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Category: On Our Radar

On Our Radar is our editorial watchlist. These are the shows, exhibits, performances, and events that have caught our attention for one reason or another. Sometimes it’s the lineup. Sometimes it’s the venue. Sometimes it’s just a feeling that something special is about to happen. This is where we highlight what we’re excited about and why we think it’s worth your time.

  • A Busy Weekend for Theater Across the Black Hills

    This weekend, there are more stage lights coming up than usual across the Black Hills.

    Not just one show or one company, but three different productions in three different towns, all opening at the same time and each taking a completely different approach to the stage.

    In Spearfish

    In Spearfish, The Matthews is pulling audiences into the center of Dancing at Lughnasa, Brian Friel’s acclaimed play about five sisters in 1930s Ireland. The staging places the audience inside the Mundy home, with actors moving through the aisles and across thrust platforms. It’s a smaller, close-range production where the focus stays on the family, how they talk to each other, what goes unsaid, and how the tension builds over time. Seating is limited, which keeps the whole thing tight from the start.

    Belle Fourche

    Belle Fourche Area Community Theater goes in a different direction with Curtain Call: A Night of One-Acts, a lineup of four short plays performed in a single evening.

    The show opens with a piece where two audience members realize they may be part of the performance. Another follows a bedtime story that keeps expanding past its original telling. There’s an absurd comedy about finding your perfect nemesis, and it closes with a woman returning home for her mother’s funeral.

    It’s a mix of tones by design, carried by a local cast and the kind of community energy that includes a bake sale in the lobby before the show even starts.

    In Rapid City

    And in Rapid City, Catalyst Theater Company brings us The Squirrels a comedy (?) by Robert Askins. A sharp, fast-moving comedy about territory, power, and survival, played out through a group of squirrels arguing over who gets to stay and who gets pushed out. It’s the kind of production that feels a little different depending on who you talk to afterward, which is usually a sign that it’s doing something right.

    What stands out isn’t just that these shows are happening, it’s how different they feel once they start.

    At The Matthews in Spearfish, the audience is pulled in close, almost inside the story, while in Belle Fourche, the evening jumps between styles, from absurd comedy to compelling drama, and at The Catalyst Theatre in Rapid City, The Squirrels keeps shifting tone, asking the audience to keep up.

    And for a weekend in the Black Hills, that’s a pretty full stage.

  • Black Hills Artist, Dick Termes, Featured on PBS Travel Series

    Black Hills Artist, Dick Termes, Featured on PBS Travel Series

    The feature comes from Samantha Brown’s Places to Love, a PBS travel series that airs nationally. Brown spent years on the Travel Channel before bringing the show to PBS, where it has continued to run across the country and build a steady audience.

    This episode, Art & Artisans, follows eight artists in different parts of the U.S. Dick Termes is one of them.

    Out past Spearfish, the setup hasn’t changed much. The Termesphere Gallery sits a little off the side of a dirt road. Then you step inside the geodesic dome, the room opens up, and entire worlds, dozens of them, spin all around you.

    Each one is built from the same idea. Instead of painting a single view, Termes paints the entire environment, every direction at once. Up, down, behind you, all wrapped onto a sphere.

    He’s been working on this idea for decades. As a painter, one viewpoint wasn’t enough. So he pushed past it, developing six-point perspective so he could paint everything on one spherical canvas, not just what he could see in front of him.

    You don’t really look at one of these and move on. You stay with them, watch them closely as they turn. You wait for that little detail you just noticed to come back around again. The longer you stand there, the more you realize Termes is showing you an entire world.

    That’s what Brown leans into in the segment. Not just how the spheres look, but what they ask of you as you’re standing there with them.

    When she asks Termes what he hopes people take away from art, his answer surprised her with its simplicity: “Be aware of the total visual space in front of you, turn around, take it all in…”

    Samantha’s show itself is built around stopping and celebrating those obscure little places when we travel. Not obvious landmarks, but quieter places where someone has been working on something long enough that it becomes its own destination. In this episode, that includes studios across the country.

    In this case, that place sits just outside Spearfish, right here in our own Black Hills. A geodesic dome tucked off a dirt road, filled with work that doesn’t really fit anywhere else. The gallery doesn’t need a show to explain what it is. Anyone who’s made the trip out there already knows. This just puts it in front of a few more people who might not have found it otherwise.

    Watch the full eposode of Samantha Brown’s Places to Love: Art & Artisans

    Samantha Brown’s Places to Love
    airs on PBS stations nationwide and is available for streaming through PBS platforms.

    Dick Termes and the Termesphere Gallery are located at 1920 Christensen Drive in Spearfish, SD. Learn more about his work at termespheres.com

  • More underground DIY Shows Start Taking Shape in Rapid City

    More underground DIY Shows Start Taking Shape in Rapid City

    By the time doors open, most of the work is already done. The speakers are set, cables run, lights dialed in. Bands start to trickle in, shaking hands, getting a feel for the room. Outside, a few flyers are still taped to poles downtown, doing their job.

    That part doesn’t happen by accident.

    Rapid City has seen versions of this before, with underground shows surfacing over the years. A new group of local organizers and bands is picking that work back up, bringing DIY punk shows into a more consistent rhythm. Touring bands are starting to route through again, local lineups are filling out, and nights that used to feel sporadic are starting to feel a little more steady.

    Some of that work has been coming from people like Ti Murphree. Murphree has been helping organize a run of shows in Rapid City, connecting with touring bands and building lineups that mix local and out-of-town acts. Two more shows are on the calendar this spring.

    March 21 brings the Colorado band Glueman through town. On April 2, Minnesota’s ¡Radical Fun Time! makes a stop in Rapid City. And looking further ahead, a three-day stretch is planned for September 24 through 26, with around twenty-one bands expected to take part.

    Like most DIY shows, these don’t come together in one clean step. Often it starts with a message from a touring band looking for a place to land between cities. From there, it’s a matter of finding a space, reaching out to local bands, and slowly building a full bill.

    Murphree got pulled into it in a similarly loose way.

    “We had two small speakers and a tiny mixer,” he said. “We decided to throw a show powered by a generator.”

    It worked. So they kept going.

    Now, the process repeats itself each time a new show takes shape. Flyers get printed at the library, usually in stacks of forty or fifty. They get passed out downtown, taped to poles, handed to businesses. Social media fills in the gaps, but the physical effort still matters.

    “No promo equals no people at the show,” Murphree said.

    Show days start early. Load-in begins around 11 a.m. with speakers, lighting, and sound equipment getting set and tested. Touring bands arrive in the late afternoon, doors open at 6:30, and music starts at 7. When the last set ends, the night doesn’t. The people putting the show together are usually the last ones out of the building, sometimes not until well after midnight.

    The bands coming through aren’t routed by large promoters. Most of the connections are built the same way the shows are, through conversation, travel, and word of mouth.

    “We talk to bands and make friendships,” Murphree said. “Then they tell other bands about us and word spreads that way.”

    That kind of network takes time to build, especially in a place where many touring bands don’t automatically think to stop.

    “A lot of bands don’t come through Rapid because they don’t know about the underground punk scene,” he said. “That’s why we try to be loud and book a lot of shows so everyone knows about it.”

    The goal behind these shows isn’t complicated. They’re all-ages. They follow the longtime punk principle of NOTAFLOF, meaning no one is turned away for lack of funds. And they’re built to give both bands and audiences a place to show up and exist for a while.

    “We just want everyone to have a good time,” Murphree said. “A place where they can come be themselves and not care about the world for a little bit.”

    Rapid City has always had an underground current moving through it, carried forward by different groups over the years. What’s happening now adds to that, shaped by the people willing to do the work because they believe the music matters and that spaces like this are worth building.

    That kind of thing doesn’t happen on its own, it takes people showing up to make it real.

  • Shenanigans, Shamrocks & Shillelaghs: Where to Celebrate St. Patrick’s Weekend in the Black Hills

    Shenanigans, Shamrocks & Shillelaghs: Where to Celebrate St. Patrick’s Weekend in the Black Hills

    Right about the time the grass starts turning green again in the Black Hills, the beers usually do too.St. Patrick’s weekend has a way of stirring up a little mischief as people head out looking for music, good company, and maybe a bit of luck along the way.

    From Rapid City dance floors to Deadwood’s parade-filled streets, the weekend brings together DJs, punk bands, pub crawls, and a few long-running traditions that have turned St. Patrick’s into one of the livelier weekends of the year across the region.

    Here’s a look at some of the places celebrating.

    While Rapid City spreads its celebrations across different venues, Deadwood tends to turn the entire town into the party.

    Deadwood St. Patrick’s Celebration

    March 13–14 • Downtown Deadwood

    The annual celebration includes a parade, citywide pub crawl, live entertainment, and the Lucky Leprechaun Hunt, a scavenger-style challenge that sends participants searching for QR codes in businesses throughout town.

    Highlights include:

    Lucky Leprechaun Hunt
    Participants use the Plan Deadwood app to locate hidden QR codes in participating businesses across town.

    Eggs & Kegs
    Saturday morning at the Deadwood Social Club.

    St. Paddy’s Parade
    Saturday at noon along Main Street.

    Deadwood Pub Crawl
    Registration begins at 11 AM at the Franklin Hotel, with the crawl officially starting at 2:30 PM.

    Singing Nuns Performances
    Throwback performances Saturday afternoon at the Franklin Hotel and Nugget Saloon as part of Deadwood’s 150th anniversary events.

    Looking Ahead to the Weekend

    Between Deadwood’s street celebrations and Rapid City’s lineup of bands, DJs, and pub crawl stops, St. Patrick’s weekend tends to bring people out across the Hills for a few days of music and late nights.

    And if history is any guide, it’s usually the kind of weekend where plans start with one stop and end somewhere completely different.