New Prospect Theatre

The Alum Ridge Boys & Ashlee
2026-06-16 20:00 - 22:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | Lucas Hicks Auditorium
The Alum Ridge Boys & Ashlee play music the way it sounded before bluegrass, old-time, and country went their separate ways. Rooted in the Blue Ridge music traditions of Southwest Virginia, the band draws from the fertile gray area of the 1940s and early 1950s — a transitional period where traditional and modern styles mingled freely, musicians who had grown up on old-time music at local fiddlers conventions were eager to try new things, and bands attempted to imitate new sounds they heard on radio and records. The Alum Ridge Boys & Ashlee’s sound is earthy, direct, and unadorned: five masterful musicians and singers delivering stirring harmonies and hard-driving instrumental work with no modern gloss and no apology, alongside a handful of original compositions that sit seamlessly in the tradition — an approach described by Bluegrass Unlimited as sounding like “a lost volume from Rounder’s Early Days of Bluegrass series.” Their recordings Live at WPAQ and Live at WPAQ II were captured in single takes around a single vintage RCA ribbon mic, standing in a circle, exactly as much of this music would have been recorded nearly eight decades ago.
Tickets: The Alum Ridge Boys & Ashlee via ThunderTix

“The Lament of Morin, Mumphries, Halstrom and Rose.” By Montgomerie Charles
2026-06-17 20:30 - 22:00 | Lucas Hicks Auditorium
Morality, missed meals, redirected runoff from the monstrosity on 8th, and the fate of four legal associates are all discussed over Martini’s in an extremely exclusive private club. What’s it about, it’s about an hour and fifteen minutes.
Tickets: The Lament of Morin, Mumphries, Halstrom and Rose via ThunderTix

“The Lament of Morin, Mumphries, Halstrom and Rose.” By Montgomerie Charles
2026-06-18 20:30 - 22:00

Alela Diane - Who’s Keeping Time? Album Release Tour w/ special guest Shannon Lay
2026-06-19 20:00 - 22:00 | Lucas Hicks Auditorium
More than a decade into one of contemporary folk’s most quietly extraordinary careers, Alela Diane returns with Who’s Keeping Time? on May 22 via Fluff & Gravy / Loose Music.
The Portland songwriter’s seventh full-length came as the consequence of intuition, coincidence, and community. “I came to the end of a season last year,” Alela shares. “My daughters had grown a bit. I no longer had babies waking me in the middle of the night. I could hear myself think again.” More and more, those thoughts circled music.
The ultimate spark for Alela’s return to her music community came in April of last year with the death of her close friend and mentor Michael Hurley — folk legend and indispensable presence in the Portland music scene. Tracked live in the attic of her 1892 Victorian home, Who’s Keeping Time? was produced by Sam Weber (Madison Cunningham, Anna Tivel) and brought to life with staples from the local music orbit, including members of the bands Lucius and Blind Pilot and fellow singer-songwriters Anna Tivel and AC Sapphire.
Over the years, Alela’s lustrous discography has gathered major critical acclaim from the likes of Pitchfork, NPR Music, The Guardian, and plenty more. UNCUT counted her work in their ambitious “50 best singer-songwriter albums” of all time roundup—a canon comprising John Lennon, Joni Mitchell, Joan Baez, Paul Simon—with Consequence echoing that significance, declaring, “Hers is a timeless sound, that of a wayfaring troubadour, which only seems to come a few times a generation.”
Shannon Lay’s music is shored by radical empathy. After 15 years of writing, recording and performing her singularly gentle songs in venues around the world, the self-taught singer-songwriter is most concerned with how her music may help people in emotional and spiritual need. In a world of persistent change, Lay’s goal is to have concentrations of love and energy in her work that double as a helping hand or a voice whispering “everything is going to be ok.” The singer’s abiding belief is that immense change also means invaluable transformation and permanent relief. Intention is her North Star. Hailed by publications such as Pitchfork, The Guardian, SPIN and Uncut magazine, Lay’s solo albums, including “Geist,” “August”, “Living Water,” and “All this life goin’ down” are noted for their thoughtful and entirely tender reflections on life’s big questions. Her seraphic voice has drawn comparisons to British folk icons Anne Briggs, Sandy Denny and Vashti Bunyan. Though an old soul, Lay aims to meet her listeners in the present. For her, creating a song, a recording or a live performance that is relatable and communal is of the utmost importance for we are constantly in flux and those unknowns, met with compassion, can be beautiful
Tickets: Alela Diane – Who’s Keeping Time? Album Release Tour w/ special guest Shannon Lay via Thun

Myth, Mask, and Puppetry Camp
2026-06-22 09:00 - 2026-06-26 13:00
In these immersive theatre camps, your child will journey through myths, sonnets and plays, bringing ancient stories to life through the magic of mask making and puppetry. Our teachers hold the space with warmth and creativity, inspiring and supporting each child as they dive into story telling through prop construction and imaginative play. Children will gain hand-on experience in set design, improvisation, choreography, music, and vocals. Students will collaborate to create a dynamic final showcase featuring their original mask and puppetry pieces.
Explore myths from around the world through mask making, puppetry, and performance.
Meet the Instructors:
Jane Entwistle: Improv and Acting
Keefe Healy: Puppetry and Playwriting
Jordan Kaulana: Music and Story Telling
Suzanne Mackay: Directing and Choreography
Other Guest Teachers:
Adaryn Healy Performance
Hazel VanBuskirk Costumes
Tuition: Myth, Mask, and Puppetry via ThunderTix

Myth, Mask, and Puppetry Camp
2026-06-29 09:00 - 2026-07-03 13:00
In these immersive theatre camps, your child will journey through myths, sonnets and plays, bringing ancient stories to life through the magic of mask making and puppetry. Our teachers hold the space with warmth and creativity, inspiring and supporting each child as they dive into story telling through prop construction and imaginative play. Children will gain hand-on experience in set design, improvisation, choreography, music, and vocals. Students will collaborate to create a dynamic final showcase featuring their original mask and puppetry pieces.
Explore myths from around the world through mask making, puppetry, and performance.
Meet the Instructors:
Jane Entwistle: Improv and Acting
Keefe Healy: Puppetry and Playwriting
Jordan Kaulana: Music and Story Telling
Suzanne Mackay: Directing and Choreography
Other Guest Teachers:
Adaryn Healy Performance
Hazel VanBuskirk Costumes

An Evening with Joe Newberry
2026-06-29 19:30 - 21:30 | Lucas Hicks Auditorium
Known around the world for his clawhammer banjo playing, Joe Newberry is also a powerful guitarist, singer and songwriter. The Gibson Brothers’ version of his song “Singing As We Rise,” featuring guest vocalist Ricky Skaggs, won an IBMA “Gospel Recorded Performance” Award. With Eric Gibson, he shared the IBMA “Song of the Year” Award for “They Called It Music.”
A longtime and frequent guest on A Prairie Home Companion, he was a featured singer on theTransatlantic Sessions tour of the U.K. with fiddler Aly Bain and Dobro master Jerry Douglas, and at the Transatlantic Session’s U.S. debut.
Growing up in a family full of singers and dancers, he took up the guitar and banjo as a teenager and learned fiddle tunes from great Missouri fiddlers. Newberry moved to North Carolina as a young man and quickly became an anchor of the incredible music scene in the state. Still going strong more than 40 years later, he collaborates with some of his favorite musicians, does solo and studio work, and plays and teaches at festivals and workshops in North America and abroad.
Tickets: An Evening with Joe Newberry via ThunderTix

Kevin McDonald Tells stories of the Kids in the Hall
2026-07-05 19:30 - 21:00 | Lucas Hicks Auditorium
Kevin McDonald Tells stories of the Kids in the Hall.
It’s half stand up, half one man show.
ABOUT
Kevin McDonald is a Canadian actor, comedian, and voice artist best known as a founding member of the acclaimed sketch troupe The Kids in the Hall. Born in Montreal, he built a devoted following through iconic characters on the group’s groundbreaking series and its 2022 revival. McDonald is also a prolific voice actor, recognized for roles in Lilo & Stitch, Catscratch, and Invader Zim, and has appeared in numerous hit shows including That ’70s Show and Arrested Development. A longtime improv performer and teacher, he continues to tour, create new work, and lead workshops, bringing his distinctive voice and offbeat comedic style to audiences around the world.
18+ Event. No Intermission.
Coupons, vouchers, comp tickets, and student tickets are not applicable for this show. Thank you!
Tickets: Kevin McDonald Tells stories of the Kids in the Hall | The Upfront Theatre

Action Fiction! Stories Performed: Book Launch Edition
2026-07-07 19:00 - 20:30 | Lucas Hicks Auditorium
Join us for a special launch-day edition of Action Fiction! Stories Performed, celebrating the release of Scott Lambridis’s debut novel, St. Ulphia’s Dead.
Action Fiction! is a live literary performance series where local actors bring short stories by local writers off the page and into the room. For this July 7 event, we’ll keep the heart of the series intact: performed short fiction, surprising voices, and the strange magic that happens when writers hand their work to actors with no strings attached.
We’ll also mark the publication of St. Ulphia’s Dead with a short excerpt from the novel, an author Q&A, and a book signing.
It’s part performance, part book launch, and part community celebration.
Tickets: Action Fiction! Stories Performed: Book Launch Edition via ThunderTix

Jenner Fox & Jeremy Elliott Album Release Show
2026-07-09 19:30 - 21:30 | Lucas Hicks Auditorium
The new Jenner Fox & Jeremy Elliott record, Beauty in Strange Colors, follows their acclaimed The Moon That Moves the Sea, and goes deeper in the way that friendship does. The songs were written mostly together this time, a record born from necessity — because hope sometimes requires a project, a reason to start again. It is seeing differently, it is apples right from the tree, it is the swirling lines of the surface of a river, it is remembering on purpose.
The Bellingham based duo recorded Beauty in Strange Colors sitting across from each other with acoustic guitars live at Bell Creek Studios last fall. Like the record, the onstage performance will include Stephanie Walbon, whose voice is its own kind of weather. Come hear the new record alongside some old favorites tunes, in the cozy home court of the New Prospect Theatre.
More on the artists:
Jenner Fox & Jeremy Elliott are a Bellingham, WA–based internationally touring duo praised for their poignant storytelling, intricate guitar interplay, and uncanny ability to blend two into one. Their debut LP, The Moon That Moves The Sea (2024), was hailed by Americana UK as “evocative and revelatory.” Fox, a prolific troubadour with 9 albums in a decade, has built his reputation on heartfelt and humorous storytelling with a voice that carries equal measures of vulnerability and conviction. Elliott, a Macon, Georgia native, weaves blues, rock, bluegrass, country, and West African influences into his unique virtuosic style. Since joining forces for a 365-mile bicycle tour across New England, the powerhouse duo has delighted audiences from Patagonia to Portland and sometimes even places that don’t start with P.
Tickets: Jenner Fox & Jeremy Elliott Album Release Show via ThunderTix

In The Heights
2026-07-10 19:00 - 21:00, 2026-07-11 14:00 - 16:00, 2026-07-11 19:00 - 21:00, 2026-07-12 14:00 - 16:00, 2026-07-12 19:00 - 21:00 | Lucas Hicks Auditorium
In the Heights tells the universal story of a vibrant community in New York’s Washington Heights neighborhood – a place where the coffee from the corner bodega is light and sweet, the windows are always open and the breeze carries the rhythm of three generations of music. It’s a community on the brink of change, full of hopes, dreams and pressures, where the biggest struggles can be deciding which traditions you take with you, and which ones you leave behind.
Tickets: In The Heights via ThunderTix

An Evening with Cruz Contreras and the Black Lilies
2026-07-16 20:00 - 22:00 | Lucas Hicks Auditorium
Raised between the rugged lines of Tennessee and the long shadows of Michigan, Cruz Contreras has spent nearly thirty years forging his path through the Americana musical landscape. He’s a multi-instrumentalist, songwriter, bandleader, producer, and storyteller whose voice cuts through noise like a well-honed blade.
First as co-founder of Robinella and the CCstringband, then as the fire at the heart of The Black Lillies, Cruz helped carve a sound that feels as old as the hills and as wild as the road. His songs have topped the Billboard and Americana charts, picked up Independent Music Awards, and earned him a nomination from the Americana Music Association as an emerging artist, though his music suggests he was never chasing trends to begin with.
He’s stood on stages from Conan O’Brien’s late-night set to the Grand Ole Opry, the latter over 40 times, and drawn praise from Rolling Stone, NPR, American Songwriter, and Vanity Fair. Contreras has toured with Robert Earl Keen and the Turnpike Troubadours, collaborated with John Oates, and shared stages with Old Crow Medicine Show, The Travelin’ McCourys, Tyler Childers, Mavis Staples, Elizabeth Cook and more. A festival veteran, Cruz Contreras & The Black Lillies have performed at Bonnaroo, Merle Fest, Jazz Fest, Red Ants Pants, Stagecoach, High Sierra, DelFest, Pickathon, Mile Zero, Cayamo and more.
Cruz Contreras & The Black Lillies kick off their Feels Like Home summer tour on June 24th in Durango, Colorado, in support of his upcoming album.
Tickets: An Evening with Cruz Contreras and the Black Lilies via ThunderTix

The Guy Who Didn't Like Musicals
2026-07-17 19:30 - 2026-07-19 21:00 | Lucas Hicks Auditorium
Show Dates:
July 17th, 7:30 PM
July 18th, 7:30 PM
July 19th, 2:00 PM
July 19th, 7:30 PM

Director:
Allissa Flood
Music Director:
Brandon Mock & Lana Marriott
Content Disclosures:
Violence, Gun Violence, Sexual References, Death, Gunshots, and Adult Language
Description:
Everything in Hatchetfield seemed normal until people began singing… Then, they began dancing… And now, a musical pandemic is sweeping the entire city. It’s up to Paul (an average guy who doesn’t like musicals) and his friends to stop this musical apocalypse and fight for humanity’s future.

Tickets: The Guy Who Didn’t Like Musicals via ThunderTix

An Evening with David Wilcox
2026-07-22 20:00 - 22:00 | Lucas Hicks Auditorium
There are songwriters who chronicle life, and then there’s David Wilcox—an artist who metabolizes it. He has long been a quiet force in American folk music; a musician’s musician, a writer’s writer, and a seeker whose gift lies in making the personal feel universal.
With the release of The Way I Tell the Story (2025), Wilcox proves, yet again, that resilience isn’t just a survival skill—it’s an art form. The record shimmers with musical sophistication but leaves just enough space for the listener to feel what Wilcox has always done best: tell the truth, gently but without apology.
The music he’s creating now comes from a place that can’t be faked. In recent years, Wilcox’s life has been shaped by his wife’s Parkinson’s diagnosis—a shift that reordered his priorities and redefined his sense of time, love, and presence. But rather than retreat, Wilcox leaned in. “Times get tough, and music gets good,” he says, and means it. These songs don’t dramatize. They don’t resolve neatly. They sit in the complexity of living—open-eyed, unafraid, quietly brave.
Wilcox’s career began in earnest in the late 1980s, when his self-released debut The Nightshift Watchman caught the attention of A&M Records. His major-label debut, How Did You Find Me Here (1989), became an unexpected hit, selling over 100,000 copies largely by word of mouth and live shows alone—an unheard-of feat for a debut folk record. Critics took note of his deft guitar work and emotional clarity, but it was the unassuming wisdom threaded through his lyrics that truly set him apart. Rolling Stone praised his “soulful insight,” while The New York Times called his music “a kind of open- hearted therapy.”
What followed was a string of acclaimed albums—Big Horizon (1994), Turning Point (1997), What You Whispered (2000) each one refining his reputation as a songwriter who knows how to say hard things in soft, lasting ways. Over the years, he’s shared stages and collaborations with artists like Shawn Colvin, Patty Larkin, Pierce Pettis, and John Gorka—fellow craftspeople committed to song over spectacle. But Wilcox has never followed the current. He’s followed the work, and in 2018 Wilcox won top honors In the 23rd annual USA Songwriting for his effervescent “We Make the Way by Walking” from his album, The View From the Edge.
That work has earned him quiet but enduring respect. His songs have been covered by k.d. lang and Tony Rice; his guitar work studied by those who understand that precision, when rooted in care, becomes its own kind of virtuosity. His influence runs deep, especially among younger artists trying to build something real in a world obsessed with surface.
Wilcox’s music still resonates, especially now, because it doesn’t try to outpace the moment. It meets it. In his world, craft is a form of care. Introspection is a public offering. And staying soft in a hard world isn’t a liability—it’s a kind of leadership.
For audiences seeking something more than noise, more than nostalgia, Wilcox’s songs remain a rare kind of company. Not flashy. Not loud. Just deeply, generously alive.
Tickets: An Evening with David Wilcox via ThunderTix

A Night of Zimbabwean Music, Dance, Drumming & Song
2026-07-26 19:30 - 21:30 | Lucas Hicks Auditorium
John Mambira
Originally from Bulawayo, Zimbabwe, John Mambira is the founder of the acclaimed band Bongo Love. Since arriving in the United States in 2007, he has shared the joy of Zimbabwean drumming, marimba, dance, and theater arts with audiences and students across the Pacific Northwest, earning a reputation as one of the region’s most vibrant ambassadors of Zimbabwean culture.
Ratie D
A captivating vocalist and world music artist, Ratie D channels Zimbabwe’s spirit through her powerful voice and contemporary sensibility. She has performed at Carnegie Hall and released her debut EP, Ink & Melodies, which blends traditional Zimbabwean influences with modern expression. Her music is a bridge between cultures, rooted in tradition and alive in the present.
Rujeko Dumbutshena
Rujeko is a Zimbabwean born dancer, teacher, cultural arts community organizer, and performing artist of African dance practices. She is currently an Assistant Professor in Dance at the University of Florida. Rujeko Dumbutshena has performed and taught across the United States and internationally. For 16 years, she directed African music and dance camps featuring artists from across Africa. She was an original cast member of the Broadway musical FELA!
Napoleon Jambwa
Born and raised in Highfield, Harare, Kudzie Jambwa grew up steeped in Zimbabwe’s musical traditions. Taught his first mbira song by his father at age five, he went on to master marimba, ngoma, hosho, and a range of modern instruments, and added dance, from traditional African to Western styles, to his remarkable repertoire. He is a complete artist in every sense of the word.
Ukama Band
Ukama is a Northwest-based band and emerging arts initiative that brings people together through music, culture, and community. We promote and back artists, helping bring meaningful cultural exchange, live performance, and connection to our communities.
Tickets: A Night of Zimbabwean Music, Dance, Drumming & Song via ThunderTix

Summer Camp - Bits of the Bard
2026-07-27 09:00 - 2026-08-06 13:00
July 27th – August 6th Mondays-Fridays 9am-1pm
Experience the timeless magic of William Shakespear’s wonderous tales in this immersive exploration of his delightful and sometimes dastardly characters.
Meet the Instructors:
Jane Entwistle: Improv and Acting
Keefe Healy: Puppetry and Playwriting
Jordan Kaulana: Music and Story Telling
Suzanne Mackay: Directing and Choreography
Other Guest Teachers:
Adaryn Healy Performance
Hazel VanBuskirk Costumes
Tuition $400: Bits of the Bard Camp via ThunderTix
