Ashland, Oregon's 24th Annual Martin Luther King Jr. Day Celebration

Ashland, Oregon’s 24^th annual Martin Luther King, Jr. Day was cleanly divided into two events: the official, city sponsored event, and the Occupy teach-in afterwards.

The first event was hosted by the Historic Ashland Armory. It was a potpourri of art and speeches geared around King and his legacy. There were three kinds of things that happened. The first consisted of specific references to the historic Civil Rights Movement, the second of work that people are doing in Southern Oregon today that continue that legacy, and the third was DeLanna Studi’s recitation of an old Tecumseh speech. The benefit of the references to the Civil Rights Movement was to give young and emerging artists a venue to perform: from Crater High School’s Flag Team and Teen Theater that began with an allegory of segregation to Ben Badden’s rap about MLK, this event was a great showcase for some of the best young artists the Rogue Valley has to offer. The continuing of King’s legacy was represented Mary Farrell, founder of the Maslow Project that helps homeless kids living in the Rogue Valley, and the Ashland Food Project, which organizes long-term food donations for the Valley’s hungry. DeLanna Studi, a Cherokee actor with the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, read a speech by Tecumseh. I feel it’s important for Native folks to get their voices heard, especially in events with a focus on racial justice.

I’m not sure how you can talk about one of the most prominent social activists of modern times and not address the waves of activism that are currently sweeping the globe, from Arab Spring to the Tea Party to Occupy. But Ashland’s MLK event said nary a word about any of these things. From where I was sitting, I wouldn’t have even known Occupy was in the area until I got to the plaza to hear King’s “I Have a Dream” speech and saw a few signs and an “Occupy” banner. In admittedly critical terms, it highlights the way that activism can be incorporated into the establishment and historicized, even while this establishment struggles with living activism. Occupy’s event didn’t retain as many people as the City’s. In fact, it seems that many of the folks at their teach-in were in one way or another associated with Occupy. It’s something that I noticed at Occupy Medford’s teach-in on January 11^th – the only people they were teaching were people who already agreed with them. Democracy can’t exist if the only people you talk about our common issues with are those who feel the same way you do. But the fault doesn’t simply lie with the Occupiers of the Rogue Valley. The general citizenry of the Valley seem to have time for activism that can be historicized and is safe, but not for living activism that threatens to change the status quo.

I might even say the same about Occupy Ashland. According to the conversations I had with Ashland’s Occupiers, which are now archived at Lenk.TV, attendance at their General Assemblies surpasses that of either Oakland or New York. So the democracy that I’m not seeing in their direct actions may exist in their GAs. The actions they are putting their hopes in, though, seem in keeping with Ashland’s relative conservatism that became apparent to me at the Martin Luther King event: they are working within the current system to create change in terms of homelessness and City banking practices in the Valley.

Spotlight on the USO

This Thursday, Camelot Theatre premiered its new show, Spotlight on the USO. Camelot’s Spotlights are a recent innovation that, to paraphrase Artistic Director Livia Genise, feature “a little story and a lot of music.” This particular show is a deviation from previous Spotlights in that it doesn’t present the biography of an individual artist through music, but rather that of an artistic organization – the USO.

But I’ll come to all that later, because really the show Thursday night was a captivating 40s and 50s jazz concert by the Southern Oregon Jazz Orchestra. They played two sets of songs that I suppose were played for the service people overseas during the 40s and 50s, but that story was only secondary to what they were doing. They did branch out from their usual fare twice, both in the second set after intermission – once to give an example of the country music that started to appear in USO tours in the second half of last century with “Route 66”, and their final number was a medley of songs from the branches of the armed forces during which narrator Shirley Patton invited veterans of each branch to stand and be recognized during their song.

The meat and bones of the concert, though, were 40s and 50s jazz standards, and were they ever a hit! They had the audience singing along with “Minnie the Moocher” and others, and nearly every soloist got a rousing applause when they sat back down. Dianne Strong, a singer, was the featured soloist of the evening. An alto, she has a powerful focal and stage presence while she stays within her range. And when she takes short-note forays above her comfortable range, she’s riveting! But she certainly should not try to hold those higher notes – her attempt in “I’ve Got You under My Skin” was acoustically uncomfortable. While I’m pointing out weaknesses, the trumpet and saxophone sections could probably use a tune-up for “American Patrol,” but besides those two mistakes the concert was certainly a good night out.

Now let’s move on to the story part of the “little bit of story and a lot of music” equation. Peter Wyckliffe wrote the script, and Shirley Patton said it. Wyckliffe has certainly done his homework and has written a feast of information. This feast, however, lacks consistency: it ranges from history lesson with facts and figures to penetrating insights into what the USO was all about. The USO was and is meant to help the troops stay connected to home, and Wyckliffe illustrates that beautifully with a verbal illustration of the phones and letters and how they were and are often the only way the troops have to connect back to their families and loved ones.

The result of the inconsistent nature of Wyckliffe’s script is that it sinks or swims with the actor saying it, and it did both with narrator Shirley Patton. She got off to a slow start, and it definitely came off as a fairly dry history lesson. After she got into her groove, she came across as more grandmotherly and inviting. But she was always reading the script, and that was always a distraction. I suggest that a script is not necessary: the role of the narrator in this particular Spotlight was that of an MC. Some kind of structural outline that the performer can do from memory is what this part called for, but a word-for-word script is a death-trap. It makes the storytelling seem artificial, and Patton’s mixing up the U.S. Navy and Air Force songs when asking veterans from the different branches to stand at the end didn’t help.

While I’m on about inconsistencies, I have to take issue with the use of projections and backlighting. Designers Bart Grady and Brian O’Connor had three different things going on: pictures of the USO from the 40s and 50s up through the 80s and 90s, cool blue and purple washes, and a warm orange wash. The pictures were my favorite – they set the location for the story that Wyckliffe and Patton were telling. The cool washes gave an atmosphere of a smoky jazz bar and fit in a more general way for the orchestra, but not for the story. Orange is jarring color, but I probably would have forgotten about it if it had remained there the whole time. But the seemingly arbitrary shifts between images, cool washes and orange were, frankly, distracting.

That said, these weak points fall outside the crux of the show: the Southern Oregon Jazz Orchestra and their 40s and 50s jazz standards. If that’s your kind of music (and even if it’s not) it’s worth a listen. But if you’re going for the story of the USO, that part of the show has a few wrinkles it needs to iron out before I can walk away satisfied.

Spotlight on the USO is playing at Camelot Theatre, 101 Talent Ave., Talent, Oregon 97540 from January 12-22. Their box office can be reached at 541-535-5250. Tickets are $22, plus $2 for reserved seating.