Hot time in the old town tonight

Okay, I’m back. After an 11-day hiatus. After seeing this blog's site meter dwindle from nearly 300 at the previous entry to 31 yesterday. Ouch.

Sorry! I wasn’t being a slugabed – quite the contrary. To my ongoing surprise and delight, SuperScript continues to attract clients – who knew it would take off so fast? But now I’m semi-back in the saddle – or back in the Aeron chair, anyway. And I was saying around the corner in The Editing Room, it’s easier just now to repeat other people’s news, so here goes.

Tonight only, head over to Portland Playhouse for a reading an hilarious Adam Rapp play that is scabrous even by his standards: Bingo with the Indians, all about a down-in-the-mouth theater troupe that decides to finance its next production by knocking over a bingo parlor. The dialogue is gut-bustingly snarky, but look out – this is the same Mr. Rapp who was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, a few years ago, for the bleak and devastating Red Light Winter. In other words . . . expect reversals of fortune.

Did I mention that Adam’s brother, Anthony, he of Rent fame, he of the above photo, headlines a superb cast? And that the cast of the touring production of Rent is rumored to heading up a celebrity audience? Don’t miss it:

When: Fri., June 26, 11 pm; Phone: 503.488.5822; Price: $10
602 NE Prescott St. :: 503.488.5822 :: portlandplayhouse.org

Doors open at NINE with a live band and other hijinks. Go tonight and someday you’ll be to able to tell your grandkids about it.

But wait, there’s more. Sojourn Theatre, one of the nation’s most innovative companies, is having an event on July 1 that will benefit their next piece, On the Table, which they’re calling their most ambitious endeavor yet. Here’s how artistic director Michael Rohd describes the work in progress:

As this really ambitious project, On The Table, picks up pace (the show will happen Summer 2010 simultaneously in PDX and a small town 50 miles from PDX, and explores the urban/rural conversation in OR, culminating with a bus trip for both audiences and a final Act at an in-between site), we're taking a moment to connect specifically around the support we need to continue making ambitious, local work.

That support is the event pictured below – come if you can, and if you can’t come, consider sending Sojourn a donation. We are so lucky to have this national treasure working right here in Portland OR; I’d love to keep it that way. Details here.