No Good Men in Oklahoma

When it comes to nationalism, there are no white hats.

Oklahoma!, now playing at Camelot Theatre through January 10th, uses Jud the creep as a foil for Curly the hero. It fails, however, to present Curly as a morally unambiguous protagonist. Instead, the only meaningful difference between the two is that Curly's chauvinism is accepted by their community.

Oklahoma! follows the courtship of Curly (Nathan Monks) and Laurey (Grace Peets) in post-Sooner/pre-state Oklahoma. Curly's desirability is supposed to be set in relief by the sexually aggressive loner Jud (Aaron Garber). Curly and Laurey, like Benedick and Beatrice, are attracted to each other but make a point of pride not to admit it. Everyone knows they like each other though: Aunt Eller (Linda Otto) suggests that Curly "just grab her and kiss her when she talks to [him] like that" after Laurey rebuffs him in the opening scene. The play begins in anticipation of a box social, in which women will be auctioned off to the men by proxy of the lunches they make. To jerk Curly's chain, Laurey agrees to go to the box social with Jud. In a member-measuring scene, Curly visits Jud in his shed and suggests he kill himself in "Pore Jud Is Dead," predicated by nothing but Jud's asking Laurey out on a date. Laurey has second thoughts after reflecting on the porn that Jud keeps pinned to the walls in the shed where he lives. Her cold feet come to a climax with a ballet sequence, choreographed by Rebecca Campbell, in which Jud rapes her and kills Curly when the latter comes to her rescue. Tensions rise between the two men in waking life as Curly moves in on Laurey, and her fears about Jud begin to come true with regards to his sexual aggression.

Curly, at least in this Oklahoma!, is morally ambivalent. While he is better than the morally turpitudinous Jud, he still engages in sexually possessive behavior towards Laurey even when she tells him "no." Rather than presenting a White Knight - or, since this is the West, a White Hat - Oklahoma! asks us what exactly differentiates Curly and Jud. The best answer it presents is that, ultimately, Curly is a native member of the community, while Jud came from elsewhere. In that sense, Curly's chauvinism is accepted and shared by the community, while Jud's represents a foreign threat. Their chauvinism is intimately related to the word's nationalistic roots: we can't forget that this story is built upon incipient statehood and patriotic excitement. Oklahoma! levels a candied critique at the chauvinistic identity of nationalism.

Curly may be better than Jud, but he's no good guy. He encourages his rival to commit suicide, apropos of nothing but juvenile jealousy, and ultimately kills Jud, committing the only homicide in a play that otherwise never crosses into bloody violence even while being on the verge of doing so. Curly's specific moral ambiguity reflects universally upon the moral ambiguity of nationalism. The effectiveness of this subtle critique is primarily indebted to Monks and Garber. Monks matches his charisma as an actor with an unsettling earnestness in recommending that Jud hang himself, and Garber plays a Jud who's simmering sexual frustration is ready to boil over at any moment.

Camelot Theatre and the Bloody Politic

Camelot Theatre's production of The Manchurian Candidate explores the exhibitionist and exploitive ontology of the pleasure taken in the vicarious experience of violence through war news on the part of Jackson County and communities like it that exist on the periphery of the United States' imperialist agenda.

By telling the story as a juxtaposition between live theater directed by Roy Von Rains, Jr., and videography by Brian O'Connor, The Manchurian Candidate casts journalistic depictions of violence as specious accounts based upon likely events that primarily serve to sate the consumers' bloodthirsty appetites. Since American consumers equal American voters, war journalism serves to entrench power in a the hands of antisocial hawks.

Camelot's production begins with a video account of a UN peacekeeping platoon's capture by an unidentified foe in Kuwait. The story cuts to a staged homecoming event for Raymond Shaw (Aaron Garber), a survivor of the ill-fated platoon and stepson to Republican Senator Johnny Iselin (Jeff Golden). Iselin uses the event as a campaign stump. Through fellow survivor Ben Marco's (Mark Schneider) videographed dream sequence, we learn that Shaw could have been brainwashed to act as a sleeper agent for an unknown entity. Also likely, these dreams can easily be chalked up to his untreated PTSD. The story, staged and videographed, follows Iselin and his wife's (Presila Quinby) rise to power, and Marco's struggle to unravel the mystery of Raymond Shaw.

Camelot explores our relationship to fictional and documentary violence as an event wherein "fictional" and "documentary" aren't, at least for the consumer, entirely distinct. By focusing heavily on depictions of violence often similar to those in fictional videography and film, journalism's violent focus serves prurient, rather than educational, purposes. In a community like Jackson County, geographically distinct from high-violence regions like current war-zones, such depictions are exhibitionist to the benefit of distant power struggles in Washington, and exploit actual victims and perpetrators of violence. O'Connor's contributions, as Video Designer, take primacy in this story. By staging artificial and intimate footage of war stories, from brainwashing to PTSD, O'Connor comments upon the insincerity of such footage as it's usually seen in Jackson County: broadcast and internet journalism. In using stage, a medium wherein artifice is acknowledged and accepted, as the venue wherein to present his videos, O'Connor comments upon the artifice inherent to video-journalism, a medium wherein acknowledged artifice is equated with failure. O'Connor, as the primary artist in this Manchurian Candidate, levels a critique at our relationship with journalistic war stories.

As described by Camelot's Manchurian Candidate, the relationship of Americans living outside sites of power and/or sites of violence with journalistic depictions of violence is defined by exhibitionism on the part of those in power, and exploitation of those actually experiencing the depicted violence. It's a particularly appropriate description during a post-9/11 election cycle. O'Connor, as the de facto primary artist in this production, uses his new-media stage-craft to its fullest extent to level this critique so tactfully that it reads as stupefying Aristotelean coercion, as opposed to a more pedantic Brechtian A-effect. While potentially soporific, this approach seems to best fit the overall story that O'Connor is telling: like Bill Watterson says, Marx only called religion the opiate of the masses because he'd never watched TV.

"The Last Five Years" 16 Years In

Jason Robert Brown's The Last Five Years is a sturdy and stubborn piece whose charms and problems persist from the Northlight premiere in 2001 to Camelot Theatre's current production.

Chris Jones's Variety critique of The Last Five Years' world premiere praises the emotional range of the score, but finds fault with the underdeveloped characters. Change the names of the artists involved, and he could almost have been writing about Camelot's revival.

The Last Five Years follows the birth, life and demise of Jamie (Nathan Monks) and Catherine's (Amanda Andersen) five year love affair. It follows Jamie's story chronologically, and Catherine's in reverse chronology: his arc begins with the first blush of love, and hers with reading his "Dear John" letter. For the most part, the musical is structured around solo numbers, with duets when their stories intersect during the wedding.

Livia Genise, artistic director of Camelot and director of this production, writes in her program note that she chose this particular play because "...it resonates with me. We all go into a love relationship, any relationship really, with all the naiveté and hope that make us who we are. And once you 'open your heart, one stitch at a time,' you may get hurt. But one thing is sure; you are never quite the same person again. And sometimes, that's a good thing." To paraphrase, she chose this text because the story resonates with her. In spite of that, her production deemphasizes narrative in favor of music. And maybe that's a good thing. The Last Five Years has an exciting score, into which both Monks and violinist Beth Martin are particularly successful at sinking their teeth and horsehairs, respectively. Genise thinks that this play asks "who is responsible for the relationship not working?" and that her "audience will ultimately decide based on whose story resonates with them the most." I contend, and Variety's Jones seems to agree with me here, that The Last Five Years is not open to such a Rashomon-esque reading: our sympathies are clearly meant to rest with Jamie. By structuring Jamie's story chronologically, we can follow his logic as to why he feels a relationship we're told at the outset is doomed is a good idea. Catherine does not have that benefit. By making a Jamie a successful novelist and Catherine a struggling actress who is, it's implied, jealous of his success, Catherine is too easy to read as a nagging wife and deuteragonist in her man's story. She's too hard to read as a protagonist. A marked difference in singing abilities between Monks and Andersen only serves to highlight these textual problems. In fact, and I'll go back to Jones' critique of the Northlight premiere again, Brown's created relationship reads as a little sexist. In short, The Last Five Year's songs are good and its story's not, and it's been that way for the last 16 years.

Camelot Theatre's production reproduces the qualities and failings of The Last Five Year's world premiere verbatim, suggesting that these are not brought to the script by any particular theater, but in fact hardwired into the play's DNA. The music's good enough, though, that audiences continue to be willing to forgive the story. Thus, the real danger with this play, though, lies in artistic directors like Genise with whom the story actually resonates. Thankfully, Genise deemphasized narrative in her production by playing fast and loose with temporal landmarks: there's only one projected on the scrim after the first number. By relying on her established musical taste and musical background, Genise emphasized the part of The Last Five Years that works and deemphasized the part that doesn't.

Community-Building in "H {N)Y P N(Y} OSIS"

Philippe Parreno's H {N)Y P N(Y} OSIS (pronounced "hypnosis") has important contributions to make to the ongoing dialogue over inclusivity and audience engagement in the theater industry.

H {N)Y P N(Y} OSIS is a 360 degree multimedia installation existing in the Wade Thompson Drill Hall of the Park Avenue Armory. By deemphasizing narrative and allowing the audience to experience the space and the micro-narratives within it on their own terms, Parreno has allowed the public to become collaborators in the creation of the ultimate event.

Upon entering the drill hall, the audience encounters Danny The Street, an avenue of marquees of light bulbs suspended parallel to the floor, along with three player pianos, and a marquee perpendicular to the floor that displays both still and moving images. At the end of the avenue, a circular mass of bleachers rises between three large screens where, over the course of the two and half hour loop, four experimental films play. The perpendicular marquee comes to life with Annlee, a nondescript manga character who steps out of the realm of studio art into the hall as two young women actors. These two living, breathing Annlees attempt to engage the audience in conversation.

Philippe Parreno places high value on collaboration: between his collaborators on the films, the composition and performance of the music, as well as other aspects of creation and production, H {N)Y P N(Y} OSIS is hardly a solo exhibition. As such, it walks the porous disciplinary line between studio art and theater. What's particularly intriguing, however, is how Parreno uses the Armory's space to facilitate co-creation of community with his audience. Since H {N)Y P N(Y} OSIS deemphasizes narrative, and runs on a two and a half hour loop for a space of between eight and ten hours, the audience is allowed to drift in and out as individuals or small groups as the piece progresses. They can explore the ways in which the marquees cast light and shadow, and interact directly with the Annlees. In other words, the audience is free to interact with each other, the actors and the space on their own terms. By allowing the audience such autonomy, Parreno shows how artists, both in the theater and studio art fields, can use their art to facilitate non-coercive micro-community building.

The American theater industry is currently exploring ways in which to facilitate audience engagement and community building with its craft. Parreno's H {N)Y P N(Y} OSIS posits one compelling way to do so.

"Long Day's Journey Into Night"

In the Oregon Shakespeare Festival's hands, Eugene O'Neill's private anguish in Long Day's Journey Into Night taps into the universal hell of addiction.

Dramaturg Lydia G. Garcia's program notes point out that the experience lived by the Tyrone is autobiographically similar to that lived by the O'Neill family during Eugene's growing up. In the very capable hands of the acting quintet (Michael Winters, Judith-Marie Bergan, Jonathan Haugen, Danforth Comins and Autumn Buck), OSF's study on the social effects of addiction resonates with startling clarity.

The set (by Christopher Acebo) and costumes (by Meg Neville) are both realist: director Christopher Liam Moore keeps any ego out of the way of the play. The opening sequence is almost a laugh a minute, punctuated by moments of tension when one of a character's addictions are obliquely referenced. As these tense punctuation points unfold, a pattern emerges: the tension exists between the three men. Mother Mary Cavan Tyrone (Bergan) brings the much needed levity. Slowly we learn that she has a problem of her own: she's addicted to morphine, and recently returned from a sanitarium. We also learn how easily she can slip back into using in the face of husband James' (Winters) alcoholism, son James Junior's (Haugen) alcoholism and gambling addiction, and son Edmund's (Comins) mysterious illness. It's so easy for her to quietly slip into the isolation of being stoned and escape the others' sicknesses, and her own sense of failure and ennui. Once she retreats into her addiction, the levity is gone and she drifts ghost-like into the background: rarely seen and never distant. The three men are left to their own devises, and explore their own vices in O'Neill's meditative prose.

Addiction, like Mary, is surprisingly invisible for its nearness to everyone. In this study, O'Neill examines the ways in which those closest to us can be afflicted, and yet, because of how isolating addiction is, it may take years before we're cognizant of what ails them. Long Day's Journey Into Night is a classic and unfortunate instance wherein a deeply personal story is in fact universal. Whether you yourself reside in that hell, or simply have to watch powerlessly as those you love sink into it, O'Neill's text resonates.

OSF's team, led by Moore, both allows O'Neill's anguish to reverberate, and gives it body to do so. It can do so because of how familiar addiction's isolation is: if you yourself suffer from one, how can you ever communicate that hell to someone who doesn't? When you watch your childhood friend retreat further and further into vodkas and crans until you can't even see him any more, how can you understand his pain or communicate your own sadness and helplessness to the guy sitting next to you who's never known any of his friends or family to suffer so? By exploring his own anguish, O'Neill taps into the universally isolating hell that is addiction, and OSF brings us into a room together to think about it.

"Head over Heels"

The Oregon Shakespeare Festival, in its relentless drive towards leadership in all things American theater, is currently premiering the next big thing from Jeff Whitty.

Whitty's new musical, Head Over Heels, juxtaposes Philip Sydney's Elizabeth romp Arcadia with the music of the Go-Go's. As such, it's a perfect combination of the Avenue Q's playwright's chops as a pop culture bard with OSF's dual interests in the existing Canon and in expanding it to include, among other things, women.

John Tufts, as the mercurial fool Philanax, opens the show (playing in the outdoor Allen Elizabethan Theatre), with the obligatory "turn off your cell phones" and an etymological musing on the word "twilight." We in the audience watch the sky change as Philanax explains that "twilight" is Anglo-Saxon for "two lights": that of the day and that of the night. It's about simultaneous opposites. And then the show begins. Basilius, King of Arcadia (Michael Sharon) is visiting The Oracle (Michele Mais), and she gives him four prophecies, all of which have to do with his losing control over his wife and daughters. Oedipally, Basilius leaves Arcadia to seek out Philanax's Bohemian homeland and escape his fate. In tow are his wife Gynecia (Miriam A. Laube), his beautiful daughter Pamela (Bonnie Milligan), and other daughter Philoclea (Tala Ashe), who's "stunningly routine appearance" leaves her in her sister's shadow. She has one suitor, though: the young shepherd Musidorus (Dylan Paul). Desperate that this may be his last chance, he proposes with "I'm Mad About You." Philoclea tells him "no", though, and hits the road with her family. While travelling, Philanax introduces the sisters to a game in which two opposites are written on either side of a card. The object is to embody both at once. Bored with the parlor game, Pamela reads Philoclea and Philanax a poem describing her perfect suitor. Much to the audience's delight, her perfect man is in fact a woman. When she and her lady-in-waiting Mopsa (Britney Simpson) harmonize on "Automatic Rainy Day" together, we know specifically which woman her perfect suitor is. It's here that lovelorn Musidorus reappears, following along like a spaniel. At Philanax's suggestion, and an opportunity presented by the chest of a theater troupe who died of not being able to find a "meaningful message," he disguises himself as the Amazon warrior Cleophila. He rescues the family from a ravenous lion single-handedly, and mother and father both fall in love with him/her. The stage is set for the Oracle's prophecies to all come true and for Basilius and family (and us the audience) to learn about the many nuances and shapes of true love.

Head Over Heels is a fun juxtaposition between Sydney's Elizabethan romance, and the Go-Go's rockin' beat. Jeff Whitty, though, is the man who makes them come together so well. His background in writing socially conscious musicals like Avenue Q, and in playing with the classics as in The Further Adventures of Hedda Gabler stand him in good stead in this project. By playing to his strengths, he's turned out an exciting retelling of a classic text.

OSF is a good place for him to initiate this project: they have a strong background in the classics, with an Elizabethan emphasis, but are also doing exciting work to expand the Canon to include voices that have been historically suppressed by a male, Anglo-Saxon and straight hegemony. By juxtaposing the Go-Go's work with that of an Anglo-Saxon male contemporary of the Bard, they acknowledge the Go-Go's cultural relevancy and their deserving admission to the Canon. And, to top it all off, it's a fun juxtaposition! Whitty's fun, the Go-Go's are fun, Sydney's fun - the whole thing's fun! By sticking to his strengths, Whitty's delivered a musical that's simultaneously fun and thought-provoking.

OSF's Pericles

Shakespeare's Pericles is a heartwarming story of a healed relationship between a father and his family that seems to parallel the author's own angst over his strained relationship with his family.

Written by Shakespeare while living and working in London, while his daughters lived in Stratford-upon-Avon, Pericles is the story of a father separated from his family by the pressures of his job as king of Tyre and the unfeeling tides of the universe. Pericles is written as an empathetic character, and the Oregon Shakespeare Festival's current production taps into that core quality of the script.

Pericles (Wayne T. Carr) meets his wife, Thaisa (Brooke Parks), while on the run from the villainous Antiochus (Scott Ripley). The pair have a daughter, Marina (Jennie Greenberry), while at sea, only to be separated by shipwreck. The three end up in different cities, but the story follows Marina and her salvation of Mytilene from the vice of lust through her unprecedented chastity. The play ends with the family's reunion at the hands of the goddess Diana (Emily Serdahl).

OSF's Pericles is a compelling piece because director Joseph Haj embraces the fairy tale qualities of the script, allowing Shakespeare's fantasy of a happy reunion with his family to play as such. It allows us to believe the happy end the way we might believe the happy end in any fairy tale: we don't necessarily believe the events of the, but we believe its sentiment. We believe that the Big Bad Wolf gets his just desserts and celebrate Little Red Riding Hood's victory. We are disappointed in the princess's mistreatment of the frog, and celebrate her reward upon behaving correctly. We hope that Pericles, Thaisa and Marina will be all right in the end, and cry just a little bit when they are. Pericles is a fairy tale, and Shakespeare's telling is the most famous one for us in our time, just like the Grimm brother's "Little Red Riding Hood" is the most famous telling of that tale. Shakespeare's Pericles is not an anonymous telling, however, who's author is shrouded behind the curtains of tradition and intermediary anthropologists. Shakespeare is very present in his Pericles, with Pericles' separation from his wife and daughter paralleling Shakespeare's own alienation from his family. That Pericles is most engaging once that central problem begins in the third act speaks to Shakespeare's Pericles' strength lying in the protagonist's role as an authorial proxy: since Shakespeare seems to have identified with Pericles in his struggle for reunion with his family, it's easiest for the audience to identify with Pericles there, too.

The lesson here is for playwrights to write not just what they know, but what they've experienced. The first two acts of Pericles are compelling only by OSF's stagecraft: the play speaks for itself when the protagonist's struggle parallels the author's own experience.

Theatrical Craftsmanship in "Three Days of Rain"

Silas Weir Mitchell brings his technically fantastic acting chops to the technically fantastic script of Three Days of Rain at Portland Center Stage.

Three Days of Rain is fairly standard kitchen-sink realism (the water in the sink even runs), to which Silas Weir Mitchell brings fairly standard acting techniques as Walker and Ned Janeway. So far so bland, but it's the proficiency of Richard Greenberg's script and Mitchell's acting that elevate PCS' production above what could have been prosaic stage-filler to something really exciting.

Three Days of Rain is written anti-chronologically: the first act is set in 1995, and the second act in 1965. Act One deals with Walker Janeway, his sister Nan (Lisa Datz) and childhood friend Pip Wexler (Sasha Roiz) just prior to and just after the reading of Ned's will. Pip's father Theo (also played by Sasha Roiz) and Ned were architectural business partners. Theo died first, and much later Ned. Neither Nan nor Walker were particularly close to Ned: he was a silent man and a distant father. Hence Walker's excitement at finding his father's journal in the apartment where Ned and Theo lived when they began their practice, which also serves as the venue for the entire play. The journal poses more questions than it answers: the evening on which their mentally unstable mother heard Walker laughing and bolted through a glass window, emerging "like a crystal being, then colorized," is entered into the journal simply as "a terrible night." The journal even begins prosaically: "three days of rain." The first act poses these questions and others, and the second act sets out to answer them by allowing us into a critical moment in the relationship between Ned and Theo and the mother Lina (also played by Datz).

Three Days of Rain's protagonists are Walker and Ned Janeway: Silas Weir Mitchell's characters. That means, taken as a whole, the play is the story of the relationship between son and father, and that it falls primarily on Mitchell's shoulders to tell that story. His acting, therefore, is the focal point of PCS's Three Days of Rain, and his presence on stage is a credit to Roiz and director Chris Coleman's bringing him into their prospective collaboration, from whence this project springs. Mitchell's technique as an actor is phenomenal. Currently, audiences have their primary exposure to him in his work as a series regular on Grimm (also co-starring Roiz), but his resume goes back years to his undergraduate and graduate work at Brown and UC San Diego, respectively. Even in minor roles, written as jokes, such as Donny Jones on My Name Is Earl, his technique steals his scenes. The only problem with Mitchell on TV is that we don't get to see enough of him. Three Days of Rain is a fantastic showcase for Mitchell's craft in that it allows us to see him use physicality, voice and methods of receiving information over the course of more than two hours to define two very different characters. Besides just showing us what a great actor Mitchell is, PCS' Three Days of Rain is a testament to the importance of craftsmanship in theater.

Greenberg's script has been performed in LORT theaters since the 90s, and with good reason: it's a technical masterpiece that plays well to Boomer subscribers comfortable with kitchen-sink realism. As such, it's a perfect vehicle for a technically brilliant actor like Silas Weir Mitchell. It's a reminder that if you're doing something well, even if you're doing something as notoriously familiar as kitchen-sink realism, you'll be doing something exciting and special.

Hero's Journey

The Oregon Shakespeare Festival's current production of Much Ado About Nothing makes it clear that the story's real hero is Hero herself.

Much Ado is two stories intertwined into one play: the "Merry War" between Beatrice and Benedick, and Hero's journey from the altar to the grave back to the altar. The Merry War is the perennial crowd pleaser, but Hero is the play's heart.

Much Ado begins with soldiers returning home to Messina, to be greeted by Beatrice (Christiana Clark) and Hero (Leah Anderson). Beatrice immediately starts laying into Benedick (Danforth Comins) before the latter even arrives, but Hero remains passive: laughing good naturedly at her cousin's antics, and allowing herself to be wooed by Don Pedro (Cristofer Jean) on behalf of Claudio (Carlo Albán). Her greatest moment of activity comes when she describes how madly in love with Beatrice Benedick is, while her cousin eaves drops. She loses her agency again when Claudio insults and refuses her at the altar, all on the strength of Don Jon's treachery, and his own fear of women. She's caught in the claws of the patriarchy: when she denies that she had sex with another man on the night before her wedding, her own father (Jack Willis) asks, "Would the two princes lie?" To escape, she has to feign death and then resurrect herself at the Friar's (Tyrone Wilson) suggestion. It's at the play's conclusion that she regains some semblance of autonomy: her public forgiveness of the men's transgressions is what allows the play to end.

The Merry War is Much Ado's entertaining selling point, especially when the belligerents have as much chemistry as Clark and Comins, but it's also the sugar that helps the proverbial medicine go down. Shakespeare apparently spent more time with Hero's journey than the Merry War, seeing as the former is written in verse and the latter prose. For the most part, the Merry War you see is the Merry War you get: Beatrice and Benedick pretend not to like each other, and flirtingly tease each other, but all it takes is a little nudge and they're plastering their own nuptials onto cousin Hero's wedding. The only place we get to see the substance of their rapport with each other is alliteratively not-funny "Kill Claudio." Phrased differently, Hero's journey shows us the substance behind the Merry War. On the other hand, Hero's arc closely parallels the most important story in Elizabethan culture: the death and resurrection of Jesus. Hero is innocent, but nonetheless forced into her grave by the faults of others. Her primary antagonist must confess his sins to her before she returns from the grave and, at least publicly, she forgives him and the other sinners. The differences between Shakespeare's story and the one(s) in the Bible are telling: in contrast to Jesus' masculinity, we have Hero's femininity. While Jews and Romans are responsible in the Bible for Jesus' crucifixion, it's men organized in a sexually immature patriarchy who are responsible for Hero's figurative interment. Hero's journey is a rather forward thinking critique of a society structured around male power and frailties, and constitutes the soul of Much Ado About Nothing. The Merry War's function is to pick up the mood from the troubling, and perhaps blasphemous, implications of Hero's Passion. Telling that story, though, calls for a strong actress: one who can tell a story to a rather cavernous house without saying it. Hero is a repressed female, who only says the sorts of things that her men want her to say. It's her hamartia, since it puts her in a position where living her life at their behest means alienation from them since, for the most part, they're stupid and viciously insecure. Leah Anderson is an actress who can tell that story, and director Lileana Blain-Cruz is a director who knows enough to give Hero's character the attention needed to allow Anderson to do her job. In Anderson and Blain-Cruz's hands, OSF's Much Ado is a compelling narrative about a woman Jesus, the gall of which is sweetened by the sugar of Clark and Comins' merry banter.

Hero is the oft overlooked hero of Much Ado About Nothing, but she's not at all overlooked by OSF. Leah Anderson and Lileana Blain-Cruz are the heroes of this particular production for giving her the weight the play needs her to have.

E Is for Empathy, F Is for Fingersmith

Augusto Boal, in his Theatre of the Oppressed, takes a cynical view of dramaturgy that excites empathy. He describes that the dominate powers in a given society use empathetic theater as a means to normalize systems that reinforce their control. Sarah Waters' Fingersmith, as adapted for the Oregon Shakespeare Festival by Alexa Junge, demonstrates how empathetic theater can be used to assert the rights of an oppressed group in the face of belligerent social systems.

Fingersmith's impact centers on the work of Waters, Junge, Sara Bruner (who plays Sue Trinder) and Erica Sullivan (who plays Maud Lilly). Waters and Junge craft a suspenseful love journey between Sue and Maud, and Bruner and Sullivan deliver grounded performances that inspire empathy in the travails of the protagonists.

The first act is told through the point of view of Sue, a "fingersmith," or jill-of-all-crimes in Victorian England. She's hired on to a con by the Gentleman (Elijah Alexander) to defraud Maud Lilly. The Gentleman is paying court to the heiress whose inheritance is in trust until she marries. Sue is to hire on as Maud's servant to support the Gentleman's suit. Once the pair are married, they plan to dump Maud into a mad house. Her inheritance will go to the Gentleman, and he and Sue will split the take. As the women spend more and more time with each other, however, they develop a friendship that blossoms into an illicit love affair. After a cliff-hanger chapter-end at the end of Act I, Maud takes over as the point of view character. Act II likewise ends in a cliff-hanger, whetting appetites for the climactic Act III.

It's hard not to draw parallels between the drowningly homophobic milieu that Waters writes in Fingersmith with Indiana and Arkansas' attention-grabbing attempts at passing discriminatory anti-gay laws, and Oklahoma's acquiescence to gay-conversion therapy. When gay kids are being driven onto the streets by parents who are too caught up in their own prejudices to love their offspring, when American Protestant morality equates itself with discrimination on the basis of sexuality, we need stories that normalize homosexual love. Fingersmith, at least with Bruner and Sullivan in the protagonic roles, takes the audience on a journey on which we root for Sue and Maud to overcome the homophobic road-blocks thrown in their path by Waters' Victorian England. Whether or not we in the audience are lesbians, we can empathize with this love story. Since non-heterosexuals are gleefully and anachronistically oppressed in the U.S., empathy plays the opposite role in Fingersmith of how Boal describes it. Instead of normalizing systems of oppression, this dramaturgy in Fingersmith normalizes equality.

Fingersmith uses classic empathetic dramaturgy to assert the rights of our homosexual citizens. Since some of our other, more Victorian, citizens, are currently in the process of trying to take homosexual rights away, Waters' story is especially timely.

Considering the Canon: Blithe Spirit

Classics are supposed to be cultural markers that tell us something timelessly and universally human about ourselves. By such a litmus test, Noel Coward's Blithe Spirit ought not to be counted with the canon.

Blithe Spirit tells us something about ourselves, but it's not timeless, and it's not universal. Coward's farce plays towards audiences' (especially American audiences') desire to feel superior. The tools it uses are often dated, and never admirable.

An English comedy of manners, Blithe Spirit saw its London debut in 1941 and hopped the pond the same year. Charles and Ruth Condomine invite eccentric medium Madame Arcati over for a little séance so that Charles can mine her for details for his upcoming novel. Arcati accidently conjures Charles' dead wife, and hilarity ensues. The jokes include references to lazy Indians, wife-beating and sexual assault, but primarily the humor comes from the characters always being one step behind the audience.

Coward flatters the audience by giving them an easy metaphor and a sense of superiority to the British characters. For American audiences, this is particularly apt. In the States, audiences are fascinated by all things British and aristocratic: look at the popularity of Downton Abbey and Jane Austen's novels. By staying one step ahead of them in Blithe Spirit, Americans are elevated from middle class mediocrity to a place above the fantastically aristocratic Brits. In addition to taking shots at his neighbors, Coward takes cheap shots at Indians ("Well, for one thing [Indians are] frightfully lazy and also, when faced with any sort of difficulty, they're rather apt to go off into their own tribal language which is naturally unintelligible"), and Cockney laborers with the clownish Edith. In addition, the jokes about domestic violence ("ELVIRA: Not at all - you were an absolute pig that time we went to Cornwall and stayed in that awful hotel - you hit me with a billiard cue. CHARLES: Only very, very gently...") and sexual assault ("CHARLES: You let him kiss you though, didn't you? ELVIRA: How could I stop him? He was bigger than I was.") aren't terribly funny.

If Blithe Spirit accesses anything universally human about us, it's our desire to feel superior to our fellow human beings. The tools it uses to make us feel superior are dated 73 years since they were written, and so can hardly be called "timeless."

What Is Portland's Artistic Future?

Theater is Portland's artistic future.

Amanda Hunt and Disjecta's "Portland2014," partially exhibited at Southern Oregon University's Schneider Museum of Art through December 6, respectfully nods to studio art's 2D past while drawing focus to its interactive and performative future.

The body of Portland2014 is 2D: Modou Dieng and Devon VanHouton's Tranquilo references public mural. Travis Fitzgerald represents tapestry with Objects of Permanence I & II. Blair Saxon-Hill's double-sided quilt Shifting Ground and Occupation hangs in the center of the gallery, and D. E. May's geometric musings hang towards the far end. Abra Ancliffe's interactive Personal Libraries Library nestles in a corner near the entry. The its membership card reads,

"The Personal Libraries Library is a lending & subscription library located in Portland, Oregon. The Library is dedicated to recreating the personal libraries of artists, philosophers, scientists, writers and other thinkers & makers. It, and the books, function as a locus for research, connections, convergences, discoveries, curiosity & happenstance.

"The PLL Press produces and disperses printed matter that investigates the material, conceptual, textual and social presence of the Library."

Enhanced white noise emanates from Kelly Rauer's Locate, a triptych of video loops meditating on human movement with its locus in the spine, in the back antechamber. Studio art, dance and video converge in this geographically isolated yet aurally pervasive piece.

PLL and Locate stand out by their difference. In a space dominated by satisfying but ultimately predictable work, these two pose questions: what is a lending library doing in a museum? what is that noise coming from the back? Without ignoring the pedigreed place that 2D art holds in such a venue, Portland2014 guides museum art towards the interactive and performative. Hunt and Disjecta are telling their artists and venues to think theatrically.

We're used to the two dimensional in art museums. There's not a lot of ground left to cover. If artists want to grow, they need to encourage their audience to engage with their work, like Ancliffe. They need to pull divergent media together like Rauer. They need to think like theater makers. 

A Perfect Pairing: "Los Olvidados" and "Marmato, Colombia"

Ramiro Gomez's art, however important, is impermanent. That makes David Feldman's documentary Los Olvidados a crucial supplement to Gomez's practice.

Gomez creates cardboard cut-out pop-up art meant to draw attention the humanity of immigrant laborers in the Southwest. The film documents the creation of an installation that Gomez erected in the Sonora desert of Arizona depicting a family of immigrants gathered around a white cross.

 

Feldman's documentary begins with a description of Gomez's art: he creates cardboard cut-outs of immigrant labors doing the kind of labor that immigrants often do. He then places them in found locations where someone might do the kind of work depicted by the cut-out. For example, he might put a cut-out gardener in a Beverly Hills lawn. Cardboard is an important ingredient in his art: it represents how immigrant laborers are often treated as disposable. This lays the groundwork for his installation titled Los Olvidados, or The Forgotten. Instead of an urban environment, Los Olvidados was placed in the Sonora desert, a high traffic area for illegal immigration up from Mexico and infamous as a deadly crossing. The piece depicts a Latino family standing around a small white cross.

By depicting immigrants in a compassionate light that calls attention to their vulnerability, Gomez puts a human face on a highly politicized and de-humanized event. His installations presumably exist until a property owner has their help clean it off their lawn, or in the case of the Sonora installation, until natural forces deteriorate the cardboard. Their impermanence is one of their strengths, but also one of their weaknesses. Feldman's film quite successfully addresses the problems of the installations' impermanence while not detracting from the story that their disposability tells.

 

David Feldman's Los Olvidados shouldn't be taken as a stand-alone film, but rather as an interpretive supplement to Ramiro Gomez's installation art. Gomez's installations are important in their humanization of a group that often takes second place to people's political beliefs about them. Feldman's film partakes of that importance.

 

Marmato, Colombia perfectly compliments Los Olvidados by placing responsibility for the root causes of Latino immigration to the States in the hands of North American capitalists and their Latino government partners.

Featured second in SIFF's "Ripped from the Headlines" package after Los Olvidados, Santiago Ramirez's Marmato is a series of interviews with the denizens of a Colombian mining community who are allegedly being displaced by an unholy alliance between a Canadian multinational and the Colombian government.

Marmato, Colombia consists of interviews with Marmato's residents, who practice traditional mining that ekes just enough mineral from the earth to make a living without depleting their primary source of income any time in the near future. According to the interviewees, their national government struck a deal with an unnamed Canadian multinational mining operation that is quickly depleting their mines and not paying the Marmatans for their labor. The government allegedly took it one step further and illegalized traditional hand-mining. As one of the interviewees puts it, by taking away their primary source of income, the Colombian government and the multinational are turning "good people bad, and bad ones rich."

Ramirez has struck a vein with his interviews with the locals affected by their conflict with the national government and the government's capitalist partners. It's worth noting, however, that he doesn't reach anything close to journalistic objectivity by including interviews with the leading figures in the multinational or government. By doing so he could flesh out the situation that is displacing the people of Marmato. Still, the interviews with Marmato's residents suffices in creating a companion piece to Los Olvidados by describing how actions taken by North American capitalists can create the conditions that displace Latin Americans from their homes, setting them, perhaps, on the road for America.

SIFF's curation is exquisite in placing Marmato, Colombia after Los Olvidados. It expands upon the story that Ramiro Gomez tells with his cardboard cut-outs by providing a platform for Colombians still in Colombia to say why they need to leave their homes. SIFF ought to be commended for their dramaturgical approach to telling one story with two films.

Free Syrian Army Propaganda

Propaganda's hard to spot when you agree with it. Let's say, for example, that you're into democracy and everyone having an equal say in affairs of state. Well, that doesn't mean that films that give exclusive voice to the democratic side of a conflict aren't propaganda, it just means that they're propaganda that you agree with.

Matthew Van Dyke's Not Anymore is interviews Mowya, a Free Syrian Army commander, and Nour Kelze, a journalist embedded with Mowya's battalion (and who's sympathies clearly lie with Free Syrian Army.) It's safe to say that Not Anymore accurately reflects Mowya and Kelze's experiences in the Syrian Civil War. It would be disingenuous to claim that it paints an accurate picture of said war.

Trigger warning: Not Anymore contains footage of a slain soldiers getting shot and killed, and a bomb or mortar blast in a crowded square.

 

Van Dyke and co-producer Kelze have created a propaganda piece to appeal to American's sentiment that democracy as a universal good. It feels disingenuous for Van Dyke and Kelze to call themselves journalists in context of this film. In other productions, perhaps they are able to interview more than one commander of one battalion of one side of the chaotic Syrian Civil War and a reporter embedded with said battalion. Not Anymore, while well meaning, feels coercive in its one-sidedness.

However much the American audience may agree with the sentiments expressed in Not Anymore, it is misguided to think that this film educates one about the multifaceted civil war that is spilling across Syria's borders. Even as propaganda it's incomplete: it doesn't tell its intended audience what it would like them to do. Should we write to our congress people demanding immediate military intervention in Syria[1]? Should we donate to this, that or the other charity? In the context of Not Anymore, Van Dyke and Kelze oughtn't be considered journalists. "Activist filmmakers" is a more apt moniker, although even as such their work is incomplete.

---

[1] Not Anymore was completed in 2013, before America's involvement in Syria in opposition to ISIL.

A Quitely Powerful Truth

One can almost hear silent and off-camera documentarian Emmanuel Vaughan-Lee asking his interviewees, "How is climate change affecting you?"

His appropriately titled Isle de Jean Charles, featured in SIFF's "Ripped from the Headlines" package, asks just that question of the denizens of the titular island, deep in the Louisiana bayou.

http://goprojectfilms.com/#isle-de-jean-charles

His interviewees describe what it's like to live in a changing climate without ever saying the words "climate change." Instead, the phenomenon is implied and only its adverse effect is made explicit. Even better, Isle de Jean Charles is a platform for the people who know the island best tell its story themselves in their own words. In a way that places blame nowhere and retains focus on the islanders, we learn how they will soon be displaced by climate change.

Vaughan-Lee's silent question is important for its silence. Instead of creating an expose like An Inconvenient Truth, Vaughan-Lee is able to simultaneously side-step a hot-button political issue and address it dead on. By humanizing a politicized event, he is able to appeal to our senses of empathy and compassion, rather than to our senses of rage and righteous indignation. Isle de Jean Charles is quietly powerful.

Being Black "After Trayvon"

Do young African-American men feel persecuted? Do you really need to ask?

Alex Mallis' short film After Trayvon, featured in SIFF's "Ripped from the Headlines" package, sure feels the need to answer. (The answer, by the way, is "yes.")

 

Unfortunately, a video that lays it out as bluntly as After Trayvon is needed, because too many white Americans are blinded by the safety lent them by their skin color to the reality that not everyone has it so good. While Mallis' format may be prosaic, it's to be commended for it's simplicity: it's hard (or at least asinine) to answer "I feel persecuted" with "no you don't."

It ought to be a no-brainer, but apparently it isn't, that young men with brown or black skin feel persecuted in America because they are persecuted in America. It's important, therefore, for material like After Trayvon to exist. Mallis may not be a sophisticated filmmaker, but he gets the job done.

A Refreshing Realism

Realism is an actor's genre.

Ellar Coltrane

Richard Linklater's Boyhood pushes realism past it's persistent 19th century parameters by filming a plotless movie over the course of twelve years so that we can watch the characters age. The lack of a plot paints a realistic picture of what growing up is like: boyhood doesn't have an inciting incident, rising action, climax, falling action and neat resolution followed by a denouement. At the same time, a three hour film that doesn't give us the orgasmically structured rush we're used to could be a real drag. It takes good actors schooled in psychological realism to make it come off, and Linklater proves that he knows how to pick them.

Boyhood follows Mason (Ellar Coltrane) and Samantha (Lorelei Linklater) as they grow up in suburban Texas. Their dad (Ethan Hawke) is trying to involve himself in their lives, and their mom (Patricia Arquette) wants to find them a good step-dad. The kids get and break up with girlfriends and boyfriends. They experiment with booze and pot, and put up Obama signs with their dad. Mason discovers his passion for photography, and both kids grow up and leave for college.

That sounds about as interesting as watching grass grow, right? That's because the story isn't that interesting. What's interesting is how the actors, principally the core four (Coltrane, Linklater, Hawke and Arquette) inhabit their roles. The Realism with which they approach their roles isn't the American Method. The Method calls for a strong focus on objectives and tactics. Think of it this way, if you're acting using the American Method, you want to figure out what your character wants from your scene partner. It's got to be something concrete, something you'll recognize and celebrate if you get. You start with one tactic to get what you want from them, and if that doesn't pay off, you move on to another. In real life, we might act this way in a job interview or during a break-up, but we generally aren't so Machiavellian. The Boyhood cast acts in a way that reflects the way we really are. When Sheena (Zoe Graham) breaks up with Mason, he is clearly trying to get her to take him back. The mom has a clear goal when she needs to get her kids out of a dangerous situation. Arquette, however, doesn't have a clear objective with its test in Coltrane when he leaves for college. Sometimes you're just sad without ulterior motives, and Arquette reflects that with a refreshing honesty. Linklater set out to make a film that portrays an honest boyhood, and so he needs a cast whose acting could take Realism past it's unfortunate conflation with the American Method. Fortunately, he put together a stellar cast who can move past the American Method towards real Realism. By doing so, Boyhood presents intrinsically relatable characters, an accomplishment that allows the audience to emphasize with them on a deeply human level.

A Familiar Flamingo

La Vida Boheme's Flamingo tells a classic story of death and rebirth using animation reminiscent of 1930s Disney.

La Vida Boheme (Henry D'Arthenay, Daniel de Sousa, Sebastián Ayala and Rafael Pérez Medina) complement their rock ballad with a cartoon drawn in the old-school Steamboat Willie that tells a familiar story. By doing the classics, and doing them well, La Vida Boheme creates an enduring film soundtracked by their Flamingo.

 

The band chooses to tell an uplifting story about death and rebirth. The use of childlike, familiar imagery and contrasts between light and dark, color and monochrome emphasize the narrative content. It goes to show that sometimes the old ways are the best ways.

By using highly accessible techniques to tell a story intimately familiar to anyone with a passing knowledge of Christian mythology, La Vida Boheme have created a modern classic.

Storytelling with Wolf & Crow

Nothing beats a strong story.

Folk band Wolf & Crow (Mathieu Stemmelen and Zachary Vieira) tell a compelling love story in their "Love in the Time of Advertising." Their simultaneously dry and imaginative sense of humor adds warmth to the story that's beautifully animated by Matt Berenty.

 

It's an endearing little love story about how nothing beats human interaction. The earnestness with which Wolf & Crow tell it and Berenty animates it sell it, but none of that would matter if the story itself wasn't strong.

When it comes right down to it, music videos are about telling a song's story. It doesn't hurt that "Love in the Time of Advertising" is a narrative poem set to old-timey country pickin'. The video doesn't give much evidence of whether or not Wolf & Crow have much going for them as musicians, but as storytellers they can't be beat.

Jenny Schweitzer's Simple Success

A successful documentary is a simple film that provides a platform for the interviewees to tell their own stories.

Jenny Schweitzer's Flor de Toloache does just that for an all-female mariachi band, casting light upon their response to the machismo that characterizes the genre.

Flor de Toloache is part of Schweitzer's Rhythm in Motion, a ten part series of short documentaries about the musicians who busk in New York City's subway system. Traditionally, mariachi bands are dominated by men. Flor de Toloache, the band featured in the eponymous film, runs against that macho grain by featuring an all-women line-up.

Flor de Toloache exists within the broader context of international patriarchy and the ways in which such social structures limit women's opportunities. By simply allowing the interviewees to describe the problem and their solution for it, Schweitzer creates a compelling and positive movie.

Rather than focus on herself as a filmmaker, or even upon the individuals interviewed, Schweitzer's Flor de Toloache allows the expert interviewees to interpret a cultural event for us. The event is not isolated: it exists within a social structure that we all participate in. Flor de Toloache is an educational documentary that is well-made because it is made simply.