60-Second Interview: Hunt Holman

As JAW: Made in Oregon crescendos on Thursday, July 10, you’ll be treated to the work of one of the wittiest, most well-observed social satirists I know: Hunt Holman.
That evening we’ll be hearing Willow Jade, which centers around a rooming house whose most mysterious tenants may or may not be on the lam and have a tantalizing bounty on their heads. The prospect has a galvanizing effect on a group of friends going nowhere fast, all of whom sniff a chance for fast money.

Hunt’s penchant for getting comedy out of people under pressure leads me to today’s 60-Second Interview:

Q: You are one of the most easy-going guys I know. Do you have a Mr. Hyde who takes you over so you can write plays with such sharp satire in them?

A: I remember being backstage at Seattle Rep when Bill Irwin was there playing Scapin. I remember seeing him, surely one of the most civilized gentlemen in show business, do a monkey walk in imitation of the person in front of him, who had no idea. What can I say? There is something inherently vicious in comedy.

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WILLOW JADE

by Hunt Holman

directed by Andrew Golla

July 10 at 7:30 pm in the Ellyn Bye Studio

Nowheresville, Washington state. Meet four aging chums with a bad idea: stave off middle age with a game of D & D … in costume. It only gets worse when a scandalous crime explodes next door, and orcs come down out of the mountains.

NB: Admission is freefreefree, but seating is limited and will be offered on a first come, first served basis. See you there.

How to eat your cake and have it too

********************************************************************************************************* At right is the famous cake created for JAW’s 10th anniversary poster by The Great Society. Check out the video below to see how it was photographed by the brilliant David Emmite at his studio, and subsequently destroyed by voracious PCS staffers. Can you believe I passed up the chance to be a hand model for this shoot?

60-Second Interview: Matt Zrebski

Rehearsals are already underway for JAW 2008, and audiences will get their first look at our works in progress next week when the Made in Oregon series commences. The three plays of this series are all by fiercely talented Pacific Northwest writers, each with a radically different perspective about life, love, and yes, landscape.

First up is Matthew B. Zrebski, whose play The Cloud-Bangers gets its concert reading on Tuesday, July 8 (details below).

Q: Matt, in this new play of yours, we’re treated to some rather droll sexual peccadilloes. I love it that your humor in this regard is so affectionate. You don’t seem to be lampooning people’s personal kinks; it feels more like you’re celebrating the romantic diversity of our species. What accounts for this beguiling new light touch in your work?

A: As it has for so many artists, the elusive nature of sexuality has always intrigued me. In much of my work, I have explored it through an angry lens -- mostly my anger at the moralists. But in the past few years I have had the pleasure to work extensively in the public high schools, and I have observed a radical shift from a dichotomic and constrictive sexual paradigm to one where a wide range of exploration is celebrated. This new generation has a different take -- one that I admit strikes a big chord of envy within my heart. And I began to think, if you strip guilt and sin out of sexuality, what you have left is nothing more than innocent curiosity. It has a sort of purity about it...it touches on a kind of utopian model...and it’s really quite beautiful. In The Cloud-Bangers I wanted to investigate the romantic issues through this less angry, more innocent lens. And in many ways, I think this shift has allowed me to find a tone that is, perhaps, quite new in my work. We shall see...

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THE CLOUD-BANGERS
written and directed by Matthew B. Zrebski

Tuesday, July 8, 7:30 pm
The Ellen Bye Studio Theater @ Portland Center Stage
128 NW Eleventh Avenue (between Couch & Davis)

Admission is FREE, but seating is limited and is provided on a first come, first served basis. See you there.

Bots Never Sleep

AbraPalabra just bit the big one. That's right, my tag board is history. For those of you who used it regularly, my apologies; it was a fun utility, but I was tired of constantly deleting the spam that cluttered it. Today alone I had to de-slime the board NINE different times -- it just wasn't worth it. There's no keeping up with those pesky little bots. God, they're gross. Ick.

Also today, I've switched the blog to comment moderation. So from now on you'll have to reproduce a code word to get your text published (evidently bots can't read yet) AND I have to tell the system to go ahead and let your comment appear. I hate having such a buffer, actually, but I am assured that it's only a matter of time before the bots start infesting my comment boxes, unless I thwart them in this way.

I'm only thinking of youse!

Micro Fest!

With JAW still weeks away, Portland is already a hotbed of startling new work, and has been for months. To mention just a few recent hijinks: Hand2Mouth’s deliriously hallucinatory collaboration with Polish company Teatr Stacja Szamocin, From a Dream to a Dream; Fever Theater’s experiential The New Believers; and my latest addiction, the End of the Pavement Micro New Works Festival.

Yes, that’s right. So this is how we relax when not working for PCS, you think reproachfully.

Guilty as charged. Even though it's that time of year when my every waking moment of consciousness seems to be oriented toward JAW, I have been indulging in the busman's holiday of attending the Micro Fest. It’s an extra-special occasion, since it marks the end of Pavement Production's EIGHTEEN fabulous years of producing theater. Not for lack of spirit or funding or creative juice, either, but because .... “it's time to move on,” sez co-founder Steve Patterson.

Mr. P, always one to go out with a bang, is gracing us with Pavement's final foray, the above-mentioned celebration of original work. It's readings, and ambitious ones, with Nick Zagone and Matt Zrebski having treated us on the past two weekends. All the work, from the writing to the acting to the -- let's just acknowledge it -- the producing has been superb.

That's what good producing is, you know: when a sense of integrity suffuses all aspects of a creative effort. Steve's a class act, and it shows everywhere in the Micro Fest.

Next up is a new piece by Steve himself, and the final showing on the Fifth of July is a romp called Ubu Lives! -- eight short plays inspired by Jarry's manic monster. With titles such as ubu's last krapp (that one's by james moore), the Micro Fest's climax promises to be a total roaratorio.

Why you want to care about net neutrality

Thank you Anthony Clarvoe for sharing this video with me and hence with us. Click below to find out what “net neutrality” is, and why without it, blogs like this would eventually cease to exist.

last chance to STEP IT UP & GET OVER HERE

Portland Center Stage’s
NOW HEAR THIS

invites you to a semi-staged reading of

WHY LOVE DOESN'T RECOGNIZE ITS NAME

a new play by Lisa Leaverton

Saturday, June 28, 2008 * Noon to approximately 1:30 pm
@ Portland Center Stage (128 NW Eleventh Avenue (between Couch & Davis) in the Rehearsal Room

Our outstanding cast includes:
Lava Alapai, Mario Calcagno, Drew Danhorn, Amy Palomino & Cecily Overman

Admission is free, but space is limited; email Megan Ward at meganw@pcs.org to reserve your seat

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At a loss for words? Then come down to Lee’s Expressive! He’s the best! Lee and his team of mechanics help clients whose speech patterns are clogged with words that are too ornate, or have the wrong shade of meaning, or just plain don’t communicate. But only Deep Mystery (that’s you, our audience) can unlock the most problematic phrases.

Please join us for our final reading of the season, which promises to be unlike any other reading we’ve had this year: it’s semi-staged; the audience can affect the play’s plot; AND the playwright herself will be here, all the way from Brooklyn, to celebrate the first fun season of NOW HEAR THIS.

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Lisa Leaverton, of Brooklyn, NY, runs (inquire within) with Director John Kaufmann, a collective devoted to audience-dependent, ephemeral theater. Her one-act PERHAPS (2008) was read in Outward Bound Series, at CSPS, Cedar Rapids. WHY LOVE DOESN’T RECOGNIZE ITS NAME, for which she received a Richard Maibaum Scholarship, was featured at Iowa New Play Festival, 2008. Theatre of the Body (2001), a series of lecture demonstrations created in collaboration with choreographer Katharine Livingston, has been performed numerous times since it sold out at Philadelphia Fringe. A Blue We All Know (2008) will be featured in a Gallery production at University of Iowa, Oct. 2008. Other plays include Who Are These They (2007), read in Primary Stages Playwrights Workshop, The LONG Night (2008), and The Countess of Misery (2005), full-length play in verse. Since graduating from Peabody Music Conservatory, Lisa has costumed theater and dance companies including Headlong Dance and Pig Iron Theatre Co. Lisa participated in Goat Island Performance workshops, and KCCTF, 2007. Recipient of a Felton award, Lisa is completing her MFA in playwriting at University of Iowa.