The refugees who came to America were Vietnamese, Cambodian, Laotian and the ethnic minorities from Laos—the Mien and Hmong.  Most had fought on the same side and helped the US military in the war in Vietnam.  The Mien and Hmong— the rural people in Laos—were particularly vulnerable for helping the CIA with covert operations.  Staying in Laos was not an option.

Farm Yoon Lee

By 1979, there were almost 62,000 Vietnamese in refugee camps.  More than 140-thousand people displaced from Cambodia and Laos joined them. Oregon and Washington State had the fifth largest population of South East Asian refugees in the country.  The Portland School district was one of the first to figure out how work with South East Asian youth coming to their schools.  The 1.5 generation—those who came to this country at a young age—learned quickly, mastering language and writing skills before their first generation parents.  Now they own businesses and are community leaders in Portland.

This half-hour documentary is an excerpt  from the Peabody-award-winning Crossing East series hosted by Margaret Cho. The eight-hour series was broadcast on more than 230 stations across the country. To hear the complete one-hour documentary on refugees or to purchase downloads and CDs of the entire Crossing East series, visit the MediaRites Store.

Acknowledgements:

The Van Lang Vietnamese School in Portland, Quy and Tien Nguyen, Ly Chheng Tang, Long San Tzeo, Farm Yoon Lee, Lee Po Cha, Khanthaly Thammavong, Sokhum Tauch, Kilong Ung, Kim Nguyen, Daran Kravanh.

Produced by Dmae Roberts with interviews by Anne Morrin and Associate Producer Sara Casswell Kolbet, Editor: Catherine Stifter, Engineer: Clark Salisbury.

Made possible by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Regional Arts and Culture Council, Oregon Arts Commission, Collins Foundation, Templeton Foudnation and the Autzen Foundation.

Visit CrossingEast.org for more information on the series.

You can hear Stage & Studio  at KBOO.FM or on 90.7FM live at 11am Tuesdays and an encore on Saturdays at 11am on KZME 107.1 FM. 

Or you can subscribe to the podcast on iTunes so you don’t have to miss a show.

And always browse our archive of shows at the official Stage and Studio website.

 (Encores Sat 11am 5/18 on KZME 107.1FM)

Matthew Kern, GraceCarter & Jon Kretzu

defunkt Theatre presents Herstory/History : a pair of landmark plays in repertory: The Boys in The Band by Mart Crowley and The Children’s Hour by Lillian Hellman. These plays have been rarely seen in recent years but they still have a great deal to say historically about sexual orientation in America. Lillian Hellman’s first play, The Children’s Hour is a tragic story of two women falsely accused of a sexual relationship and the devastating consequences of that lie. The nine men that make up The Boys in the Band were among the first positive depictions of openly gay men in America.

Culminating in this summer’s Pride Festival, director Jon Kretzu collaborates with defunkt theatre to produce two evenings of theater that mirror and inform each other, showing us both how far we have come as a society, and how far we have yet to go.

The Boys in the Band

Arthur Franklin, Bjorn Anderson, Jake Street, Christopher Ringkamp, Jason Glick, Matthew Kern, Jeffrey Arrington, Joshua Rice, and Matthew Kerrigan in The Boys in the Band. Photo:Andrew Klaus

It’s Harold’s birthday, Michael is throwing a party and you are invited. Performed “on location” in a site specific location with audience seated throughout the space as guests at the party.

Performed in a private home dressed to recreate the 1960s, Jon Kretzu’s reimagined The Boys in the Band is a not to be missed theatrical event unlike any other show this season.

Due to the unique nature of this performance, seating is extremely limited for The Boys in the Band.

Melissa Whitney & Grace Carter in The Children’s Hour. Photo:Andrew Klaus

The Children’s Hour
Lillian Hellman’s classic tale of false accusations and their consequences.

Jon Kretzu, an ensemble of Portland’s finest actors, and an extraordinary design team collaborate to lay bare the timelessness of this landmark work of American theater, by one of America’s first successful female playwrights

 defunkt theatre’s Herstory/History: The Boys in the Band by Mart Crowley and The Children’s Hour by Lillian Hellman directed by Jon Kretzu runs through June 15,  2013.  All Performances are at 7: 30 pm.  To purchase tickets and see a detailed performance schedule visit defunktheatre.com.

 Shows are in two locations: 

The Boys in the Band  is performed “on location” at 3125 NE Burnside, Portland

With: Jeffrey Arrington, Bjorn Anderson, Matthew Kern, Arthur Franklin, Jake Street, Joshua Rice, Jason Glick, Christopher Ringkamp , and Matthew Kerrigan.

The Children’s Hour (opens Friday, May 17) at the Back Door Theater 4319 SE Hawthorne Blvd. Portland.

With: Melissa Whitney, Grace Carter, Jane Fellows, David Bellis-Squires, Roxanne Stathos,  Anna Bishop, Sophie Shely,  Kate Thresher, Allie Rangel, Calvin Metcalf.

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Also, hear filmmaker and videographer Justin Hartwig review the documentary film, Searching For Sugarman, that debuts on the Starz channel on May 22nd. 

The film is about two South Africans who set out to discover what happened to their unlikely musical hero, the mysterious 1970s rock ‘n’ roller, Rodriguez who recently regained national attention.

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You can hear Stage & Studio on…

• the KBOO website and on 90.7FM live at 11am on Tuesdays
• Saturdays 11am on KZME, 107.1FM
• Don’t want to miss a single episode? Subscribe to Stage & Studio On iTunes!

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Between the dark and the daylight,
When the night is begining to lower,
Comes a pause in the day’s occupations,
That is known as the Children’s Hour.

I hear in the chamber above me
The patter of little feet,
The sound of a door that is opened,
And voices soft and sweet.

From my study I see in the lamplight,
Descending the broad hall stair,
Grave Alice, and laughing Allegra,
And Edith with golden hair.

A whisper, and then a silence:
Yet I know by their merry eyes
They are plotting and planning together
To take me by surprise…

The Children’s Hour
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Ursula K. Le Guin at rehearsal. Photo by Brian Weaver, Portland Playhouse’s artistic director.

“The Left Hand of Darkness, ” named the best novel winner of Hugo and Nebula Awards in 1969,  is set in the future on a world called Gethen where there is permanent winter. An envoy named Genly Ai is sent to Gethen to convince its people to join a world collective known as Ekumen.

On Gethen there is no female or male except for once a month for a short time when procreation could take place. Le Guin’s novel brings  up issues of androgyny and the cultural conventions of gender, dominance and sexuality.

The stage adaption was created by H2M’s artistic director Jonathan Walters and UO Theatre Professor John Schmor. The cast includes both Hand2Mouth and Portland Playhouse actors with Damian Thompson taking on the role of Genly Ai. Also in the cast are Lorraine Bahr, Julie Hammond, Liz Hayden and Matthew Dieckman.

Le Guin is a revered  writer in Portland’s artistic community, and this stage adaptation of a beloved book has been eagerly awaited. The production is likely to sell out quickly in the intimate Portland Playhouse Theatre. If there is one theatre event sure to draw discussion for years to come, it’s “The Left Hand Of Darkness.”

Le Guin has been part of the rehearsal process and here is an excerpt of her reaction  written on her blog:

Jonathan Walters and Ursula K. Le Guin at rehearsal.

“Actors are magicians.

All stage people are magicians, the whole crew, on stage and behind it, working the lights and painting the set and all the rest. They collaborate methodically (ritual must be methodical, because it must be complete) in working magic. And they can do it with remarkably unlikely stuff. No cloaks, no magic wands or eyes of newt or bubbling alembics.

Essentially they do it by limiting space, and moving and speaking within that space to establish and maintain a Secondary Creation.”

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“The Left Hand Of Darkness” premiere May 2nd  and runs through June 2nd (previews May 2 & 3, opening May 4), Thu – Sun (evenings 7:30 PM, matinees
 2:00 PM).  All shows are at Portland Playhouse located at 602 NE Prescott. For reservations and more info visit: Hand2MouthTheatre.org and PortlandPlayhouse.org.

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You can hear Stage & Studio on…

JonathanWalter, AllisonTigard & DamianThompson

• the KBOO website and on 90.7FM live at 11am on Tuesdays
• Saturdays 11am on KZME, 107.1FM
• Don’t want to miss a single episode? Subscribe to Stage & Studio On iTunes!

OTHER EVENTS RELATED TO THE PERFORMANCES OF “LEFT HAND OF DARKNESS”:

MAY 19: Ice Cream Social with Bitch Media, following 2 pm matinee performance, Portland Playhouse

Wherefore newest-wave feminism? Join us for an Ice Cream Social with Bitch Media: Next-Gen Feminist Media in Portland. Sponsored by Ruby Jewel.

MAY 25: Panel Discussion, following 2 pm matinee performance, Portland Playhouse

A World Without Gender: Imagining The Left Hand of Darkness. A scholarly panel discussion on themes and significance of the novel featuring scholars Tony Wolk (English Department, Portland State University) and Ann Mussey (Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies, Portland State University), and Brian Weaver (Artistic Director, Portland Playhouse). Moderated by Ruth Wikler-Luker (Portland Playhouse).

Details on all this and more at www.portlandplayhouse.org.

Dámaso Rodriguez, Photo credit: Shawn Lee

Dámaso Rodriguez is a Co-Founder of Furious Theatre Company, an ensemble-driven theatre committed to daring, socially relevant new plays of visceral impact, where he served as Co-Artistic Director from 2001-2012. From 2007-2010 he served as Associate Artistic Director of the Pasadena Playhouse. His directing credits include work at the Pasadena Playhouse, Intiman Theatre, South Coast Repertory, Laguna Playhouse, and Furious Theatre. Dámaso is a recipient of the Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle Award, the Back Stage Garland Award, the NAACP Theatre Award, and the Pasadena Arts Council’s Gold Crown Award. In 2010, Furious Theatre Company was named to LA Weekly’s list of “Best Theatres of the Decade.” In 2012, he was honored as a finalist for the Zelda Fichandler Award.  More information at:  www.damaso-rodriguez.com.

Linda Alper

Linda Alper has played leading roles at The Intiman, Portland Center Stage, Off Broadway, Mark Taper Forum, Seattle Rep, Baltimore Center Stage and other theatres, including 23 seasons with the Oregon Shakespeare Festival.  At Artists Rep, she appeared in Superior Donuts and as Ranevskaya in The Cherry Orchard. Linda co-wrote five adaptations produced at OSF, including Napoli!, co-translated with Beatrice Basso, which will be produced by ACT in San Francisco.  The Three Musketeers, adapted with Penny Metropulos and Douglas Langworthy, has also been produced by The Denver Center, many Shakespeare festivals and The Acting Company. Linda has been chosen for critics’ awards for performance, a National Science Grant for a visiting artist to Taiwan, Fulbright Travel Grant, Fulbright Specialist Roster and an Oregon Arts Commission Individual Artist Fellowship.  A graduate of The Juilliard School, she is a Fulbright senior scholar.More info at www.lindaalper.com.

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More about the Ten Chimneys: Summer, 1938. Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne, the two most revered stars of the Broadway stage, have decided to perform Anton Chekhov’s The Sea Gull. But first they must retreat to “investigate” the play at Ten Chimneys, their sprawling Wisconsin estate, surrounded by actors, family and hangers-on. When a young actress named Uta Hagen arrives, a romantic triangle begins to mirror the events in Chekhov’s play about passion and art.

Ten Chimneys by Jeffrey Hatcher and directed by Dámaso Rodriguez features Linda Alper as Lynn Fontanne and Michael Mendelson as Alfred Lunt. Performance Dates:   April 23 – May 26, Wednesday through Sunday at 7:30pm, Sunday at 2:00pm. Opening Night is Friday, April 26. Performances are at Artists Repertory Theatre – Alder Stage (16^th and Morrison St.) Tickets: $25-$50. For more info or reservations call 503.241.1278 or visit www.artistsrep.org

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Bing Bingham

And in the latter part of the show,we bring you a commentary from Bing Bingham who  lives on a remote ranch in northern Central Oregon where he works as an independent writer, photographer and radio producer.

Bingham is probably best known for his web column, Coffee Shop Moments, which takes place in the fictional Dusty Dog Cafe.  Read more of his stories at: bingbingham.com.

You can hear Stage & Studio at:

• the KBOO website and on 90.7FM live at 11am on Tuesdays
• Saturdays 11am on KZME, 107.1FM
• Don’t want to miss a single episode? Subscribe to Stage & Studio On iTunes!

(Photo credit above: Joni Kabana)

Cheryl Strayed, Photo: Brian Lindstrom

Strayed’s first book was a novel called “Torch,” an unflinching literary look at a family in grief after the mother dies from cancer. That book was based largely on Strayed’s own family experiences.  With “Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail,” Strayed ventured head on into a memoir about her experiences dealing with grief and her own demons as she forced herself to walk more than a thousand miles. The brutal honesty touched readers around the world and Strayed’s been on the road for more than a year with readings, appearances for “Wild” as well as her newest book “Tiny Beautiful Things,”  a collection from her “Dear Sugar” advice column.

MORE ABOUT WILD: At 22, Cheryl Strayed thought she had lost everything. In the wake of her mother’s death, her family scattered and her own marriage was soon destroyed. Four years later, with nothing more to lose, she made the most impulsive decision of her life. With no experience or training, driven only by blind will, she would hike more than 1,000 miles of the Pacific Crest Trail, from the Mojave Desert through California and Oregon to Washington — and she would do it alone.

Cheryl Strayed is the author of #1 New York Times bestseller WILD, the New York Times bestseller TINY BEAUTIFUL THINGS, and the novel TORCH. WILD was chosen by Oprah Winfrey as her first selection for Oprah’s Book Club 2.0 and optioned for film by Reese Witherspoon’s production company, Pacific Standard. Strayed has written the “Dear Sugar” column on TheRumpus.net since March 2010. Her writing has appeared in THE BEST AMERICAN ESSAYS, the New York Times Magazine, the Washington Post Magazine, Vogue, Allure, The Missouri Review, Creative Nonfiction, The Sun and elsewhere. Her books have been translated into twenty-six languages around the world. She holds an MFA in fiction writing from Syracuse University and a bachelor’s degree from the University of Minnesota. She lives in Portland, Oregon with her husband and their two children.

You can hear Stage & Studio at:

• the KBOO website and on 90.7FM live at 11am on Tuesdays
• Saturdays 11am on KZME, 107.1FM
• Don’t want to miss a single episode? Subscribe to Stage & Studio On iTunes!

Watch her trailer about “Wild” here…

In the second half.  Dmae talks  with Dante J. James, bureau director of Equity and Human Rights at the City of Portland about how they’re reaching underserved communities about Portland’s Arts Education and Access Income Tax including immigrants and those without internet access. This includes news of a possible deadline extension and ways to waive the late fines. To find out more about the tax call 503-865-4-ART (4278) or visit artstax.net. 

Olga Sanchez, artistic director of Milagro Theatre.

More about Guapa: Single-mom Roly lives in a dusty Texas border town that everyone longs to escape. She’s never seen anything like Guapa, a natural-born athlete with a fiery ambition to become an international soccer star. When Guapa joins Roly’s family, everyone’s life is turned upside down. With only one shot to reach the big leagues from the barrio, how can Guapa convince the non-believers to let go of their doubts and for her to succeed.

Guapa by Caridad Svich is one of the plays selected in the National New Play Network Rolling World premiere. This is a commitment by a theatre to mount the production three times so that the play can be developed to its fullest potential.

Guapa runs March 21-April 13, 2013. Previews Thursday, March 21, 7:30 p.m. and Opens Friday, March 22, 8 p.m., Thursdays at 7:30 p.m.. Fridays and Saturdays at 8 p.m.Sundays at 2 p.m. at Milagro Theatre, 525 SE Stark Street, Portland, Oregon 97214

ADMISSION: $15 (preview) – $30; discounts for students, seniors, groups of 15+ and advance purchases. Tickets can be purchased from www.milagro.org or 503-236-7253 

ABOUT THE PLAYWRIGHT

Caridad Svich

Caridad Svich had had productions at the Denver Center, Mixed Blood Theatre, Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park, Repertorio Espanol, 59East59, McCarren Park Pool, 7 Stages, Salvage Vanguard Theatre, Teatro Mori (Santiago, Chile), ARTheater (Cologne), and Edinburgh Fringe Festival/UK. She received the 2011 American Theatre Critics Association Primus Prize for her play The House of the Spirits, based on the novel by Isabel Allende, and has been short-listed for the PEN Award in Drama three times, including in 2010 for Instructions for Breathing. Her key works include 12 Ophelias,Alchemy of Desire/Dead Man’s Blues, Any Place But Here, Iphigenia…A Rave Fable,Fugitive Pieces, In the Time of the Butterflies (based on Julia Alvarez’s novel),Magnificent Waste, and the multimedia collaboration The Booth Variations. 

UPCOMING TALKS WITH JORGE HUERTA:

Jorge Huerta

Jorge Huerta is professor Emeritus of Theatre & Dance at the University of California, San Diego, is the nation’s leading expert in the field of Chicana/o and U.S. Latina/o theatre. He has edited three anthologies of plays and written the landmark books Chicano Theatre: Themes and Forms and Chicano Drama: Performance, Society, and Myth. Huerta has directed in theatres across the country and has lectured and conducted workshops throughout the U.S., Latin America, and Western Europe. In 2007 Huerta was honored by the Association for Theatre in Higher Education for “Lifetime Achievement in Educational Theater.” In 2008 he was recognized as a “Distinguished Scholar” by the American Society for Theatre Research.

Sunday, March 24th at Milagro Theatre: Post-play conversation with Jorge Huerta, Professor Emeritus of Theatre & Dance at the University of California, San Diego, 

Monday, March 25, 2013: Jorge Huerta, “The Many Stages of Chicana/o Theatre: From the Fields to the Arena”at Psychology 105, 5 p.m. Free and open to the public. More into at: http://reed.edu/aloud/

You can hear Stage & Studio at:

• the KBOO website and on 90.7FM live at 11am on Tuesdays
• Saturdays 11am on KZME, 107.1FM
• Don’t want to miss a single episode? Subscribe to Stage & Studio On iTunes!

Fujii leads the conversation between taiko as a preservation art as well as a artform that creates new original work. With her skilled ensemble of professional taiko performers including Toru Watanabe and new managing director Robin Mullins, Portland Taiko is on the cusp of moving the organization to new heights.

Michelle Fujii & Toru Watanabe, 2010 spring concert, The Way Back Home, at the Winningstad Theatre at PCPA  2010 Photo: Rich Iwasaki

Portland Taiko’s  Insatiable is a new compositions exploring as they say “the possibilities of the art form of taiko through contemporary reflections on Japanese folk dance.” The program mixes drumming, dance and voice to explore the title of the piece and what it means to be insatiable.

Show times for Insatiable:

Friday, March 29^th 8:00 pm
Saturday, March 30^th 2:00 pm & 8:00 pm
Lincoln Hall, PSU 1620 SW Park Avenue, Portland
Tickets on sale now!

Purchase tickets online here
Also available at PSU Box Office
discounts for Seniors, Students, 10+ Groups, and PT Members.
Contact Portland Taiko for more information 503 288-2456.

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And in the latter part of the show, hear Dmae Roberts’ feature story on Black Grace, a New Zealand dance company that fuses Samoan and Maori traditions and contemporary dance.  This piece originally aired on PRI’s The World.

Read the story here:

Black Grace

Eleven mostly Samoan and Maori dancers filled the stage when I saw them in Portland, Oregon. They performed a piece based on the traditional ideas of Samoan slap dancing. The dancers made sky-high jumps and quick turns to create complex rhythms of floor stomping, cries and body slaps.

Black Grace artistic director Neil Ieremia says he took Samoan slap dancing and melded it with a children’s hand game to make a dance statement about child abuse.

“It’s a big thing back home,” Ieremia says. “And particularly being Pacific Island descent, I had kids, mates, turn up school with bruises and what have you and sometimes they wouldn’t turn up at all. Or, they might turn up six weeks late later after the cast had come off a broken piece of their body or something. So it was tough to reflect that back on our communities but I really thought that was part of our responsibility.”

That responsibility to tell authentic stories through dance was something Iremeia felt passionate about 18 years ago when he formed Black Grace. But the decision to become a professional dancer wasn’t met with enthusiasm by his Samoan family.

“In New Zealand the Pacific island culture is a minority and it isn’t huge and had its fair share of knocks,” he says. “We’re normally thought of as unskilled labor and when you finish high school, if you finish high school you’re either going to go on welfare or get a job in the local factory. I tell my parents I wanted to go to dance school. I’ve been working at the bank and was doing rather well but I told them and my mother cried. And my father simply did his traditional Samoan tsk, tsk, tsk shook his head and walked away from me.”

Black Grace

In the end, his parents supported his plan to start a Samoan and Maori contemporary dance company. And during lean times, they even put up their house as collateral for a loan. Ieremia says that kind of courage is at the heart of the name Black Grace. The risk has paid off. Ieremia says Black Grace is now the largest contemporary dance company in New Zealand.

You can hear Stage & Studio at:

• the KBOO website and on 90.7FM live at 11am on Tuesdays
• Saturdays 11am on KZME, 107.1FM
• Don’t want to miss a single episode? Subscribe to Stage & Studio On iTunes!

Hard Times Come Again No More takes place during a pivotal 1934 Truckers’ strike in Minnesota. Sowelu produced this play as a timely portrayal of poverty and joblessness building inevitably to a clash between the human need for dignified survival and corporate hunger for profit.

Lisa Marsicek and Stephanie Woods.

Martha Boesing based Hard Times Come Again No More on the 1930s stories, essays, characters of Meridel LeSueur (Salute to Spring,The Girl). LeSueur was a prominent “proletarian” writer of the 30s, was blacklisted in McCarthy’s madness that followed WWII. The stories and essays include: Annunciation, Dead in Steel, The Dread Road, Fable of a Man and Pigeons, A Hungry Intellectual, I was Marching, Our Fathers, Sequel to Love, They Follow Us Girls, What Happens in a Strike, Wind, Women Are Hungry, Women on the Breadlines.

Hard Times Come Again No More is directed by Lorraine Bahr & Jim Davis. Actors featured are: Del Lewis; Nancy Wilson; Judith Ford; Lisa Marsicek; Stephanie Woods; Evan Honer; Christopher Ringkamp; Rebecca Ridenour.

Performances are March 8th thru 23rd, 2013 Thurs.-Saturdays 7:30 p.m.. Saturday matinees 2:00 p.m. March 16th & 23rd Sunday matinee 2:00 March 17th.  All shows are at Performance Works NW, 4625 SE 67th Ave. (off Foster Rd.) Portland, OR 97206 TICKETS: Sliding scale $12-$25 Go to: www.sowelutheater.org or call 503-568-4017

MORE ABOUT THE PLAYWRIGHT:

Martha Boesing

Martha Boesing (PLAYWRIGHT) has written over 40 produced plays, led workshops, and directed plays for theaters throughout the country.  She was the Founder and Artistic Director At the Foot of the Mountain theater in Minneapolis (the longest running professional women’s theater in the country) from1974-84.  She has won several national awards including an NEA, a Bush Fellowship, and the Kennedy Center’s Fund for New American Playwrights.  In the sixties, she was a company member of Minneapolis’ Firehouse Theater (an iconoclastic, experimental theater,) and her work remains true to the ideological concerns of that time.  She now lives in Oakland with her partner, Sandy Boucher, and creates theatre pieces for The Faithful Fools, a street ministry in the Tenderloin district of San Francisco.  Find out more at: www.marthaboesing.com.

MORE ABOUT MERIDEL LE SUEUR

Meridel Le Sueur (middle) with Audre Lorde (left) and Adrienne Rich (right), 1980.

Meridel Le Sueur was an American writer associated with the proletarian movement of the 1930s and 1940s. She published articles in the New Masses and The American Mercury. Her best known books are North Star Country (1945), a people’s history of Minnesota, and the novel The Girl, which was written in the 1930s but not published until 1978. In the 1950s, Le Sueur was blacklisted as a communist, but her reputation was revived in the 1970s, when she was hailed as a proto-feminist for her writings in support of women’s rights.

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Bing Bingham

And in the latter part of the show, a featured Writers Read segment from Bing Bingham who  lives on a remote ranch in northern, Central Oregon where he works as an independent writer, photographer and radio producer.

Bingham is probably best known for his web column, Coffee Shop Moments, which takes place in the fictional Dusty Dog Cafe.  Read more of his stories at: bingbingham.com.

You can hear Stage & Studio at:

• the KBOO website and on 90.7FM live at 11am on Tuesdays
• Saturdays 11am on KZME, 107.1FM
• Don’t want to miss a single episode? Subscribe to Stage & Studio On iTunes!

Butler’s personal story is inspiring. She grew up in a struggling, racially mixed neighborhood in Pasadena, California. Her father was a shoeshiner who died when Octavia was very young. Her single mom worked as a maid. Butler overcame poverty and dyslexia and worked as a dishwasher, telemarketer, and potato chip inspector before graduating from Pasadena City College and rising to the height of her field. She was the first African-American female novelist to excel in the male-dominated field of science fiction.

Octavia Butler/Photo by her friend Leslie Howle

Octavia’s work featured women of color as heroines and explored themes of race, eugenics, class, throwaway workers, dystopian economic divides, religion, global warming, and genetic manipulation. In 1995, because of her forward-thinking visionary writing, she received what is commonly known as a “genius grant” from the MacArthur Fellows Program, a prestigious award given by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. Octavia was the first science-fiction writer to have won the award. She also won Nebula and Hugo awards, top science fiction honors. In 2010, she was inducted into to the Science Fiction Hall of Fame in Seattle.

I’ve read most of her books now, but it was Butler’s Parable of the Talents that especially spoke to me. I read it during the height of the Occupy Portland movement, and her descriptions of a dystopian future disabled by massive poverty, corporate takeovers, class wars, and anarchy resonated with me. The book’s protagonist, Lauren Oya Olamina, escaped violence-torn Los Angeles to travel northward for safety. She meets people along the journey and they form a new community. They are drawn to her stories presenting space travel as hope for the future and a chance to start anew. This idea thrilled me like it did when I was a child watching the 1969 moon landing or my favorite show at the time — “Star Trek” — which spoke of a utopian future.

In several of Butler’s novels, she describes the near-idyllic setting of the Pacific Northwest as a place people escaping the horrors of inner-city madness can live in peace and safety. That’s why in 1999, she moved to Seattle, the city she fell in love with on a book tour.

Butler’s novels and short stories feature African-American or African women as heroines. In Kindred, she writes of a black woman in 1976 who aimlessly works in dystopian jobs that go nowhere. She has no sense of history but hopes for a future with her husband who is white. She soon begins the first of six involuntary travels back in time to the antebellum South. She endures beatings and the horrors of slavery. Butler wrote Kindred in the 1970s because she felt young people of her generation were distant from the emotional impact of slavery as a legalized institution.

It’s amazing to me that Butler was the first widely read and studied African-American science-fiction novelist in America. There are countless YouTube videos of her interviews as well as young people of all colors and nationalities giving video reviews, readings, and even curious dramatizations of her novels. Butler’s multicultural novels pushed boundaries of race, gender, and humanity as she presented ideas ahead of her time that have become realities: inner city unrest, economic and class disparities, climate change disasters, and the power of the one percent.

Before her death, Octavia was quoted as saying she wanted to write a follow-up to the Parable novels with one that would reflect her move to Seattle in which her characters achieve their dream of reaching Alpha Centauri to save humanity. I can understand how she felt. The problems of the world seem too overwhelming, and there’s a strong part of me that believes we should start all over somewhere else. But the reality is that this is our world. Octavia’s prophetic writing has come true in many cases. Let’s hope her vision of humanity surviving despite the struggles remains true.

Octavia E. Butler’s hope involved working with young writers of color and encouraging a new generation of writers at the prestigious Clarion and Clarion West writers’ workshops. After her death, friends and colleagues of the Carl Brandon Society, a group dedicated to raising awareness of race and ethnicity in speculative literature, started the Octavia E. Butler Memorial Scholarship to fund scholarships for writers of color to study at Clarion. This year the group published an e-book called Bloodchildren: Stories by the Octavia E. Butler Scholars (the title pays homage to her short story “Bloodchild”). The book is an anthology by student writers of color and proceeds benefit the memorial scholarship fund. To learn more, visit:www.carlbrandon.org/bloodchildren.html.

Read The Asian Reporter in its entirety! Go to: www.asianreporter.com/completepaper.htm

Phillip Kan Gotanda

For more than three decades,  Gotanda has been a major influence in the broadening of our definition of theater in America  Gotanda tells human multicultural stories with memorable characters throughout American history. The creator of one of the largest bodies of Asian American-themed work, Gotanda is also known for working with a range of aesthetic styles—from jazz to spoken word, dance to symphonic, and opera to indie film—and varied subject matter—from controversial social issues such as male violence against women to the intersectionality of Asian American and African American communities.

I DREAM OF CHANG AND ENG, a reimagining of the lives of the conjoined American twins, Chang and Eng Bunker.

Gotanda is a recipient of a Guggenheim as well as other honors and award and is currently teaches at University of California, Berkeley. His started off as a musician with a law degree from Hastings College of Law. Before they were playwrights, he and fellow musician David Henry Hwang performed together and toured around California. His journey to becoming one of the top American playwrights was unexpected and fortuitous for the development of multicultural theatre.

On his website, he writes:

“No one is ever just one thing:  the label that has been given them, the definition that one has accepted and lives within.  Nonetheless, so much of what we work and live by seems based on these seemingly transparent assumptions.  I am a playwright, I am an American playwright, I am an Asian American playwright, I am an Asian American playwright of Japanese descent, or, I am not an Asian American playwright. They serve their purpose.  In the end we are all beings in flux, in continual invention and reformation. We must use social labels and self-defining names as they should be used, as convenient constructs to get a handle on the shifting world, to be replaced by more suitable ones as the world shifts again, as we shift again.”

You can hear Stage & Studio at:

‘After The War’ at American Conservatory Theater.

• the KBOO website and on 90.7FM live at 11am on Tuesdays
• Saturdays 11am on KZME, 107.1FM
• Don’t want to miss a single episode? Subscribe to Stage & Studio On iTunes!

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Wendy Westerwelle & Ritah Parrish

Triangle Productions presents Ritah Parrish and Wendy Westerwelle, two of Portland’s leading comic actresses in 25 Questions For A Jewish Mother written by Emmy Award-winning Judy Gold (writer/producer on The Rosie O’Donnell Show.) co-written with Kate Moira Ryan.  According to Triangle’s artistic director Don Horn, 25 Questions is “one of those shows for everyone, but be forewarned that not everything word that comes out of a Jewish mother has gems of wisdom behind them, but what they do say makes for an entertaining evening.”

Wendy Westerwelle on the secret of comedy: “It has to be honest. If it doesn’t come from me,  inside me, inside what I know, if it doesn’t from tragedy or love or some real emotion, it is not funny. Being mean is not funny. Putting people down is not funny. Putting myself down and criticizing my frailties is funny if I do it with love.”

This Triangle production is the first production done by anyone other than Judy Gold. 25 Questions for a Jewish Mother is based on a series of interviews with more than 50 American Jewish mothers. Their stories are interspersed with anecdotes about her own mother and her life as a lesbian mother of two sons. It ran at the Ars Nova Theater in New York City in early 2006 and reopened on October 12, 2006, at St. Luke’s Theater.

Wendy Westerwelle, RitahParrish & Dmae

25 Questions For A Jewish Mother with Ritah Parrish and Wendy Westerwelle.

Location: Triangle Productions
The Sanctuary at Sandy Plaza
1785 NE Sandy Blvd
Portland, OR 97232

Reserved tickets $15 to $35.For reservations and ticket info, visit to www.tripro.org or call 503-239-5919

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Black Grace

White Bird Dance presents the Portland debut of New Zealand’s acclaimed Black Grace on Tuesday, Feb. 19th at Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall . Black Grace blends Samoan ceremonial movement and contemporary dance.  Based in Auckland and under the artistic direction of Neil Ieremia, Black Grace is New Zealand’s leading contemporary dance company with an ensemble of Samoan and Maori dancers. The term black in the company name Black Grace refers to courage in the New Zealand Māori/Pacific Islander argot of the 1980s.  Neil Ieremia’s choreography incorporates elements of slap dancing, which include speaking, singing and slapping the bodies.  Germany’s Main Post has called Black Grace “a thrilling bond between ceremonial dances…and an athletic form of modern dance.”

Black Grace is the inspiration of White Bird’s 13^th Outreach Project with Portland Public Schools, which will include a multi-disciplinary on-line curriculum on the theme of“Indigenous Cultures in New Zealand and Australia,” culminating in a free student performance for PPS at the Schnitzer on February 20  (not open to the public).

Black Grace,  presented by White Bird, at the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall, directed by Neil Ieremia. Single show only, Tuesday, February 19, 7:30 pm.

Tickets: $26-$64 available at www.whitebird.org and at PCPA Box (ZERO ticket fees).  Also available at 1-800-380-3516 (additional fees will apply).

You can hear Stage & Studio at:

• the KBOO website and on 90.7FM live at 11am on Tuesdays
• Saturdays 11am on KZME, 107.1FM
• Don’t want to miss a single episode? Subscribe to Stage & Studio On iTunes!

NW Film Center’s 36th annual Portland International Film Festival (PIFF 36) runs February 7-23, 2013 and showcases 136 films—93 features and 43 short films—from 44 different countries.

Brian Lindstrom & Bill Foster

PIFF traditionally showcases Portland filmmakers. This year we hear about three full-length documentaries that are featured: Alien Boy: The Life And Death of James Chasse, American Winter and A Fierce Green Fire. Several of the short films are also showing at PIFF including Joanna Priestly’s Pluto, Ian Berry’s Box and Chel White’s Bird of Flames. We’ll hear about all these films and hear clips from some of them. What is the state of documentary-making in Portland. Tune in!

MORE ABOUT THE FESTIVAL:

The Portland International Film Festival kicks off Thursday, February 7th at 7:30 p.m. with a special Opening Night screening of BLANCANIEVES at the Portland Center for the Performing Arts’ Newmark Theater (1111 SW Broadway Avenue), followed by an Opening Night party at the Newmark Theater. Tickets to the screening and party are $25, and are available now at http://festivals.nwfilm.org/piff36/events/.

Festival locations include the Film Center’s Whitsell Auditorium inside the Portland Art Museum (1219 SW Park Avenue), Cinema 21 (616 NW 21^st Ave), Cinemagic (2021 SE Hawthorne Blvd.), Regal Fox Tower (846 SW Park Ave.), Regal Lloyd Center (1510 NE Multnomah St.), the Newmark Theater (1111 SW Broadway), and the World Trade Center Theater (121 SW Salmon Street.

READ ABOUT THE FEATURED DOCUMENTARIES:

Portland Police Watching A Restrained Jim Chasse who was suffering multiple injuries.

Alien Boy: The Life And Death of James Chasse by Brian Lindstrom.

One of the Portland families of ‘American Winter’

Five years into the worst economic crisis since the 1930s, American Winter presents a telling snapshot of the state of our society as it exists for millions of American families across the country. Shot over the course of the winter months of 2011–2012, the film follows eight Portland families—found through their calls to 211info, a referral service that steers thousands of families in crisis to available social services—as they were battling to keep their heads above water while facing overwhelming financial challenges and a shrinking social safety net.  (90 mins.)

A Fierce Green Fire by Mark Kitchell

Amazon Forest Fire in ‘A Fierce Green Fire’

One of the great social movements of the 20th century, environmentalism continues as an urgent force in the 21st. Kitchell’s passionate film charts the advent of the modern environmental movement, from the early conservation causes of John Muir to the formation of landmark organizations like the Sierra Club and Greenpeace, to the creation of events like Earth Day and the continuing evolution of public conversation about the growing threats of pollution, climate change, overharvesting, and their effects on both our ecology and society.  (114 mins.)

Festival Schedule:

The full PIFF Program, tickets, and more are available at http://festivals.nwfilm.org/piff36/.

Advance Ticket Outlet:
Mark Building, Portland Art Museum, 1119 SW Park Avenue thru February 23 daily from 12-6 p.m. Advance tickets by phone at (503) 276-4310
Advance tickets online at http://festivals.nwfilm.org/piff36/.

Admission Prices:
$11 General; $10 Portland Art Museum members, students, seniors; $8 Silver Screen Club Friends. Opening Night: $30 general; $25 Silver Screen Friends and PAM members

You can hear Stage & Studio at:

• the KBOO website and on 90.7FM live at 11am on Tuesdays
• Saturdays 11am on KZME, 107.1FM
• Don’t want to miss a single episode? Subscribe to Stage & Studio On iTunes!

MORE ABOUT THE FILMS;

PIFF 36 will present audiences with an early look at 7 of this year’s Oscar nominees, including Chilean director Pablo Larraín’s NO and WAR WITCH (dir. Kim Nguyen) from Canada. Among this year’s Festival line-up are international award winners POST TENEBRAS LUX (dir. Carlos Reygadas, Mexico), which won the Best Director prize at Cannes; TABU (dir. Miguel Gomes, Portugal), which took the FIPRESCI (International Film Critics) Award at the Berlin Film Festival; JUST THE WIND (dir. Benedek Fliegauf, Hungary), which won the Jury Grand Prize at the Berlin Film Festival; and PIETA (dir. Kim Ki-duk, South Korea), which won the Best Film Prize at the Venice Film Festival.  Other highly regarded films include TOGETHER (dir. Hsu Chao-Jen, Taiwan), wherein the love lives of an entire neighborhood are overseen by a 17-year old observer; SOMETHING IN THE AIR (dir. Olivier Assayas, France), which examines the post-May of ’68 struggle between French youth culture and government through the eyes of an aspiring artist ; and the latest film from acclaimed director Xavier Dolan, LAURENCE ANYWAYS (Canada), which chronicles the romantic and social difficulties encountered when a high school teacher in a long term relationship publicly announces and openly embraces his transexuality.

 

Instructors Dmae Roberts and Clark Salisbury are opening their studios to teach a curriculum of short term seminars. Take one or combine into a package for a discounted rate. All seminars are limited to six people each! Email mediarites@aol.com to secure your spot!  

Check out the schedule and seminar descriptions…

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Dmae Roberts Seminars, location MediaRites office in SE Portland. Work with multimedia tools, handouts, recording equipment and computer/wifi access.

Fri, March 15th, 5:30-8pm How To Make Stunning Interviews- $65 

Interviewing Seminar at MediaRites

How do you get family members and friends to open up and tell you their secrets? It’s more difficult than you think, especially when you’re holding a microphone and recording good quality sound. The dynamic changes when you try to get oral histories from those you are close to and you need some strategies to record precious stories. In this seminar, you’ll learn those strategies and get great recording tips as well as advice on equipment.

Feb. 21st  5:30-8pm. Launching Your Kickstarter Campaign – $65

Everyone seems to be raising funds for their projects through Kickstarter, USA Projects or Indiegogo these days. Why? Because if you create a great campaign, it can be a relatively quick and painless way to get your project funded and to connect you with a community of donors who will continue to care about your work. But many Kickstarter type projects aren’t funded. Learn the ins and outs of what it takes to help bring in contributors to your successful fundraiser project.

Mar. 3rd 1-4pm - Getting The Most Out of Social Media – $50

Many employers won’t hire people without some social media presence. For artists, writers, performers, media makers or arts organizers, social media presents a low-cost ways to promote their work and events. You cannot manage a successful Kickstarter without social media promotion. Learn how to maintain privacy while creating effective promotions. If you’ve been hesitant to enter the social media world, learn the how’s, do’s & dont’s of Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and email promotion for you or your projects including your Kickstarter fundraising.

Sat., Mar. 2nd – Intermediate Voice Performance – $50

You’ve done voice work or taken Dmae’s  beginning class or have  prior voice performance experience but would like further work to break out of habits or to strengthen and broaden your voice performance range. What’s the difference in performing commercials, narration, essays or poetry? Dmae  provides sample copy to read and give tips and exercises. If you’re an actor who would like to learn how to create a voice demo, a radio/video producer who does your own narration or a writer who would like to put audio excerpts of your work online or as an audiobook, we’ll work on your performance and record your voice so you can sound your best.

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Clark Salisbury Seminars – Location  Salisbury Studio, SW Portland.  

These seminars will take you through the basics you need to create, edit and distribute via the web professional documentary projects

RESCHEDULED:

Sat., Feb. 17th 1-4pm – Recording Your Voice – $50 (rescheduling)

Covers studio basics for getting the best, cleanest recordings possible using whatever gear you have available, as well as letting you in on a few of the secrets used by the pros to get the best voice recordings. You’ll get mic instruction and learn how to be able to record, narrate and leave with your own recording at home or in your office. Clark will offer suggestions and recommendations for affordable equipment and software in order to produce great recordings.

RESCHEDULED:
Sun., Feb. 23rd 1-4pm – Editing & Mixing Your Audio – $50n (rescheduling)

You’ll learn to create seamless documentary pieces ready for broadcast, including layering, balancing, and final mastering. We’ll share tips and tricks for efficiently producing pro-quality audio, and shortcuts for dealing with common recording problems. We’ll touch on basic plugins and techniques for their use. You’ll get low-cost software suggestions and hands-on instruction as you edit and mix a short  production in the seminar. Bring in your oral history  recordings or narration and learn how to edit and mix it yourself!

RESCHEDULED:
Thurs. Feb. 24th 5:30-9pm – Creating A WordPress Website $60

Many artists and businesses are moving away from time-consuming and costly HTML websites and creating easy-to-update WordPress websites. In this seminar, you’ll learn to put together and deploy your own website, including multimedia (audio/video/photos/podcasting) content, to show your work off to it’s best advantage. We’ll show how quick, easy and inexpensive (even free) it is to put together a professional website. We’ll touch on HTML and CSS, but familiarity with either is not required to get the most from this seminar.

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 ABOUT INSTRUCTORS:

Dmae Roberts has 25 years of professional broadcast radio experience and has trained hundreds of students, mentees, national workshop and conference attendees. She has taught and led seminars at Linfield College, the Association of Independents in Radio, the National Federation of Community Broadcasters, the Center for Documentary Studies and Third Coast International Festival. She wrote a chapter for the Reality Radio book that includes writing from the top radio producers in the country.

Read testimonials about her work training.

Clark Salisbury has worked more than 20 years as a sound engineer  and multimedia designer and producer. He was worked on top-notch radio documentary series including Crossing East and Wisdom of the Elders. He has created  number of websites and multimedia videos. He is the owner and engineer of c-Sonics Studio.

Scott Carrier

For nearly 30 years, Scott Carrier has produced thought-provoking personal documentaries about the people, cultures and tumultuous world he encounters. He explored war-torn Afghanistan after 9/11. Carrier documented the hazards immigrants faced in desert crossings from Sonora,Mexico, which won the 2006 George Foster Peabody Award, that was featured as part of a special produced by Barrett Golding and HearingVoices.com.

But one of his most known and often played pieces is Running After Antelope that puts to test an anthropological theory and gives us a metaphorical look at the idea of obsession and pursuit in one’s life. We’ll hear that piece in its entirety that first aired on NPR’s All Things Considered in 1986. It was story edited by Larry Massett and received an individual grant from the National Endowment for the Arts.

This piece had production assistance by Darby Burn Strong.

Featured music is by Ragon Linde from his CD Both Sides Of The Story.

You can hear Stage & Studio on:

• the KBOO website and on 90.7 FM live at 11am on Tuesdays
• Saturdays 11am on KZME, 107.1 FM
• and on the Stage & Studio official website.
• Don’t want to miss a single episode? Subscribe to Stage & Studio On iTunes!

Susan Mach

Susan Mach’s The Lost Boy at Artists Repertory Theatre, directed by Allen Nause, is a world premiere is based on the historical events surrounding what is generally considered to be the “first ransom kidnapping” in America. In 1874, 4-year-old Charles Ross, or “Little Charlie,” and his 6-year-old brother were lured by two men into a carriage outside their home in Philadelphia. The men drove them around the city for two hours before dropping off the older boy.  Charlie, however, was never seen again.  His father, a wealthy businessman named Christian Ross, received a letter demanding $20,000 for the safe return of his son.  Countless publications nationwide, including the New York Times, and circus promoter P.T. Barnum, who offered a $10,000 reward for Charlie, helped raise awareness of the case but also benefited from the chaos they created.

Geoff Kanick, Sam Dinkowitz, Elizabeth Houghton & Gray Eubank as P.T. Barnum. Photos By Owen Carey.  Artists Repertory Theatre

For years, Christian Ross received hundreds of tips of sightings of Charlie across the United States, Canada, and England, including men claiming to be Charlie himself; none were legitimate.  The two kidnappers were named but died before going to trial, and the fate of “Little Charlie” remains unknown. In 2009, Mach read from The Lost Boy as part of the Made in Oregon series at JAW Playwrights Festival, sponsored by Portland Center Stage. For this play, Mach was awarded the 2011 Angus Bowmer Award for Drama at the Oregon Book Awards.

The Lost Boy at Artists Rep performs through February 10th.
Performances: Tuesday – Sunday @ 7:30pm; Sunday @ 2:00pm

Location:
Artists Repertory Theatre, Inside the Morrison Lobby at 1515 SW Morrison Street
Phone: 503.241.1278
Fax: 503.241.8268
Email: boxoffice@artistsrep.org

For more info/reservations: www.artistsrep.org

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Rolland Walsh, Jacklyn Maddux & Bruce Burkhartsmeier. Third Rail Repertory.

Susan Mach’s A Noble Failure at Third Rail Repertory Theatre, directed by Phillip Cuomo, details the tragic journey of a public school getting co-opted by a private for- profit company. The genesis of the play began with the creation of the character Rosalyn (magnificently played by Jacklyn Maddux), a lifelong teacher who never imagined herself as anything else.  She is trying to keep a young Russian immigrant, Ivan, in school after he gets in trouble for tagging the library and destroying a trophy case. Rosalyn’s one ally and reluctant hero is the principal, Truman, performed with beleaguered gusto by Bruce Burkhartsmeier.

Much of the play is a response to the current broken public school system. Mach eloquent lays out the the current education crisis that often creates more hardship for already burdened career teachers, and dramatizes how public schools are being shut down in record numbers, replaced by privately owned charter schools that often cherry-pick students, disregarding those with low incomes and/or learning disabilities.

A Noble Failure performances run through Feb. 3rd at Third Rail Repertory. To order tickets from Third Rail Rep online click the links below or call us at 503-235-1101. You can also purchase over the counter at PCPA Box Office – 1111 SW Broadway.

Adults $33.25-$41.25, Seniors $27.25-$33.25, Under 30 $22.25

Third Rail Performance Location
Winningstad Theatre
1111 SW Broadway
Portland, OR 97205

For more info/tickets: www.thirdrailrep.org

 More about the playwright: 

Playwright Susan Mach has an MA in Playwriting from Boston University. Her first play,Monograms, published by Rain City Press in Seattle, received a Portland Drama Critics Circle Award. Her second play, Angle of View, was a finalist for the Oregon Book Award and received readings at Portland Repertory Theatre and Boston Playwrights’ Theatre.  For her third play, The Shadow Testament, she received a Woman Writers Fellowship from Literary Arts. Her play, The Difficult Season, a collaboration with renowned jazz pianist and songwriter Dave Frishberg, was workshopped at Artists Repertory Theatre

She was awarded a fellowship from Oregon Literary Arts for her latest play, The Lost Boy, which was also part of Portland Center Stage’s JAW/West development series and recently received a staged reading at Bloomsburg Theatre Ensemble, and was a winner of the 2011 Angus Bowmer Award for Drama at the Oregon Book Awards.

Fertile Ground Festival of New Works 2013, presented by the Portland Area Theatre Alliance, January 24- February 3, 2013. Read/hear more about Fertile Ground with festival director Nicole Lane. 

Tickets: www.fertilegroundpdx.org. Individual Event tickets sold through each producer and can be accessed through www.fertilegroundpdx.org

Festival Passes: $50 –  www.fertilegroundpdx.org

You can hear Stage & Studio on:

• the KBOO website and on 90.7 FM live at 11am on Tuesdays
• Saturdays 11am on KZME, 107.1 FM
• and on the Stage & Studio official website.
• Don’t want to miss a single episode? Subscribe to Stage & Studio On iTunes!

Hear Nicole Lane  talk about  the impressive Fertile Ground Festival presented by the Portland Area Theatre Alliance featuring more than 90 new works with more than 100 artists throughout Portland, January 24- February 3, 2013.

We also hear two songs from Richard Moore about Rain! The Musical. Robert Guitron talks about how Polaris has mapped out the wealth of dance companies in the Portland area with more than 170 companies of varied ethnicities and styles. Amazing stories about arts and artists. Hear the podcast now!

Nicole Lane, Richard Moore & Robert Guitron

Fertile Ground Festival of New Work 2013, presented by the Portland Area Theatre Alliance, January 24- February 3, 2013.

Tickets: www.fertilegroundpdx.org. Individual Event tickets sold through each producer and can be accessed through www.fertilegroundpdx.org

Festival Passes: $50 –  www.fertilegroundpdx.org

Event Descriptions:    More information about the Fertile Ground Festival and full event listings and descriptions can be found in the Festival Guide and at www.fertilegroundpdx.org

Polaris Dance Theatre

Polaris Dance Theatre  presents Groovin’ Greenhouse 

Polaris Dance Theatre and the Fertile Ground Festival are pleased to once again collaborate on THE GROOVIN’ GREENHOUSE. During the Festival – a 10-day celebration of local Portland art – Polaris Dance Theatre will host a special space for new dance works to grow! Dance lovers will take in a spectrum of styles and choreographers all under one roof.  Performers include NW Fusion, Bridge City Dance Project, SubRosa Dance Collective, Wobbly Dance, Jennifer Camp, Jocelyn Edelstein, and Sydney Skov.

Performances are January 31-February 2nd @ Polaris Dance Center (1501 SW Taylor) For ticket info and reservations: www.polarisdance.org

More about Rain:

David Poulshock Productions presents Rain! The Musical with music & Lyrics by Richard Moore and Libretto by Monte Merrick.

Rain! The Musical is the story of a one-hit-wonder rocker who returns home to Portland to woo back the lover he jilted and the city he abandoned – only to discover that it hasn’t rained in 274 days. Not a drop. When he finds himself asking, “What’s the point of Portland without the rain?” all hell breaks loose.

Performances are Feb 1, 2 @ 8pm; Feb 3 @ 3pm at the IFCC @Ethos located at 5340 N. Interstate Ave. in Portland. Tickets: $10 advance; $15 door | www.boxofficetickets.com or 800.494.8497 (TIXS)

Anya Pearson as The Godmother

Other Fertile Ground offerings include PDX Playwrights including Sandra de Helen’s The Godmother  on January 27, 2013 at 8pm, Hipbone Studio 1847 E. Burnside, Portland, OR starring Anya Pearson, directed by Patric Callahan.

And Umbrella For Three/Good Ones/Going On, 7 pm on Sat Feb. 2nd also at Hipbone Studio.

$15 or buy a Fertile Ground pass at http://fertilegroundpdx.org/  Check out the full menu of new plays at PDX Playwrights at www.boxofficetickets.com.

You can hear Stage & Studio on:

• the KBOO website and on 90.7 FM live at 11am on Tuesdays
• Saturdays 11am on KZME, 107.1 FM
• and on the Stage & Studio official website.
• Don’t want to miss a single episode? Subscribe to Stage & Studio On iTunes!

The holidays are over. The world didn’t end as predicted by the Mayan calendar and there is still abundant life on earth. For many around the country, however, there have been difficult times. Last month there was horrific news of two shootings — one close to home and another on the other side of the country. Holidays sometimes compound the hard times, and each year they can seem even more trying, especially for those struggling to make ends meet in a tough economy.

(Photo: ‘Dawn’ by Richard Jensen)

A week before Christmas, I received bad financial news. I won’t go into detail, but it cast gloom on a holiday season rife with consumerism and it has caused concern as I enter 2013.

A few days before Christmas, my best friend kept vigil with her ex-partner who died from terminal breast cancer. My friend was not alone. Throughout the holidays, amid the peace-love-happy Facebook photos, I also learned about other friends struggling with hardship and the death of loved ones.

Reading the news around the world can be a recipe for depression. Violence, wars, inequity … None of it makes sense. And problems I thought might be resolved within my lifetime seem too immense to ever solve.

All the “isms” still exist and have found new life in a variety of media. It seems doubtful they’ll ever go away. Racism especially appears to be on the rise. There’s a growing fear of China and the “yellow peril.” There are subtle things such as the “Make Me Asian” app on Google and negative comments made about basketball player Jeremy Lin. A multitude of racist comments were tweeted about our president when he interrupted a football game to address the mass shooting in Newtown, Connecticut. There is still so much anger and bigotry that exists in this country.

The world is full of people who act, people who follow, and those who do a little of both. Some fight for things I understand, like helping the disenfranchised, cleaning up the planet, growing healthy food, providing healthcare, improving education, or fighting for civil rights. Others fight for things I don’t understand, like guns, capital punishment, hoarding wealth, and creating giant fences on our borders.

What do I feel hopeful about in 2013? I have to take stock: a good home and husband; two twin tabby cats; a brother who is far from the norm, but doing better than he ever has in his life; close friends who I can call when I need a lifeline.

I pine for what turned out to be the gravy days before the 2008 crash. As I get older, there are fewer work opportunities. That’s partly the way it should be. It makes way for younger folks who face a great amount of debt coming out of college. Yet I feel I’m too young to be put out to pasture, so there’s a division between how things should be for the world and how I want them to be for myself.

I wish my health insurance hadn’t been raised to $550 a month on my birthday. I wish life wasn’t such a day-to-day struggle. I wish we weren’t at war with each other and in other countries. I wish the wealthy would realize they don’t need to spend so much money to live. Okay, I’m really dreaming now. But I wish life were easier for us all.

What gives me hope? A project I can do that makes the world a little better, a chance to look up at the stars, a random act of kindness or courage, doing more good than bad, and yes, seeing a child who feels safe.

Read more of Dmae’s columns at The Asian Reporter. Or in the Dmae Writes section. 

And in the latter part of the show, popular actor Darius Pierce joins us to talk about his solo show at PCS. Hear him recite some of his favorite passages of the show and reflect about what it’s like to work on holiday shows for the last several years.

 (Encores 12/22 11am on KZME 107.1FM)

Pratik Motwani & Jonathan Godsey in ‘Zoo Zoo’ at Imago Theatre

Jonathan Godsey (who has been with Imago since 1998 and played near every animal!) and Pratik Motwani (all the way from Mumbai where he dubbed the lead role in the Oscar-winning ‘Slumdog Millionaire’)

ZOOZOO RETURNS WITH CATS! at Imago Theatre and runs through  JAN.1st in Portland.

This family hit brings to life the antics of our everyday household cats in a not-so-everyday way. The show is joined by audience hit “Cats” who join the entourage of Frogs, Penguins, Hippos and other wild, crazy creatures that make the world of  ZooZoo.

Tickets $16 for kids, $27 for youth/senior, $31 for adults. They are available at the door or by calling Imago: 503.231.9581. Or TicketsWest.com, 503.224.8499.

Find out more at ImagoTheatre.com.

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Santaland Diaries
By David Sedaris Adapted for the stage by Joe Mantello,directed by Wendy Knox and performed by Darius Pierce . Runs through December 30th at Portland Center Stage.

Based on the true chronicles of David Sedaris’ experience as Crumpet the Elf in Macy’s Santaland display, this cult classic riffs on a few of Sedaris’ truly odd encounters with his fellow man during the height of the holiday crunch. NPR humorist and best-selling author of When You Are Engulfed in Flames, Me Talk Pretty One Day and Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim, David Sedaris has become one of America’s pre-eminent humor writers, and this production has become a Portland holiday tradition.

Darius Pierce in ‘The Santaland Diaries’ at Portland Center Stage

Performance times:
Tuesday – Sunday evenings at 7:30 p.m
Saturday and Sunday matinees at 2 p.m.
Thursday matinees at noon

All shows are at Portland Center Stage located at 128 NW Eleventh Avenue, Portland, Oregon 97209. For more info and tickets call 503-445-3700 or visit their site at PCS.org.

You can hear Stage & Studio on:

• the KBOO website and on 90.7 FM live at 11am on Tuesdays
• Saturdays 11am on KZME, 107.1 FM
• and on the Stage & Studio official website.
• Don’t want to miss a single episode? Subscribe to Stage & Studio On iTunes!

A look at professional holiday youth productions: Seeds of Hope at Do Jump! and Peter Pan at Northwest Children’s Theatre & School. We’ll hear from director Aaron Wheeler-Kay at Do Jump! and Managing Director/Co-Founder Judy Kafoury at NWCT which celebrates its 20th anniversary with a new commissioned adaptation of  the classic Peter Pan.

(encores 11am Sat 12/15 on KZME 107.1FM)

Seeds of Hope at Do Jump! is  as a tale of a teenage girl whose carefree summer is rocked by a stunning turn of events. Interwoven is the mythic tale of Pandora opening her box of chaos and unleashing a physical collage of aerial dance, acrobatics & song. Seeds of Hope weaves together our shared experiences to explore themes of change, optimism and hope.

Aaron Wheeler Kay, Do Jump’s ‘Seeds Of Hope’

Directed by Aaron Wheeler-Kay, Seeds of Hope introduces an exceptional ensemble of youth artists from across our community, and features live original music by Mike Van Liew, Jack Buddeke & Mike Snyder. Come be a part of this innovative performance!

Aaron Wheeler-Kay talks about his experiences working as a used performer for do  job 16 years ago and coming to direct this new mainstage production with the  next generation of performers.

He also tells us about the importance of this kind of theater skills to build  confidence and to get a young person ready for the real world.

Audience members age 10 & above will grasp its themes, and the athleticism & artistry of Seeds of Hope are appropriate for all ages.

Seeds of Hope, an innovative project at Do Jump! Directed by Aaron Wheeler-Kay All shows are December 7-23, Fridays & Saturdays, 7 pm. Sundays, 1 & 4:30 pm. Tickets are $22 for adults, $18 for seniors, $15 for Youth (12 & under)To purchase: Visitwww.dojump.org , or call 503.231.1232.

Seeds of Hope photos: Jeffrey Freeman.

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For NWCT’s 20th anniversary, the theatre and school presents the classic musical Peter Pan, a new musical adaption based on the the J.M. Barrie play that launched the company. Managing director and co-founder Judy Kafoury tells us that it over 1 million kids have come to see the productions at Northwest Children’s Theater as well as perform in the productions and study at the school. She also recounts a number of success stories of past students who have gone on to work in national TV shows and on Broadway.

(Captain Hook) John Ellingson and (Peter Pan) Michael Kepler Meo

The legend of “The Boy Who Wouldn’t Grow Up” began back in 1904 with J.M Barrie’s original stage play. Over the past century, Peter Pan has been adapted into films, books, and graphic novels.

It is also the story that gave NW Children’s Theater & School its start back in 1993. For their 20th Anniversary Season, the Children’s Theater has commissioned an original musical adaptation by author Milo Mowery and composer Rodolfo Ortega.

With direction by NWCT Artistic Director Sarah Jane Hardy, Peter Pan marks the return of the creative team behind last year’s El Zorrito: The Legend of the Boy Zorro, which won a drammy for “Outstanding Original Script.” 

SHOWTIMES: DEC. 8 – JAN. 6, 2012-13.

Dec. 8, 9, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, Jan. 1, 5, 6  at 2pm

All shows are at the NW Childrens Theatre & School located at 1819 NW Everett Street, Suite 216 in Portland, OR 97209-2189.  Call 503-222-4480 or visit online at:www.nwcts.org 

You can hear Stage & Studio on:

• the KBOO website and on 90.7 FM live at 11am on Tuesdays
• Saturdays 11am on KZME, 107.1 FM
• and on the Stage & Studio official website.
• Don’t want to miss a single episode? Subscribe to Stage & Studio On iTunes!

Around the country there’s a tradition of Revels which is a season celebration of holiday traditions during Christmas. Portland Revels has been bringing a yearly celebratory performance each year set in different countries.

Susannah Park, Betsy Branch and Debby Garman of Portland Revels

This year the Christmas Revels  brings music and dance of mid-1800s Appalachia featuring a chorus of more than 70 to reenact an Appalachian village with carols, spirituals and clogging.

Dmae Roberts talks with executive director Debby Garman, singer and dancer Suzannah Park and Betsy Branch of the Blue Mountain String Band. We’ll find out more about the Christmas Revels production and hear a live concert.

Also in the cast are Portland actors Ithica Tell and Shuhe Hawkins, and local musicians including Betsy Branch, Leela Grace, Gabrielle Macrae, Kevin Sandri, Sophie Vitells and the Portland Brass Quintet. The music includes instrumental traditions of the American 1800s, including shape note carols and Shaker hymns and spirituals. Directed by Bruce Hostetler with music director Robert Lockwood. Scenic design by Larry Larsen and costumes by Margaret Chapman.

Eleven matinee and evening performances at The Scottish Rite Center Theater, SW 15th and Morrison St, Portland, OR.

Directed by Bruce Hostetler with music byPortland Brass Quintet & The Blue Mountain String Band.

Schedule:  (two one-hour acts with one 15 minute intermission)
7:30 pm Friday, Dec. 7
1:00 pm Saturday, Dec. 8, 7:30 pm Saturday, Dec. 8
1 pm Sunday, Dec. 9, 7:00 pm Sunday, Dec. 9
7:30 pm Thursday, Dec. 13
7:30 pm Friday, Dec. 14
1 pm Saturday, Dec. 15, 7:30 pm Saturday, Dec. 15
1 pm Sunday, Dec. 16, 5 pm Sunday, Dec. 16

Adult ticket prices begin at $18. Senior and Student Ticket prices begin at $12. Children ticket prices begin at $7. Box office opens October 24. Tickets available online at www.portlandrevels.org, or call the Revels Box Office at 503-200-1604

Hear this tale of a Portland arts group that brings together communities during the holidays and all year round. The music and tales of Appalachia are especially  endearing during this time.

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You can hear Stage & Studio on:

• the KBOO website and on 90.7 FM live at 11am on Tuesdays
• Saturdays 11am on KZME, 107.1 FM
• and on the Stage & Studio official website.
• Don’t want to miss a single episode? Subscribe to Stage & Studio On iTunes!

Hear the Making Change final special.  Join Producer and Guest Host Sarika Mehta for a special on gifted singer and activist Rupa Marya, the lead vocalist and director of Rupa and the April Fishes. Their music encompasses elements of jazz, blues, klezmer, folk amongst others, with songs in Spanish, French and English. Rupa herself was born in India, grew up in France and San Francisco, and uses her music to give voice to her experiences.

Rupa Marya

While Rupa is also a medical doctor. She took a hiatus from medicine last year to develop their latest album,Build. 

The album, Build was released this past year, inspired by uprisings around the world including the Occupy movements, Tahrir Square, Chilean student riots and the economic difficulties in Greece.

While they were on tour in Portland last month, Rupa Marya joined Sarika Mehta to discuss the Build tour, and specifically, an upcoming 6-week stay in India to promote awareness on the devasting issue of farmer suicides. She also talked about the activism she’s done through much of her career as part of her music.

Sarika Mehta

Tune in for this special edition of Stage and Studio with Host/Producer Sarika Mehta to hear the an inspiring artist and hear her music!

‘Making Change’ is a series about the intersection of creativity and social change. AIt’s funded by the Regional Arts and Culture Council and individual donors including June Arima & John Schumann Fund of the Equity Foundation.

‘Making Change’ features and specials have been airing throughout the year. Hear more of the special programs. 

You can hear Stage & Studio on: 

I didn’t realize the last Thanksgiving I spent with my mom would actually be the very last. We never know about “the last time” until it’s no more.

Ma’s been gone 10 years now. When she had a recurrence of breast cancer, I spent three years commuting back and forth from Portland to Eugene every three or four days to help take care of her. I oversaw the household, shopped, cooked and cleaned while trying to get my work done on my laptop on her kitchen table.

At night we would watch romantic comedy movies. Once in a while Ma pointed out someone being too silly, and I’d agree. She had quite the discerning eye for a woman with no formal education who didn’t read English. She remarked on stupid plot lines or rolled her eyes at sappy lines and then got teary during poignant moments. Before she got sick, we never had the patience with one another to sit quietly together. The arguments always got in the way, especially during the holidays.

Our movie marathons were a fun quiet time together. We never had that after I became a teen, and I started to rebel, lasting all through adulthood. It took her illness for us to finally meet in some midpoint to enjoy each other’s company. Before then, she’d try to hook me into her Taiwanese musical soap operas. These were badly recorded video copies of costumed dramas in which the Monkey King and beautiful princesses in gowns with long, flowing sleeves fought battles against evil emperors. I loved watching them for about 10 minutes before the dreadful singing and clanging of instruments started. My Oklahoman father used to call it “kwangkwang”—a Taiwanese slang word for any loud noise.

But when I became my mom’s caregiver, I’d rent movies and watch them on a little TV in the spare bedroom where I slept. One day I was in the middle of The Green Mile when Ma peeked in.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

“I’m watching this movie about a convict who heals people…” She sat down on the bed next to me fascinated as I explained the plot. At one point, the Michael Duncan Clark character put his hands on a dying Patricia Clarkson and took her cancer away. We cried together when we saw that. That’s when our movie marathons began.

Caregiving is full of ups and downs. You have bad weeks and you live for the times that you find the joy of getting closer to the loved one who’s ill.  But that last Thanksgiving, we had hope.

After two bouts of pneumonia while fighting her breast cancer, she ended up on the hospice program. At one point, during the summer that was to be her last summer, she was frustrated with her slow recovery.  We figured out during her hospitalization that she had a minor stroke, and that’s why one side of her mouth didn’t quite work. She started crying in frustration because she couldn’t drink a glass of water without some of it spilling out.

I said to her, “Ma, people can live a longer time with cancer but you need to decide if you want to live.”

She looked at me quietly studying me and said, “I want to live.”

“Then you will,” I said.

And she “graduated” from the hospice program. She was happy to move about the house, go shopping once a week and cook simple meals with some help from my brother or me.

That Thanksgiving, my husband spent the holiday with his elderly parents, and I was with my mom and brother. After years of fights over my not eating meat, Ma had become closer to her Buddhist religion and had become a vegetarian. That thrilled me to no end. So I attempted to cook a Tofurky without reading the directions. Ma wanted me to baste it like she did when she roasted a turkey every night before Thanksgiving. But I cooked it way too long. It ended up being a bit tough and chewy.

Now for the holidays, my hubby cooks it by following directions on the package, and the Tofurky turns out moist and delicious. But that Thanksgiving my mom and I laughed at how hard it was to chew so we dined instead on mashed potatoes, vegies and store-bought pumpkin pie. Afterwards, we watched another of our silly romantic movie marathons.

That was to be our last Thanksgiving meal together.

We didn’t know it was the last. We only thought about hope and living as long as possible before the inevitable end. That came after the oncologist told us on one of our weekly visits that there was no need to keep coming. She died five months later in May. But on our final Thanksgiving we had one good holiday that made up for the difficult ones in the past.

*Read more essays in the Dmae Writes section. Or in The Asian Reporter.

Horatio Law and Sandy Sampson at Sisters of The Road

Horatio Hung-Yan Law is a public art and installation artist who is interested in creating collaborative installations with diverse communities, and in exploring how art activates the complex and dynamic relationship between individual and community. As artist-in-resident, he has created installations with Multnomah County Health Department, South Waterfront Development, and families with children adopted from China. He’s now working on public art projects with the Oregon State Hospital, Seattle Public Utility % for Art in South Park, and Tri-Met’s Portland-Milwaukie Light Rail Line. He is also an assistant professor at the Pacific Northwest College of Art.

We’ll also hear from Lucilene Lira, Leadership Program Coordinator for Sisters Of The Road:  Created and coordinated by artist Horatio Hung-Yan Law, in collaboration with artist Sandy Sampson, the Open Circles project began in early September. Over the following month, Sisters community members painted 60 plates with unique new urban hobo sign decals.  Designed, re-glazed and decorated, the New Urban (Hobo) Signs plates update the hobo signs from the Depression Era, reflecting the experiences of people who are homeless in our city today. The plates captured the imagination of everyone who participated.

And we’ll hear about the impact on the project at Planned Parenthood from Susanne Hashim, VP for External Affiars: Open Circles Project Bird’s Nest Building Workshops at Planned Parenthood Columbia Willamette (PPCW) on MLK.  To raise awareness around and about Planned Parenthood—the project points out that “Birds make their nests only when they are ready to start a family.”—members of the public are welcome to make nests and decorate them with unique materials that reflect one’s thoughts about home and family. Both the difficult issues and the joy of nurturing a family are equal parts of the reality the project is attempting to explore. The nests will become part of the “Open Circles Project” Installation at Place Gallery, Pioneer Place Mall in November.

Events for public installation: Open Circles collaborative, community art project, opens Saturday, November 17th at the Place Black Gallery. The opening reception will be held 5:00 to 9:00 pm, and will feature artists who participated in the Open Circles project. There will be a second reception December 15th from 5-9 pm.

‘Making Change’ is a year-long series funded by the Regional Arts and Culture Council and individual donors including June Arima & John Schumann Fund of the Equity Foundation.

‘Making Change’ is a series about the intersection of creativity and social change. These features and specials have been airing throughout the year. Find out how you can support ‘Making Change.’

You can hear Stage & Studio on:

• the KBOO website and on 90.7 FM live at 11am on Tuesdays
• Saturdays 11am on KZME, 107.1 FM
• and on the Stage & Studio official website.
• Don’t want to miss a single episode? Subscribe to Stage & Studio On iTunes!

 

Also Producer Tali Singer has a brand new feature piece on a student at Portland Actors Conservatory, Phoebe Southwood, under the direction of Artistic Director Beth Harper. The piece chronicles her preparation for her graduation showcase.

You can hear Stage & Studio on:

• the KBOO website and on 90.7 FM live at 11am on Tuesdays
• Saturdays 11am on KZME, 107.1 FM
• and on the Stage & Studio official website.
• Don’t want to miss a single episode? Subscribe to Stage & Studio On iTunes!

Kim Stafford Photo: Perrin Kerns

More about 100 Tricks Every Boy Can Do: Bret and Kim Stafford, the oldest boys of the Poet Laureate and pacifist William Stafford, were close. As children, they never fought and were inseparable, yet each had their own unique place within the family. Bret was the good son, the obedient public servant; Kim the itinerant wanderer. Though their home was full of love, there was a code of silence about hard things: “Why tell what hurts?”

As childhood pleasures ebbed, this reticence took its toll on Bret. Against a backdrop of the 1950s and 60s, Bret—a puritan in the summer of love, a conscientious objector in the Vietnam era—became a casualty of his own interior war and took his life, leaving the family—and Kim—to endure the loss.

Taking its title from a pamphlet Bret ordered as a kid, 100 Tricks Every Boy Can Do is a memoir that works its own magic in portraying two brothers bound by love and friendship through boyhood and adolescence, forging their way into adulthood, together and then, ultimately, apart.

Kim Stafford and Dmae

Through Kim’s devotions, he shares Bret’s life and what it teaches us about the secret nature of depression, the tender ancestry of violence, the quest for harmonious relations, and finally, the trick of joy.

Kim Stafford Readings:

November 8, 7pm  at Annie Blooms, 7834 SW Capitol Hwy / Portland OR 97219. For more info call 503-246-0053 or visit www.annieblooms.com

November 14, 7pm  at Broadway Books, 1714 NE Broadway, Portland OR 97232. For more info call  503-284-1726  www.broadwaybooks.net/event

 November 18, 1-4pm  Book signing, Audubon Society “Wild Arts Festival,” Montgomery Park, 2701 NW Vaughn, Portland OR 97210. For more info visit: wildartsfestival.org/about-portland-audubon

December 4, 7pm at Elliott Bay Book Co., 1521 Tenth Avenue
, Seattle WA 98122. More info call 206-624-6600. www.elliottbaybook.com/node/events/current

January 16, 2013, 7-8pm Book Launch and reading, Lewis & Clark College. Portland, OR (contact Matsya Siosal 503-768-6222)

February 21, 7pm Grass Roots Book Store / Corvallis Public LibraryCorvallis, Or (& a free writing workshop, 2-4pm)

March 4-6, time TBA  Associated Writing Programs, Boston (Panel: “Writing Beyond the End”) https://www.awpwriter.org/awp_conference/schedule

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Kim Stafford has taught since 1979 at Lewis and Clark College, where he is the founding director of the Northwest Writing Institute and co-director of the Documentary Studies program. He also serves as the literary executor for the estate of William Stafford. He has worked as an oral historian, letterpress printer, editor, photographer, teacher, and visiting writer in communities and colleges across the country, and in Italy, Scotland, and Bhutan. Stafford has published a dozen books of poetry and prose, including The Muses Among Us: Eloquent Listening and Other Pleasures of the Writer’s Craft; Early Morning: Remembering My Father, William Stafford; and Having Everything Right: Essays of Place. He has received two National Endowment for the Arts fellowships, the Oregon Governor’s Arts Award, and a Western States Book Award. He lives in Portland, Oregon, with his wife and children.

More info on the book:   www.tupress.org or Kim Stafford’s site: www.kim-stafford.com/

Read an excerpt: Prologue: The Trick

Kim Stafford

“In 1958, when he was ten, my older brother, Bret, found an ad in the back of a comic book and ordered 100 Tricks Every Boy Can Do. When this pamphlet of secrets arrived, he flipped through to the last and most difficult trick: how to jerk a tablecloth away but leave a wine glass standing. Like many tricks in this life, the materials were ordinary, but the required sleight of hand approached the impossible.

He waited until everyone was gone from home, set the Finnish sherry glass on the dishtowel—a hand-made crystal that family friends had brought us from afar. Bret held the selvage in his hands, took a breath, and yanked the cloth. Shattered glass flew everywhere.

Long after Bret was gone, I would tell our son, Guthrie, who had never met his uncle, stories of that era when I had a brother and the world was young. It was an era spangled with mysteries and delights.

One day, when Guthrie was ten, as we sat at our family table, he took the edge of the tablecloth in his hands, cast a sly smile in my direction, and said, “Dad, shall I do the trick?”

He laughed, made a feint to twitch the cloth in his hands, and my mind went far. The present moment dropped away, and I watched my brother in a parade of enigmatic moments from childhood through our years together and beyond.

“Guthrie,” I said, “I could write a book about Uncle Bret called ‘100 Tricks Every Boy Can Do,’ and tell all kinds of stories from his life.”

“Yeah, Dad,” Guthrie said, “but suicide was the trick that didn’t work.”

Well, one of the tricks that didn’t work. In my brother’s life, his last desperate day was but one in an array of mysteries. How many tricks are required to become a man? What have been my own encounters with this fierce set of hidden tests and amazing feats? And Guthrie, this man-child in my life—what moments from his story best reveal our need? The essential code must include the tricks of confidence, loneliness, sex, fear, anger—how to begin a courtship and know it is right, how to end a job when it goes wrong, how to crawl from the wreckage when this life falters, how to plunge to the cellar of sorrow and grope for the ladder that might bring you back into some kind of light, no matter how dim or strange.

How many lessons must be clawed from trouble in order to survive? By what infinite practice in sleight of hand does one become a human being?”

You can hear Stage & Studio on:

‘Crazy Jane’ is the name of an earthy character invented by the Irish poet W. B. Yeats and based on a real person that Yeats admired for her audacity, lust for life and satirical eye. She is a passionate old woman who flies in the face of convention and propriety to speak her mind about love, war, character and freedom.

The women of Cascadia Composers adopted “Crazy Jane” as a muse because her bold spirit and fearlessness in expressing herself can be an inspiration to women composers – a group that has been marginalized throughout Western musical history.

Some of the older composers grew up during a time when women were barred from playing in professional orchestras and what few female musicians, and especially composers and conductors, who had existed barely merited a footnote in traditional music education.

Crazy Janes Collaborate! performance of music and dance is Friday, November 9, 7:30 PM at Colonial Heights Presbyterian Church, 2828 SE Stevens Street, Portland. Tickets: $5, students; $10, Cascadia members/seniors; $15, working artists; $20, general admission. More info here.

Composers include: Susan Alexjander, Amelia Bierly, Elizabeth Dyson,  Renée Favand-See, Cynthia Gerdes, Lisa Marsh, Bonnie Miksch, Jan Mittlestaedt, Sydney Stevens, and Jennifer Wright with collaborators. 

Included in the concert are dancers Courtney Allen, Michelle Fujii, Lavinia Magliocco and visual artists Suzy Kitman; Marilyn Maricle; Bonnie Meltzer.  Poets: Claire Sykes, Sherrill Roberts, Zayra Yves.

Musicians include Renee Favand-See, mezzo sop., Bonnie Miksch, voice;  Paloma Griffin, violin; Elizabeth Dyson, Amelia Bierly and Sherill Roberts, cellos, Rosemary Roberts, harp; Jennifer Wright, toy piano;  Sydney Stevens, Connie Titterington and Lisa Marsh, piano; Mitch Iimori, oboe and English horn; Bonnie Miksch, live computer; Susan Alexjander, synthesizer.

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And in the latter part of the show, we hear from Miriam Feder about her new play Ephemory, a new play by Miriam Feder, is a story of aging, caregiving, immigration, war, and love

The story of Ephemory: While packing her mother Carole to an assisted living facility, Ruth begins to hears her mom’s stories. She hears about her mom immigrating to New York in 1938, losing track of her family as war swept the continent, and finding, reuniting. The stories come to life on stage and the play and the daughter seesthe resourcefulness and magnificence of her mother, even as Carole’s faculties diminish.

Ephemory opens November 9 at the Headwaters Theatre in Portland and runs November 9, 10, II, 15, 16, 17, 18, 21 (Wednesday,) 23,24 and 25. Shows are at 7:30, except for Sundays, at 2 pm. The Headwaters is located at 55 NE Farragut, 97211.

Miriam Feder

[DIRECTIONS: From N. Vancouver Ave. turn Rat NE Farragut (3 blocks north of Lombard. Landmark=electric sub-station on N.E Comer.) At end of Farragut (~blocks) turn L into parking lot. Entrance is on the "track" side.]

TICKETS: Tickets are $15, gen. admission. Discount available for groups of 10 or more. For more info visit: https:llwww.boxofficetickets.com/enter Ephemory. (cash or check at the door only.)

You can hear Stage & Studio on:

These seminars are small group intensive training at an affordable cost. We’re offering classes monthly that will take you from novice to professional.
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HOW TO  MAKE STUNNING INTERVIEWS 

Dec. 8th 2012, 1-4pm – $65 (limited to 6 people-only 3 spots left!)

Back by popular demand, DmaeRoberts  is offering her  interviewing and field recording seminar. She’s  interv iewed more than 1000 people in the course of her career. She’s done one-on-one interviews as well as large groups at one time. The secret of a successful interview is to engage in a conversation that encourages you to listen and the interview subject to do most of the talking. How do you get people to open up and tell you their secrets? And how do you do this while holding a microphone and recording great sound?

In this small group seminar, DmaeRoberts leads you through the steps of a stunning interview that is professionally recorded. She’ll also advise you on low-cost professional recorders and mics. This seminar is perfect for audio producers, podcasters, oral historians and writers researching their next project.

Location: DmaeRoberts Studio, SE Portland.

Email mediarites@aol.com to secure your spot!  

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PROFESSIONAL VOICE RECORDING at RexPost Studios
Sunday, Nov. 11, 2012 – 1 – 5 pm - $125 (limited to 10 people-over) 

Need a great voice demo or have narration you need to do? Here’s a chance to work at the state of the art RexPost Studios in downtown Portland. Learn how read and record your work for narration, readings, and. commercial voice work. If you’re an actor who would like to learn how to create a voice demo, a radio/video producer who does your own narration or a writer who would like to put audio excerpts of your work online or as an audiobook, this session will be give you the right tools and exercises to sound your best. (Rex Post Studios featured left and right)

Rex Post Studio

Work with skilled voice coach Dmae Roberts in vocal exercises and tips. You’ll get mic instruction from Russ Gorsline, veteran engineer/owner of RexPost who has worked on movies and TV shows, most recently Leverage, Grimm and Portlandia. Participants are asked to bring something to read that they want to record. You will leave with your own short voice recording. In this afternoon session, you’ll be able to record, narrate and leave with your own recording. Don’t miss this rare opportunity! 

Email Dmae at  mediarites@aol.com to secure your spot!  

Instructors: DmaeRoberts and Russ Gorsline

Check out  RexPost’s website and a recent article about the facility from PRWeb.

PLEASE EMAIL BEFORE REGISTERING.

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SOCIAL MEDIA FOR PROMOTION
Saturday, Nov 10, 2012, 1-4 pm – $50 (limited to 7 people-on  over)

You don’t need to reveal that much or be that social to be socially engaged! The reality is almost everyone needs a Facebook page to be employed or to promote their work. Many employers won’t hire people without some social media presence. For artists, writers, performers, media makers or arts organizers, social media presents a low-cost ways to promote their work and events.

Learn how to maintain privacy while putting your best foot forward. What can you share without being too personal? If you’ve been hesitant to enter the social media world, DmaeRoberts will lead you step-by-step into the how’s, do’s & don’ts of Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and email promotion for you or your projects.

Instructor: DmaeRoberts. Location: SE Portland.

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HOW TO  MAKE STUNNING INTERVIEWS 
Saturday Nov. 17, 2012, 1-4pm – $65 (limited to 6 people-over)

Henry Winkler & Dmae

Back by popular demand, Dmae  is offering her  interviewing and field recording seminar. She’s  interv iewed more than 1000 people in the course of her career. She’s done one-on-one interviews as well as large groups at one time. The secret of a successful interview is to engage in a conversation that encourages you to listen and the interview subject to do most of the talking. How do you get people to open up and tell you their secrets? And how do you do this while holding a microphone and recording great sound?

In this small group seminar, Dmae leads you through the steps of a stunning interview that is professionally recorded. She’ll also advise you on low-cost professional recorders and mics. This seminar is perfect for audio producers, podcasters, oral historians and writers researching their next project.

Location: DmaeRoberts Studio, SE Portland.

Email  mediarites@aol.com to secure your spot!  

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DmaeRoberts has 25 years of professional broadcast radio experience and has trained hundreds of students, mentees, national workshop and conference attendees. She has taught and led seminars at Linfield College, the Association of Independents in Radio, the National Federation of Community Broadcasters, the Center for Documentary Studies and Third Coast International Festival.

She wrote a chapter for the Reality Radio book that includes writing from the top radio producers in the country. Read testimonials about her teaching! 

Testimonials from her recent seminars!

“There is so much to learn…even if you feel like a seasoned professional. Dmae’s seminar made me realize some of the fundamentals that I had forgotten and introduced me to new technology. I was really pleased that I got to spend the afternoon with her but I have a complaint…I wanted to stay longer!” Amanda, Artslandia 

“Now I feel like I have the basic tools and information to start doing some (more) interviews with family and possibly others. It was also great to get to use some of the different mics and equipment to get a feel for what it is like, and to view it on your monitor and see/hear the levels. It really increased my awareness for and appreciation of what goes into making a successful interview….” Jennifer M.

(Left photo: Ramona Lisa, Alexander, Lance McQueen, Michael J. Asberry, Victor Mack, Gayle Samuels, Mujahid Abdul-Rashid. Photo Owen Carey.)

Dmae with Kevin Jones, Seven Guitars, Artists Rep

Up first, Dmae Roberts talks with director Kevin Jones from August Wilson’s Seven Guitars at Artists Repertory Theatre‘s 30th season. The play focuses on seven African-American characters in 1948. Seven Guitars begins and ends after the funeral of one of the main characters, showing events leading to the funeral in flashbacks. Seven Guitars covers 1940s as part of Wilson’s Pittsburgh Cycle plays in a decade-by-decade anthology of African-American life during the twentieth century. Jones is also the co-creator of the August Wilson Red Door Project. We’ll learn more about this effort to bring positive change in Portland’s racial ecology.

Brian Weaver

Seven Guitars runs through November 11 on the Morrison Stage, 1515 SW Morrison, Portland. Tickets are $25-$50; Students $20. For more info and reservations, 503.241.1278 or visit www.artistsrep.org

Logan Benedict and cast of Bloody, Bloody Andrew Jackson at Portland Playhouse

Bloody, Bloody Andrew Jackson is a political emo-musical fiercely tackling territorial expansion and Jackson’s genocidal policies of Native American removal from homelands leading to a forced 1000-mile march across America called the Trail of Tears. The show runs  through Nov. 11 at Portland Playhouse located at 602 NE Prescott in Portland. For reservations and more info, call 503-488-5822.

We’ll also hear about August Wilson’s King Hedley II starring acclaimed Oregon Shakespeare Festival actor Peter Macon. King Hedley II, set in the mid-1980s in a Pittsburgh plagued by desperation, blight, and drive-by shootings, tells the story of a man and his community struggling to reconcile with the past and build for the future.

And in the final portion of the show, we’ll learn about Mozart’s most powerful opera, Don Giovanni at Portland Opera.  Don Giovanniopens November 2 at Keller Auditorium with additional performances November 4 pm, 8, 10, 2012.  Tickets begin at $25.

New York City Opera’s Don Giovanni (2009), Photo: © Carol Rosegg

The hero of Mozart and Da Ponte’s Don Giovanni has shocked, outraged and fascinated audiences since his first sighting in Prague a couple hundred years ago. Suave and maniacal, he is a seducer and murderer who answers to nothing but his drives and desires.

Portland Opera’s production, originally created for New York City Opera in 2009 by Christopher Alden, was praised by The New York Timesas “dark, erotic and vividly theatrical . . . striking, insightful.”  Alden will restage his popular work here, unearthing the heart of this timeless, disturbing tale in a new production at Portland Opera.

Dmae talks with two young opera artists, Matthew Grill and Lindsay Ohse who also sings a little live! These two artists are understudying crucial roles and have interesting insight as they observe and study rehearsals each day.

Matt Grill & Lindsay Ohs, Portland Opera

You can hear Stage & Studio on:

(left to right) Zoe Rudman, Ed Lyons &Nurys Herrera in Miracle’s world premiere of RAÍZ,Photo by Russell J. Young

Dmae Roberts talks about Miracle’s World Premiere of Raiz with Olga Sanchez and actress Maria Sanchez. Portland’s long-running Dia de los muertos celebration features a world premiere play about a cabal of Aztec gods, a young clown and his partner. With music and dance,  the play goes back in time and interweaves the roots of pre-Hispanic history and traditions with musings on life and death. We’ll also get highlights of the new Miracle Theatre season.

RAÍZ – A Celebration of the Day of the Dead is directed by Arturo Martinini. Performances run Oct. 19-Nov. 11, 2012 Thursday, Oct. 18, 7:30 p.m., Preview,  Friday, Oct. 19, 8 p.m., Opening Night with complimentary reception catered by La Bonita restaurant.

Showtimes are Thursdays at 7:30 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays at 8 p.m. Sundays at 2 p.m. All shows are atMilagro Theatre, 525 SE Stark Street, Portland, Oregon 97214.

Tickets: $15 – $30; discounts for students, seniors, groups of 15+ and advance purchases. Tickets can be purchased from www.milagro.org or 503-236-7253 or www.milagro.org

Danny Wolohan and William Salyers. Photo by Patrick Weishampel

Then at 11:30am we’ll hear from Bill Rauch, artistic director of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. We’ll hear about the 2013 opening weekend. Dmae talked with Rauch in Portland when he was here to direct the world premiere of The Body Of An American by award-winning playwright Dan O’Brien at Portland Center Stage.

When O’Brien was moved to contact war photographer Paul Watson about his book Where War Lives, the two began a correspondence eventually leading to a dramatic meeting in the Canadian Arctic. Hear this amazing story of a friendship and the war experiences that haunted them.

Portland Center Stage’s world premiere production of The Body of an American by Dan O’Brien runs Tuesday through Sunday through November 11, 2012. Tickets start at $39, with discounts available for students and those under 25.  Rush tickets are $20. In his first production at PCS, Oregon Shakespeare Festival Artistic Director Bill Rauch is directing this riveting world premiere.

Show times are 7:30 p.m. Tuesday through Sunday, with 2 p.m. matinees on Sundays and select Saturdays and matinees at noon on Thursdays. See the show calendar at www.pcs.org/body for the complete performance schedule. Tickets can be purchased online at www.pcs.org, by phone at 503.445.3700 or by visiting the box office located at 128 NW Eleventh Avenue.

Byron Wong of the Thymos organization of Oregon will tell us about their new anthology Where Are You From?: An Anthology of Asian American Writing. Co-edited by Valerie Katagiri and Larry Yu, Where Are You From? is a collection of personal essays, fiction, poetry, and visual arts created by established artists and emerging voices in the Asian American community.

Inspired by the all-too-common question asked of Asian Americans from “fresh off the boat” immigrants to multigenerational native born citizens, Where Are You From? explores the diverse geographies of Asian American experience from the personal to the political and all points between.

Contributors include former Oregon Poet Laureate Lawson Inada; writings by documentary filmmaker Curtis Choy and popular authors Andrew Lam and Matthew Salesses; a critical look at the suicide of Iris Chang by Professor Darrell Hamamoto; an interview with Iris Chang’s mother, Ying-Ying Chang; poems and stories by Hawaiian “Pidgin Guerrilla” Lee Tonouchi; Dmae Roberts’ personal reflections about her brother and hoarding; Nicholas Hartlep’s autobiographical essay about his experiences as a transracial adoptee in the US; Roberta May Wong’s provocative art installations about identity and belonging; companion essays by Simon Tam and Ben Efsanem debating the politics of “reclaiming” racist epithets.

Thymos will be hosting a launch party for the anthology that is free and open to the public:

Where Are You From?: An Anthology of Asian American Writing! 
October 22nd at 5:30-8:00 PM located at Dragonwell Bistro, 735 SW First Avenue, Portland, OR 97204. (Located on the corner of SW 1st & Yamhill,  next to Yamhill District Max Station)

RSVP to Byron Wong (naru_hodo@yahoo.com) by October 19, 2012.

For questions and other information, contact: Thymosbook@gmail.com. Or visit at http://thymos.org.

Where Are You From? is available for purchase from Amazon.com as either an eBook ($9.99) or in paperback ($16).

Street Roots Vendor Willie Bradford

Up first, producer Tali Singer brings us a feature story about Street Roots, a nonprofit newspaper addressing homelessness and poverty in Portland.

The paper gives opportunities to the unhoused community to write as we well as work as as vendors, preventing homelessness for more than 250 people each year.

Street Roots’ mission is to be a catalyst for individual and social change. We’ll go out with vendors as they sell the paper  on street corners and we’ll hear from Israel Bayer, the executive director of Street Roots.

Then we’ll hear a piece from producer Sarika Mehta in her first piece for Stage & Studio. It’s about Colored Pencils, a grassroots arts group created by Polo Catalani and Nim Xuto.

Hmong dancers and mom prepping for performance. Photo: Richard Jensen

Colored Pencils started off as small community events featuring immigrant artists and has grown to be a leader in promoting tolerance, understanding and cultural diversity in Portland through events that draw 100 or more people each month.

Drummer Master Mashud. Photo: Richard Jensen

We’ll experience once recent event in downtown Portland’s Director Park and hear from the founders about their efforts to promote diversity.

Mehta also interviewed urban studies scholar Caleb Rosado who talks about the importance of an organization like Colored Pencils and what has made Oregon historically a mostly white state.

And finally, Dmae Roberts reports on an outdoor mural in Corvallis, Oregon that drew international attention in the usually quiet college town of about 55,000 people.

David Lin in front of his mural. Photo: Richard Jensen

Recently, Corvallis’ city government found itself explaining democracy and freedom of speech to Chinese government officials who found the 10 x 100 foot mural disturbing.

On the right side are pastoral scenes of Taiwan. Nearby lanterns float to the sky with messages of independence written in Chinese.  On the left side of the mural, a graphic image of self-immolation by Tibetan monks.

Corvallis Mayor Julie Manning. Photo: Richard Jensen

The mural was commissioned by David Lin, a Taiwanese-American businessman who wanted to show his concern for Tibet and Taiwan indendence.  But Chinese diplomats complained and flew to Corvallis to get Mayor Julie Manning to remove the mural.

Hear the feature story that aired on PRI’s The World. And check out the photos of the mural below.

‘Making Change’ is a year-long series funded by the Regional Arts and Culture Council and individual donors including June Arima & John Schumann Fund of the Equity Foundation.

‘Making Change’ is a series about the intersection of creativity and social change. These features and specials have been airing throughout the year. Find out how you can support ‘Making Change.’

Every autumn, Portland Taiko brings out its biggest drums. Making Waves 2012 features the premiere of four new works from four Portland Taiko artists: Dan Chin, Karen Tingey, Toru Watanabe, and Portland Taiko Artistic Director Michelle Fujii Dan Chin’s untitled piece, Karen Tingey’s “Sunny” (working title), Toru Watanabe’s “GozuMezu”, and a collaborative piece by Watanabe and Fujii called “Poking the Stars.”

Toru Watanabe & Michelle Fujii, Photo: Rich Iwasaki

These artists will reveal different inspirations and processes that shape new work in the taiko art form.

Tingey’s premier will be an ode to her late mother. Watanabe’s composition takes its name from the legendary guardians of the underworld. Chin debuts his first new work inspired by sounds and rhythms from everyday life.

Hear music from the Northwest’s premiere Asian American performing arts group and find out what it takes to create new Taiko pieces.

We hear about how Fujii and Watanabe met in Japan. Fujii’s also remembers Obo Addy, the famed Ghanian drummer who recently passed away. Plus two live Taiko songs in the studio.

Michelle Fujii & Toru Watanabe

Portland Taiko presents Making Waves 2012.
Performances are Saturday September 29th at 8:00 pm and Sunday September 30th at 2:00 pm.

All shows are at Lincoln Performance Hall, Portland State University located at 1620 SW Park Ave.
Tickets are $15- $25, available through PSU Box Office and Ticketmaster outlets.

For more information and for group tickets (10+), call (503) 288-2456 or email info@portlandtaiko.org.

Founded in 1994, Portland Taiko was the first professional taiko (Japanese drum performance) ensemble in the Pacific Northwest. They have been a strong artistic presence in Portland and beyond for eighteen years. Portland Taiko pushes the boundaries of taiko expression by integrating contemporary sound, modern and folkdance movement, and world music with traditional taiko rhythms.

Artistic Director Michelle Fujii and Managing Director Robin Mullins lead the company which performs for over 50,000 people locally and nationally in concerts, community performances, and tour engagements each year.  Portland Taiko also offers studio classes, school programs, and community educational work to students of all ages.

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Jessica Jarratt Miller

The Creative Advocacy Network is sponsoring Ballot Measure 26-146 in November for an arts tax of $35 per Portland wage earner above the federal poverty line. The plan is to raise $12 million a year to hire arts teachers in Portland elementary schools and to give the Regional Arts and Culture Council funding to disperse for arts access to school-age children.

What is the impact for Portland youth? How will the revenue be administered? What’s the affect for low-incomeand retired or fixed-income individuals? What is the challenge in passing this measure at the time of high unemployment and in competition with libraries and school funding measures? And why have we come to this all-time low point with arts education in the schools?

Background: For the last three years, CAN has conducted research on the steep declines of arts education access for Portland’s elementary and secondary school age children. What they  found is that in the last five years, Parkrose and Centennial School Districts have cut their art and music teaching staff by half. Portland Public Schools has dropped all arts instruction in 22 schools in just two years.

When compared with other major cities in the country, Portland ranks at an all-time low for arts education. A U.S. Department of Education report in April showed :

• In 2011, 18% of Portland elementary schools provide art instruction compared to 83% nationally.
• 58% of Portland elementary schools provide music instruction compared to 94% nationally.
• 28% of all Portland schools provide no arts instruction of any kind including music, drama, dance or visual arts, compared to 3% of schools nationally.
• 11,596 Portland children attending schools do not have any art, dance, drama, or music instruction.

Jessica Jarratt Miller joined the Creative Advocacy Network with 18 years of experience as a fundraiser and non-profit leader.  Through the years, Jessica has structured and grown non-profit organizations, established successful public/private partnerships and launched vital new programs in Oregon, Washington, California and Washington D.C.  She has also secured more than $35 million in funding for education, arts and culture, the environment, social services and civil rights.

What inspires one to become a poet? How do learn as much from teaching as being taught? Is all creative writing political or personal? Listen to this engaging talk about the craft of writing and hear Arcana read her poems.  (Re-broadcast Sat 9/15 at 11am on KZME 107.1 FM)

Judith Arcana

(Judith Arcana, left. Photo by Barbara Gundle)

Arcana’s newest published collection, The Parachute Jump Effect, is a chapbook of poems. Her other books include Grace Paley’s Life Stories, 4th Period English and Every Mother’s Son. Find out more about her writing at JudithArcana.com.

A longtime teacher of literature, writing and women’s studies, Arcana has a PhD in Literature, an MA in Women’s Studies, an Urban Preceptorship in Preventive Medicine and a BA in English. She’s taught in high schools, colleges, libraries, living rooms and other places, including the Parents School, Women’s Liberation School, Illinois State Women’s Reformatory and Washington County Jail in Oregon.

Excerpt of  ”We Understand That Sky

Readings:

September 19th at 7pm – reading from new work in progress - the Maude poems, a project
supported by a grant from RACC at  St Johns Booksellers. 8622 N Lombard in Portland.

September 20th at 7pm – reading from THE PARACHUTE JUMP EFFECT
and other recent work Writing Pearls at Pop Culture, 1929 Main St.in Vancouver, Washington

September 29th at 7pm – Judith Arcana and Penelope Scambly Schott,reading together: BARDS & BREAD
at Fleur de Lis Bakery/Cafe, savory small plates + drinks for purchaaw at 3930 NE Hancock in Portland.

October 2, 2012 at 7pm -  reading from new work - the Maude poems, a project at Broadway Books. 1714 NE Broadway in Portland.

Claudia Meza: SonicCityPDX

Claudia Meza created an interactive sound installation at the White Box at the University of Oregon in Portland. Visitors can start and stop audiotapes on a series of hanging cassette players, looping and layering the myriad soundscapes.

Meza also created Listening To Space: Sonic City PDX. An audio tour running SEPT 6–16, Meza worked with 30 local musicians, composers, and sound artists. With QR codes and online maps, audiences are directed to sites and sounds, culminating in a live, outdoor concert.

Legendary musician and artist Laurie Anderson performs Dirtday!, the third and final of her groundbreaking solo story works on Sept. 16. With wit and candor, Anderson engages with politics of the Occupy movement, theories of evolution, families, history, and animals in a collection of songs and stories.

Angela Mattox & Claudia Meza-TBA Festival

TBA returning artists include Faustin Linyekula, Gob Squad, and Miguel Gutierrez,as well as the first local interractive projects by Big Art Group, chelftisch, Lagartijas Tiradas al Sol, and Nora Chipaumire.

The Festival features U.S. artist and international artists from  Mexico, Japan, Croatia and Serbia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Germany and Zimbabwe.

For more info and a calendar of events and performances, visit the TBA website.

Or call 503.242.1419. Check out summary of artists below…

Here are some highlights from TBA:12:

BIG ART GROUP, THE PEOPLE—PORTLAND THEATER/VIDEO, US (SEPT 6­–8)

With their unmistakable brand of transgressive internet-age aesthetics, Big Art Group broaches themes of democracy, justice, and community in an outdoor spectacle of theater and large-scale video projection with a cross-section of Portlanders.

ANT HAMPTON & TIM ETCHELLS, THE QUIET VOLUME. THEATER, UK [US PREMIER] (SEPT 6­–16)

A self-generated ‘automatic’ performance for two audience members/participants taking cues from headphones. They follow an unlikely path through a pile of books, as outlined by “autoteatro” pioneer Ant Hampton, and artist/writer Tim Etchells.

LAGARTIJAS TIRADAS AL SOL, EL RUMOR DEL INCENDIO (SEPT 7-9). ASALTO AL AGUA TRANSPARENTE (SEPT 10–12)

Lagartijas Tiradas al Sol, El Rumor del Incendio

The young Mexican theater collective presents El Rumor del Incendio, exploring the history of their radical revolutionary forebears in 60s Mexico. Asalto al Agua Transparente explores the stark water issues of Lake Texcoco from the Aztec founding of Tenochitlan.

MIGUEL GUTIERREZ, HEAVENS WHAT HAVE I DONE. DANCE, US (SEPT 7–9)

Gutierrez weaves a rambling and comic monologue that unspools into a bold and ferocious dance.

NORA CHIPAUMIRE, MIRIAM. DANCE, ZIMBABWE/US [WORLD PREMIER] (SEPT 7–8)

In MIRIAM, Zimbabwe-born, New York-based choreographer Nora Chipaumire creates a deeply personal dance featuring herself and dancer Okwui Okpokwasili. MIRIAM explores the tensions that women face between public expectations and private desires and the perfection and sacrifice of the feminine ideal.

ANDREW DICKSON, LIFE COACH. PERFORMANCE, US (SEPT 8–9, 15­–16)

Andrew Dickson offers hour-long life coaching sessions to select festival-goers. In a break from traditional coaching, an audience will be invited to observe, offer support, and reflect on their own journey while the one-on-one dialogue happens on stage.

Kota Yamazaki/ Fluid Hug-Hug

KOTA YAMAZAKI/FLUID HUG-HUG, (GLOWING). DANCE, JAPAN (SEPT 9)

Famed butoh choreographer Kota Yamazaki has collaborated with six dancers from Japan, Senegal, Ethiopia, and the US on a new performance that blends traditional and avant-garde forms.

PERFORATIONS: NEW PERFORMANCE FROM THE BALKANS. PERFORMANCE, CROATIA/SERBIA (SEPT 10–11)

Writer and multimedia artist Biljana Kosmogina, performer Petra, and experimental music duo East Rodeo explore the contemporary issues of Balkan life and reveal the latest generation of artists from the region.

KEITH HENNESSY, TURBULENCE (A DANCE ABOUT THE ECONOMY). DANCE, US [WORLD PREMIER] (SEPT 12–15)

Bay Area choreographer Keith Hennessy gathers an international ensemble cast to respond to the global economic crisis at the level of the dancing body, offering new movements, images, and strategies that explore failure as practice, crisis as movement, and queer as tactic.

SAM GREEN & YO LA TENGO, THE LOVE SONG OF R. BUCKMINSTER FULLER. FILM/MUSIC, US (SEPT 12)

A “live documentary” from filmmaker Sam Green exploring futurist, architect, engineer/inventor Buckminster Fuller’s utopian vision of radical social change through design. With a live score from experimental indie band Yo La Tengo, the film draws inspiration from old travelogues, the Benshi tradition, and internet TEDtalks.

GOB SQUAD, GOB’S SQUAD’S KITCHEN — YOU’VE NEVER HAD IT SO GOOD. THEATER/FILM, GERMANY/UK (SEPT 13­–15)

Gob Squad Prater der Volksbuehne mit “Kitchen

Gob Squad takes a trip back to the underground cinemas of New York to re-create Andy Warhol’s Kitchen. Live actors cross in and out of the films and audience.

FAUSTIN LINYEKULA, LE CARGO. DANCE, DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF THE CONGO [US PREMIER] (SEPT 13–15)

Legacy, forgetting, and memory form a confluence of forces in the work of choreographer Faustin Linyekula, whose performances are indelibly etched by the experiences of his home in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

CHELFITSCH, HOT PEPPER, AIR CONDITIONER, AND THE FAREWELL SPEECH
THEATER, JAPAN (SEPT 14–15)

Three vignettes track the absurd and mundane stories of a group of office employees in this stylized performance. The company references the social and cultural characteristics of today’s Japan, not least of Tokyo.

VOICES AND ECHOES FROM JAPAN. MUSIC, JAPAN (SEPT 16)

Gozo Yoshimasu

Acclaimed artist and musician Aki Onda has organized a rare concert from some of the pioneering forces of Japan’s avant-garde sound and music scene. Sound artist Akio Suzuki, experimental poet Gôzô Yoshimasu, and improvisatory guitarist/turntablist Otomo Yoshihide present a range of performances.

VISUAL ART AT THE TBA FESTIVAL: End Things

Visual Art Curator Kristan Kennedy gathered together a group of international artists for a series of projects and residencies that reflect on “things”—why we make them, why we keep them, and their place in our lives.

ALEX CECCHETTI, SUMMER IS NOT THE PRIZE OF WINTER, ITALY. 

Working across performance, literature, painting, video, sculpture, and choreography, Cecchetti constructs narratives through chance and accident and pre-considered rules and guides. In this “performance relay,” the artist delivers a poetic discourse through words, objects, and drawings.

ISABELLE CORNARO, FRANCE

Isabelle Cornaro carries her content between mediums, representing the same ideas through different forms. For this site-specific installation, Cornaro will create a series of painted murals based on her film-work.

MO RITTER, US

Mo Ritter

Ritter boldly resists the anti-object impulse of our digital age, instead making sculptural objects that highlight the tensions between stillness/animation. Pulling clay directly from the earth from sites around Oregon.

ERIKA VOGT, US

Casting objects from both found industrial molds and forms of her own making, Vogt will construct an interactive installation of sculptures suspended and manipulated by ceiling-mounted pulleys.

VAN BRUMMELEN & DE HAAN, MONUMENT TO ANOTHER MAN’S FATHERLAND,NETHERLANDS. CO-PRESENTED WITH CINEMA PROJECT

Dutch duo Lonnie van Brummelen and Siebren de Haan pursue the complex work of artistic restoration and repatriation in Monument to Another Man’s Fatherland (I), a 35mm black and white film that slowly tracks the length of the Turkish Pergamon frieze in Berlin.

VENUS X. MUSIC, US (SEPT 6)

The force behind New York City’s epic GHE20G0TH1K parties, DJ Venus X will mash-up a global mix of chopped and screwed pop songs, club mixes, political newscasts, and big dance beats.

CHRISTEENE. MUSIC, US (SEPT 7)

Created by performance artist Paul Soileau, CHRISTEENE is a shameless and sexually infused sewer of live rap and RnB, who challenges the American obsession with charm and grace.

TEN TINY DANCES. DANCE, INTERNATIONAL (SEPT 8)

The audience favorite returns with a lineup of 10 performers. Confined to a 4×4 foot stage, the dancers and artists of Ten Tiny Dances devise new material within tight constraints. Featuring Miguel Gutierrez, Okwui Okpokwasili, Keith Hennessy, Carlos Gonzalez, Taka Yamamoto, Linda K Johnson, Renee Sills, and Nicole Olson.

Laura Heit

LAURA HEIT AND DAVID COMMANDER. TOY THEATER, US  (SEPT 9)

Two clever puppeteers play out small-scale dramas live and projected on-screen. Laura Heit performs matchbox micro-plays with hand-cranked action and pop-up engineering. David Commander presents In Flight, a satiric performance questioning airplanes and news media.

BRAINSTORM/SAHEL SOUNDS. MUSIC, INTERNATIONAL (SEPT 10)

Art-pop group BRAINSTORM and music label Sahel Sounds have curated a multimedia night of musical performances, Skype video concerts from western Africa, YouTube remixes, and live cellphone feeds. Featuring performances by local musicians Jason Urick, and Iftin Band.

HOLLYWOOD THEATRE PRESENTS: FUTURE CINEMA (SEPT 11)

Hollywood Theatre brings Terrifying Women (“The Vagina Monologues on nitrous oxide”) by artists including Alicia McDaid, Kathleen Keogh, Tanya Smith, Diana Joy; Director Weston Currie premieres a new film with a live score by Liz Harris (Grouper); and Wolf Choir leads a raucous round of B Movie Bingo with Gary Busey’s BULLETPROOF.

PARENTHETICAL GIRLS, ET AL.. MUSIC/DANCE, US (SEPT 12)

Parenthetical Girls presents an evening of performances by  musical guests Golden Retriever, Classical Revolution PDX performing compositions by Jherek Bischof and a solo dance by choreographer Allie Hankins.

ALEXIS BLAIR PENNEY. MUSIC, US (SEPT 13)

New York-based singer, performer, DJ/personality Alexis Blair Penney travels an emotional journey in song, from childhood to first love to romantic dissolution to ecstatic hope and empowerment.

THU TRAN, THE YES AND NO OF BLACK LIGHT FOOD. PERFORMANCE/FOOD, US (SEPT 14)

Yes and No of Blacklight Food

Host/creator of  TV show FOOD PARTY, Thu Tran presents her own take on the classic cooking show. For nearly two months, Tran recorded the effects of black light on almost everything she ate.

FADE TO MIND. MUSIC, US (SEPT 15)

A record label and a movement, a series of club nights and cooperative projects in music, visual art, video, and apparel, Fade to Mind is an LA-based DJ collective changing the global bass music scene. DJ/Producers Kingdom, Total Freedom, and Massacooramaan throws a closing night TBA party.

Dmae finds out how the founders of Universes met at Bard College and started working in poetry clubs before becoming a theatre group. They talk about their unique style of theatre and the process of creating the play as well as the legacy of the Black Panters and Young Lords in their own neighborhoods.

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Steven Sapp, Mildred Ruiz Sapp & William Ruiz of ‘Universes’ Photo: Richard Jensen

Party People Mini-Review: 

There are few times in theatre where you can witness a new genre coming alive before your eyes. Party People is one of those times.

Commissioned in 2009 for American Revolutions: the United States History Cycle, Universes spent three years working on this project and interviewed more than 20 of the veterans of the Black Panthers and the Young Lords, whose social movements during that period left a complicated legacy.

Party People makes for an unflinching look from a variety of perspectives both the heroic efforts of party members to enact social programs to help the impoverished in their communities and the violence that erupted throughout the tumultuous period during the civil rights era.

The play begins with an epic musical number infused with power and passion with Universes’ Mildred Ruiz-Sapp’s stunning vocals and the charged poetry of Steven Sapp and William Ruiz.

Part collage, poetry, live concert with dazzling light shows and video montages, Party People is grounded by a solid story line. The main action takes place in an art installation  about the very history the play examines. As young artists go through tech rehearsals for the art opening, Black Panther and Young Lords members who were interviewed for the ‘show’ recall their memories and come to grips with their past. In this artshow within an artshow, Party People is an amazing internal look at this time period as well as the responsibilities of artists when creating art based on real people and history.

Jimmy (William Ruiz, a.k.a. Ninja) as Donna (Robynn Rodriguez) awaits. Photo by Jenny Graham.

The dramatic turning point for the play comes when the veterans of political change interact with each other at the art installation. Secrets are revealed and old wounds open up again as they face friends, allies and deep-seated conflicts. The stellar OSF cast led by Universes offers OSF actors a chance to play cultural roles that expand their versatility. It’s novel to hear passionate singing and see hip hop moves by actors with strong classical training.

Party People defies genre and categorization. All one needs to know is that something electric and monumental came alive when OSF and Universes staged this play. There is so much potential for the play to tour in other parts of the country so this important and often overlooked time period isn’t forgotten nor the lives that shaped it.

Party People runs through November 3rd in OSF’s New Theatre and is directed by Liesl Tommy, who last directed the critically acclaimed play Ruined at OSF in 2010. For  more info or tickets visit: OSFAshland.org.  Or call 541-482-4331 or 800-219-8161.

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Background from OSF: “The Black Panther Party was a revolutionary leftist African-American organization active from 1966 to 1982 and was founded on the principles outlined in their Ten-Point Program: “Land, Bread, Housing, Education, Clothing, Justice and Peace.” They instituted a number of social programs to alleviate poverty and improve health among inner city black communities.

Malik (Christopher Livingston) & Blue (G. Valmont Thomas) greet one another. Photo by Jenny Graham.

Likewise, the Young Lords, a Puerto Rican nationalist group founded as a human rights movement in 1968, championed health care, education and tenants’ rights for Latinos. J. Edgar Hoover saw the organized activity of these groups as a threat to the nation’s internal security, and had them and other revolutionary movements infiltrated by his FBI Counterintelligence Program. These agents escalated the growing distrust and violence in the parties, and in time, the community and political achievements of the Black Panther Party and the Young Lords have been overshadowed by the often confrontational and militant tactics.”

UNIVERSES spent months traveling the country speaking with members of the two organizations and listening to their recollections, inspiring a theatrical re-imagining of this significant period in American history. The interweaving of the stories moves us to reconsider these movements, the impetus for their formation, and work toward a better future for all Americans.”

Anne Sorce & Camille Cettina of Push Leg

Nighthawks is the workshop production of an original performance piece inspired by the works of Edward Hopper August 26 & 27 – Two Nights Only!  7:30pm at the Portland Actors’ Conservatory located at 1436 SW Montgomery Street in Portland, OR 97201.

Tickets: $5-10 sliding scale, tickets at the door (cash or check only)
For reservations email: pushleg@gmail.com
For more information go to www.pushleg.com

About NIGHTHAWKS

Nighthawks Sneak Peek at JAW
Photo Credit: Stephen A. Miller

The kinetic vitality of invention and imagination of a physical-theater based ensemble
collides with Edward Hopper’s world of small-town Americana longing and solitude to
create a landscape teaming with life, longing, and the American Dream. Nighthawks
paints a picture both intimate and epic, as characters dare to reach beyond the confines
of their every day.

THE ENSEMBLE: Catherine Egan, Keyon Gaskin, Darren McCarthy, Ben Plont, Anne Sorce & Camille Cettina, assistant directed by Sascha Blocker and designed in collaboration with Jenny Ampersand (costumes) and Bill Tripp (set).

ABOUT PUSH LEG:

Push Leg is helmed performer/creators Camille Cettina and Anne Sorce. As a team. Camille and Anne have over 20 years of professional experience as performers, creators of new work, and producers. They trained, respectively, with renowned theater artists at the London International School of Performing Arts and the Ecole Jacques Lecoq in Paris.

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Far Away by Caryl Churchill Directed by Samantha Van Der Merwe

Portland-based Lyrical Strings Duo (Lucia Conrad on violin and Stephen Osserman on classical guitar) perform works from their debut album Evening Songs. Their CD features a variety of 19th and 20 century music including Chopin, Mendelssohn, Faure, Ponce and Kreisler.

Their show also presents acclaimed cellist/singer Ashia Grzesik to open the evening.

Lucia Conrad & Stephen Osserman

Time and Location: August 23rd, 8pm at the Secret Society, 116 NE Russell St., Portland, OR

Tickets: $12 including copy of CD ($7 without CD).

For more info and CD, visit their site at: LyricalStringsDuo.com/EveningSongs/

They perform two beautiful songs live! More highlights from the show:

They both find Portland’s indy music scene to allow them outside the box music opportunities…

Lucia: ”Here I can do film music, soundtracks for movies, unusual things…”

Stephen: “Not a lot venues and space for those kind of activities back east but here now…it seems like every week there’s a new interesting opportunity coming up.”

Lucia’s biggest challenge was to learn to improvise: “Because we are glued to the page. This is how we were trained. Since I was five, I’ve had a page in front of me.”

Lucia’s advice to young musicians: “Be professional. This is a small community and people will know if you’re not being professional especially young people. Be serious about your art.”

Listen this live concert and interview as they push the envelope in Classical music!

Lucia Conrad

About the duo

Lucia and Stephen met through Classical Revolution PDX. In 2010 they formed the Lyrical Strings Duo, and they’ve been taking their music to the churches, parks, halls, and living rooms of the Northwest ever since. Lucia was born and raised in Czech Republic and is a graduate of the Prague Conservatory. She has appeared in both the United States and Europe as a soloist and chamber musician. Now based in Portland, she is the Concertmaster of the Willamette Falls Symphony, Assistant Concertmaster of the Salem Chamber Orchestra and the first violinist in many other regional orchestras and chamber groups.

Stephen Osserman

For over a decade Stephen has worked to take classical guitar to new places. As a student at the Yale School of Music – where he earned a Masters of Music in Guitar Performance – he collaborated with a wide array of artists, combining traditional guitar repertoire with dance, poetry, and theater. Recently he has focused on arranging Romantic Era works for the duo, many of which they plan to publish in 2013.

Evening Songs includes many of these arrangements. With a foundation of three Chopin Nocturnes, the album is a dark fantasia that weaves together a set of Mendelssohn’s Songs Without Words, Ponce’s Mexican folk-inspired Estrellita, Kreisler’s nostalgic gypsy-infused La Gitana, introspective works by Satie, and more.

About Classical Revolution PDX

Classical Revolution PDX, a non-profit organization founded in 2007, has grown to a network of over two hundred musicians with a shared desire to make classical music a part of people’s daily lives and chamber music a vibrant part of Portland’s artistic community.

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You can hear Stage & Studio on:

Heart of Glass,Herzog’s 1976 film has been described as one of the strangest narrative films in history in which Herzog hypnotized all the actors. The film has also been hailed as an early Herzog masterpiece. Without a doubt the filming was an adventure and challenged the way many films have been done since.

Alan Greenberg

Set in 18th century Bavaria in a glass blowing factory, the film features breathtaking landscapes and actors who appear to moving and talking in a trance-like state.

Greenberg, a journalist at the time, was 26 when he was invited to work with Herzog on Heart of Glass. He travelled throughout Europe with Herzog scouting locations and taking part in the filming, oftentimes in great physical danger.

More than 30 years later, Greenberg intercuts personal narrative with pages from the screenplay to make a fascinating look into the creative process of a young genius called Wernor Herzog.

Greenberg talks about Every Night the Trees Disappear but also shares his journey as a screenwriter who has worked on screenplays including Martin Scorsese’s Cape Fear and Bernardo Bertolucci’s 1900.

We also find out about Greenberg’s newest published screenplay, Love in Vain, about the blues artist Robert Johnson that’s being made into a film after 30 years. Join us for this engaging talk with a master writer!

Featured film music is from ‘Heart of Glass’ by Herzog’s composer, Popol Vuh.

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Reviews of Greenberg’s book:

Scene being filmed of ‘Heart of Glass’

You can hear Stage & Studio on:

Tracy J, Prince

With more than 200 archival photos , Portland’s Goose Hollow. Prince provides answers on the origin of the Goose Hollow name, how Tanner Creek Gulch was filled and has created a revealing historical look at an area that’s often forgotten and disregarded.

Portland’s Goose Hollow tells stories of the Great Plank Road, City Park’s slow-moving landslide and famous residents such as Daniel Lownsdale, C. E. S. Wood, Dr. Marie Equi, John Reed, and Bud Clark. Historic institutions such as Civic Stadium, Multnomah Athletic Club, Lincoln High School and Washington Park.

More about the book: One of Portland’s oldest neighborhoods, Goose Hollow is steps from downtown and beloved for its quirky character, historic homes, spectacular views and walkability.

Chinook woman and baby. Native American women once sold kindling & wild berries to Portlanders. Photo: taken by Lily E. White (1902)(c) Library of Congress

More than a century ago, the actual “hollow” was dramatically altered when the meandering Tanner Creek, in a deep gulch with several trestle bridge crossings, was diverted underground and infilled.

The creek’s presence is still felt in the ravine carved through the Tualatin Mountains (spanned by the Vista Bridge) and in the neighborhood’s identity.

 Read a review of Portland’s Goose Hollow from the Willamette Week. 

Learn about what you didn’t know about Goose Hollow!

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More about the author:

Tracy J. Prince, Ph.D. lives in Goose Hollow and is a Scholar-in-Residence at Portland State University’s Portland Center for Public Humanities. By interviewing numerous Portland families and conducting archival research at the Oregonian, City of Portland, and the Oregon Historical Society, Prince uncovered the little-known history of this charming neighborhood.

(1880) Portlander's relied on Chinese farmers in Goose Hollow. Photo: Oregon Historical Society

Prince first started researching the history of her neighborhood in 2009, when she was designing flags for the neighborhood and wanted to put a date of establishment on the flag.

She had so much fun digging around in her neighborhood’s history and felt that so much of it was completely unknown to Portland that she decided to keep researching.

She reports that she had a wonderful time exploring in archives, meeting postcard and antique photo collectors, and talking to old folks about the good ol’ days

(1960) Jayne Mansfield comes to ride Rose Festival Float. Photo: Oregon Historical Society.

Portland’s Goose Hollow is available at area bookstores, independent retailers, and online retailers, or through Arcadia Publishing at (888)-313-2665 or www.arcadiapublishing.com.

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Here’s a video extra! After the interview, Prince and her daughter Zadie showed me how they harmonize. Take  a look at this charming video of their impromptu performance..

You can hear Stage & Studio on:

]]> http://stagenstudio.com/2012/07/goose-hollow/feed/ 0 author,Books,hi,history,Northwest,Oregon,pdx,Portland,women,writers Hear about the history of one of Portland's oldest neighborhoods, Goose Hollow, just outside of downtown. Dmae talks with author Tracy J. Prince, Ph.D who has researched Goose Hollow's history in a new book filled with vintage photos. Hear about the history of one of Portland's oldest neighborhoods, Goose Hollow, just outside of downtown. Dmae talks with author Tracy J. Prince, Ph.D who has researched Goose Hollow's history in a new book filled with vintage photos. From forest to farmland to stadiums and schools, the story of Goose Hollow's development is a dramatic evolution. Learn the backstory of how it got its name and hear about all the famous residents and visitors. With more than 200 archival photos , Portland’s Goose Hollow. Prince provides answers on the origin of the Goose Hollow name, how Tanner Creek Gulch was filled and has created a revealing historical look at an area that's often forgotten and disregarded. Portland’s Goose Hollow tells stories of the Great Plank Road, City Park's slow-moving landslide and famous residents such as Daniel Lownsdale, C. E. S. Wood, Dr. Marie Equi, John Reed, and Bud Clark. Historic institutions such as Civic Stadium, Multnomah Athletic Club, Lincoln High School and Washington Park. More about the book: One of Portland's oldest neighborhoods, Goose Hollow is steps from downtown and beloved for its quirky character, historic homes, spectacular views and walkability. More than a century ago, the actual "hollow" was dramatically altered when the meandering Tanner Creek, in a deep gulch with several trestle bridge crossings, was diverted underground and infilled. The creek's presence is still felt in the ravine carved through the Tualatin Mountains (spanned by the Vista Bridge) and in the neighborhood's identity.  Read a review of Portland's Goose Hollow from the Willamette Week.  Learn about what you didn't know about Goose Hollow!   ____________________________________________________ More about the author: Tracy J. Prince, Ph.D. lives in Goose Hollow and is a Scholar-in-Residence at Portland State University's Portland Center for Public Humanities. By interviewing numerous Portland families and conducting archival research at the Oregonian, City of Portland, and the Oregon Historical Society, Prince uncovered the little-known history of this charming neighborhood. Prince first started researching the history of her neighborhood in 2009, when she was designing flags for the neighborhood and wanted to put a date of establishment on the flag. She had so much fun digging around in her neighborhood's history and felt that so much of it was completely unknown to Portland that she decided to keep researching. She reports that she had a wonderful time exploring in archives, meeting postcard and antique photo collectors, and talking to old folks about the good ol' days Portland’s Goose Hollow is available at area bookstores, independent retailers, and online retailers, or through Arcadia Publishing at (888)-313-2665 or www.arcadiapublishing.com. ________________________________________   Here's a video extra! After the interview, Prince and her daughter Zadie showed me how they harmonize. Take  a look at this charming video of their impromptu performance.. You can hear Stage & Studio on: the KBOO website and on 90.7FM live at 11am on Tuesdays Saturdays 11am on KZME, 107.1FM Don't want to miss a single episode? Subscribe to Stage & Studio On iTunes! And always on the official Stage & Studio website! Stage & Studio no http://stagenstudio.com/2012/07/season-of-lear/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=season-of-lear http://stagenstudio.com/2012/07/season-of-lear/#comments Sat, 07 Jul 2012 01:38:29 +0000 Dmae Roberts http://stagenstudio.com/?p=1276 More summer Shakespeare coverage with Portland Shakespeare Project’s Season of Lear shows. Dmae talks with artistic director Michael Mendelson and playwright C.S. Whitcomb about their collaboration of a new Lear adaptation to run in repertory with Shakespeare’s King Lear. (Re-broadcast 11am Sat 7/14 on KZME 107.1 FM) 

Dmae with C.S. Whitcomb & Michael Mendelson

This second season of Portland Shakespeare Project features the new play Lear’s Follies written by award winning Oregon playwright C.S. Whitcomb directed by Mendelson. Artists Repertory Theatre director Jon Kretzu directs a new staging of King Lear performed by a cast of six actors.

Dmae starts with a short audio quiz on King Lear at the top of the show! We also feature music by Rudolp Ortega, sound designer and composer for Lear’s Follies. Mendelson and Whitcom talk about the importance of Lear as baby boomers age during a time of economic downturn.  Whitcomb’s new adaption stays true to the plot of Shakespeare.

Tobias Anderson & Matt Smith. Photo: David Kinder

Set in a Virginia tobacco empire family in 1929, Whitcomb’s modern adaption of Lear’s Follies explores issues of pride, greed, friendship, devotion and the choices people make in their lives that keep them shackled emotionally to their past.

Music by Roscarrock and Fisherman’s Friends.

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A scene at Speakers Corner near Marble Arch, Hyde Park

First up, hear about a tradition of open public speaking and debate in Hyde Park in London.

Since 1872, Londoners can lawfully make speeches on Sunday to anyone who will listen. Speaker’s Corner is a tradition that still lives on encouraging public discourse and spirited social engagement.

Dmae walked around the park and recorded different speakers in May. Hear the original social media hub at Speaker’s Corner.

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Next, we’ll hear a Lloyd Edmonds tell his story. He’s a street musician who plays at Marble Arch at the entrance of Hyde Park.

Lloyd Edmonds at Hyde Park

Edmonds loves the blues and plays his guitar for passers-by. He tells us how the 2012 Olympics in London is making it difficult for street musicians.

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Then we go to Greenwich, England steeped in maritime history. The town once housed the royal palace but after a civil war, it fell into disrepair so the palace was rebuilt as the Royal Naval Hospital for Sailors.  It’s also the home of the Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance.

Dmae took a walk through the courtyard in the middle of all the rehearsal rooms and created a sound piece.

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Finally,  we travel to Port Isaac, Cornwall where the PBS show Doc Martin is filmed. There we meet the Fisherman’s Friends, a group of 10 men who grew up together in the same little village.

For more than 15, the Fisherman’s Friends have been singing sea shanties as a group in Port Isaac, Cornwall (pictured, top left)

Dmae with the Fisherman's Friends

During the summer, the ten men give free concerts in the old harbor drawing crowds of 3000 or more.

The picturesque village has been highlighted in films and TV shows—mostly recently the popular Doc Martin series. But the Fisherman’s Friends with their masterful harmonies and lively performances remain the heart of local culture.

They started singing sea chanties and Christmas carols to raise money for charity but soon became so popular they got a major recording contract and now have a busy touring schedule.

ThePlatt in the harbor of Port Isaac

Dmae talked with them at their ‘headquarters’ at the Golden Lion Pub in Port Isaac about what makes their style of singing unusual.

This story originally aired nationally.

You can hear it here on PRI”s The World and see a slideshow of photos by Richard Jensen.

And as an audio “extra” we hear from the Fisherman’s Friends about their love of the Cornish language and how it’s in danger of being forgotten. 

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You can hear Stage & Studio on:

Read testimonials from her recent seminars!

“There is so much to learn…even if you feel like a seasoned professional. Dmae’s seminar made me realize some of the fundamentals that I had forgotten and introduced me to new technology. I was really pleased that I got to spend the afternoon with her but I have a complaint…I wanted to stay longer!” Amanda, Artslandia 

“Now I feel like I have the basic tools and information to start doing some (more) interviews with family and possibly others. It was also great to get to use some of the different mics and equipment to get a feel for what it is like, and to view it on your monitor and see/hear the levels. It really increased my awareness for and appreciation of what goes into making a successful interview….” Jennifer M.

Dmae with Dixie Hutchinson, KNBA training residency

Dmae Roberts has 25 years of professional broadcast radio experience and has trained hundreds of students, mentees, national workshop and conference attendees. She has taught and led seminars at Linfield College, the Association of Independents in Radio, the National Federation of Community Broadcasters, the Center for Documentary Studies and Third Coast International Festival. She wrote a chapter for the Reality Radio book that includes writing from the top radio producers in the

Dmae has also successfully navigated the nonprofit world to fund her artistic projects and created an independent business as a freelance writer and producer. Read Dmae’s grantwriting advice ’10 Tips To A Winning Proposal” in FundingYourBliss.com. 

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How To Make Stunning Interviews - (COMPLETELY FULL!)

Saturday July 21st, 1-4pm – $65 (limited to 6 people)

Back by popular demand, Dmae  is offering her  interviewing and field recording seminar. She’s  interviewed more than 1000 people in the course of her career. She’s done one-on-one interviews as well as large groups at one time. The secret of a successful interview is to engage in a conversation that encourages you to listen and the interview subject to do most of the talking. How do you get people to open up and tell you their secrets? And how do you do this while holding a microphone and recording great sound?

In this small group seminar, Dmae leads you through the steps of a stunning interview that is professionally recorded. She’ll also advise you on low-cost professional recorders and mics. This seminar is perfect for audio producers, podcasters, oral historians and writers researching their next project.

Location: Dmae Roberts Studio, SE Portland.

Please email mediarites @ aol.com to register! 

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Funding Your Bliss Grantwriting-  (Filled!)

Sunday July 8th  OR Sunday, July 22nd 1-5pm – $100 (limited to 6 people)

Summer is generally grantwriting season. Get some help from Dmae  who has made a living producing and writing award-winning radio programs and stage plays.  The Funding Your Bliss Grantwriting seminar  highlights some of her experiences and offers helpful strategy in grantwriting to fund your own artistry. In this seminar, we’ll study what makes a successful grant proposal and how to pitch your projects to potential funders including how to create a successful kickstarter funding project.

This seminar includes one free critique of your project narrative (within 2 weeks of the seminar). Read more about Dmae’s grantwriting advice ’10 Tips To A Winning Proposal” in FundingYourBliss.com. 

Location: Dmae Roberts Studio, SE Portland.

Please email mediarites @ aol.com to register! 

Funding Your Bliss Testimonials!

Through Dmae’s consultation, Julie Sabatier changed the name of her radio program/podcast, developed a website to promote it and got her first funding.

“She worked closely with me as I completed my first successful grant application. Thanks to her good pointers and thoughtful insights, I received funding for two special episodes of my radio show/podcast Destination DIY from the Regional Arts and Culture Council in 2008.  Dmae Roberts has been an indispensable mentor to me as I continue to develop my professional radio career.”                              

                             Julie Sabatier, radio producer, Portland, OR  

Dmae helped Nancy Greenleesewith her first grant proposal.

“Dmae is the consummate trainer.  She taught me the basics of budgeting, made suggestions on the proposal, and encouraged me to think creatively.  My questions were answered promptly and with detail and she raised questions about the application that I didn’t even realize needed addressing.  Now that I’ve traveled down this road once, I have the skills to apply for other grants and believe I will succeed in securing funding.”         

                 Nancy Greenleese, freelance reporter based in Rome

Maria Esteves landed a grant from California Humanities for her film idea.  

“I was trying to get a grant for a film documentary I was producing with a friend. We really didn’t have a clue of what to do, how to start a grant proposal. It was the first time for both of us. We were so discouraged; the guidelines were so complicated. But with Dmae advice and guidance, we wrote it and finished it in time against all odds, and we got it! Without her help I don’t think we would have done it. And that first grant brought another one, and thanks to that we were able to finish the film.                                                     

              Maria Esteves, independent filmmaker, Los Angeles, CA   

***PLEASE EMAIL  FOR REGISTRATION INFORMATION. 

First up, director Butch Flowers tells us about Northwest Classical Theatre Company’s Measure For Measure opens Friday June 22^nd and runs through July 15 ^th (Thursday, Friday, and Saturday at 7:30pm Sunday at 2pm) at the Shoe Box Theater (2110 SE 10^th Avenue) in Portland. Flowers talks about his history with this company, why Measure for Measureis considered a ‘problem play’ and his personal love of Shakespeare.

Play synopsis: Measure For Measure focuses on Angelo, who is asked to rule by the Duke of Vienna (who pretends to leave town but instead dresses as a friar to observe the goings-on in his absence). Angelo is strict, moralistic, and unwavering in his decision-making; he arrests and condemns a young man (Claudio) for impregnating his lover before marriage.

Chris Porter & Bonnie Aguston NWCTC 'Measure For Measure' /Photo: Jason Maniccia

Isabella, Claudio’s sister, is about to enter a nunnery when her brother is arrested. When she hears of her brother’s arrest, she goes to Angelo to beg him for mercy. He refuses, but suggests that there might be some way to change his mind.

Butch Flowers, NWCTC

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Then Dmae goes to England, to the land of Shakespeare’s birth to play a feature piece about the Fisherman’s Friends in Port Isaac, Cornwall. This piece originally aired on PRI’s The World. 

For more than 15, the Fisherman’s Friends have been singing sea shanties as a group in Port Isaac, Cornwall. During the summer, the ten men give free concerts in the old harbor drawing crowds of 3000 or more.  The picturesque village has been highlighted in films and TV shows—mostly recently the popular Doc Martin series.

Dmae w/ Fisherman's Friends

But the Fisherman’s Friends with their masterful harmonies and lively performances remain the heart of local culture. With a 1.6 million dollar recording contract (1 million pounds – that’s according to the Guardian) , the group is gaining worldwide attention.

Dmae  visited with the singers at their favorite pub in Port Isaac and produced this story. See a slideshow of Port Isaac with photos by Richard Jensen!

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Next Dmae talks with Milepost 5′s Claire Willett and Post 5 Theatre’s Ty Boice about the Summer of Shakespeare Festival with numerous companies. Post 5 Theatre is also offering two productions of their own in the courtyard at Milespost 5.

Ty Boice & Claire Willett

A Midsummer Night’s Dream previews June 27th & 28^th and runs June 29th-July 20th at 7 p.m. Directed by Erica Terpening-Romeo & Caitlin Fisher-Draeger

Henry IV Part I, previews August 15th & 16th and runs August 17th – Sept 8th at 7 p.m.

Directed by Don Alder. Food and drink available onsite. Children welcome.

Performances are free of charge.  Donations are welcome. All performances take place in the Milepost 5 Courtyard (850 NE 81st Avenue at NE Oregon Street). Street parking only.

We’ll also hear about Milepost 5′s Summer of Shakespeare Festival. The Portland Free Shakespeare Festival Schedule (Free & Open To All Ages):

Post 5 show Summer 2011

Friday, July 20th
7 p.m. - A Midsummer Night’s Dream presented by Post5 Theatre

Saturday, July 21st 
Noon: As You Like It presented by Original Practice Shakespeare
3 PM: The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged) presented by Post5 Theatre
7 PM: Hamlet presented by Portland Actors’ Ensemble

Sunday, July 22nd 
11 AM: “Brunch With the Bard”, guest speakers TBD
2 PM: Anon and on and on presented by Brody Theatre
4 PM: ”Shakespeare in 2012,” a talkback with Post5 Artistic Director Ty Boice & Managing Director Orion Bradshaw
7 PM: Romeo & Juliet presented by Original Practice Shakespeare

Romeo & Juliet/ Post 5 show last summer

Friday, July 27th 
7 PM: Twelfth Night presented by Portland Actors’ Ensemble

Saturday, July 28th
12 PM: Sonnetscape presented by Fuse Theatre Ensemble
3 PM: Good Will presented by Northwest Classical Theatre Company
7 PM: Much Ado About Nothing presented by Willamette Shakespeare
10 PM: Closing Awards Ceremony & Festivities

Portland Actors Ensemble’s Shakespeare in the Parks series presents two free summer productions: The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, which will be performed over five weekends primarily at Lone Fir Cemetery in SE Portland, and Twelfth Night, or What You Will, which travels to metro-area parks over a seven-weekend run.

Kayla Lian (Ophelia) & Doug Reynolds (Hamlet) Portland Actors Ensemble's "Hamlet" at Lone Fir Cemetery through 7/14 at 7pm. Photo by iamrio.com.

Hamlet will run Thursday, Friday, and Saturday evenings at 7:00 pm from June 14 through July 14 . Bruce Hostetler directs the production. *ASL Interpreted Performances (July 7 performance of Hamlet and August 12 performance of Twelfth Night)

Directions to park locations are available at: www.portlandactors.org., All Shows are FREE Thursday, Friday & Saturday evenings, unless noted

Lone Fir Cemetery in SE Portland. Entrance located near SE 26th Ave and SE Washington Street
June 14, 15, 16, 21, 23, 28, 29, and 30, at 7:00 pm
July 5, 6, 7*, 12, 13** and 14, at 7:00 pm Performed just west of the Soldier’s Monument at the center of the cemetery. Please enter from SE 26th Ave. and stay on the paved areas.  For more information on the Lone Fir,  please visit Metro’s Historic pioneer cemeteries website at  www.oregonmetro.gov/cemeteries.

With special shows at:

Marylhurst University, June 22, at 6:30 pm
17600 Pacific Highway, Lake Oswego
On the Knight’s Green in front of the BP John Administration Bldg.

Meinig Memorial Park, Sandy, July 8, at 6:00 pm
39250 Pioneer Blvd, behind City Hall.

Portland Outdoor Shakespeare Festival, July 21, at 7:00 pm
Hosted by Post5 Theatre, 850 NE 81st Ave., Portland.

PAE’s Twelfth Night, or What You Will Directed by Avital Shira. All Shows are FREE
Saturday and Sunday afternoons, unless noted, plus Labor Day.

Maryhill Museum, July 21, at 3:00 pm
35 Maryhill Museum Drive, Goldendale, Washington
-near the Sculpture Garden.

Portland Outdoor Shakespeare Festival, July 27, at 7:00 pm
Hosted by Post5 Theatre, 850 NE 81st Ave., Portland.

Laurelhurst Park, July 28 and 29, at 3:00 pm
SE 35th Ave. and SE Oak St., near “picnic area F” in the center of the Park.

Columbia Park, Troutdale, August 4, at 6:00 pm
1900 SW Cherry Park Road, Troutdale.

Lynchwood Park, August 5, at 3:00 pm
SE Haig and SE 174th, between Division and Powell.

Marylhurst University, August 10, 6:30 pm
17600 Pacific Highway, Lake Oswego
On the Knight’s Green in front of the BP John Administration Bldg.

Washington Park, August 11 and 12*, at 3:00 pm
SW Washington Way, in the lower park, just North of  the Holocaust Memorial
(NOT at the amphitheater,) at site 2 on this map.

Gabriel Park, August 18 and 19, at 3:00 pm
SW 45th Ave and SW Nevada Ct., past the Tennis Courts.

Fernhill Park, August 25 and 26, at 3:00 pm
NE 37th Ave & Ainsworth St, on the NE 41st Ave. side.

Reed College, September 1, 2, and 3, at 3:00 pm
SE Woodstock and SE Reed College Pl., in front of Eliot Hall.

You can hear Stage & Studio on:

I’ve been to the emergency room only a few time for myself or family members. Usually we had fast response and care. But nationally E.R. wait times have increased since the recent economic downturn. A 2010 Press Ganey Pulse Report revealed that the average length of stay in a U.S. emergency department increased to 4 hours, 7 minutes.” More people are using the E.R. for primary care.

That was evident last Sunday night when my brother came to my house around midnight with a bloody hand. He had cut it on a lawnmower blade earlier that night. I immediately took him to the E. R. at the neighborhood hospital. These are the approximate times of our night.

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12:25am – I take Jack to the E.R. The desk nurse puts some gauze on his deep gash and loosely wraps it with a bandage.

12:40am – He’s checked in. Someone takes his blood pressure. We sit in the waiting area. About 25-30 people, half are people of color, are in the waiting area. Some look like they have sprains. Some are coughing. One man had a bag of ice on his jaw. A woman in front of me looks like she’s about to vomit.

1:30am– Jack is registered.

2:30am – My brother nods off in the waiting area. I ask the desk nurse if we should just see our family clinic, which opens at 7:30am. She cautions it’s a serious cut and he should be seen right away. I remind her it’s been two hours.

2:35am – The desk nurse apologizes to those waiting. Ambulances have been bringing in people through the back entrance, she says. An elderly woman moans, “but I arrived on an ambulance a long time ago.”

3:10am – A young man in a leg brace and his two friends leave the E.R. laughing.  A woman being wheeled by in a wheelchair munches on a sandwich. My brother is in pain. He’s received no medication. About 20 people are in stages of sleep around me.

3:15am – My brother’s name is finally called and we take the long walk to the treatment area. We see nurses and doctors chatting and laughing. No one seems to be emergency mode. I’ve walked into more hectic offices. We’re shown into a room with a hospital bed and left there.

3:20am – A nurse asks if I’m a family member and I say yes. She asks my brother to take his pullover shirt off so she can take his blood pressure, but he’s scared to hurt his hand. I later look at his chart and it says ‘patient refused to remove shirt.’  The nurse pulls the curtain over the sliding door so we can’t see out.

3:25am – I open the curtain slightly to look at the nurses station. The same nurse who took Jack’s blood pressure asks if there’s a problem. I say, “yes, my brother has a deep cut and we’re waiting.” I stare out so we won’t be forgotten. I read out loud a sign posted on the wall about patients’ rights and advocacy. The title: “SPEAK UP.”

4:00am – The doctor appears. He says the cut needs to be cleaned and asks my brother if that’s all right. Jack’s tired and in pain and isn’t responding. I say, “yes, it’s all right. Let’s do it.” The doctor is perturbed. “Are you a family member?” Yes, and we’ve been waiting since 12:30am. He apologizes and says that when he came to work at 10:30pm, he had 20 cases already. “Must be a full moon,” he ponders.

4:10am –The doctor sticks a needle filled with lidocaine several times into Jack’s hand. Jack groans in pain. The doctor leaves.

4:20am – A different nurse washes Jack’s wound. I hear the doctor on the phone in the hallway.

4:30-4:45am – The doctor returns. I watch him make seven sutures. I’m relieved the wound isn’t exposed anymore. The doctor talks about follow-up care and a temporary cast. We’re glad the ordeal is almost over.  We wait.

5:00am – A young male nurse enters and says a fiberglass cast will be faster but he likes to do plaster ones. I say whatever is quicker. We’ve been here since 12:30 am. He replies back that he’s been there since 10:30 p.m. He leaves.

5:15am – The male nurse returns with the cast and molds it around my brother’s forearm. He bandages everything. It takes 10 minutes. But we still need to wait to be released.

5:35am – We exit through the waiting area. The desk nurse waves a goodbye. Might have been a full moon, but we didn’t see it. It’s now daybreak.

I don’t know if this was a portent of things to come or if this wait time was an anomaly for Portland. I left angry and disappointed, not with the care itself, but with the lack of urgency. I know if I hadn’t been there as an advocate, it might have taken longer. Quiet people seemed to take longer to be seen. Maybe the medical staff moved more quickly with emergencies brought in the back entrance. But it didn’t seem like they were in emergency mode to us. I wonder if the hospital could truly handle critical emergencies if something catastrophic occurred. With more people unable to get insurance or primary healthcare, I can’t help thinking the wait for emergency care will only get worse.

 Read more of Dmae’s columns at The Asian Reporter. Or in the Dmae Writes section. 

Conduit presents eight new works to celebrate. The contemporary dance space has provided independent dancers a place for performance and workshops. We’ll also hear about their Just 17th  party and performance. We’ll also hear about Conduit’s history, its place in the dance community as well as Conduit’s Just 17th party and Dance+ performances.

Tere Mathern & Danielle Ross

Featured music for this show is by Good King Friday. Hear their music at GoodKingFriday.com.

Conduit Dance presents DANCE+ – eight new works have been chosen to spotlight collaboration within Portland’s dance and arts communities. This curated, dance-packed festival offers two programs at Conduit’s studio theater on the 4th floor of the historic Pythian Building in downtown Portland. Al shows are at  8:30 pm (approx 1.5 hours long. Tickets: $20/general, $15/students/seniors/limited income.

July 19-22 Program:
-This is how we Disappear | bobbevy (Suniti Dernovsek & David Stein)
-WWWEEERRRQQQ | The DECEPTiCONS (Kaj-Anne Pepper, Anthony Hudson, Mickey Pollizato, and Jen Hackworth)
-Tilth | Kristine Anderson & Tabitha Blankenbiller
-Terrain | Keely McIntyre & Ash Black Bufflo

Jessica Hightower and Philippe Bronchtein Photo: Meghaan Gilligan

July 26-29 Program:
-The Loveliest Landscape | Danielle Ross & Christi Denton
-Close Quarters | The Friendly Pheromones (Zahra Banzi, Chase Hamilton, Zoe  Nelson, Ben Magaziner & Anthony Shepard)
-advantAGE | Keyon Gaskin, Gregg Bielemeier & Philippe Bronchtien
-Tsunami | Luciana Proaño, Sumi Wu, Dylan Wilbur, Art Resnick & Todd Trigsted

Just 17! Benefit Party and Performance Cocktails and hors d’oeuvres, site based and staged dance performances, and silent auction for many great prizes. Saturday, June 16, 2012 at 7:00pm-11:00 pm atConduit Dance, 918 SW Yamhill, 4^th Floor in Portland.

Tickets: $30-$100 available at www.brownpapertickets.com/event/238525 or pay at the door. Ticket price includes one free beverage, hors d’oeuvres and one or more free raffle tickets depending on the amount donated for admission  All ages welcome.

The evening includes dances by Gregg Bielemeier, Tere Mathern, Linda K. Johnson, Josie Moseley performed by Skinner/Kirk, TopShakeDance (Jim McGinn), bobevvy (Suniti Dernovsek and David Stein), Catherine Egan, Danielle Ross, Mike Barber, Tracy Broyles and more!

Zahra Banzi, Chase Hamilton, Zöe Nelson photo by Brian McDonnell

You can hear Stage & Studio on:

Stacey Hallal

Stacey Hallal  in  Irregardless  combines stand up, songs and storytelling  exploring topics like marriage, robots, grammar, sex and tatoos. Her presentation and perspective are fresh, but what makes her funniest is that she hits a common chord that resonates with the audience not only in the moment, but also well beyond the end of the show.

Hallal trained at the famed Second City in Chicago,  and founded Curious Comedy Theater in Portland. Bob Hicks of the Oregonian says, “Comic actress Stacey Hallal has a face that can rise like a puff pastry or fall like a mob informer with an anvil tied ’round his feet. Her eyes can pop like a Looney Toons critter’s, and she can stretch a grin as crazy-wide as Jack Nicholson’s in “The Shining.” Her voice has the same cockeyed flexibility, and she uses both to highly amusing effect…in other words, she’s a genuine talent.”

Show dates are July  5th-14th Thurs-Sun. Find out more and reserve tickets here. 

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Elizabeth Huffman performs in You Belong To Me  by Steven Wolfson. The play is about several women on the precipice of monumental personal change. Two of the women Huffman plays are: The Actress who struggles to hold onto her sanity when her life is ravaged by divorce and addiction and Aspasia, a high-priced courtesan who shares the bed of ancient Greece’s most powerful politician, seeks to influence the destiny of her country and its women.

Elizabeth Huffman / Photo: Russell J.Young

Brian Allard, ClaraHillier & NoahGoldenberg

Hear about their unique style of Shakespeare, performing with scripts with their own roles only and with different casting each performance. A free family outing with Shakespeare, improv and the outdoors.

Original Practice Shakespeare Festival (OPS Fest) performs William Shakespeare’s  As You Like It and Romeo & Juliet this summer.

AYLI follows the stories of a banished Duke, a cross-dressing woman, a collection of lovers, clowns, and a morose ex-courtier, and touches on all of humanity, from life to love to death. Romeo & Juliet tells the famed tragedy of star-crossed lovers from feuding families.

Devin Harkness (Mustardseede - Yellow), Matt Haynes (Moth - Red) and Kerry Leek (Cobweb - Blue)

OPS Fest brings energetic and engaging performances the Oregonian has called “fun, action-packed and fast-moving.”

Many specialized events are also happening with OPS Fest this year. June 21st marks their second annual performance of A Midsommer Nights Dreame on a Midsummer night, at the top of Council Crest Park.

They  perform their full repertoire of five plays, in only four days, in July at Laurelhurst Park.

OPS Fest will also be a part of Milepost 5’s Shakespeare Festival in July, as well as a part of all Sunday Parkways events, spanning from May to September.

Performance dates:

• Thursday 6/21, 10pm – Council Crest – 2^nd Annual Midsummer Midsommer
• Saturday, 6/23, 2pm – Gabriel Park – As You Like It
• Sunday, 6/24, 1pm – Kenton Park – Romeo and Juliet
• Friday, 6/29, 7pm – Esther Short Park, Vancouver – As You Like It
• Saturday, 6/30, 2pm – Cathedral Park – As You Like It
• Sunday, 7/1, 2pm – Washington Park – As You Like It
• Saturday, 7/7, 7pm – Director Park – Romeo and Juliet
• Sunday, 7/8, 2pm – Irving Park – As You Like It
• Thursday, 7/12, 7pm – Laurelhurst Park – Twelfe Night
• Friday, 7/13, 7pm – Laurelhurst Park – A Midsommer Nights Dreame
• Saturday, 7/14, 2pm – Laurelhurst Park – Much Adoe About Nothing
• Saturday, 7/14, 7pm – Laurelhurst Park – Romeo and Juliet
• Sunday, 7/15, 2pm – Laurlhurst Park – As You Like It
• Friday, 7/20, 7pm – Marylhurst University – As You Like It
• Saturday, 7/21, 12pm – Milepost 5 – As You Like It
• Saturday, 7/21, 6pm – Carolwood Park, Beaverton – As You Like It
• Saturday, 7/22, 1pm – Gabriel Park – A Midsommer Nights Dreame
• Sunday, 7/22, 7pm – Milepost 5- Romeo and Juliet
• Friday, 7/27, 7pm – Nehalem  – Romeo and Juliet
• Saturday, 7/28, 1pm – Nehalem – As You Like It
• Sunday, 8/5, 2pm – Lents Park – As You Like It
• Sunday, 8/26, 1pm – Mt. Tabor Park – As You Like It

All performances are free!

Further details about OpsFest and additional performances can be found on the website at www.opsfest.org.

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Phyllis Fast

And in the latter part of the show, we’ll hear a feature story about three mixed-race artists talking about how their combinations of races affects the mixed genres of their work.

We’ll hear from musician Phillip Blanchett, visual artist Phyllis Fast, & performance poet Robert Karimi.

This originally aired as part of In The Mix: Conversations With Artists Between Races. Find out more at mixedraceworld.org. 

And find out more about Loving Day which commemorates the anniversary of Loving v. Virginia, the Supreme Court case that legalized interracial marriage on June 12th, 1967.

Phillip Blanchett

According to the Pew Research Center, about 15% of all new marriages in the United States are interracial (an all time high).

Over 9 million people selected “Two or More Races” accoring to the latest Census numbers, over 2 million more than in 2000. Find out more at lovingday.org. 

You can hear Stage & Studio on:

Robert Karimi

• the KBOO website and on 90.7FM live at 11am on Tuesdays
• Saturdays 11am on KZME, 107.1FM
• Don’t want to miss a single episode? Subscribe to Stage & Studio On iTunes!
• And always on the official Stage & Studio website!

Davy Brun & Alex Ballard

Bouand Dance Company was founded in Portland in  2005 by director and choreographer Alexandrous Ballard. They perform in the tradition of European classical training with modern dance techniques. The group has had several successful collaborations with theater, film and video designers and musicians  including Portland’s own 3 Leg Torso.

The company is currently working with Davy Brun (Lyon Opera Ballet) in creation of a new work. Bouand made its European debut and drew an enthusiastic response on Davy Brun’s home turf in Lyon, France last November and  welcome the return of French choreographer Davy Brun and his company Ando Cie to Portland.

Brun and his dancers will stage the North American debut of Concursus, a dance that serves as one of the central works in Brun’s 2012 touring schedule. Concursus will be paired with Ballard’s Noesis/Noema in its first Portland performance with an all-professional cast. Alberta Ballet’s Yukichi Hattori rounds out the bill with a duet.

Performances are June 1st and 2nd at the Bodyvox Dance Center, 1201 NW 17th Ave in Portland. Shows start at 7:30pm. For tickets,  visit BrownPaperTickets.com.

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And in the latter part of the show, Dmae presents a feature story that originally aired on NPR’s Latino USA.

Nainoa Kaiama / Photo: Richard Jensen

Love of nature runs deep in Hawaiian culture but for centuries, agribusiness on the island has eroded knowledge of traditional foodways and farming practices.

At Lahinaluna  High School, a public Boarding School in Maui, Hawaii students like Nainoa Kaiama are reconnecting with the island’s past. Nainoa who is Hawaiian and Mexican comes from a long tradition of farming. His family has owned a ranch on the Big Island of Hawaii for more than 300 years. He came to this school to learn new techniques that will help carry on the tradition and the love of Aina or love for the land.

Hear this sound-rich personal story at the end of the show!

You can hear Stage & Studio on:

• the KBOO website and on 90.7FM live at 11am on Tuesdays
• Saturdays 11am on KZME, 107.1FM
• and everyday at noon on Radio23.org
• Don’t want to miss a single episode? Subscribe to Stage & Studio On iTunes!
• And always on the official Stage & Studio website!

Study with Peabody-winning producer Dmae Roberts and engineer Clark Salisbury who have collaborated since 2002 on award-winning feature stories and documentaries.  These seminars are limited to six participants, intensive training at an affordable cost. We’re offering classes monthly that will take you from novice to professional.

Dmae Roberts has 25 years of professional broadcast radio experience and has trained hundreds of students, mentees, national workshop and conference attendees. She has taught and led seminars at Linfield College, the Association of Independents in Radio, the National Federation of Community Broadcasters, the Center for Documentary Studies and Third Coast International Festival.

She wrote a chapter for the Reality Radio book that includes writing from the top radio producers in the country. Read testimonials about her work training.

Clark Salisbury has worked more than 20 years as a sound engineer  and multimedia designer and producer. He was worked on top-notch radio documentary series including Crossing East and the Wisdom of the Elders and has created scores of websites and multimedia videos. He is the owner and engineer of Salisbury Studio.

How To Make Stunning Interviews-(COMPLETELY FULL!)

Saturday, June 2nd, 1-4pm – $65 (limited to 6 people-1 spot left!)

Dmae Roberts has interviewed more than 1000 people in the course of her career. She’s done one-on-one interviews as well as large groups at one time. The secret of a successful interview is to engage in a conversation that encourages you to listen and the interview subject to do most of the talking. That may seem simple but how do you get people to open up and tell you their secrets? And how do you do this while holding a microphone and recording great sound?

In this small group seminar, Dmae will lead you through the steps of a stunning interview filled with great quotes and is professionally recorded. She’ll also advise you on low-cost professional recorders and mics.

This seminar is perfect for audio producers, podcasters, oral historians and writers researching their next project.

Location: Dmae Roberts Studio, SE Portland.

 Please email mediarites @ aol.com to register! 

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Writing Feature Stories

Saturday June 23rd, 1-5pm – $70 (limited to 6 people)

Do you want to learn how to turn your interviews into a feature story that you  could pitch to a network radio show? In this seminar with Dmae Roberts, you’ll learn how to write for the ear. You’ll learn the structure for a national quality radio feature story. Dmae will lead through the editing process and how to write your narration as well as pick the best audio cuts to make a professional feature story.

In this seminar, we’ll focus on ‘finding the poetry’ in your audio interviews and your narration and essays. Examples will be given from Dmae’s chapter ‘Finding The Poetry’ in the Reality Radio  book, published by University of North Carolina Press. You’ll also hear clips from Dmae’s 25 years of producing features stories for NPR and PRI programs.

Hear Dmae’s recent national piece for NPR’s Latino USA! 

 Please email mediarites @ aol.com to register! 

Tricks of the Trade: Mixing and Editing Audio for Broadcast
Monday, June 4th, 6 – 9 PM NEW TIME*: Saturday, June 9, 1-4 PM
$65 (limited to 6 people)

You’ve been working with your audio but somehow you just can’t get it to sound right. There are audio problems you’d like to learn how to fix, but you’re not sure how; or you’d like to learn how to minimize the amount of time spent editing and mixing, but still get pristine sound.

Get the inside scoop on how to produce high-quality broadcast-ready audio for radio, film, podcast, or whatever. Peabody-award-winning engineer Clark Salisbury will show you how to take your audio up a notch. This seminar will include, but not be limited to:

• Common mistakes when editing voice, and how to avoid them
• Dealing with typical problems
• Understanding and using plug-ins: EQ, compression, de-essing, ducking and effects
• Understanding what you see – learn to edit visually

Please email ClarkSalisbury@gmail.com for more information or to register for ‘Tricks of the Trade’

*Due to a scheduling conflict

***PLEASE EMAIL  FOR REGISTRATION INFORMATION. 

]]> http://stagenstudio.com/2012/04/june-media-seminars/feed/ 0 http://stagenstudio.com/2012/04/remembrance/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=remembrance http://stagenstudio.com/2012/04/remembrance/#comments Sun, 29 Apr 2012 23:54:39 +0000 Dmae Roberts http://stagenstudio.com/?p=1178 Join Dmae Roberts for a special radio memorial on the 10th anniversary of her mom’s death. Remembrance: On Time And Distance is part memoir and a collection of radio pieces she’s produced about the complex ties that bind a mother and daughter. Airs Tues 5/1 11am on KBOO 90.7FM. This special will also air Sat 11am  5/5 on KZME 107.1FM with Dmae’s Peabody-winning documentary  Mei Mei, A Daughter’s Song.

For Remembrance: On Time And Distance, Dmae presents excerpts from Mei Mei and The Journey of Lady Buddha. She recounts her weekend trip to Taiwan to rescue her mom when she fell ill and plays her piece Messages from the phone messages she saved while taking care of her mom in her final years.

Featured music from: Dave Pasche, Stephen Hoyt and special thanks to Aaron Meyer from his CDs Walk, Don’t Walk and Near The Edge. Hear him at AaronMeyer.com.

Memoir excerpt: “10 Years and I still feel anger and pain. The seven stages of grief have long left me but these two emotions keep coming back. 

Ten years ago my mom passed away from a recurrence of breast cancer. Three years before that her doctor left her in a hospital gown in a cold radiology room not knowing why she was there. She called me crying when I was two hours away by car and not able able to help her,

Six months before that I took a weekend flight to Taipei, Taiwan to bring her back after relatives I had never met emailed me saying she was sick.

Time and distance. They say that it heals all wounds. Who are they? These mysterious people who offer sayings with vague meanings. Does time heal? Is there ever a way to heal wounds completely that have been opened up over and again through a lifetime?

Time and distance are what separated my mom and me. She of another race, another generation, culture and language. Anger and Pain brought us together and drove our ambitions in life.”

Please join Dmae for this personal show about a complex relationship, caregiving and healing.

You can hear Stage & Studio on:

• the KBOO website and on 90.7FM live at 11am on Tuesdays
• Saturdays 11am on KZME, 107.1FM
• and everyday at noon on Radio23.org
• Don’t want to miss a single episode? Subscribe to Stage & Studio On iTunes!
• And always on the official Stage & Studio website!

Gracie Hansen

At the age of 40, Gracie Hansen became the “Queen” of the ’62 Seattle World’s Fair. She set out to “save the Fair (to which it was billed as the Science Fair) from science.” She went on to run a 500 seat Las Vegas style show room in Portland Oregon for five years before turning her attention on the governorship of the State of Oregon.

The musical GRACIE is an unusual story about a bored housewife in 1953 who helps a local PTA to raise money to buy playground equipment and begins a local “follies” type stage show. It ran for five years and was shut down because of  “some nudity on stage” caused by some local loggers.

Don Horn & Julianna Jaffe

Gracie Hansen then opened a pavilion at the ’62 World’s Fair after raising $90,000 (that’s $630,000 in today’s dollars). After the fair closed, Hansen came to Portland to run the Roaring 20’s Room at the Hoyt Hotel for seven years.

In 1970 she became the first woman to run for Governor of Oregon. She came in third out of the eight candidates. Horn says that was the year Tom McCall won and Robert Straub came in second.

Gracie Hansen with Johnny Carson

Julianna Jaffe plays Gracie Hansen; with a chorus of eight dancers and five band members. With book by: Donnie (Donald Horn) and  music by various.  composers.

Performances are May 3rd -May 27th Thursday, Friday, Saturday @ 7:30; Sunday @ 2 pm (no show May 6). Tickets: $15.00-$35.00 Call: 503-239-5919 or go to www.tripro.org to order. Triangle Productions is located  at The Sanctuary located at Sandy Plaza 1785 NE Sandy Blvd.

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And in the last part of the show, we hear a sound piece from artist Linda Hutchins who is appearing with three other artists in Low Lives, an international festival of live performance-based works transmitted online and in real time at multiple venues in the U.S. and around the world.

Linda Hutchins at work

Linda Hutchins will combine drawing and percussion in White Out , a performance that weaves repeated strokes of silver from ten thimble-clad finger into a rhythmic pattern on the walls. Immediately following the performance, Hutchins will re-paint the wall, erasing all traces of the work. Hutchins is a Portland-based artist with a background in textiles and computer engineering. She was awarded the Juror’s Prize for her wall drawing in the Tacoma Art Museum’s 2009 Northwest Biennial and has received national press coverage from American Craft, Fiberarts and Art in America. She is represented by Pulliam Gallery in Portland.

Low Lives presents works that critically investigate, challenge, and extend the potential of performance practice through live online broadcasting networks. This year, PICA contributes three live, five-minute projects in a two-day festival with Austin Adkins, Linda Hutchins, and Robert Tyree.

Performances are April 27, 5:30–8:30pm and April 28, 1:00–3:00 pm at PICA, 415 SW 10th Ave, Suite 300 in Portland.

Visit http://www.lowlives.net/ for details on the streaming link.

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You can hear Stage & Studio on:

• the KBOO website and on 90.7FM live at 11am on Tuesdays
• Saturdays 11am on KZME, 107.1FM
• and everyday at noon on Radio23.org
• Don’t want to miss a single episode? Subscribe to Stage & Studio On iTunes!
• And always on the official Stage & Studio website!

Well Arts has projects telling the stories of elders in Voices of Our Elders (with Hollywood Senior Center and Friendly House) , veterans in Soldier’s Heart (with Portland Vet Center), nurses in Nurses’ Story Project, and a yearly  writing workshop with former participants called Returning Heroes.

Katy Liljeholm, artistic director of Well Arts and actor Kristin Olson-Huddle

We hear about Well Arts’ current ‘Beautiful Minds’ project with the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) Washington County Center to perform stories written about mental illness written by people living with mental illness in a production titled What’s Important is the Story. 

Performances:

April 20- 7:30pm at Village Baptist Church 330 Murray Blvd Beaverton

April 21- 2pm at Hillsboro Artists’ Regional Theatre 185 SE Washington Hillsboro.

April 27-7:30pm at Southminster Presbyterian Church 12250 SW Denney Rd Beaverton.

April 28 -2pm at Serendipity Playhouse 500 Washington Street Vancouver, Washington.

Tickets are $8 online at wellarts.org  or call 503-459-4500. Tickets are $10 at the door.

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Laurence Overmire

And in latter part of the show, some thoughts and poetry on the theme of time and distance with writers Laurence Overmire and Terri Lojacano share their poems for our Writer’s Read segment. We’ll also hear Dmae’s sound poem about Time.

Laurence Overmire is the author of three books of poetry, Honor and Remembrance, Report From X-Star 10, and Gone Hollywood. 

Hear more of Laurence Overmire’s work in our Writer’s Read series. 

Terri Lojacano has been writing poetry since she was in Jr. High school.   She has written a fictional manuscript that has many of her poems in it including this one called “the vows of your name.”

Submit your own Writers Read at StageNStudio @ aol.com. Read more details here.

Featured music: Michael Hoppe‘s CD Nostalgie and Mike Langlie  of Twink.

You can hear Stage & Studio on:

• the KBOO website and on 90.7FM live at 11am on Tuesdays
• Saturdays 11am on KZME, 107.1FM
• and everyday at noon on Radio23.org
• Don’t want to miss a single episode? Subscribe to Stage & Studio On iTunes!
• And always on the official Stage & Studio website!

Laurence Overmire

Laurence Overmire is the author of three books of poetry, Honor and Remembrance, Report From X-Star 10, and Gone Hollywood. 

Hear more of Laurence Overmire’s work in our Writer’s Read series. 

Terri Lojacano has been writing poetry since she was in Jr. High school.   She has written a fictional manuscript that has many of her poems in it including this one called “the vows of your name.”

Terri Lojacano

Submit your own Writers Read at StageNStudio @ aol.com. Read more details here.

In the final sound poem, Dmae presents a new version of a piece she aired on NPR in 1988 called “Time.”

We featured music by composer Mike Langlie  of Twink.

You can hear Stage & Studio on:

• the KBOO website and on 90.7FM live at 11am on Tuesdays
• Saturdays 11am on KZME, 107.1FM
• and everyday at noon on Radio23.org
• Don’t want to miss a single episode? Subscribe to Stage & Studio On iTunes!
• And always on the official Stage & Studio website!

Description: A devastating storm’s heading to the bayou, and sixteen-year-old Marcus is haunted by a dream of pounding rain and an unidentifiable man – a dream his father once had and no one wants to hear. Marcus’s quest for its meaning takes him to the bayou’s darkness. The quest may cost him friendships and a mother’s love, but may 

Portland Playhouse presents…

THE BROTHER/SISTER PLAYS by Tarell Alvin McCraney and directed by Victor Mack. Cast includes Ramona Alexander, Bobby Bermea, Jennifer Lanier, Damian Thompson, Lava Alapai, Brian Jones, Salim Sanchez, Jonah Weston. Show runs through May 13, Thursday–Sat 7:30pm; matinee Sundays at 2pm; Sat 4pm on some days. Tickets $12 – $23. Buy online at:  www.portlandplayhouse.org Call the box office: (503) 205-0715. All shows are at the Church, 602 NE Prescott Street in Portland.

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Brian Tierney

In the latter part of the show, we hear about Brian Tierneywho was shot on March 28th on his way home on I-205 from his job as a choir director. Dmae talks with singer Liz Bacon of The Julians who fills us in on Tierney’s progress and details about the benefit concert to help his family with mounting medical expenses.

The benefit concert for Brian Tierney with some of portland’s best classical singers is Sunday, April 22^nd at 7:00 pm. The concert is at All Saints Catholic Church
located at 3847 NE Glisan street in Portland. For more info visit a a site dedicated to the concert.

(Listen to the radio interview with OSF actors.)

The White Snake is emotionally and visually stunning with fine acting and wondrous projections and lighting effects. The tight-knit skilled ensemble of actors, deftly move through technically challenging scene changes. The stunning beauty of the production and the play’s ultimate message of love leaves the audience breathless while at same time rising for a standing ovation. It’s a play the whole family would enjoy.

Created through rehearsals with a mostly Asian American cast, this production honors an age-old story even Asian Americans might not know. Though I’ve read many Chinese legends about Kuan Yin, the Asian bodhisattva of mercy and compassion (who plays a small part in this play), I wasn’t familiar with the legend of The White Snake.

Amy Kim Waschke (White Snake) & Tanya McBride (Green Snake) Photo: Jenny Graham

Many versions have been told and retold through several centuries including books, Chinese operas, even an American opera, as well as countless films and television shows. Not an oral tradition folktale or fable, The White Snake is a legend that exists in a very real place much like King Arthur’s Camelot is set in particular locations in England. There is an actual Broken Bridge on the West Lake in Hangzhou in the Eastern province of China that tour groups visit along with the Leifeng Pagoda. Both these spots figure prominently in the legend.

In OSF’s version, White Snake (played by Amy Kim Waschke) travels down from her a mountain and befriends another spirit named Green Snake (played by Tanya McBride). They both decide to take human form to learn more about what it means to be human. They meet a young pharmacist’s assistant, Xu Xian (played by Christopher Livingston). White Snake falls in love and decides to stay in human form so she can wed Xu Xian. She then sets up a pharmacy business that becomes quite successful. So much so that a jealous monk, Fa Hai, (played by Jack Willis) decides to split up the couple. After all, it’s unnatural for a spirit and human to marry. Death, resurrection and a tremendous water battle ensue and play out beautifully onstage.

XuXian (Christopher Livingston) and White Snake (Amy Kim Waschke) marry. Photo: Jenny Graham

Director and adapter Mary Zimmerman comes with an award-winning track record of creating new work about myths and legends in collaboration with actors, musicians and designers. Several scenes moved me to tears. It was inspiring for me to see so many Asian actors on the OSF stage, though I can’t help thinking how historic it would have been to have an entire Asian cast. This season does have the most Asian American actors in the company, about 16 percent according to OSF. But at OSF non-traditional casting also means Asian roles will go to non-Asians.

I confess it took me 15 minutes into the 90-minute show before I could fully enjoy the beauty of The White Snake. I had to let go of the dread that it would somehow be littered with stereotypes as so many cultural stories often become when presented to a mainstream audience. Thankfully there were no Chinese accents or caricatures.  Instead, I found The White Snake to be the opposite…it wasn’t quite Chinese.

I believe the intent was to create universality for a non-Asian audience. The costuming was beautiful, with some Japanese and Korean influences, and the Chinese stick rod puppetry was reimagined for this production. But the script segued from pure poetry to lines geared toward Americanisms and easy laughs like the anti-vegetarian innuendos. Most of these lines came from the two-dimensionally evil Fa Hai. The character leaned toward American Western cattle baron with declarations like ‘this is Buddha’s Country’ and shouting the usually holy  ‘Amitabha Buddha’ (which means “infinite light”) as a swear word. Fa Hai in legend has been presented as a king or sorcerer but eventually the character changed to monk, a character that led many Buddhist monks to distance themselves from this version.

After 15 minutes, I let go of my wish to hear correct Chinese pronunciations with tones. Perhaps that was another attempt to appeal to a non-Asian audience. This is a small detail that perhaps only those who speak Chinese would catch. But it seemed a missed opportunity to play with the tonal beauty of the language. Another omission for me was the lack of Chinese opera movement for some of the choreographed segments. Again, it’s a detail in a play filled so many exquisite details that would have perfected this production.  Non-Asian audiences probably wouldn’t notice. But when The White Snake moves to Berkeley Repertory Theatre in November, chances are there will be more people in the audience who will wonder about some of those touches of authenticity.

Yet one cannot deny the power of the production, and I urge you to book your tickets to The White Snake before it closes in July. There are so few Asian plays being done now, and this re-imagining of a beloved legend will live in memory for those who have the good fortune to see it.

For more info, visit OSFAshland.org.

Links:

This article is also  available on newstands for The Asian Reporter and online at their site. 

More info on The White Snake:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legend_of_the_White_Snake

http://www.osfashland.org/browse/production.aspx?prod=236

The Washington County Cooperative Library Services (WCCLS) hosts the 8th Annual Hearing Voices Storytelling Festival April 7 – 14. The festival features four professional storytellers: Tim Tingle (Canyon Lake, TX), Kirk Waller (Oakland, CA), Habiba Addo(Portland, OR and Ghana, West Africa) and Leslie Slape (Rainier, OR).

Leslie Slape & Heather Waisanen

The week-long storytelling extravaganza features thirteen storytelling performances at the WCCLS member libraries, the Glenn & Viola Walters Cultural Arts Center in Hillsboro and the Pumpkin Ridge Golf Club in North Plains.

Leslie Slape has been storytelling since she was a little girl. When she had children of her own, she began telling tales professionally. She is equally at home in large and small venues, from festivals to the fireside. Her storytelling inspirations are far-ranging, from folktales to history and biography. She especially loves tales from Russia, where her grandfather was born.

See a schedule of events: http://www.wccls.org/voices

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Camille Claudel

Camille Claudel was a risk-taking artist in France who studied with the famous Rodin in Paris during the late 1800s. This operatic drama and movement hybrid travels through her life as a sculptor, lover, sister, daughter and the artist she became. Although most known for her progressive, sensual and autobiographic works, Claudel haunts history for destroying many of her own sculptures. Her life, and eventual unraveling, is threaded through her close relationship with her brother, the famous writer and diplomat, Paul Claudel. Theresa Koon’s passionate portrait paints Claudel’s tumultuous struggle with her family, her affair with Rodin and her burning inner conflict of whether or not to allow her creativity out in the world.

Dmae Roberts offers this backstage insight into the progress OSF has made in bringing more communties of color onto their stages. We’ll hear the thoughts of  Amy Kim Waschke (White Snake), Tanya McBride (Green Snake) and ensemble cast members Cristofer Jean, Lisa Tejero, Ako, and Vin Kridakorn. They talked about what it was like to work on this original show as well as the challenges of being a working actor and finding good roles.

Hear  about the struggle for  ’representAsian’ on professional stages and the current decline of roles for Asian actors on Broadway. A recent report, Ethnic Representation on New York Stages: 2006/07 to 2010/11 Seasons,led to a series of roundtables with Asian American actors and NY theatres.

While the report states the percentage of Asian Americans on Broadway was 2% in 2011, OSF has hit an historic milestone in the 2012 season. According to OSF, 16% of the acting company are East Asian, Southeast, South and West Asian.

Don’t miss this look behind the scenes of The White Snake and hear how OSF has been a leader of cultural change in theatre through non-traditional casting.  ‘Making Change’ is a series of specials and features on the intersection of creativity and social change. It’s made possible by the Regional Arts and Culture Council and individual donors.

Lisa Tejero,Tanya McBride, Cristofer Jean, Amy Kim Waschke,Vin Kridakorn & Ako. Photo: Jenny Graham, OSF

More about the play: The White Snake  at OSF is emotionally and visually stunning with fine acting and wondrous projections and lighting effects. The tight-knit skilled ensemble of actors, deftly move through technically challenging scene changes. The stunning beauty of the production and the play’s ultimate message of love leaves the audience breathless while at same time rising for a standing ovation. Created through collaborative rehearsals led by award-winning adapter/director Mary Zimmerman, and with a mostly Asian American cast, this production honors a story even multigenerational Asian Americans might not know. Many versions of the legend of The White Snake have been told and retold through several centuries including books, Chinese operas, even an American opera, as well as countless films and television shows.

Amy Kim Waschke & Tanya McBride. Photo: Jenny Graham, OSF

In OSF’s version, White Snake (played by Amy Kim Waschke) travels down from her a mountain and befriends another spirit named Green Snake (played by Tanya McBride). They both decide to take human form to learn more about what it means to be human. They meet a young pharmacist’s assistant, Xu Xian (played by Christopher Livingston). White Snake falls in love and decides to stay in human form so she can wed Xu Xian. She then sets up a pharmacy business that becomes quite successful. So much so that a jealous monk, Fa Hai, (played by Jack Willis) decides to split up the couple. After all, it’s unnatural for a spirit and human to marry. Death, resurrection and a tremendous water battle ensue and play out beautifully onstage.

The world premiere of The White Snake adapted from the Chinese legend by Mary Zimmerman runs through July 8 at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland, Oregon.   Also running in the Spring are the uproariously funny Animal Crackers, a gritty pre-Alamo Western version of Romeo & Juliet and a new adaption of The Seagull. 

To see a schedule of shows, visit OSFAshland.org. 

You can hear Stage & Studio on:

• the KBOO website and on 90.7FM live at 11am on Tuesdays
• Saturdays 11am on KZME, 107.1FM
• and everyday at noon on Radio23.org
• Don’t want to miss a single episode? Subscribe to Stage & Studio On iTunes!
• And always on the official Stage & Studio website!

Stephen Marc Beaudoin

Stephen Marc Beaudoin is a talented and respected singer and actor who has performed throughout the country. In Portland, he’s worked with Opera Theater Oregon and Hand2Mouth Theatre to name a few.

Beaudoin is also a successful community activist who has been able to produce disaster relief benefits that have raised an amazing amount of donations. His benefit ‘Songs For Haiti’ brought more than $150,000 for Mercy Corps, International. The benefit ‘From Oregon, With Love’ brought in more than $250, 000 for disaster relief after the earthquake and tsunami in Japan.

Katie Ehlen

Beaudoin first saw the PHAME choir perform at the Haiti benefit concert. He joined the board of the directors and is now the executive director bringing PHAME to a new level of growth.

We’ll also meet students like Aaron Hobson, Nikki Lane, Pat Hansen and Katie Carlson, artistic director Jessica Dart and music director Matthew Gailey.

Hear members of the PHAME choir and staff rehearse for the upcoming four-county tour and performance at the Aladdin Theatre in this ‘Making Change’ documentary special on location at PHAME.

‘Making Change’ is  year-long series about the how artists, performers, writers, innovators and community organizations use creativity for social and cultural change.

It’s made possible with funding by the Regional Arts and Culture Council and individual donors including June Arima & John Schumann Fund of the Equity Foundation. These features and specials will air throughout the year.

Find out how you can support ‘Making Change.’

Aaron Hobson

“PHAME: the H is for Honored Tour” is scheduled for 14 performances throughout the four-county area. All performances are free with the exception of the final performance at the Aladdin Theater March 22, 2012.

Tickets for this performance will be $15 and go on sale February 1, 2012. More information and show dates available by calling 503-764-9718, or visiting phameontour.tumblr.com

Performance Schedule:

Nikkie Lane (center)

Wednesday, March 14, 2012, 7 p.m.

St. Johns Community Center Auditorium, 8427 N Central Street (FREE)

Thursday, March 15, 2012, 7 p.m.,
East Portland Community Center, 740 SE 106th Avenue (FREE)

Friday, March 16, 2012, 7 p.m.,
Estacada Junior High Auditorium, 500 NE Main St.(FREE)

Saturday, March 17, 2012, 7 p.m.,
Clark College, Foster Auditorium,1933 Fort Vancouver Way, Vancouver, WA (FREE)

Sunday, March 18th, 2012, 10 a.m.,

Matthew Gailey

Grace Memorial Episcopal Church, 1535 NE 17th Avenue (FREE)

Monday, March 19, 2012, 6:30 p.m.,
Elsie Stuhr Center, 5550 SW Hall Blvd. (FREE)

Thursday, March 22, 2012, 7 p.m.,
The Aladdin Theater, 3017 SE Milwaukie ($15 all tickets, available at ticketmaster.com

You can hear Stage & Studio on:

• the KBOO website and on 90.7FM live at 11am on Tuesdays
• Saturdays 11am on KZME, 107.1FM
• and everyday at noon on Radio23.org
• Don’t want to miss a single episode? Subscribe to Stage & Studio On iTunes!
• And always on the official Stage & Studio website!

Study with Peabody-winning producer Dmae Roberts and engineer Clark Salisbury who have collaborated since 2002 on award-winning feature stories and documentaries.  These seminars are limited to six participants, intensive training at an affordable cost. We’re offering classes monthly that will take you from novice to professional.

Dmae Roberts has 25 years of professional broadcast radio experience and has trained hundreds of students, mentees, national workshop and conference attendees. She has taught and led seminars at Linfield College, the Association of Independents in Radio, the National Federation of Community Broadcasters, the Center for Documentary Studies and Third Coast International Festival. She wrote a chapter for the Reality Radio book that includes writing from the top radio producers in the country. Read testimonials about her work training.

Clark Salisbury has worked more than 20 years as a sound engineer and multimedia designer and producer. He was worked on top-notch radio documentary series including Crossing East and the Wisdom of the Elders and has created scores of websites and multimedia videos. He is the owner and engineer of Salisbury Studio.

To launch the New Media Seminars, we’ve starting off with two afternoons seminars located at Salisbury Studio in Portland.

NEW SEMINAR – JUST ADDED!

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Recording Your Voice- 

(COMPLETELY FULL!)

Saturday, April 7th, 1-5pm – $100 (limited to 7 people)

Learn how read and record your work for narration, readings, and. commercial voice work. If you’re an actor who would like to learn how to create a voice demo, a radio/video producer who does your own narration or a writer who would like to put audio excerpts of your work online or as an audiobook, this session will be give you the right tools and exercises to sound your best. Included are voice relaxation tips and mic placement guidance. Dmae Roberts will lead you through vocal exercises and coach you during a professional recording session. Participants are asked to bring something to read that they want to record. You will leave with your own short voice recording.

Location: Salisbury Studios in SW Portland.

PLEASE EMAIL BEFORE REGISTERING.

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AUDIO PRIMER
Saturday, Feb. 18, 2012 (COMPLETELY FULL!)

1 – 5 pm

$80 (limited to 6 people) Refreshments provided

This seminar is a perfect introduction to professional recording to get you started in the world of audio production.You will get an overview of how to record, edit and mix audio for either broadcast, podcasts, multimedia and online websites.

Recommended for public and commercial radio producers, writers who want to record their work, online multimedia producers, podcasters, talk show host/producers, video documentarians and anyone who conducts an interviewer or oral history recording.

Includes practical information and reviews of free applications and software as well as professional industry standard equipment. You will also get the lowdown on affordable field recording mics and recording kits with tips for creating professional audio quality.

Registration: Paypal or Send check to reserve space to MediaRites.

For Questions email: mediarites@aol.com.

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Making Social Media Work For You
Wednesday, March 28th, 1-4pm – $45 (limited to 6 people) - COMPLETED- WILL BE OFFERING AGAIN!

For artists, writers, performers, media makers or arts organizers who want low-cost ways to promote their work and events. Learn how to maintain privacy while socially engaging with thousands. If you’ve been hesitant to enter the social media work, this how-to workshop will lead you step-by-step into the how’s, do’s & don’ts of Twitter, Facebook and email promotion for your projects. This includes email consultation for two weeks after the seminar. Dmae Roberts will show you the intricacies, etiquette and practical ways to make social media work for you.

Instructor: Dmae Roberts   Location: SE Portland

Registration: Please contact MediaRites first. Paypal or Send check to reserve space to MediaRites.

For Questions email: mediarites@aol.com.

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BEYOND THE BASICS (COMLETELY FULL)
Sunday, March 11, 2012
Noon – 5 pm
$100 (limited to 6 people)
Refreshments provided

All seminars are first come, first served. (Please email us before signing up.)

This seminar will give you hands on experience to how to professionally record your work. Recommended for writers who want to record a reading, podcasters who want to improve their interviewing and recording skills,  filmmakers who want to get professional audio and radio producers who want to move their feature stories toward national quality.

Come prepared to record and edit a five-minute reading or bring an already recorded interview. All participants will leave with a finished produced 5-minute piece with our critique and advise for further production. Finished productions may air on Stage & Studio!

If you haven’t taken the Audio Primer, please contact us before registering for Beyond the Basics.

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UPCOMING SEMINARS INCLUDE:

• AUDIO ESSAYS AND SCRIPTWRITING
• CREATING AN AUDIO FEATURE STORY
• CONSTRUCTING PROFESSIONAL SITES WITH WORDPRESS
• EFFECTIVE GRANTWRITING

For more information, or to be included in our seminar list, email mediarites@aol.com

Must email before registering

To reserve a space, please email before using buttons below to send payment to MediaRites via Paypal.

Checks are accepted – email MediaRites for information.

New Media Seminars
Recording Your Voice Saturday, April 7th 1-5pm $100
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Making Social Media Work For you Wednesday, March 28th 1-4pm $45

Email MediaRites for more information.

Filmmakers Sue Arbuthnot and Richard Wilhelm of Hare In The Gate Productions talk about their film Amber Waves & Checkered Flags.

One day the filmmakers drove by a sign for Lind, pop. 500, with a rustic sign inviting, “Welcome to Lind! Drop in—Mt. St. Helens did!” They found there the annual Lind Combine Demolition Derby.  IN June 2003, they started working on their documentary Amber Waves & Checkered Flag to film the Derby. This extreme sport’s purpose is to bolster a struggling town and a multi-generational way of life. They decided to follow two young men—Josh Knodel and Matt Miller—who aspired to win the derby and to carry on the family traditions of producing abundant wheat and supporting their community.

About the Film:

For eight years, Amber Waves & Checkered Flags follows two childhood best friends,whose quest to win an offbeat, hilarious, extreme sport parallels the struggle for existence facing family farms and rural towns.

June—Eastern Washington’s austerely beautiful farmland—Josh Knodel, 18, eagerly awaits his first chance to compete in Lind’s annual Combine Demolition Derby. Josh and Matt Miller, 17, prepare JAWS, a hulking, out-of-retirement 6602 John Deere combine, for battle. Josh doesn’t know that his biggest fight—his bid to carry on the three-generation family farm—will put him to an even tougher test.

Josh Knodel and Matt Miller after a day’s work.

Small farms require fewer workers than in Josh’s grandpa’s time. To survive, small farms must increase production to support the next generation. When the Knodels fail to locate new land, Josh’s dream vanishes, and he must leave the farm. Luckily, the Knodels acquire new acreage, and Josh returns.

Today, Josh and Matt work to sustain family farms and their community. With JAWS once again ready for a metal-gnashing go-round, it’s derby time.

 

Richard Wilhelm and Sue Arbuthnot relax against a derby combine.

About the Filmmakers:

Sue Arbuthnot is an independent filmmaker whose films span themes of social change through community building and sustainability, diversity, historic and cultural preservation. She has begun exploring a series of narrative non-fiction works around the relationships between neurology, illness, and behavior. She received the 1990 Pacific Pioneer Fund grant and a 2010 Oregon Arts Commission’s Media Arts Fellowship. She began teaching film and video at the Northwest Film Center’s Young Filmmaker Program in 1995. Since 2008, Sue has been teaching in the NWFC’s Adult Certificate Program. She has taught and mentored students at the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation Burns Paiute Reservation, Spokane Indian Reservation, and Yakama Nation. She was recently elected to the Board of Directors of Portland’s Women in Film.

Richard Wilhelm draws from his life-long work in photography, art, design, and education to inspire and challenge his work in film. He earned his BFA in visual design and photography from the University of Oregon, and established a design studio in Seattle, which he directed for 14 years, until partnering with Sue Arbuthnot at Hare in the Gate Productions in 1999. Together they’ve produced dozens of films, from 60-second pieces to feature documentaries. Since 2006, Richard has developed and installed permanent, multimedia interpretive exhibits. Richard has taught photography and graphic design at the university level including more than 50 photography workshops exploring relationships between people and environments.

You can hear Stage & Studio on:

• the KBOO website and on 90.7FM live at 11am on Tuesdays
• Saturdays 11am on KZME, 107.1FM
• and everyday at noon on Radio23.org
• Don’t want to miss a single episode? Subscribe to Stage & Studio On iTunes!
• And always on the official Stage & Studio website!

Linda Austin’s A head of time brings together an accomplished ensemble of eight dancers  for a performance and installation (before the show) to sift together an unpredictable array of methodical, agile, detailed, and playfully awkward dance movement.  The set is comprised of 300 stacked blankets; video imagery; original and stolen text, and has a sound score by Seth Nehil.

More about Linda Austin:

Linda Austin, co-founder & director of Performance Works NorthWest in Portland, OR, has been making dance and performance since 1983. Her works have been performed in New York, Mexico City, Seattle and Portland, at venues such as Danspace Project, PS 122, Movement Research at Judson Church, the Kitchen, On the Boards and PICA’s TBA Festival. She’s received fellowships/grants from New York Foundation for the Arts and the Oregon Arts Commission,  Regional Arts & Culture Council, Paul G. Allen Family Foundation, and Movement Research and residencies at Djerassi and Robert Wilson’s Watermill Center. Her writing has appeared in The Movement Research Performance Journal, Tierra Adentro (Mexico), the literary journal FO A RM and a 2003 collection from MIT Press, Women, Art & Technology.

Linda Austin & Danielle Ross

Recent projects include 2010 Paired Spectacular, an homage to dance pioneers Yvonne Rainer and Deborah Hay; the 2009 Bandage a Knife, a collaboration with Seth Nehil inspired by a Japanese cult noir film; and a 2008 site-specific dance at Portland’s Lovejoy Fountain as part of The City Dance of Anna & Lawrence Halprin, performed in the 2008 TBA Festival. An in-progress version of A head of time and a 6-week installation of this project was featured at The Art Gym in April 2011 as part of an exhibit devoted to the choreographic process titled Dance: before, after, during.

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Performance Works NorthWest || Linda Austin Dance presents A head of time a new ensemble work by Linda Austin

Choreographer Linda Austin, collaborating with sound artist Seth Nehil, and dancers Philippe Bronchtein, Jin Camou, Catherine Egan, Keyon Gaskin, Esther LaPointe, Danielle Ross & Lucy Yim, with Lighting by Jeff Forbes. Performances are Friday and Saturday March 23 & 24 at 8pm, Sunday March 25 at 2pm and 7pm.  Doors open 30 min. before curtain for a walk-through of installation. All shows are located at Imago Theatre, 17 SE 8^th Ave., Portland. TICKETS: $12 before March 15 General admission $15-$20 sliding scale.For more info call: 503-777-1907 or visit online.

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In the latter part of show, we’ll check in with Michelle Fujii, artistic director of Portland Taiko about their new concert Three: 3 Conversations With Taiko.

Fujii explores the taiko art form’s ability to speak to us individually and collectively. THREE weaves distinct forms of classical Japanese art Nihon Buyo, Koto and Shakuhachi into contemporary conversations with the drum.

This collaboration celebrates Michelle’s exploration of taiko as an active force that continues to evolve and inspire curiosity.

Nihon Buyo is the art form of traditional Japanese dance, vibrant today with a history of nearly four centuries.  The Koto (13 string plucked zither) and Shakuhachi (flute held vertically like a recorder) are instruments seemingly unchanged over the ages that continue to reveal new possibilities.

Tickets on sale through the PCPA Box Office & all Ticketmaster outlets. $20.25- $11.25. Students and Seniors save 10% off regular adult prices. Members save 10%, order direct from Portland Taiko, and pay no handling charges! Tickets available through the PCPA Box Office and all Ticketmaster locations for non-members.

Join more conversations!
Pre-performance discussion Sunday March 25 @ 1 pm
Moderated by: Larry Kominz, Professor of Japanese at PSU and member of the Japan Society of New York’s performing arts advisory committee.

You can hear Stage & Studio on:

• the KBOO website and on 90.7FM live at 11am on Tuesdays
• Saturdays 11am on KZME, 107.1FM
• and everyday at noon on Radio23.org
• Don’t want to miss a single episode? Subscribe to Stage & Studio On iTunes!
• And always on the official Stage & Studio website!

Our Fathers Who Aren’t In Heaven chronicles Michael Johnson’s relationship with his father, David Johnson, a prize-winning African American photographer who documented the civil rights movement in America in the 1950s and 1960s. In this half-hour documentary, we hear abut the often distant relationships that fathers have with their sons. The piece is introduced by James DePreist, former music director of the Oregon Symphony.

Photograph by David Johnson

Michael Johnson is an award-winning radio producer  who lives in San Francisco. Johnson has produced music shows  on KALW and KPFA in San Francisco. He was an associate producer for Lost and Found Sound, editor and digital mix engineer for “Spirits Of The Present: The Legacy From Native America” for Radio Smithsonian (PRI), and associate producer for the documentary series “Legacies: Tales from America”.  He also served as general manager of KALW-FM, and digital training manager and senior producer of the Hot Soup Program at KQED-FM. He currently lives life online, reporting on emerging technologies, and guiding social media marketing strategies.

About David Johnson–

David Johnson, now 84 years old, fell in love with photography at age 12. He happened to win a small camera in a contest and began snapping photos. After a stint in the navy, he decided to study photography and while browsing through Popular Photography, he saw a small article that Ansel Adams was setting up a photography department at the California School of Fine Arts in San Francisco (now the SF Art Institute).  He wrote to Adams and was accepted into the program.

Mr. Johnson lived in Ansel’s house in the beginning and worked in his darkroom.  Eventually he moved out and rented a room in the Fillmore which is where he began meeting the early leadership of African-Americans emerging in the city.

Photograph by David Johnson

Ansel Adams told his students to photograph what they knew.  For Mr. Johnson, this meant documenting life on the streets and in the clubs of the Fillmore district. In 1947, Mr. Johnson became a staff reporter for the emerging Sun-Reporter.

After working for the newspaper and opening a small studio, Mr. Johnson continued to document  the social, political and private lives of African-Americans living in the Fillmore District -  the  jazz clubs, street scenes, the civil rights movement in San Francisco, and the neighborhood changes – always with an eye for depicting people positively, with dignity and respect.

See a collection of David Johnson’s award-winning photographs.

You can hear Stage & Studio at…

• the KBOO website and on 90.7FM live at 11am on Tuesdays
• Saturdays 11am on KZME, 107.1FM
• and everyday at noon on Radio23.org
• Don’t want to miss a single episode? Subscribe to Stage & Studio On iTunes!
• And always on the official Stage & Studio website!

On 11am Saturday 2/18 on KZME 107.1 FM, Dmae Roberts talkswith Allen Nause, artistic director of Artists Repertory Theatre and Paul Nicholson, executive director of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. Both men are theatre icons contributing decades to their theatre companies. Nause is retiring from Artists Rep after the 2013 season and this is Nicholson’s final season at OSF. We’ll hear about this year’s season of plays and talk about their artistic legacies.

(Featured left: (L-R)Beth Harper,Richard Emore, Jason Glick, Val Landrum, Danielle Purdy credit: Owen Carey)

Allen Nause - Photo: Owen Carey

Allen Nause is directing Circle Mirror Transformation by Annie Baker, winner of the 2009 Obie award. This sharp, funny and insightful play chronicles five people who take an adult creative drama class at a small-town community center. In six weeks they play theater games and do exercises that lead them to discover truths about themselves.

Allen Nause has been Artists Repertory Theatre’s Artistic Director since 1988. He has performed in many plays at Artists Rep including: Frankie and Johnny in the Claire De Lune, Breaking The Code, Art, The Drawer Boy, Death Of A Salesman, Blackbird, Vanya and most recently No Man’s Land.

Val Landrum & Richard Elmore Photo: Owen Carey

Circle Mirror Transformation by Annie Baker and directed by Allen Nause.  The play features Beth Harper, Richard Elmore, Jason Glick, Val Landrum, and Danielle Purdy.

The show runs through March 11 Wednesday through Sunday at 7:30pm, Sunday at 2pm, Wednesday matinee at 11am on Feb. 29 at Artists Repertory Theatre – Alder Stage (16^th and Alder St.) Tickets: $25-$50; Students $20  For more info call 503.241.1278 or visit www.artistsrep.org.

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Paul Nicholson

And then in the second part of the show  the Tony Award–winning Oregon Shakespeare Festival’s 2012 preview performances begin February 17, opening a season dedicated to Executive Director Paul Nicholson, who is retiring at the end of the season after 33 years at OSF. Nicholson became executive director in November 1995. He joined the Festival in 1980, serving as general manager for 16 years.

The season opens February 24 with Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet and runs through November 4.

The timeless tragedy of Romeo and Juliet comes once again to OSF’s stage. The star-crossed lovers and their feuding families are set in the late 1840s Alta California—a period of California history rich with the culture of the Spanish-speaking Californios.

Other shows opening soon include:

The White Snake adapted from the ancient Chinese fable by Mary Zimmerman. In this beloved Chinese legend, a snake spirit disguised as a beautiful woman falls in love with a young scholar. White Snake keeps her true identity secret from him, but a disapprov ing monk persists in unmasking her. Staged by Tony Award-winning director Mary Zimmerman, this is sure to be a not-to-be-missed production.

Seagull (February 23-June 22) by Anton Chekhov and adapted by Libby AppeOSF’s Artistic Director Emerita Libby Appel continues her life-long passion and relationship with Chekhov and both adapts and directs this humorous, heartbreaking and achingly human story set in 19^th century Russia.

Animal Crackers(February 19 – November 4) Book by George S. Kaufman & Morrie Ryskind; Music and lyrics by Bert Kalmar & Harry Ruby.  Allison Narver directs this raucous 1930s vaudevillian musical farce made famous by the Marx Brothers—and yes, it will be funny!

Shakespeare offerings later this season include Troilus and Cressida, the final episode in the saga of Prince Hal in Henry V and  As You Like It and a world premiere adaptation The Very Merry Wives of Windsor, Iowa, based on Shakespeare’s play.

The fourth show to open in the Angus Bowmer Theatre will be the three-ring tour de force, Medea/Macbeth/Cinderella, adapted by Bill Rauch and Tracy Young from the plays by Euripides, Shakespeare and Rodgers and Hammerstein. The final show to open in the Bowmer is a world premiere play by Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Robert Schenkkan, All the Way. Part of American Revolutions: the United States History Cycle, the play looks at the tumultuous first year of Lyndon Baines Johnson’s presidency.

For tickets or more info call the OSF Box Office at 541-482-4331 or 800-219-8161 or visit online at OSFAshland.org.

You can hear Stage & Studio at:

• the KBOO website and on 90.7FM live at 11am on Tuesdays
• Saturdays 11am on KZME, 107.1FM
• and everyday at noon on Radio23.org
• Don’t want to miss a single episode? Subscribe to Stage & Studio On iTunes!

Bill Foster

The NW Film Center celebrates its 40th anniversary year as an organization. This year’s PIFF line-up includes documentaries, family friendly films, PIFF After Dark and an ear

ly look at 11 of this year’s Oscar nominees.

The full PIFF Program, tickets, and more are available at http://festivals.nwfilm.org/piff35/.

Tickets are available by phone (503-276-4310) or in person at the Film Center’s Advance Ticket Outlet, located in the lobby of the Portland Art Museum’s Mark Building at 1119 SW Park Avenue, open daily from 12-6 p.m. February 1-25.

Online tickets are available anytime at http://festivals.nwfilm.org/piff35/.

Some of the films Dmae will showcase are:

Unfinished Spaces – an historical documentary about three architects who in 1961 attempted to create three arts buildings in Cuba at Fidel Castro’s invitation. 40 years later the buildings remain unfinished and decaying. This film chronicles of what changed in Cuba that made it impossible for the buildings to be completed.

Pink Ribbons, Inc. – an Canadian investigative documentary about the commercialization and breast cancer industry, especially timely now because of the recent Susan G. Komen Foundation controversy. (see photo above left)

Where Are You Taking Me? Kimi Takesue lyrical and beautifully photographed travelogue in Uganda without narration and very little dialogue that presents everyday life of a country healing from a war-torn, violent history.

Almanya - a family comedy/drama about a Turkish worker who makes a life for himself in Germany.

The Fairy - a whimsical French film about a hotel worker falls in love with woman who claims to be a fairy who grants him three wishes. This delightful off-beat comedy features a trio of performers skilled in circus arts who employ great physical humor with hilarious dance numbers. A sure hit at PIFF!

How Much Does Your Building Weigh? - a mesmerizing documentary about the astounding eco-friendly architecture of Norman Foster, a colleague of Buckminster Fuller. This film is about a quest to make life better by designing beautiful, sustainable buildings that might offer solutions to a society and culture.

You can hear Stage & Studio at:

• the KBOO website and on 90.7FM live at 11am on Tuesdays
• Saturdays 11am on KZME, 107.1FM
• and everyday at noon on Radio23.org
• Don’t want to miss a single episode? Subscribe to Stage & Studio On iTunes!

Carrie-Ann Tkaczyk, A. Molotkov, Bruce Bartlett and Ragon Linde

In the sultry jungles of Nepal, modern and ancient desires beat. When a stranger comes to Batuwaa, the mystic and the modern clash. Voices, percussion music, and story meld into the pulse of a mysterious pool, Bhoot Pool: the place the villagers of Batuwaa fear; the place the forbidden are free to love.

Carrie-Ann Tkaczyk experienced Nepal’s democratic movement while serving as a Peace Corpsvolunteer in the early 1990’s, the time period of this story. Her writing about Nepal has won Best Short Story at Third Goal, is in the magazine ECS Nepal,and is online in Peace Corps’ Digital Library. A founding member of the writers’ group, The Guttery, her latest project is a performance of Only Ghosts with Portland musicians and Guttery poets. Some of her public readings are featured at the Pacific Northwest College of Art’s Whitman Project, The Oregon Literary Review, Show and Tell Gallery, and Love Outlives Us.

Kalirati Productions presents Only Ghosts for two performanes only on February 25 4:30 and 7:00 at Hipbone Studios 847 E. BURNSIDE, #104  in PORTLAND.

Tickets are $6 to $10 and available at Brownpaper tickets or the show’s website: https://sites.google.com/site/seeonlyghosts/

Masks for the production were made by students at the Nepali school, Educational Environment Boarding School. Proceeds will benefit this school.

Also at the end of the show, Dmae plays a piece from her audio vault. Listen to First Love produced in 1986.

You can hear Stage & Studio at…

• the KBOO website and on 90.7FM live at 11am on Tuesdays
• Saturdays 11am on KZME, 107.1FM
• and everyday at noon on Radio23.org
• Don’t want to miss a single episode? Subscribe to Stage & Studio On iTunes!
• And always on the official Stage & Studio website!

As part of this years Fertile Ground Festival of New Works, Lunacy Stageworks produces another important story providing a hard-to-come by connection; this time to the reality of what women endure through their stories from the front lines of Portland’s sex trade. Last year, Lunacy Stageworks also participated in Fertile Ground with Stories: from the Streets, a collection of readings written and performed by people who had experienced homelessness.

Featured music by Molly Baucham from her new CD Maid On The Shore.

Susan Mach

Susan Mach’s A Noble Failure is about what happens when a public school gets co-opted by a private for- profit company. The genesis of the play began with the creation of the character Rosalyn, a lifelong teacher who never imagined herself as anything else.   She is trying to keep a young Russian immigrant, Ivan, in school after he gets in trouble for tagging the library and destroying a trophy case.  Rosalyn is an English teacher modeled after influential instructors of Mach’s.

Much of the play is a response to the current broken public school system. It speaks to how career teachers are being maligned and demonized in the media for economic and social ills beyond their control, and how public schools are being shut down in record numbers, replaced by privately owned charter schools that often cherry-pick students, disregarding those with low incomes and/or learning disabilities.

Claire Willett

Claire Willett’s Dear Galileo looks at three women in three different times who wrestle with their identity, the conflict between science and religion, and what it means to be their fathers’ daughters. In Renaissance Italy, Celeste Galilei lives under house arrest with her elderly father Galileo, the disgraced astronomer who wants to defy the Pope yet again by publishing one last book.

In a small town in Texas, creationist author and TV pundit Robert Snow is at a loss when his 10-year-old daughter Haley’s newfound passion for science begins to pull her away from the Biblical teachings of her upbringing. And in Swift Trail Junction, Arizona, home of the Vatican Observatory’s U.S. outpost, New York sculptor Cassie Willows arrives to find that her estranged father, world-renowned astrophysicist Jasper Willows, has gone missing. As the three stories move toward their point of convergence, the destinies of each become inextricably bound with the others, linked through time by love, family, grief, faith and the search for identity.

Show Times:

A Noble Failure by Susan Mach
Directed by Erin Lucas
Venue: CoHo Theater
Festival Dates: Sunday, January 22 – 2:00pm, Sunday, January 29 – 7:30pm
Tickets are Pay-What-You-Will | 503.205.0715

Dear Galileo by Claire Willett

Directed by Stephanie Mulligan

Venue:  Artists Repertory Theatre, Morrison Stage, 1515 SW Morrison, Portland OR 97205

Festival Dates:  Jan 21 @ 2pm; Jan 23 @ 7:30pm

Tickets:  Pay What You Will; $10 suggested donation | 503.241.1278

Playwright Susan Mach has an MA in Playwriting from Boston University. Her first play, Monograms, published by Rain City Press in Seattle, received a Portland Drama Critics Circle Award. Her second play, Angle of View, was a finalist for the Oregon Book Award and received readings at Portland Repertory Theatre and Boston Playwrights’ Theatre.  For her third play, The Shadow Testament, she received a Woman Writers Fellowship from Literary Arts. Her play, The Difficult Season, a collaboration with renowned jazz pianist and songwriter Dave Frishberg, was workshopped at Artists Repertory Theatre

She was recently awarded a fellowship from Oregon Literary Arts for her latest play, The Lost Boy, which was also part of Portland Center Stage’s JAW/West development series and recently received a staged reading at Bloomsburg Theatre Ensemble, and was a winner of the 2011 Angus Bowmer Award for Drama at the Oregon Book Awards.

Playwright Claire Willett was the summer 2011 Writer-In-Residence at the I-Park Artists’ Colony in East Haddam, CT., was named the 2011 Oregon Literary Fellow for Drama, and was a finalist for the 2011 Fox Valley Repertory Collider Project (a new initiative supporting the creation of new plays about science and technology). Three of her plays have been produced as staged readings for Fertile Ground’s Festival of New Works: Upon Waking in 2009, How the Light Gets In in 2010, and That Was the River, This Is the Sea (co-written with Gilberto Martin del Campo) in 2011.

You can hear Stage & Studio at:

• the KBOO website and on 90.7FM live at 11am on Tuesdays
• Saturdays 11am on KZME, 107.1FM
• and everyday at noon on Radio23.org
• Don’t want to miss a single episode? Subscribe to Stage & Studio On iTunes!

Dmae Roberts  talks with Portland comedian, musician and Fertile Ground/Second City alum auGi and award-winning PBS writer Slash Coleman about Big Plastic Heroes– Warning: Trying to be Your Idol is Dangerous.

Hear some great stories from their monologues and auGi promises to sing live! The production is being presented as part of the Fertile Ground Festival of New Works 2012.

Dmae with auGi

Set against the backdrop of two small towns in the 1980s, the show, which starts January 21st with six shows and runs through February 4, features two autobiographical solo-performances that highlight what bad things can happen when oddball teen boys try to be their action-hero idols.

Growing up in a tiny Michigan town surrounded by endless cornfields isn’t exactly the life of an action hero. auGi reveals how he and a group of oddball friends formed a fantasy commando squad with very real consequences. This funny, humbling, true-life story proves that being yourself is all the adventure you need.

Slash Coleman

Bicentennial fever finds Slash Coleman, creator of the PBS special, revealing the story of his eccentric family, his obsession with Evel Knievel, and a crush on his third-grade teacher that lands him in the hospital.

Each night also includes appearances by two Portland storytellers who will tell their own 10-minute “misplaced hero” story. Local stortytellers include: Stacey Hallal, Meg Worden, Ry Stroud, Andrew Bynum, Jimmy Radosta, Karol Collymore, Cory Huff, Meagan Kate, Penny Walter and Molly Norton.

Performance dates: Jan 21, 26, 27, 28; February 3, 4 at 7:30 pm
Venue: The Sanctuary at Sandy Plaza which is located at 1785 NE Sandy Blvd Portland, OR 97232
Tickets: $15 – $17.50; www.BigPlasticHeroes.com or call (804) 353-3799.
Limited reserved seating available. Advance tickets are recommended.

Read a fun blog post about his experiences being interviewed on Stage & Studio!

auGi – Performer/Playwright/Producer
Called “…a brilliant funnyman” by the Producer of The Late Late Show with Craig Kilborn and Entertainment Tonight, auGi created, wrote, produced, and performed in hundreds of shows at both The Second City and the world famous Improv in Hollywood, was a regular feature on “The Best of the Worst” on NBC’s Last Comic Standing, and appeared on Comedy Central and E! auGi co-wrote and starred in his autobiographical solo show, SexyNurd: Rockstar Trapped in a Nurd’s Body, which played to sold-out audiences during both the 2010 Fertile Ground and Singlehandedly festivals, was a Willamette Week pick.

Slash – Performer/Playwright
WGBH Boston says, “Slash has the power to change the way people think.” Best known for his PBS special and Off-Broadway one man show, The Neon Man and Me, Slash’s most recent performances include shows at The International Storytelling Center, The National Storytelling Festival, and Pete Seeger’s Clearwater Festival. He’s also a blogger for Psychology Today and a regular contributor to Storytelling Magazine.

Coleman lived in southeast Portland from 1997 – 2001, and worked as a visual artist, an educator and a performing artist. His production company About Vision Entertainment, created with Stash Tea CEO Tom Lisicki, which produced over a dozen multidisciplinary products with ties to the city, was based in Portland until 2004. Slash currently lives in New York City where he continues to write and develop material for the stage, film and TV.

You can hear Stage & Studio at:

• the KBOO website and on 90.7FM live at 11am on Tuesdays
• Saturdays on KZME, 107.1FM
• and everyday at noon on Radio23.org
• Don’t want to miss a single episode? Subscribe to Stage & Studio On iTunes!

This week on Stage & Studio, join Dmae Roberts as she talks with recipient of the 2011 Oregon Book Award, Susan Mach, and 2011′s Oregon Literary Fellow, Claire Willett. Susan Mach’s A Noble Failure, the winner of NEWxNW Playwrighting Competition, will be presented as a staged reading at CoHo Theater. Artist’s Reperatory Theater will present a staged reading of Willett’s Dear Galileo, both as part of the Fertile Ground Festival of New Works.

A Noble Failure is about what happens when a public school gets co-opted by a private for- profit company. The genesis of the play began with the creation of the character Rosalyn, a lifelong teacher who never imagined herself as anything else. She is trying to keep a young Russian immigrant, Ivan, in school after he gets in trouble for tagging the library and destroying a trophy case.  Rosalyn is an English teacher modeled after influential instructors of Mach’s.

Much of the play is a response to the current broken public school system. It speaks to how career teachers are being maligned and demonized in the media for economic and social ills beyond their control, and how public schools are being shut down in record numbers, replaced by privately owned charter schools that often cherry-pick students, disregarding those with low incomes and/or learning disabilities.

Claire Willett’s Dear Galileo looks at three women in three different times who wrestle with their identity, the conflictbetween science and religion, and what it means to be their fathers’ daughters. In Renaissance Italy, Celeste Galilei lives under house arrest with her elderly father Galileo, the disgraced astronomer who wants to defy the Pope yet again by publishing one last book.

In a small town in Texas, creationist author and TV pundit Robert Snow is at a loss when his 10-year-old daughter Haley’s newfound passion for science begins to pull her away from the Biblical teachings of her upbringing. And in Swift Trail Junction, Arizona, home of the Vatican Observatory’s U.S. outpost, New York sculptor Cassie Willows arrives to find that her estranged father, world-renowned astrophysicist Jasper Willows, has gone missing. As the three stories move toward their point of convergence, the destinies of each become inextricably bound with the others, linked through time by love, family, grief, faith and the search for identity.

Show Times:

A Noble Failure by Susan Mach
Directed by Erin Lucas
Venue: CoHo Theater
Festival Dates: Sunday, January 22 – 2:00pm, Sunday, January 29 – 7:30pm
Tickets are Pay-What-You-Will | 503.205.0715

Dear Galileo by Claire Willett

Directed by Stephanie Mulligan

Venue:  Artists Repertory Theatre, Morrison Stage, 1515 SW Morrison, Portland OR 97205

Festival Dates:  Jan 21 @ 2pm; Jan 23 @ 7:30pm

Tickets:  Pay What You Will; $10 suggested donation | 503.241.1278

Even though they might deny it, most actors at one time or another have daydreamed about what they would say in an Oscar speech. I remember a story a friend told me about a famous actor who shall go unnamed who taught a workshop right after he won the Oscar and allegedly brought the little statuette with him to class. He passed it around to all the students so they could hold a real life Oscar award in their hands. Then he told them to make up an acceptance speech and perform it to the class. On the surface that sounds egotistical but I wonder how many students actually enjoyed doing that exercise. They got to live out the fantasy of accepting the top acting award in America—something usually reserved for the privacy of one’s bathroom mirror. Of course I don’t speak from personal experience…ahem…

This year I haven’t seen most of the films nominated but I’m still excited about watching the telecast on Feb. 26th. There’s buzz already that two African-American actresss, Viola Davis and Octavia Spencer from The Help will take home Best Lead Actress and Supporting Actress statuettes. I’m thrilled there are actors of color nominated who are frontrunners this year as opposed to the all-white Oscar actor pool last year. The 2012 Oscar acting categories race actually has more race this time including a Latina (Bérénice Bejo in The Artist ) and Latino (Demián Bichir in A Better Life ). Yay, color!

But there’s one thing that makes the Oscars still less than perfect for me. No Asians have been nominated in the big categories especially in acting.  With the exception of Jennifer Yuh Nelson for Best Animated Feature on Kung Fu Panda 2 and Asghar Farhadi for Best Foreign Language Film and Best Writing-Original Screenplay for A Separation, the field is bleak for Asians in non-technical categories.

In the entire Academy history, the only Asian actors to have won the golden statuette are Miyoshi Umeki in 1957 for Sayonara, Haing S. Ngor in 1984 for The Killing Fields (a shame Pat Morita received his only nomination for The Karate Kid that same year), Ben Kingsley (who is South Asian) in 1982 for Ghandi and, yes, Yul Brynner in 1956 for The King and I. Believe it or not, Yul Brynner was Russian and Mongolian-Tartar (a mixture of Russian and Turkic).

Directors and production artists have fared much better at the Oscars, especially Taiwanese director Ang Lee, cinematographer James Wong Howe and Editor Richard Chew. But no Asian actor has won the award since 1984. And no Asian has won the Best Lead Actress award—ever.

Will an Asian actress win the Best Leading Actress Oscar in my lifetime? Not with the way film roles are cast these days. Not unless someone decides to produce an Asian version of The Help with stereotypical roles set in a nail salon or sweatshop. Who knows? Maybe that’s in the works. The recent film version of Lisa See’s exquisite book Snow Flower And The Secret Fan that employed Asian actresses in lead roles bombed at the box office. The likelihood of Hollywood taking “risks” on Asian actors in lead roles is slim in this economy. The simple truth is white actors can have failed roles and still keep working but actors of color may only get one chance.

I think about the young Asian actors who can’t find roles in local theatre let alone in major Hollywood movies. I wonder if they have rehearsed their Oscar speeches in front of the mirror. Do they practice thanking everyone who helped them? Perhaps they say, “oh what an historic moment in America and to all the young actresses out there, keep dreaming because this is proof your dreams can come true!”

Meanwhile those of us who know that dream will most likely never come true for us personally can delight in the wins of those who have worked hard and struggled and overcome the challenges to finally bring home that golden statuette. Yes, Eliza and I attired in our fake jewels while clinking our champagne glasses will be there to cheer them on.

© Dmae Roberts 2012

*Originally published in The Asian Reporter

Thanksgiving meal with my brother went well till my husband and I noticed the duct tape wrapped around Jack’s fingers.

“What’s that?” I asked.

“I cut myself,” he replied.

I asked “how?” and there was a long pause, a pause that’s been indicative of the thing we don’t talk about if we can avoid it: his bottle collecting. He collects and hoards bottles, cans and even crushed cans and plastic bottles. After one of my many interrogations, Jack once confessed he blew air into them so he could put them through the bottle return machines.

“You put your lips on these bottles?” I once asked him with a measure of undisguised disgust. He simply shrugged his sullen teenager shrug, which is far from appealing coming on a middle-aged man.

“Do you know what kind of germs or illnesses you can get?” I said, barely containing my fear for him.

But on this Thanksgiving night he bore proof of the hazards of his collecting. I looked at the duct tape binding his index and middle fingers. It looked like he hadn’t changed the dressing in days

“Did you do this digging around a dumpster?” I asked him.

He confessed he was searching through our neighbor’s recycling bins.  He used to solely collect out of business and apartment dumpsters but like has moved onto rummaging through curbside bins on trash days like many street people now do. He confessed his cuts came from a tin can he got in one of the bins.

As much as I’m a proponent of recycling, I’ve come to resent the financial incentives to return containers for a nickel or a dime. This feeds on my brother’s compulsion to hoard dozens of bags, which he stores in his driveway and inside his compact car. Regardless that he’s taking away the livelihood of unhoused people, Jack has no qualms about going undercover and dressing like a street person when he goes collecting.

We finished Thanksgiving dinner early so I could look at fingers. I had to cut through the duct tape because it had become fused to his skin.

“How long have you had this tape on?”

“Since I cut it,” Pause. “Tuesday morning… early…”

“Why didn’t you call us?”

“I don’t know!”

I looked at the cut. Deep. It could have used stitches but it was too late now. The cut was gaping with flesh exposed. It would heal that way. We bandaged the wounds as best as we could. The next day I took him to our family clinic. I was relieved when the nurse practitioner said it wasn’t infected.

I tried to get Jack to describe to the nurse how he cut his fingers; how he hoards cans and bottles; how he drives around in a car stacked with bags of bottles all around him with barely enough room to drive; how he has have obsessive compulsive disorder.  But Jack has the ability to downplay his behavior when talking with a professional who could potentially help him. Some years ago I made appointments for him to see a low-cost social worker for therapy. After several months, the social worker plainly told my husband and me that it would be easier for us if we just accepted there was nothing we could do about his behavior.

I’ve been a caretaker for my family since childhood when my mother didn’t understand English and I had to translate and read for her. When people have asked why I’ve never had children or if I even want children, my response has been “Why? I have my family.” It was hard to see how I could raise children when my mother had been a child and dependent first on my father before he died, and then me and my brother. My sense of filial duty to my mother was so strong that I gave up three years of my life to care for when she was dying.

In Chinese there is a term called Ko-Gu—the epitome of filial duty. There is a Buddhist story about Princess Miaoshan, a woman who saves her father by cutting off her arms and gouging out her eyes for the ingredients of a healing potion to save her father. Her sacrifice led to her ultimate enlightenment to become the female Buddha, Kuan Yin. Ko-Gu is fundamental concept for any Chinese daughter, especially one with a Tiger Mom. In order to save my mother’s life, I performed a symbolic Ko-Gu and gave up a part of my life to try to save hers as she battled breast cancer. When she passed on, my familial burden shifted to caring for my brother and dealing with his illness for collecting and hoarding.

That’s not to say it’s all burden. My brother and I enjoy watching our sci-fi shows and movies together.  He is the last of my blood family and we share our past and memories of childhood that no one else could know and he’s still one of the sweetest people I know.

And so this Christmas, my brother and I had our meal cooked by my understanding husband. Our small family unit is far from idyllic but I’ve come to accept that if we can have a calm peaceful holiday with no gaping wounds to bind, then it will indeed be enough.

Best known for her literary science fiction and fantasy books, Le Guin crosses all genres.  She recently published a book of poetry and drawings with photographs by Roger Dorband. They are doing a series of readings which started with a book launch at Looking Glass Books in Sellwood. Roberts also visited with Le Guin recently at her home to talk about her works and career.

Ursula K. Le Guin -Photo: Richard Jensen

Dmae also attended a book party for “Out Here” at the Looking Glass Bookstore. Le Guin said it was the very first book launch she’s ever had.

Oregon Treasures is a special series with funding by the Regional Arts and Culture Council.

This year long series produced by Dmae Roberts brings to light veteran arts organizations and artists who have made an impact for several decades on the artistic landscape of Oregon.

Throughout 2010, Stage and Studio will air these creative feature stories and  highly produced half-hour specials of lengthy portraits.

You can hear Stage & Studio at the KBOO website or on 90.7FM live at 11am Tuesdays.

Or you can subscribe to the podcast on iTunes so you don’t have to miss a show.

Join Producer Dmae Roberts as she embarks on a one-hour exploration called Artland: A Pushing Boundaries Special. This year-long investigation of innovative arts explores artists and arts groups that push personal, artistic, cultural and physical boundaries.

This special one-hour long journey includes music by 3 Leg Torso, David Ornette Cherry, Todd Tawd & Moira Smiley & Voco.

Feature stories include:

Producer Tali Singer brings up a feature story on  Street Books created by Writer Laura Moulton‘s as she delivers books to street people on her Haley tricycle, better known as her mobile library. A large pullout drawer is filled with hundreds of books as she delivers them to people in downtown Portland.  This is Moulton’s social practice art project pushing the boundaries of the definition of art.

Producer Macon Reed brings us more sounds of social practice as she talks with artist Lexa Walsh. They take us on a tour of local food cart vendors as Walsh asks them to create a song with her.

We also have installation sounds from DripDrop Productions and a short tour by Rose Bond of one of her outdoor film installation Broadsided in Exeter, England.

Bond is an internationally known award-winning filmmaker and installation artist who teaches at the Pacific Northwest College of Art.

Writer, composer, filmmaker and visual artist A. Molotkov was born in St. Petersburg, Russia, and moved to the U.S. in 1990, switching to writing in English in 1993.

He shares his poem, ’Say Me With a Dry Leaf’ presented with music by Moira Smiley and Voco.

Macon Reed brings us a personal profile of filmmaker and Portland native Brian Lindstrom. Lindstrom makes films about people he says we put an ex through: ex-cons, people with long histories of drug addiction, mental illness, and homelessness. Lindstrom talk about his films highlighting unusual subjects.

His new film, Alien Boy tells the story Jim Chasse who struggled with mental illness and died while being subdued by police in downtown Portland.

Dmae presents a feature on a Hand2Mouth Theatre rehearsal and talks with director Jonathan Walters, performer Faith Helma and dramaturg Alex Huebsch about their show, Uncanny Valley, as they talk about how they make memories come alive and explore the question “What if you could revisit your memories?” This award-winning Portland group creates original work with music, movement and fantastic effects that resemble a rock concert. Dmae give us insight on how they create this work.

Catherine J.H. Miller is an artist that was born legally blind and has been pushing the boundaries of gallery art while bringing much-needed attention to accessbility both for artists and patrons with physical challenges. Tali Singer spent time  with Miller as she created her project, A Somewhat Secret Place: Disability and Art that brought artists of all abilities from the Northwest and Canada to create art and dialogue about disability.

Fourth generation Japanese American Taiko artist and folk dancer AND artistic director of Portland Taiko, Michelle Fujii, talks with Dmae Roberts about her her solo performance, Choking. Fujii tells us the challenges of honoring cultural traditions while pushing the artforms forward. She tells us how balances artistic preservation with innovation.

Pendulum Aerial Arts pushes through physical boundaries by suspending their dancers high above the audience. Join Macon Reed as he talks to company artistic director Suzanne Kenney about her personal struggles led to her conquering her own fears to create beautiful aerial art and to build a company that now tours and creates original work.

And finally, Dmae Roberts takes a walk on a peaceful sunny day and visits the Portland Occupy movement, before occupiers received the eviction notice. She talks with people at the art tent and about the power of art to soothe and enliven the spirit during difficult times.

Pushing Boundaries is a year-long series of feautres and specials that profiled artists and arts groups who push the personal, physcial and artistic boundaries in their work.

This project was made possible with funding from the Regional Arts and Culture Council.

Additional support for this documentary special came from United States Artists projects fund and MediaRites Productions.

You can hear Stage & Studio  live at the KBOO.FM or on 90.7FM live at 11am Tuesdays.