Made in Oregon gets up close and....

JAW’s Made in Oregon series comes to an appropriately heady climax on Sunday evening with Personal, a new play by Portlander Brian Kettler directed by Jessica Nikkel.

Brian, we don’t often get treated to dramas like Personal in the theater; to me it’s thoughtful investigation of the nature of identity that nevertheless plays like a like a thriller. Apart from just being told a good story, what do you hope audiences will take away from seeing your play?

Well, I love thrillers about memory and identity, and I certainly see Personal fitting into that genre. I hope the audience comes out of the play feeling angry, hopeful, and maybe even a little scared. Personal is written as an attack against unrealistic portrayals of happiness and fulfillment, especially in celebrity journalism. I hope that Personal inspires some sort of catharsis in its audience.

We are all humans, we all fight through pain and muck, and we all have some sort of gap between our ideal selves and our actual selves. I think just about everyone has looked at the beautiful people in magazines and felt crappy about themselves. I hope people come out of the play realizing that we are not alone, we all share the same shit, and we have to help each other through it.

Personal debuts this Sunday, July 17, at 8pm on the Main Stage of the Gerding Theater; no reservations are required, and admission as always is freefreefree.

MIO continues with Continuum

What is real in a hall of mirrors? That question comes to the fore at Made in Oregon this Sunday with Patrick Wohlmut’s Continuum, directed by Stan Foote. Commissioned by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, this tense cat-and-mouse game will stick in your head a long time after the actors have taken their bows.

So Patrick. Continuum is a play of many reversals, and we have to revise our beliefs about the characters several times during it. What does this say about your world view as a writer? Do you feel that human character is essentially a constantly shifting work in progress?

I do believe that. Many people tend to think of themselves as presenting different faces to different people at different times. I think the truth is more complex than that, more rooted in the Buddha’s observation that (depending on who translates it) either “What we are is what we have thought,” or possibly, “What we think, we become.” I think our personality encompasses the full sum of anything we are in the habit of thinking, and that different situations bring out different parts of us. We don’t have many faces; rather, like Walt Whitman says, we are all large, and contain multitudes that may seem contradictory depending upon the situation in which we find ourselves. However, those aspects are not contradictory — they are all, in fact, us. That means that different people and situations reflect us in very different ways. The world is a hall of mirrors, and we see different aspects of ourselves in everything.

That’s why I tend to appreciate — and try to use — an aspect of playwriting that Paul Castagno describes in his book, New Playwriting Strategies. He describes a trend set by playwrights such as Len Jenkin and Mac Wellman, where character-specific dialogue is eschewed in favor of sometimes rapidly shifting vocal strategies, meaning that several speech genres — ways of speaking — can emerge in the course of a scene, an act, or a whole play. I’m not a die-hard adherent of this strategy of writing, because I think that people do tend to fall into specific speech patterns; it’s not all chaos. However, there’s something in that flexibility of character that attracts me and rings true.

Continuum plays this Sunday, July 17, at 4pm at Gerding Theater. Admission is free and no reservations are necessary, though I’d advise getting there early if you like sitting up close.

A banner year for Made in Oregon

Antartikos, a powerful new play by Andrea Stolowitz, kicks off JAW’s Made in Oregon weekend this Saturday. I’ve listened to this play several times in rehearsal and I’m always moved by it; I think you will be, too. I hope to see you there this weekend.

Andrea, while clearly Antartikos is not your personal story, it’s also evident that it comes from a very personal place within you. That’s unusual nowadays, when so often real feelings are cloaked within layers of irony. Will you feel exposed or vulnerable when people hear the play performed?

Hearing the play for me is always hard. The play is about saying goodbye to those you love and about accepting the ultimate closure that happens when someone dies. It is hard for me to hear because it makes me feel those things, but also because it is exposing the way I think about the world — a kernel of sadness I have — to people who don’t know me. It feels like suddenly everyone knows more about me than I know about them and what they know are the feelings that I never really talk about.

On the other hand, what I ask of my audience is to go to a deep emotional place with me, and if I weren’t willing to go there, neither would they be. So in the end it is an even exchange. I write plays to create that shared experience with an audience, so even though it feels raw to hear it, I am proud of the experience it creates. In my view, anything you care about and share with a room full of others will always feel raw. But isn't that why we are alive?

Antartikos is directed by Gemma Whelan and performs this Saturday, July 16 at 4pm at the Gerding Theater. No reservations required and always free of charge.

Where to be this weekend

This Saturday kicks off the JAW Festival with....well, moi-même. Funnily enough, I believe my Community Artists Lab happens to be the first event this year. Enrollment for the Lab is closed, by the way; I only mention it to pique you.

More importantly, the big event this weekend is Made in Oregon, where four of Oregon's most intriguing playwrights will share their latest work with you. Matthew B. Zrebski's new opus, Forky, debuts this Saturday, July 16, at 8 pm on the big stage.


Matt, part of the fun with a new play of yours is that all bets are off when it comes to content, style, voice – you name it. No two MBZ plays are alike. Where did this play come from? Will any demons get exorcized in the course of our seeing Forky?

I think more than any play I’ve written, this one reflects my age. At 38, I can no longer pretend that one day I’m going to be an adult. I am an adult. Like it or not. Life is “now.” The future, though still something to dream about, is less about “what I will be” and more about “how I will grow as I am.” And at it’s most basic, Forky is about the choices we’ve made to reach this adult self – and how we deal with that both literally and spiritually. God, could that sound more banal? I suppose a sexier way to describe the play’s genesis is to reveal the first visual image I had: someone dancing romantically with a giant dead sperm. I mean, of course, right? Sexy! And from that image, the tone and content of the play emerged. I hope it’s both silly and devastating, earthly and ethereal – but mostly, I hope it’s a swift and thrilling 80-minute ride for the audience . . . maybe even entertaining. Who knows?

News flash: 1980 was kind to no one

Back to the blog after several days of computer meltdown agonies. It seems I have to post rapidly now, before the system implodes on me. Wish me luck.

Made in Oregon kicked off Monday evening with the Sue Mach opus described in the previous post – and after all my bruiting the event about, I’m missed it, because of a lucrative but last-minute rush edit. POOP. If you went, let me know what happened, k?

Right now, though, here’s another peek behind the curtain regarding Wednesday’s outing (July 15 at 6:00pm): The Missing Pieces, by Nick Zagone, which takes place in Portland in 1980 just after the Mt. St Helen's blew. Music plays an important part in this play, I’m glad to say, because it was an era when music converged in a veritable gang bang of clashing styles: punk, pop, New Wave, even disco-inflected versions of all these.

The playwright promises that the partial playlist below will appear either in the play itself or during the pre-show, and it’s an orgy of cheesy one-hit wonders and some classics sans fromage -- the perfect play list for ashy Portland Oregon May 1980. Feast your ears:

The Clash: Train in Vain
Talking Heads: Once in a Lifetime
Blondie: Call Me
M: Pop Music
X: Los Angeles
Joy Division: Love Will Tear Us Apart.
Ramones: Let's Go and (but of course) Rock and Roll High School
Blondie: Call Me
The Knack: My Sharona
Michael Jackson: Off the Wall
Pretenders: Brass in Pocket
The Cars: Let's Go



And what of tonight? Be there by six for chills and spills in Brian Kettler’s tense new drama, In School Suspension. It’s about Danny and Angela, two high school students locked away in an abandoned Spanish classroom during a disaster drill, beleaguered by a teacher wants to make sure his students experience authentic feelings of fear and terror. What could possibly go wrong, right?

See you tonight.

Slouching toward summertime

I hope you're happy, all you sun worshippers. Summer has come to Oregon -- yes, even here -- and now it will be hothothot all the live-long day. Nice for some, but we creatures of the night wither when the UV rays come out.

One good thing about July, though: JAW takes over the Armory, and original playwriting -- highly original playwriting, mind you -- comes at you from every cranny.

More about the full slate later, but as a teaser, let me tantalize you with the Made in Oregon reading pictured here. MIO, by the by, is a series of readings that focuses on the burgeoning playwriting scene happening in Portland and elsewhere in Cascadia. These readings are rehearsed but not workshopped as fully as the plays presented in the JAW Weekend, so they have a rough-and-ready feel to them that suits the reading format muy bien, thank you so much.

Andrea Stolowitz' new play Bad Family, which debuts on Thursday, July 16 at 6:00pm, is the last of the four plays in the 2009 edition of Made in Oregon, but Andrea since is the first writer to send me a postcard, I share it with you first.

And can I just say: look at that cast. These actors could animate The Faerie Queene, but fortunately they have much livelier material to work with here. Andrea's play gives us a fabulously fury of a teenager named Alexandra who is prone to using her neighbor's lawn to cast spells that she hopes will dissolve the marriage of her and stepfather. When she hijacks the car and the neighbor for a road trip into the desert, well....let's just say the road to revelation is paved with bad intentions.

Over the next couple of weeks I'll try to profile each of the 2009 JAW playwrights to find out what their big trips are.

Meanwhile, I'll comfort myself with the knowledge that ever since the summer solstice, the days are getting imperceptibly shorter and shorter....

JAW rolls inexorably on!

JAW: Made in Oregon came to a gloriously off-the-rails finish this evening with Hunt Holman's crazy-ass epic, Willow Jade. Even before the reading started, we knew we were in for a nutty evening when Kelsey noticed a typo in the program. Hunt's bio started out" "The lays of Hunt Holman include Spanish Girl..." Ay yi yi.

What can I say. We. Play. Rough.

And now we press on, as all the out-of-town artists arrive on Friday to commence rehearsing the mainstage works in progress. But in case you couldn't make it to Made in Oregon, here's a glimpse of our first evening:

60-Second Interview: Ginny Foster

JAW: Made in Oregon continues this Wednesday with Ginny Foster's new play, Starvation Heights, adapted from Gregg Olsen 's best-selling true-crime novel of the same name. The question I pose to Ginny below is excerpted from a fuller interview just posted on PCS 's site; click here to read the whole conversation.

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Q: Do you feel Starvation Heights is an outrageous play?

A: When I read Gregg Olsen’s book, I realized Linda Hazzard was an outrageous character. In Karin Magaldi’s playwriting class at Portland State — where fracturing the rules of the traditional play was encouraged — I wrote a number of successful one-acts, often outrageous in form and/or content. Starvation Heights is different from my other plays in that I tried to take an ax to any places — or characters — based on my own philosophical and political views, of which I have many little darlings to murder. Most of the true-crime books portray the killer as entirely evil, and do not raise the question of “why does evil exist?” or “why is this person evil?” I left the former question ALONE, because entering that forest would lead me to my usual philosophical dead-end trails.

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STARVATION HEIGHTS
Wednesday, July 9, 7:30 pm
in the Ellen Bye Studio
@ Portland Center Stage
128 NW Eleventh

Free admission, but seating is limited and occurs on a first come, first served basis. See you there!

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.

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...

* * * * * * * * *

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.

But wait, there’s more.

Indeed. There are directors behind each of the Made in Oregon readings, of course, but we ask them to be terribly self-effacing in JAW. O they’re credited for their work, but they don’t get bios in the programs; nobody does, actually, except for the playwrights. It’s another way of many that we put the emphasis where its belong in this Festival – on the writers.

Nevertheless.

For The Cloud-Bangers, Matthew B. Zrebski will direct his own work – a practice I ordinarily disapprove of (what’s a reading for if not to give the writer perspective? which is hard to maintain when directing others), but Matt is such an experienced and nuanced director and this script is in such good shape that I…caved. However, Matt will be nimbly assisted by the golden Karin Magaldi, on board as his dramaturg, so I need not lose sleep.

Karin returns to MIO the following evening as director for Ginny Foster’s Starvation Heights. And too-cool-to-live Andrew Golla will direct Hunt Holman’s hilarious, eight-character train wreck, Willow Jade.



Bonus! You’ll remember that Ginny based her play on the historical crime novel of the same name by Gregg Olsen, with Gregg’s kind permission. Turns out Gregg is coming to Portland to see Ginny’s reading, to see how she’s shaped the story. His book, which one reviewer described as “investigative reporting at its best,” is a fascinating and compelling study, and it will be fun to meet the man who spent so much time researching the conflicted “doctor” at the story’s center.

If you’d like to fall under the story’s spell right now, check out the web site all about it. And then follow the links to Gregg’s own site and personal blog – chilling!

Local Heroes

Heavens to Murgatroyd and all right already, I swear to Archangel Michael and all the saints that we will have the full JAW copy on the PCS website before this Monday’s out. To tide you over, though, I’d like to announce the three plays of the “Made in Oregon” series, which form a mini-fest of plays in advance of the Festival proper. Feast your eyes on this fab line-up:

JAW: Made in Oregon
Script-in-hand readings by three of Oregon’s own. All MIO readings begin promptly at 7:30pm in the Ellyn Bye Studio Theater.

The Cloud-Bangers
by Matthew B. Zrebski
July 8
All the clouds are cumulonimbus in this heady mix of meteorology, migraines and steamy romance. Only an air-clearing storm will reveal who’s zoomin’ whom.

Starvation Heights
by Ginny Foster
July 9
In this adaptation of the true-crime novel by New York Times best-selling author Gregg Olsen, lady doctor Linda Hazzard opens a sanitarium with some unorthodox treatments. When her clients start leaving her care feet first, a mysterious figure known as Nanny appears, determined to save two patients in particular.

Willow Jade
by Hunt Holman
July 10
Nowheresville, Southwest Washingon. Meet four aging chums with a good idea: stave off middle age by reviving their high school rock band. Bad idea: coming to terms with their past during a disastrous game of D&D – in costume.