OPEN CITY

PlayGroup presents

OPEN CITY

by Althea Hukari, Shelly Lipkin, Ellen Margolis, Steve Patterson, Andrea Stolowitz, Patrick Wohlmut, Nick Zagone + Matthew B. Zrebski

directed by Matthew B. Zrebski

with the talents of Deirdre Atkinson, Ben Buckley, Timothy M. Hill and Lara Kobrin

8 playwrights. Each with a Portland location assigned by chance operation. The result: 8 short plays adding up to a kaliedoscopic portrait of Stumptown, Bridge City, The City of Roses, the City That Works, Greenlandia. The City of ..........

When: this coming Monday, February 2, 2009 @ 7:30pm

Where: The Gerding Theater, Portland Center Stage @ The Armory

Wny: The Fertile Ground Festival


Special tip for the hip: Open City leads directly to the fabulous Fertile Ground Festival closing night fete. Come for the art, stay for the hooch!

At left: the famed Fremont Bridge Troll. Which is actually in Seattle, not Portland, but who's counting.

Almost Famous, Chapter 2

Dear Reader,

Yet again I ax you to forgive me for my neglect. It’s been blustery and flustery at stately Wayne Manor recently, with How To Disappear and Never Be Found rehearsing (and thus Rose is MIA), Apollo in previews and Fertile Ground already on the simmer. Yikes! By the way, for a handy blog item that manages to encompass all the above, check out The Mighty Cannon’s recent musings at Culture Shock. The mystery man is really on a roll, a tear, a wild, wild ride........

In the midst of all that the excitement (and let’s face it, stress = stress, even if you are having fun whilst undergoing it), an ongoing oasis for me is always PlayGroup, PCS's writers' unit. Yeah, that’s the gang at right. Our bimonthly meetings are elemental for me – touchstones where I’m reminded that it’s great playwriting that makes all the rest of the madness worthwhile.

As you know, because you never miss a post here, a week ago Monday we hosted a public reading of Patrick Wohlmut’s new play Continuum, the group’s Sloan commission. The omnipresent Barry Johnson, of Oregonian and Art Scatter fame, spoke to Patrick and I in advance of the reading – a conversation I wish could have gone on for much longer. But now Barry’s recorded his impressions of that conversation as one of the inaugural entries on his new column, Portland Arts Watch. You now have to scroll down to January 11, that’s how remiss I’ve been as of late, but if you do you will be rewarded with finding out all about us.

And now for a preview of coming PlayGroup exploits, plucked from the official Fertile Ground calendar:

The Orchard by Althea Hukari
Directed by Olga Sanchez

A Portland Center Stage Playgroup event

Festival Date: Jan. 26 at 7:30pm

Chekhov comes to Hood River in this large-cast, ensemble comedy-drama, with echoes of The Cherry Orchard and The Three Sisters, about a Finnish-American family in transition. Ms. Hukari is a founding member of PlayGroup, Portland Center Stage's celebrated playwriting unit.

Venue: Main Stage, Gerding Theater at the Armory (128 NW 11th Ave)

Open City
by Althea Hukari, Shelly Lipkin, Ellen Margolis, Steve Patterson, Andrea Stolowitz, Patrick Wohlmut, Nick Zagone, and Matthew B. Zrebski

A Portland Center Stage Playgroup event

Festival Dates: Feb 2 at 7:30 pm

For this group show created by PlayGroup (whose previous escapades include The Clearing, Frenching the Bones and Ten Tiny Playlets) and directed by Matt Zrebski, each playwright pulled a Portland location and a cast size out of hat, then went to work on a short play inspired by those circumstances. The result, presented in rehearsed concert form, is a kaleidoscopic vision of the Rose City that adds up to a town we all recognize.

Venue: Main Stage, Gerding Theater at the Armory (128 NW 11th Ave)

PLUS
A Fully Staged World Premiere

Vitriol and Violets
Music and lyrics by Dave Frishberg, book by Shelly Lipkin, Louanne Moldovan and Sherry Lamoreaux

[ Not a PlayGroup event, but Shelly is a beloved PlayGroup member]

Festival Dates: Jan 23 at 8:00 pm, Jan. 24 at 2:00 and 8:00 pm, Jan 25 at 2:00 pm, Jan 30 at 8:00 pm, Jan. 31 at 2:00 and 8:00 pm, Feb 1 at 2:00 pm.

Full extended run: Jan 16 to Feb 1, 2009

New York, 1920. The Great War is over, and people are hungry to live and laugh again. Nobody laughed more than the "Algonquin Round Table", a group of writers and their friends who gathered at the Algonquin Hotel. During the course of their "ten-year lunch," Table associates Alexander Wolcott, Robert Benchley, Dorothy Parker, George S. Kaufman, Edna Ferber, Heywood Broun, Harold Ross, Harpo Marx and Jane Grant gained fame and fortune as much for their widely quoted bon mots as for their significant achievements. This stage play, which premiered at Lakewood Theater Company and won an Oregon Book Award, has been completely rewritten as a musical in collaboration with Dave Frishberg, one of the nation's foremost Jazz composers (and a Portland Native).

Venue: The Blue Room at the Scottish Rite Center (709 SW 15th)

You are here

You know how in the past I’ve alluded to PlayGroup’s top secret, unassailable, never-to-be-scruted blog? Where we hang out our highest aspirations and most petty grievances out to dry, away from the jaundiced public eye?

Well, the post below (plus its photo above) is timely rrrrrrripped from that blog – with the poster’s permission, of course – one Steve Peterson. It’s too nice a thing not to share it on the intergalactic scale of my blog. [kidding] [blushing at my own cupidity] [anyway] Here it is:

I picked up the new issue of American Theatre, and I was pleased to see it contained four Portland theater references: a story on set design for Sometimes a Great Notion (with a beautiful photo by Owen Carey); a piece on ART's new resident ensemble, including pics of four Portland actors; a piece on Oregon Children’s Theatre's collaboration with a Milwaukee (WI) theater (the show--I forget the title--is going to play both there and here); and a JAW reference in the article on David Adjmi's play Stunning. Stuff on PCS, ART, and Milagro crops up now and then in American Theatre, but I was kind of thrown by so many references in one issue. Maybe some lobbying from those in the know could coax a story on Fertile Ground … It does have news peg in that the festival's kind of a unique cross between a fringe theatre festival and a music festival model (e.g., South by Southwest). Which would be tres cool. No?

But yes.

It's beginning to look a lot like Hallows.....

PlayGroup is PCS’s writers’ unit, which meets every other week to read new member writing, commiserate, talk about theater issues, and generally be of support to one another. Our latest provocation is an outrageous group show, devised just in time for Halloween, entitled Frenching the Bones. The title refers to an actual culinary term about scraping meat off ribs. Yikes!

We are indebted to member Sam Gregory for the ooky concept, centered around a nine-course dinner. Each playwright drew a course name out of a hat, and was therewith charged with writing a short playlet that somehow combined the substance of that course with ... horror. We start with an insouciant amuse-bouche, and gnaw and gnash our way to the heady “wine & spirits” course at the end.

The spirit of the Grand Guignol lives on!

Sam’s brainchild is free of charge, and all are welcome. Here are the details:

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WHO: Portland Center Stage PlayGroup
WHAT: Frenching the Bones
WHEN: Tuesday, October 30, 2007 -- 8 PM
WHERE: CoHo Theater, 2257 NW Raleigh, Portland OR

HOW MUCH: Free!

Frenching the Bones: A Night of New One Acts on Horror & Food

On October 30, PlayGroup presents a reading of nine brief one-acts exploring the twisting connections between horror and food.

Comic and Grotesque, Touching and Horrifying, Tasty and Tasteless, the nine courses on this menu run the gamut of sensations.

Four talented actors take all 28 roles.

The evening will be directed by Matthew B. Zrebski, with stage directions voiced by Virginia Belt.

The playwrights include William S. Gregory, Hunt Holman, Althea Hukari, Shelly Lipkin, Ellen Margolis, Steve Patterson, Patrick Wohlmut, Nick Zagone and Matthew B. Zrebski.

The cast includes Sharon Mann, Chris Murray, Gary Norman and Cecily Overman.

The show starts at 8 PM, and runs under two hours.

We are indebted to OREGON CULTURAL TRUST for supporting the work of PlayGroup, and to COHO PRODUCTIONS for providing us with a place to perform as a way of encouraging original playwriting.

See you at CoHo!