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.

Adventures in Playwriting, cont'd

That’s right, the birthday madness continues. Thank you Dawn Young for the droll mortification at right. I feel a new Facebook portrait coming on.

Anyhow. It was my good fortune last night to take in another high watermark in the annals of Portland’s crazy-ass one-off events. This one, InsomniACTS, was a benefit for Portland Theatre Works that sets a new benchmark for fiscal transparency: all the money raised by the event goes toward a workshop of a new play by Andrew Wardenaar this coming spring, Live from Douglas.

InsomniACTS was a double-headed beast, conceived by PTWKS’s AD, Andrew Golla, and playwright/impresaria Eugenia Woods. Eager patrons crowded the fabulously groovy Hipbone Studio on Friday evening to see short plays by six notable Portland dramatists, including Nick Zagone, after which each writer was auctioned off on the spot. The winning bidder got to commission a playwright to write an entirely new short piece, with first and last lines of the commissioner’s choosing. Then the assembled voted on three props that had to be used in all six playlets.

Oh, and the playwrights had from then until 6:30am next morning to compose and turn in their scripts. Which would be cast and rehearsed that day, for presentation that same evening.

Yikes.

When I showed up on Saturday night, you could taste the excitement; a nervous flutter made the Studio seem to flap like a sail. Actors running back and forth; directors toting sacks of props peculiar to their own piece; an audience clearly prepared to have a rollicking good time. And they got it. Me, too.

The props turned out to be a gas mask, an oversized ladle and a stuffed crow. The given lines, in every single case, were of course diabolically challenging. All the writers did a game job, but specials props must go to Ellen Kesend for her hysterically funny and excoriating send-up of American recklessness, I Sold It on E-Bay.

With any luck, InsomniACTS will be an annual event. If so, they’ll be turning people away at the door, so get there early next time. And Andrew: jack up those admission prices! It is a benefit, after all.