{photo:A Rauschenberg collage at the Blue Sky Gallery}

We’re taking the month off from our FREE First Thursday concerts, but here’s a great opportunity to whet your appetite for the artistic pleasures awaiting you next season at PCS, with some help from Blue Sky Gallery.

Next season’s world premiere of Nancy Keystone’s Apollo will feature a dreamlike collage of photography, dance, spoken word and moving image delving into the hidden ramifications of America’s mission to the moon (and the former Nazi scientists who were arguably instrumental to its success).

Keystone’s style has been compared to collage work of the late, great visual artist Robert Rauschenberg. Never seen any of his mind-bending work?

Lucky for you, local photography gallery the Blue Sky Gallery is currently showing a series of prints based on photographs he took of China in the 1980s.

Join the crowds at tonight’s First Thursday opening or wander in with a gelato on your next lazy long lunch- we guarantee it will whet your appetite for Keystone’s ground-breaking coup de theatre next January.

Plus, it may make you itch to create your own incisive social commentary using that box of cards, magazine clippings and photos you found too interesting to throw away and too random to display…

In fact, if you do get inspired to bust out the modge podge, here’s a summer project idea that could win you dinner in the pearl and tickets to a show:

1. Pick a theme based on a show coming to PCS next season
(gangsters? Nixon? rock divas? Dymaxion files? East Hamptons? Forged documentation? moon landings? Nazis? geodesic domes? gosh the possibilities are endless!)

2. Build a Rauschenberg-style collage, including somewhere in it the PCS brochure image from the show you picked.

3. Mail it attn: Trisha Pancio, Portland Center Stage, 128 NW 11th Ave, PDX 97209 (be sure to include your name and address so we can give you proper credit for your work!)

We’ll post every collage we receive to the PCS blog, and our favorite collage artist will win dinner and a show of your choice at PCS next season.

Happy cutting and pasting!