THE ESSENTIAL A&E PICKS FOR FEB 20 - 26 

• Robert Holman

Pygmalion Productions: The Big Quiet
While the pop-culture perception of the LDS missionary is overwhelmingly male—from the "Mormon cinema" of the early 2000s to Broadway's The Book of Mormon and beyond—sister missionaries are having a bit of a moment. The 2024 thriller Heretic prominently centered the experience of two female missionaries, and now we have the local premiere of playwright Morag Shepherd's The Big Quiet, inspired by her own experience as a missionary.

Set in 2005 San Diego, The Big Quiet focuses on missionary companions Sister Roberts and Sister Garcia, addressing their relationship and the tensions that emerge over the distinctive views of faith, God and following the rules. "I think there was a story sitting inside of me about my mission for years, and eventually it just had to come out," Shepherd noted in a press release. "... as a way to process my own mission, but also because these sisters really had a story to tell. ... I think we have seen a lot of stories about the Mormon mission through the male lens, and not so much about the female experience, which is so different and unique."

Pygmalion Productions' presentation of Morag Shepherd's The Big Quiet runs at the Rose Wagner Center Black Box Theatre (138 W. 300 South) Feb. 21 – March 8, with performances Thursday – Friday at 7:30 p.m., Saturday at 4 p.m. and Sunday at 2 p.m. The Sunday performance on Feb. 23 will include a post-show conversation with the playwright. Tickets are $17.50 - $22.50; visit saltlakecountyarts.org to purchase tickets and for additional event information. (Scott Renshaw)

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City Weekly Winter Soirée
If we here at Salt Lake City Weekly are about anything, it's about community—informing you of what's going on in your community politically, socially and artistically, sure, but also trying to build a sense of being part of a shared community. We've extended that mission into our events, like our Best of Utah party and recognizing creators and lovers of beer at the City Weekly Beer Festival. Now, at a time when folks might be suffering from a mix of seasonal affective disorder and cabin fever, we're inviting you to mix it up a little and find more community at our first-ever Winter Soirée.

Live music, tasty bites and craft cocktails will be just part of the fun as City Weekly sets up an opportunity to bust out of the winter doldrums. Eight local distilleries—Ogden's Own, Dented Brick, Vintage, Spirits of the Wasatch, Salt Flats Distilling, Salt City Vodka, Proverbial Sprits and Mountain West Cider—will be on hand, creating cocktail options unique for this event, with a seasonally-appropriate sensibility. Meanwhile, you can enjoy music throughout the evening from Vinyl Koala, who describe themselves as "a 3-piece psych blues fusion band."

The 1st annual City Weekly Winter Soirée comes to The Clubhouse (850 E. South Temple) on Saturday, Feb. 22 from 5 p.m. – 10 p.m. Entry tickets are $10 advance, $15 at the door; cocktails will be sold a la carte, but you can also get an advance package for $40 including three full-size or six sample-size cocktails, plus a souvenir whiskey glass. Visit cwstore.cityweekly.net to purchase tickets and for additional event information. (SR)

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Ed Yong: Becoming a Birder @ Utah Museum of Fine Arts, 2/25
Understanding complex scientific ideas is hard; being able to explain those ideas to a layperson might be even harder. It was that particular skill that earned writer Ed Yong a Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Writing in 2021, honoring his work on stories explaining the COVID-19 pandemic in The Atlantic. And it's also been characteristic of his books: 2016's I Contain Multitudes about the world of microbes, and his most recent work, 2022's An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us.

An Immense World deals with the many different ways animals perceive the world, from scent to electromagnetism, from changes in air pressure to complex kinds of vision. Yet for all his expertise on the creatures of the natural world, Yong hasn't always felt integrated with them. "I've written about nature for pretty much my entire career, but I felt a little bit disconnected from it," Yong said in an interview earlier this year with Living Bird magazine. "I wanted to remedy that." As a result, he immersed himself in the world of birding, relocating to California in the process. He wrote about his new passion for The New York Times in 2024, and will share stories in an upcoming local appearance.

Ed Yong discusses "Becoming a Birder: Immersion in the True Reality" as part of the Tanner Humanities Center series at the Utah Museum of Fine Arts' Dumke Auditorium (410 Campus Center Dr.) on Tuesday, Feb. 25 at 7 p.m. The event is free and open to the public; visit thc.utah.edu for additional event information. (SR)