People's Republic of Portland

Last night I watched a comedian from a major American metropolis tell amusing anecdotes about our Cascadian paradise. Was I sucking back PBR with my Umpqua ice-cream in a dimly-lit room going on a Portlandia marathon? Of course not! Everyone who’s anyone knows to pair an Old Rasputin with dairy desserts. And I wasn’t watching Portlandia anyways. I put on my second favorite black tie and headed downtown to Lauren Weedman’s People’s Republic of Portland at Portland Center Stage. And no, it wasn’t just a theatrical staging of Fred and Carrie’s TV hit. Those New Yorkers go for sketch comedy, but L.A. Lauren’s show is stand-up/storytelling. And that gal can spin a yarn! She regaled us with her misadventures visiting Portland for the first time. A seasoned solo performer, she kept the audience entranced with her vivid depictions Portland types that we all know and love, or at least know and tolerate. Whereas Fred and Carrie have the luxury of costumes and actual locations, Lauren didn’t need any of those. For the most part, in fact, whenever she tried to stray away from telling the story with just her voice and body and tried to bring in lights and music, the choice felt forced. It disrupted the flow of her narrative and didn’t contribute anything. But the standing ovation she got at the end excuses any misguided theatricality. All told, People’s Republic panders to Portandian egos in the same way as the TV show: we love it when representatives from our big city sisters New York and L.A. come here and tell us how quirky and awesome we are.

Beer McMennamin’s Ruby Ale. It’s a fun Portland beer, and People’s Republic is a fun Portland play.

Tomorrow

Yesterday I went to Tomorrow. But I didn’t drive a DeLorean. No, my Ford Taurus and I went to Action/Adventure’s new play, where we were informed before the show started that we would be seeing Tomorrow today. I might go back and see it later, maybe next week, but I don’t think it will be finished (bet you thought I was going to make the “tomorrow” pun again, didn’t you? No, I know when to stop.) It wasn’t yesterday, that’s for sure. 

Action/Adventure structured their play like the Zager & Evans standard “In the Year 2525” by creating a trope where they would cite a pop culture reference from each decade, 60s through 90s, envisioning the future, and then explore other stories about what the future might be like. However, the drama in Zager & Evans’ story comes from humanity’s increasing depravity in each century. Tomorrow lacks such a build. However, they do touch upon and develop the theme of cultural pessimism about the future. At least, I think they did, but this could just be a narrative that I'm imposing: Tomorrow lacks a clear focus and instead draws together a potpourri of stories, dance and song without anything more precise than “the future” to hold it all together. But this is what I think they were driving at:

Our visions of the future are based in our visions of the past and present. They need to be: the future is unknown, so all we have to go on is what is already familiar. Action/Adventure develops this by citing (past) cultural edifices looking at the future: Zager & Evans, Mad Max, Terminator, Ray Bradbury. But these stories all describe a future where humans have lost control and the only law is violence. When you put two and two together, this shows us that, at least since the 60s, our vision of our past and present is also one in which humanity has no control over its own fate and in the absence of that control are reverting to our default position of rampant violence. The word “apocalypse,” originally the “revelation” to St. John about God’s coming kingdomon earth, now indicates hell on earth. Even positive futures are seen with little hope: “utopia” literally isn’t any place. In fact, the most compelling moment in Tomorrow was when the ensemble juxtaposed “the sun will come out tomorrow” with global warming.

But, just like Action/Adventure started in a good direction with the Zager & Evans structure but didn’t follow through, they hampered the impact of our culture pessimism by preaching (like in church) optimism. While I could have forgiven the structural corruption brought on by a light focus on that pessimism, the force optimism took me out of it. Because of that, I just didn’t buy the story they were telling. The promise without delivery makes this play feel unfinished.

And what beer goes best with Tomorrow?

Well, this one’s a little harder. The easy answer would be Lagunita’s Pale Ale, since that’s what they were selling and that’s what I drank. But what self-respecting dramaturg takes the easy route and shirks research? Not this one, that’s for sure. So, just like Action/Adventure goes back in time for their source material and finds hardly anything but devastation and hopelessness yet inexplicably tries to end on a high note, I’m going go back to vintage beer advertisements and recommend that you grab a couple buds and head on down to 1050 SE Clinton next weekend. Tomorrow is problematic but not without promise. Where there's life, there's hope Bud.

http://vintage-ads.dreamwidth.org/tag/budweiser

The Possessions of La Boîte

This weekend The Reformers open their flagship piece, The Possessions of La Boîte at Zoomtopia on SE Belmont. The only thing I knew about the piece when I parked down the street on a rainy Friday night is what I’d read on The Reformers’ website:

“The Possessions of la boîte is an ensemble devised work taken from actual family letters and group improvisation.”

If that description makes you think of something that would be performed off-off-Broadway by the New York Neo-Futurists or at the Incubator Arts Project then you are in the same boat I was. And you would be just as wrong. Possessions is less a play than it is an orchestral piece, where actors replace the violins, Richard E. Moore’s soundscapes stand the cellos, and the timpani is the click click click of a typewriter.

Conceived by Charmian Creagle and then created by an ensemble of defunkt Theatre alum, Possessions uses Creagle’s old family letters to create a theatrical poem. Everything is subsumed by the mellow, sleepy rhythm of cycling repetitions of tropes from the source material. This rhythm is augmented by the Moore’s tonal moodscape and the gray costumes designed by Kimberly Smay. These legato elements are punctuated by an staccato that threatens to intrude into the meditative qualities of the piece, only to once again be repressed by their twilight grays. They begin small: a sneeze, the snap of a sheet, the rattle of a typewriter. By the end, they have grown into Kubrickian projections by Ben Purdy and Carrie Solomon: rapid-fire montages of found video accompanied by a piercing industrial music. But even these more dramatic intrusions lack the potency to speed or permanently alter the driving legato.

These rhythmic tension provide a kind of drama, but not the kind I was expecting. Possessions works well as a piece of classical music, and I feel that if I’d gone expecting Dvorak instead of Neo-Futurism, I would have gotten a lot more out of the experience.

The Possessions of La Boîte plays Fridays through Sundays at 810 SE Belmont at 8PM. The price is $15.

And, just for fun, let’s try pairing plays with beer:

Black Butte Porter is the perfect beer for Possessions. The rich dark flavor interrupted but not overwhelmed by the prominent hops matches The Reformers’ legatos and staccatos.