Taylor's lament: “everybody wants to be God’s exclamation point”!

Two things to know about Taylor Mac: yes, he is as absolutely fabulous as you’ve heard; and no, the faint of heart should not sit within easy reach of him.

I caught Taylor’s uproarious cabaret last night, on the hottest night of the year, at Washington High School, where his latest performance event has been a conspicuous offering of this year’s Time-Based Art Festival. Entitled Comparison Is Violence or The Ziggy Stardust Meets Tiny Tim Songbook, the evening’s ostensible premise centers around how a lone critic pegged his act as a cross between these two legendary performers, and immediately other Google-dependent journalists adopted the description as Mac’s tagline.

But that’s all a feint, as it turns out.

Early on Mac tells us — after asking us to sing along with the chorus of an obscure Tiny Tim song — how much he hates audience participation. At once point, after having just asked a question of the audience, he goes so far as to reassure us, saying: “Don’t worry, I’m not going to make you do anything.” Yet after singling out a few terrified spectators, he adds: “Okay, the drag queen lied.” And climbs off the stage and into the audience, where he proceeds to embroil his victims in various degrees of participation throughout the evening.

Another feint: after decrying the “niches” that Bowie and Tiny Tim were put into, the artist voices his concern that he’s always getting invited into highly specialized performance occasions such as TBA and No Boundaries. “The trouble is,” he says, “I have boundaries.”

But this too is not true. Because the entire screamingly funny evening, peppered throughout with impressive vocal gymnastics and punctuated by glitter throwing, is all about busting boundaries. Even the glam-rock drag Mac wears gradually gets shed as the cabaret continues, until by the end the bitch goddess towering over us in cothurni is revealed as a smallish bald guy (albeit a strikingly sexy one), whose voice has gone from thunderous to softly appealing.

If I’m making this sound like a jumble, much of the evening it feels that way. But yes, you’ve guessed it—this too is marvelous sleight of hand. Following this performance, director Megan Kate Ward observed: “He acts likes it’s all just a conversation, like he’s just chatting and make it up as he goes along, and then of course it turns out he knew exactly where he was taking us the whole time.”

This much IS true. At the end we’ve learned, among other things, that while comparison may be violence, sometimes a little violence is good thing.

Reportedly The Irish Times has said: “Taylor Mac seduces you, breaks your heart, patches it back up again and sews sequins along the scars.” I know now what the Times means. Once Taylor Mac sprinkles you with glitter, you’ll follow him anywhere.

When Irish guys are stylin’

Across the country but especially here in Portlandia, I’m famous for evaporating like morning mist. Whether it’s a theater event, an art opening or Storm Large’s surprise party, take your eyes off me for a minute and I’m gone for the night. No. I'm not going through that awkward stage. It’s just hate the long goodbyes that are the fallout of social occasions.

My technique, honed by years of disappearing acts, involves scoping out all available exits upon arrival. Ideal targets? Egresses located just past bathrooms; back doors; secret passageways (oh yes — for some reason these abound in Portland). A quick scrutiny of “alarmed” doors, by way of checking whether their wires are attached or not, often yields handy exits where angels fear to tread. And catered affairs are a bonus; the servers will gladly clue you in about any hidden corridors or tunnels.

Imagine my surprise when “Cousin Tabitha” recently informed me that there's a term of art for the disappearing act: the Irish Goodbye. There’s even a Facebook page dedicated to the practice. So apparently I come from a long line of escape artists; it’s actually my genetic heritage.

Recently, though, that changed for me when I donating my aging Jetta to AllClassical. Now I get around by walking (a subversive act for this former Angeleno), busing, cycling, renting the occasional ZipCar. And also the kindness of acquaintances.

Whereas at first the inconvenience of all this seemed colossal — I mean, the ability to take off on impulse is very nearly the definition of American, is it not? — it’s turning to be a kind of blessing. Last week, for ex, Olga Sanchez and I got lost in the fogbound northwest hills and had a fun adventure together. My bus rides around town have resulted in a great increase of reading (and when you do that for a living, you know that can’t be bad). In attending Superior Donuts last week with my Drammy colleague Barbara, I found much about her storied career that I’d never suspected (since I’d never had the time to ask before). From the bicycling, I’ve discovered that oxygenation is entertaining. And last night, instead of being the first guy out the door at Vertigo, I headed over to The Blue Monk — ostensibly to wait for my ride home, then going on to have a rollicking conversation with playwright Kim Rosenstock and director Megan Kate Ward.

As recently as a few weeks ago, none of this would have happened. Had I still my own car, in each of these cases I would have appeared and vanished suddenly. Like Count Dracula, but without the starched shirt, cape and pomade.

So for now, anyway, it’s farewell to the Irish Goodbye and hello to a more earthbound MrMead than perhaps you’ve spotted fleetingly in the past.

Slán go fóill.

Now and forever

It’s always fun to go to public events with Megan. In addition to the pleasure of her company, I get all these approving smiles from women of a certain age. No doubt they’re thinking: isn’t that sweet, that nice man is taking his granddaughter out for some very improving culture.

Last night’s event was Cats. Yes, THAT Cats, the Andrew Lloyd Webber juggernaut currently playing at the Keller Auditorium as the Portland stop in a national tour. Though the spectacle premiered in 1981, I never saw it back in the day, because there were no comps whatsoever to be had. (In my student days, I saw only the second acts of Broadway shows anyway, and Cats just didn’t tickle my spider sense.) So I was grateful for the opportunity to see what nearly 30 years of fuss has been about.

Well. Talk about truth in advertising. The play is about cats. Probably you already know this is all based on a book of light verse by T.S. Eliot, of all people: Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats, from 1939. (Intriguingly, however, the one song you can actually hum, Memory, hails from Tom’s groovier, more avant-garde phase.) None of it makes a lick of sense, really, but it’s all very colorful, and the talented touring cast dances their tails off. (Ahem.)



The video posted above is not of the current national tour, but this is exactly what last night looked like; apparently all the production elements are codified. Never mind that the dance vocabulary and Webber’s hodgepodge of a score are shopworn (the synth-heavy arrangements recall MTV of yore), the thing is an event. The gleeful opening night audience include a startling number of people (and I’m talking adults here) with velvet cat’s ears on their heads and/or sporting puss print outfits. Impressive!

Cats is probably not a show for jaded theater lifers like myself; I can’t help but see through the tricks and even be a tad irked by the staginess of it all. But for those who still thrill at pulsing strobe lights shone in their faces or for whom lots and lots of makeup hold a forbidden fascination, the show may be magic. Certainly last night’s audience enjoyed the play thoroughly.

Know what else I’ve never seen? Les Miz and Miss Saigon. I’m counting on the Keller’s Broadway series to also fill in these lacunae in my theater education, tool. Where was I, anyway, during the waning years of the Broadway musical? It feels like I skipped from Hair and Jesus Christ Superstar straight over to In the Heights and Passing Strange. Feel free to tell me what I missed.

Tonight on Planet Earth

You know: you could start off a new year more worser than by paying heed to Anne Bogart's sage adjurations.

Many thanks to my colleague Megan Kate Ward for posting this on her blog and recalling me to what I’m up to. What we’re all up to.

* * * * *

A Word of Advice by Anne Bogart

Do Not assume that you have to have some prescribed conditions to do your best work.

DO NOT WAIT

Do Not wait for enough time or money to accomplish what you think you have in mind.

Work with what you have right now.

Work with the people around you right now.

Work with the architecture you see around you right now.

Do Not wait till you are sure that you know what you are doing.

Do Not wait for what you assume is the appropriate, stress-free environment in which to generate expression.

Do Not wait for maturity or insight or wisdom.

Do Not wait until you have enough technique.

What you do now, what you make of your present circumstances will determine the quality and scope of your future endeavors.

And at the same time, be patient.

On going around and coming around

Okay, I’m back from four days in the amazing centrifuge of literary activity known as the Willamette Writers Conference – a wondrous creative tune-up that posits all sorts of possibilities for the future.

By this evening I’ll have a new post on my other long-neglected blog, The Editing Room, and expect a makeover for SuperScript’s website, too. The latter has long required an update thanks to new services I’ve added by sheer force of demand.

Meanwhile, though, I took a brief but rejuvenating intermission in the middle of the Conference for the world premiere of The Bullet Round (subtitled "a chamber play in six rounds), by the endlessly inventive Steven Drukman. Directed by Megan Ward and produced by The David Mamet School for Boys, opening was bumpy in a few spots (the kind of thing that’s worked out by the next performance), but none of that detracted by a wryly amusing, intricately interwoven series of stories with something to say about America’s simultaneous horror of and fascination with guns.

Based in formal terms on Schnitzler’s famous Le Ronde structure, the story traces the progress of a Glock as it’s passed from on individual to another – sometimes reluctantly, sometimes accidentally, and once as an act of personal recuperation. Along the way, the playwright comically exploit weaknesses of character to great effect; nearly everyone in the play is divested of an illusion or two. It’s all excellent fodder for Steven Drukman, whose razor-sharp observations of human foibles borders on the anthropological.

The cast is terrific throughout, but I have to single out Gary Norman for his pitch-perfect portrayal of an acerbic professor who turns out to be more fallible than anyone but himself realizes. Drukman – no stranger to the Jesuitical pontifications that amount to job security in academia – gives us a character too wound-up to trust yet too human for us to judge. Gary’s timing with this portrayal of a man too clever for his own good is flawless.

Get thee to the theater and catch this one.

A Night at the Drammys

Is it just me or was this a particular wild Drammy ceremony this year?

Once again, I’m happy to report that bloggers more quick on the draw than I am have already covered the particulars, including Alison Hallett over at BlogTown and the ineffable culturejock at Culture Shock. But neither reported on the radiant nimbus sported by Megan Ward, which was so glam as to hold its own against the evening’s other goddess, Storm Large (our tattooed answer to Grace Kelly).

So now I’m free to talk about my favorite part of the evening: myself.

Again this year, the fabulous people at the Portland Area Theatre Alliance hosted a segment of the ceremony called The Spotlight Awards. These are kind of like Portland theater’s version of the People’s Choice Awards; in truly democratic fashion, any PATA member can nominate people who aren’t usually recognized in awards ceremonies: stage managers, for instance, and crew members, and … others.


While I’m as “other” as they come, nobody told me I’d been nominated. By that point in the ceremony, my mind had wandered briefly…I was thinking about the ancient Hitchcock film, Notorious, which I had just discussed with Marissabidilla a couple of nights before, and I wondered if it could be useful to me as I continued to tinker with another Bluebeard adaptation, Gozzi’s Zenobia…

Then all of the sudden I heard my name, and Megan jumped out of her chair and there was all this racket and I thought Oh no, now I’ll have to go up there. So I did, but it was flummoxing in the extreme because I didn’t actually know what I was going there for at that moment. Jen Raynak crowned me with the lovely tiara you see at the right (hand-made by herself), and I said thank you to the microphone and I fled.

Now I regret that; probably I disappointed some people by not saying a few words. (Though no doubt others were grateful.) So I’ll say a very few words now. Now that I know what the distinction was for.

Theater folk of Portland: it means everything to me that you wanted this award to be an encouragement to me. To say you’re proud of me. Because I’m proud of you, too. In the U.S. we have several cities with theater scenes that reflect what’s unique about where they are; I wonder if you realize that Portland is that way, too. There’s nowhere like it. And over the past seven years I’ve seen it grow and knit together till it’s become the city’s last big secret, invisible to many of its citizens but beloved by those have sought it out. I know that many of you could work in bigger markets and more glittery venues. But you choose to be here, and I’m grateful for that.

Gertrude Stein once wrote that personality reflects landscape – you move to San Francisco or Los Angeles knowing that an earthquake could kill you at any second, or instead you stick with certain Midwest states where you can be sure nothing will happen to you for the rest of your life. What does it say about us that we choose to live in this green corner of the wild, wild west? In the shadows of volcanoes, in a greenbelt between an ocean and a desert? I think it’s something to do with the DIY, rough and ready ethic of the Northwest – that sense that BY GOD I have something to say and I want to say it where people just might listen.

Seriously, more days than not I think about how lucky I am to live here and to work alongside tireless and dedicated artists who are so incredibly singular. I applaud your individualism, and I’m also gladdened that you can temporarily give it up when it really counts.

It touches me that you count me among your own. Thank you.

Mimsy were the borogroves

Extraordinary theater experience this weekend. I caught a kind of double feature at the Lilliputian Shoe Box Theatre over near Ladd’s Addition. First in the bill was a truly transcendent production of Carlos Murillo’s mobius strip of a play, Mimesophobia, or Before and After. Significantly rewritten since its first Portland appearance in JAW 2004, the script is a dizzying combination of suspense story, Po-Mo Gordian knot and (apparently) (and deceptively) free-falling deconstruction of narrative style. If that sounds heady, it is. It’s also endlessly compelling, funny and scary, often all at the same time.

As directed by Kristan Seemel, you enter the tiny house to find you seem to be in a gallery – a passageway lined with film house seats on either side, and audio speakers posted in front of every other seat. Then you notice odd bits of Chinoiserie here and there – a kitschy sconce, a suggestion of red lacquer. Mostly strikingly, a proscenium bisects the space at a crazy angle.

The settings gels for you with the opening lines of the play. Out of the darkness, a woman (Paige Jones) welcomes you. Though she’s standing in a bright spot, you don’t locate her right away because her words are disembodied – she’s miked, and seems to be inside the nearest speaker. This queasy sense of dislocation will turn out to underscore much of the play’s meaning, but for now, she’s informing you that you are in Graumann’s Chinese. Aha. You’re about to see the premiere of a new film, whose artful yet commercial qualities are about to make its screenwriters the latest darlings of Hollywood’s glitterati.



From there the play will weave a sinuous path through several interdependent stories. One of them has a particular schadenfreudian frisson for me, since it makes gleeful fun of writer’s retreat I used to curate for A.S.K. Theater Projects. But Murillo is up to much more than parody. The play is a rare invitation to revel in the mystery of language, the power of storytelling, and the sheer ingenuity with which we attempt to make sense of our lives.

Not to mention across-the-board superb performances. That’s the awe-inspiring Brittany Burch in the rehearsal photo (by Yolanda Suarez); Brittany plays the feverishly brilliant and spooky Shawn, who unwittingly unites the play’s multiple fractured narratives. The play closes next weekend already (Aug. 23); don’t you dare miss it. This is likely one of the best theater events to happen in Portland this year.



Following Mimesophobia, it’s well worth your while to stick around to see the rarely performed Amiri Baraka masterpiece, the short play Dutchman. In addition to excellent direction (by Megan Ward) and noteworthy performances by Nasir Najieb and Julie Jeske (that's Nasir at right, in the Christine Siltanen photo), opening night got a great assist from the weather. On an unusually humid night for Portland, the tiny Shoe Box did indeed feel as sticky as a Manhattan subway in August. So do yourself a favor; when the weather breaks here next week, hie yourself over to these shows and rediscover that live performance is all about.