overgrown and a little bit forgotten. My next thought was that it’s almost a metaphor for the republican congress.”

Harper said his perceived metaphor could not have been Wiley’s intention, but the suggestion remains. Harper said it’s important for people to know that these portraits are ultimately a collaboration between the Obamas and the artists. He was surprised by his first impression, because it didn’t align with how he thought the former president would want to be remembered.

Sherald’s portrait of Mrs. Obama starkly contrasts Mr. Obama’s portrait, clearly not intending to  paint a perfectly accurate likeness of the first lady. Her skin tone is close to graphite and there are only a few precise facial details. But she looks regal and beautiful. There’s an mesmerizing tension between Mrs. Obama’s royal expression, posture and gown and the modern art imagery on the gown itself. The juxtaposition seems to say: “American queenliness has a new poster child.”

“The best portraits mix the fact of the person with an idea,” Harper said addressing the criticisms that Mrs. Obama’s portrait doesn’t look like her. “A portrait that’s just: ‘here’s what you look like’ without an idea is going to be dull. [Mrs. Obama’s] is a monument. It’s a pyramid composition, but it looks much more strong and stable than a pyramid. It’s authoritative.”

It makes sense that responses to the portraits of the first Black president and first lady, whose time in office was so wrought with political and social polarization, would be varied.

The one constant from journalists and critics of these paintings is the claim that the portraits break the mold of all others that came before. The 43 presidential portraits in the National Portrait Gallery seem preoccupied with displaying power and pride in a one-dimensional way, except those of Bill Clinton and John F. Kennedy who were portrayed in more abstract forms.

The Obama portraits have been a catalyst that has gotten the nation talking about how we are going to remember the 44th president and first lady in a new and necessary way.

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Both the Torah and the Quran mandate followers to welcome weary travelers into one’s home. This mandate is less culturally applicable today, but at a recent Manzil Midrash event, Muslim and Jewish students practiced the spirit of welcoming the stranger over a traditional Mediterranean meal.

Oregon Hillel and the Muslim Student Association organized the event as part of the Manzil Midrash dialogue series to encourage conversations about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Discussions at the event, which took place in the Many Nations Longhouse of the University of Oregon on Feb. 20, centered around using food to bring people together.

Before everyone could dive into the falafel, hummus, pita and salad from the Eugene restaurant Mediterranean Network, students from the MSA and Hillel gave a presentation about food customs in their faiths.

The discussion focused on how both religions’ sacred texts instruct people to be generous to strangers with food no matter what someone’s background is. As the Israeli-Palestinian conflict continues, students said practicing that common custom can help make progress.

“We want to send students wherever they end up with experience learning from others’ perspectives,” said Andy Gitelson, the executive director of Oregon Hillel. “These discussions plant important seeds because this conflict is not going to be resolved by my generation. It’s going to be resolved by the younger generation.”

The event attracted students interested in issues of the Middle East who were unaffiliated with Hillel and the MSA.

“Growing up, my family always came together around the dinner table,” said sophomore political science and international studies major Momo Wilms-Crowe during a discussion about the role of food in communities. “Over time I’ve realized just how important those meals were to me.”

The event concluded with a presentation by several alumni of the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies, which is located in the Arava Valley South of the Dead Sea between Israel and Jordan.

The Arava Institute focuses on educating students about how people affected by the Israeli-Palestinian conflict can work together to address the region’s common environmental problems such as water and food insecurity. The student body is one-third Israeli, one-third Palestinian and one-third international students.

While discussions at the Institute can get contentious between students who have differing perspectives of the conflict, presenters said that at the end of the day, they all respectfully share one dining hall where they reconcile their differences. Presenters Noa Gluskinos from Israel and Ashraf Akram from a Palestinian community of Jerusalem also discussed how they have been personally affected by the ongoing conflict.

“In my family we have a saying, which is: ‘Either you bring something positive to the conflict, or you step aside,’” Akram said.

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The 90th annual Oscars takes place on Sunday, March 4 at 5 p.m. (PST). The documentary (short subject) category serves as a gratifying break from the movie star-driven, high budget films that dominate other categories. These films are the highly artistic products of pure passion from the directors and producers who make them — the films are not big money-makers. This year’s documentary shorts tell compelling stories dealing with increasingly relevant social issues. The Broadway Metro theater in Eugene is showing each of these films, which range from 29 to 40 minutes in duration, in two separate programs through Thursday, Feb. 22.

“Traffic Stop”

“Traffic Stop” examines the current tension between American law enforcement agencies and Black communities through the story of 26-year-old school teacher Breaion King.

The film shows dashcam video of King being pulled over for a traffic violation in Austin, Texas in June 2015. The traffic stop should have been routine and uneventful. But viewers watch as the officer’s frustration escalates quickly while he asks King to comply with his requests. The officer then pulls King out of her car and wrestles her to the ground as she cries for help.

Following the violent altercation, while King is being driven to the police station under arrest, backseat video shows her conversation with a different police officer about racial bias in law enforcement. The officer tells King that police are afraid of Black people because they have “violent tendencies.”

The documentary juxtaposes recordings of King’s arrest with footage of her passionately teaching children math and taking a dance class. The juxtaposition serves as a jarring contrast between one of the worst days of King’s life and her normal, productive daily life.

The film is entirely from King’s perspective and doesn’t include comment from the arresting officers. But King’s story reveals the underlying fear many members of Black communities have toward the police, and how that fear is often justified.

“Edith+Eddie”

No one expects to fall in love at the age of 95 or 96, but Edith and Eddie, an unlikely Virginian couple, did after they met and won a $5000 lottery ticket together. The film begins with an endearing love story about an interracial couple. Their romance could not be more hopeful.

Not long into the film, the complicated nature of this couple’s situation becomes apparent.

They live in Edith’s lifelong Virginia home, but the house is not suitable for people their age. With Edith’s dementia, her daughter — and legal guardian — wants her to move out of the house and stay with her in Florida. Edith resists leaving because of traumatic experiences she’s had with her son-in-law and her daughter isn’t willing to care for her husband Eddie.

Edith’s other daughter lives in Virginia too and wants her sister to let Edith and Eddie stay in their current home. This family dispute spirals downward as lawyers get involved.

The film is a tragedy. Viewers see the immense pressure external forces increasingly place on Edith and Eddie’s love. As the film progresses, the futility of the couple’s hope to live out their final days together and happy becomes agonizingly clear.

“Heaven is a Traffic Jam on the 405”

“Heaven is a Traffic Jam on the 405” is a work of art. Not only do viewers see stunning art pieces and graphic animation throughout the film, but the narrative and cinematic arrangement also creates a mesmerizing, dream-like viewing experience. The documentary focuses on L.A.-based artist Mindy Alper and her lifelong struggle with mental illness. The film depicts the effect her struggle with mental health has on her relationships with family and friends and her troubled childhood.

The film culminates with an exhibition of Alper’s art in an L.A. gallery. Along the way, interviews with Alper, her mother and her art teacher depict Alper’s difficult life experience.

Despite completely losing her ability to speak following a nervous breakdown at the age of 27, Alper’s articulation of her psychological battles and artistic process reveals her genius.

This documentary shows the positive effect structured artistic outlets can have on people dealing with incapacitating mental illnesses. It is a breathtaking look at the life and work of a modern artist who deserves wide public attention.

“Heroin(e)”

“Heroin(e)” features the efforts of three women to combat the opioid crisis in their hometown of Huntington, West Virginia. Huntington’s opioid overdose rate is now 10 times the national average. The stories of these three women and the addicts they help intersect in powerful and intricate ways.

Necia Freeman plays the sympathetic and supportive role in this network of people addressing the opioid crisis in this community. She runs the Brown Bags and Backpacks ministry, which passes out meals to women on the street who in many cases have been forced to resort to prostitution to support themselves in the economically depressed region.

Family court judge Patricia Keller plays an authoritative, structure-providing role for addicts in Huntington. She runs drug-court recovery hearings and demands commitment and honesty from the people whose cases she oversees. Some heed her demand, but others don’t, and it’s fascinating to watch Keller try to help those individuals.

Jan Rader is the emergency responder in town. She is the chief of the fire department and her primary job in recent years has been administering anti-overdose medication following emergency calls. In one two-month period, Rader responded to 27 overdoses.

In the most poignant scene, Rader responds to a report of someone overdosing in a Sheetz gas station convenience store. While she and other first responders are treating the patient, Sheetz employees continue to ring up customers in the background. The community is so desensitized to the opioid crisis that they are completely unaffected by it happening just feet away from them.

“Knife Skills”

“Knife Skills” shows what it goes into making a top-notch French restaurant, but there’s a twist: nearly all the employees of Edwins in Cleveland were formerly incarcerated, including the founder,.

Founder Brandon Edwin Chrostowski started the nonprofit restaurant to give structure to people who were recently released from prison with camaraderie and a common goal. He saw those things as crucial to reducing recidivism rates and ensuring their long-term success by giving them a fresh start.

People in the program learn every aspect of the restaurant business from experts. They cook gourmet food, learn about fine French wines and become intimately versed in the hospitality business.

Chrostowski and Director of Culinary Gerry Grim don’t go easy on people in the program. In a restaurant striving to be five-star, there’s no room for mistakes. In the beginning of the film, the group of trainees starts at 120 people. Over the course of six weeks, the restaurant team is reduced to 35.

Viewers can’t help but root for people in the program to succeed. They see employees struggle and grow in that environment as the film reveals the diverse backstories of a few participants.

Throughout the film, people’s passion for their new goal evolves, and as Chrostowski says, “the one thing people need to know is that they have something to prove.”

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Senior producer of “This American Life” Brian Reed wanted to create a new genre of storytelling long before he first received an email from John B. McLemore. McLemore would later become the focus of Reed’s podcast, which is now an international phenomenon. He and “Serial” producer Julie Snyder achieved that goal when they made the seven-part podcast series “S-town.” Sixteen million people downloaded the show in the first week after it was released. It took four weeks for the first season of “Serial” to reach that number of downloads.

When Reed came to the Hult Center for Performing Arts on Friday, Feb. 9, he spoke to a crowd of nearly 300 people about what it took to make the podcast. Reed played clips of audio that never made it into the final show, took questions from the audience and discussed what it was like to know McLemore until his death in June 2015 while Reed was still recording for the show.

In 2012, Reed received an email with the subject line “John B. McLemore lives in Shittown, Alabama.” It caught his eye. During Reed’s reporting over the next few years, what began as an investigation of an alleged murder in a small Alabamian town, turned into a beautiful, novel-like story about McLemore’s friendships, romances and tragic suicide.

“I don’t know what else to say, the story exerted a pull on me,” Reed said at the Hult Center.

Reed said he and Snyder wanted to create a series that would pull people in like a TV drama. They got their inspiration from works of literary fiction such as “The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao” by Junot Díaz. Reed said he knew audio storytelling was a medium that would allow him to capture the vivid textures of life, but with real moments and conversations.

In episodes of “This American Life,” producers preview the plot of the story and often explicitly tell listeners why they should listen. Reed says that in “S-town” he wanted that motivation to be intrinsic. He relied on exceptional attention to detail that would enrapture listeners and “train them to have no expectations” about where the story was heading.

One such detail Reed discussed in the talk required the tedious work of fact-checkers repeatedly confirming and revising with sources which board game people at the Woodstock, Alabama senior center were playing when he was there. It was a little-known game called “Skip-Bo,” and a detail made for a work of literature.

Reed became a character in the story too. Questions for Reed from the Hult Center audience were an opportunity for fans to interact with the story itself.

One audience member asked Reed what McLemore’s most admirable trait was. Reed replied: “He had a way of staying riled up about things that most people have become sort of desensitized to like climate change. He was constantly affected by injustices that we feel powerless against.”

Find the “S-town” podcast on iTunes, stownpodcast.org or wherever you get your podcast. The composer of “S-town’s” soundtrack, Daniel Hart, is playing a show at the Hi-Fi Lounge in Eugene on Sunday, March 18.

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In the play, “The Father,” viewers see the world through the eyes of André, a man struggling to come to terms with Alzheimer’s disease. The set morphs slowly and subtly. Furniture disappears, walls shift and the color of André’s pajamas fades. Soon viewers start to wonder: “Are we in André’s apartment after all? Have we ever been? And where is his watch?” The process of André’s internal and external deterioration becomes palpable for viewers.

French playwright Florian Zeller wrote the 2012 play,“The Father,” which is also University Theatre’s first show of 2018. After the show’s second weekend and with one more to go, its success is apparent: The opening show was sold out and two others were near capacity.

The play focuses on the relationship between André, played by junior biology major Ryan Sayegh, and his daughter Anne, played by senior English major and theatre arts minor Jenna Gaitan. Their relationship is tragedy embodied.

Anne wrestles with how to care for her father when sometimes he doesn’t recognize her face. The strain of being his main caretaker makes her fantasize about wringing his neck while he sleeps.

Meanwhile, André grows more suspicious of his revolving door of in-home caregivers stealing his misplaced possessions. He muses to the caregivers about his other daughter, who he claims to love more, while Anne sits 10 feet away. André’s moments of clarity allow the terrifying nature of his experience to come through.

In one scene, André, unable to accept his illness, wrenchingly accuses Anne of memory loss. But the deep love they maintain for each other is apparent, making their situation even more tragic.

According to the show’s director and Professor of Theatre Arts, Nelson Barre, the play is dynamically universal, and its subject has personally affected everyone involved in its production. Each member of the cast and most of the production team have lost a loved one to Alzheimer’s or dementia. Barre said the prevalence of the disease and people’s relationships with it drove everyone’s emotional investment.

“If you can’t remember where you fit into the world and where everyone else is in relation to you, which is sort of how we define ourselves, or if you’ve forgotten who these people around you are or where you live, then who are you?” Barre said.

Gaitan said that listening to someone from the Eugene Alzheimer’s Association give a presentation to the cast about the disease was invaluable both personally and for her role. Gaitan’s great grandmother suffered from the disease and her grandmother ended up in a similar position as her character being a vital caregiver.

“We wanted to portray as accurately as possible the experience of not only someone going through dementia but also the people who are helping them cope with the fact that their family member has an illness of that nature,” Gaitan said.

“The Father” has two remaining shows at the Hope Theater on Feb. 9 and 10 at 7:30.

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The sky is clear, and an alpha male langur monkey sits relaxed in the shade on a beige, residential rooftop in Jodhpur, India among several female langurs. But the day doesn’t remain peaceful for this particular alpha langur, as a gang of hostile male langurs approaches.

The alpha langur leaps into action to defend his territory. The langurs launch themselves across gaps between buildings several meters wide. They weave into narrow crevasses, propel past canopies of electric wires and navigate with gravity-defying maneuvers through the urban landscape.The alpha successfully chases away the other males but returns home to the females with a bloody gash across his right leg.

These langurs thrive in the temple gardens of Jodhpur because the people associate them with the Hindu god Hanuman. Their food is literally handed to them by the basketful.

This scene is the first of many like it in the episode “Cities” of the sequel BBC nature documentary series, “Planet Earth II,” that was released in 2016. The series has recently been made available on Netflix in the U.S. The final episode depicts the most notable difference from the original 2006 series. It’s an episode devoted entirely to showing how animals live in human-dominated areas.

The new series is arranged the same way as the first. Fifty-minute individual episodes focus primarily on animal life in specific ecosystems: islands, mountains, jungles, deserts, grasslands and cities. “Cities” is the sixth and final episode, as if to remind viewers that all the natural wonders they just saw shot in spectacular Ultra HD footage during the five previous episodes are under the expanding threats of human development and climate change.

“In this decade, the urban environment is expected to grow by 30 percent,” legendary nature documentary filmmaker David Attenborough said in the episode’s opening seconds. “It may appear hostile to animal life, but for the bold, this is a world of surprising opportunity.”

Nature documentaries are known for inaccurately displaying plants and animals as separate from human life. The films often suggest that ecosystems are untouched, pristine, and worst of all, undisturbed. “Planet Earth II” tries to correct that false narrative. Humans now live in what some scientists call the “Anthropocene,” an entire geologic epoch characterized by human influence in every square centimeter of the globe.

In a deviation from typical nature documentaries, narration scattered throughout “Planet Earth II” features pointed commentary about how climate changes are affecting ecosystems like never before. “Changes in the climate mean temperatures here are rising more than the global average and, as deserts heat up, they are also expanding,” Attenborough said in the “Deserts” episode. “Every year, a further 50,000 square miles of grass and farmland are turning into barren stretches of dust and rock.”

The “Cities” episode features a select few species that benefit from opportunities such as food that humans create in urban environments. If there weren’t periodic allusions to the pervasiveness of human impact on the natural world throughout the series, it would be entirely misguided to have the celebratory tone that occurs at times in the “Cities” episode.

The series demonstrates that nature documentaries are becoming more based on the reality. Humans have never harmed plants and animals more, but a greater scientific understanding of those organisms can make people better equipped to improve those unending relationships.

Watch the trailer for “Planet Earth II” below:

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