Inspired by… Cancer and Beauty and a 9 Year Old Boy January 19, 2012

What inspires a Festival project? Here’s one extraordinary answer from playwright David Berkson.

Fifteen years ago, I began tutoring 9 year old boy named Eric. My new student had recently been diagnosed with leukemia, and was being homeschooled. Told by his family of a voracious appetite Shakespeare, I was asked if I could take an hour a week to help foster his burgeoning interest.

Eking out a living as a professional actor in San Francisco, I was happy for the work. And I was especially pleased to meet my new charge; even at our first interview, Eric wasted no time. He wanted to talk about The Merchant of Venice. Bothered and fascinated with the Bard’s treatment of the Jewish moneylender Shylock, Eric wrestled with the most troublesome issues in the play before finally asking: “Was Shakespeare anti-Symmetrical?”

Most malapropisms reveal ignorance. Eric’s revealed knowledge. And curiosity. Read the rest of the story.

You can check out his piece, The Penguins of Ithaca,  January 27, 28, 29 @ 7:30pm at the Northwest Academy Blue Box Theatre, 1130 SW Main St, Portland OR 97205. Tickets available through www.fertilegroundpdx.org.

PLAYWRIGHT INTERVIEW: Claire Willett January 19, 2012

Playwright Interview: Claire Willett

Trisha Mead digs into the writing process of 4-time Fertile Ground playwright Claire Willett, author of Artists Rep’s featured festival project Dear Galileo.

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

Three women in three different times 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. Cast includes Portland favorites David Bodin, Adrienne Flagg, Chris Harder and Gilberto Martin del Campo. Join us for a post-show talkback after each show with the playwright and director, moderated by Mead Hunter.

Trisha Asks, Claire Answers

Give me your one-sentence thesis statement for what kind of work you like to create.

Funny and moving stories about messy, complicated people trying to figure out the big stuff in life – faith, grief, family, love, identity – and occasionally really screwing it up along the way.

Four years, four festival projects. What keeps you inspired to create new work?

I still have so many more stories I want to tell, and different creative leaps I want to take.  Every play I write, I get a little braver, more willing to take a risk.  When that clump of half-formed thoughts rattling around in your brain finally coalesces into the beginning of a real story idea, you just want to keep running down that path as fast as you can to see where it’s going to end up, and you won’t know until you get there.  And the best thing about Fertile Ground is that it gives you a new goal every year.  As soon as this year’s festival ends I know I have a year to write my next year’s play.  It pushes me to keep writing, to always have a couple ideas on deck and to be writing all the time.  I’m so grateful for that.

Do you feel you’ve discovered your ideal audience? Describe the typical/perfect audience member for a Claire Willett play.

I’m Catholic, so there’s a very Catholic sensibility to my writing, even when I’m not writing about religion (though I often do).  And I love, love, love using theatre to sort of invite people who don’t define themselves as religious to enter into that world.  I wrote a play 2 years ago about monks, where one of the major plot points had to do with somebody going to Confession, and after the show one of my best friends, who is completely non-religious, was like, “I TOTALLY want to go to Confession now.  It sounds RAD.”  Those are my favorite moments.  People leave a little bit different than they came in – those are the perfect audience members.  If you get a handful of those, you’re lucky. 

I think of myself as the Fertile Ground poster child.  Without the resources available through this festival – the shared marketing, the visibility, being under the umbrella of a larger organization with all that entails – I can reach an audience I could never have found otherwise.  I’d just be in my living room doing readings for my friends.  But now I feel like I’m building a bit of a regular audience.  People who follow theatre stuff in Portland are starting to know who I am a little bit.  There are Portland theatregoers who have seen all four of my shows.  They don’t know me, they just found me in the Fertile Ground catalog that first year and liked what they saw and kept coming back.  I hope I give them a better show every year. 

Think about the writer you were four years ago. What advice would today’s Claire give four-years-ago Claire about creating new work and participating in Fertile Ground?

Child, you have trust issues.  It won’t kill you to let someone read a first draft before you think everything is perfectly polished.  It won’t kill you to put the script in a director’s hands and then WALK AWAY.  Relax. 

Also, your smartest audience member and reader will be your dad. 

You had the opportunity to complete your current festival project with the help of a month-long writer’s retreat. Tell us about that experience. Do you feel it impacted what you chose to create?

It was AMAZING.  I’m used to writing from 10 at night until 2 in the morning, because with two jobs, that was the time I had.  But with a whole month of uninterrupted days stretching ahead, I wrote completely differently.  I could take time.  I could do research.  I could sit with an idea until it fully germinated.  I could sit in my studio with a pot of coffee and read all of Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time in one day and take notes, and then spend the whole day just re-reading and thinking about those notes.  I wasn’t writing in a rush, or with the phone ringing, or with a tiny chunk of time in between a million things to do.  I felt free and expansive and I think the writing is freer and more expansive because of that.  I think people who have seen my other plays will feel the difference in this one.  I had time to get everything right the first time, to take it slow.

This is the first year you are not having to self-produce your project. What does it mean to you to be selected as one of Artists Rep’s Fertile Ground projects this year? What opportunities has it created?

Having the stamp of approval of the city’s second-largest theatre company makes a huge difference.  It will change how the script is perceived when I start shopping it out to theatres for production.  It’s already changed my media and press visibility.  Being Artists Rep’s project kicks me a major step up the ladder in terms of how much attention a project gets.  It gives you access to a whole new audience.  For my last three projects, it was all on me.  I did all my own press and marketing.  I made the programs.  I paid actors out of my own bank account.  I set up and took down chairs every night.  I tore my own tickets at the door.  Year One we were in a tiny music studio with room for like 30 chairs.  Year Two we were at Jim & Patty’s Coffee, and the night baking shift came on around the beginning of Act II, so oven beeps and delicious cookie smells were constantly wafting over the counter.  Year Three we were in an honest-to-God warehouse; the actors hung out “offstage” in a room full of table saws.  A theatre with real seats feels like a crazy luxury.  And not just any theatre, but  Artists Rep, where I used to work.  It’s like the theatrical equivalent of that great first love you never get over.  I know these people.  I wrote grants for them, I ran around carrying cases of wine in high heels at opening nights, I edited playbills and staffed photo shoots and stuffed envelopes.  Being back there not as an administrator but as an artist – and working with some of my favorite former colleagues like Stephanie Mulligan and Carol Ann Wohlmut – is indescribable. 

When I first started writing plays for Fertile Ground, most of the Portland theatre world knew me as a grantwriter, and I kept waiting for someone to point at me and accuse me of being a fraud.  “She can’t be an artist, she’s an arts administrator!”  But nobody did.  It was like, “Oh, you also do this thing too?  Awesome.”  Just immediately accepted.  It was only me that felt like I wasn’t enough of an artist to sit at the cool kids’ table; nobody else was looking at me that way.  People root for each other here, in a genuine and non-clique-y way.  It’s really inspiring.

The big difference, to be quite frank, is legitimacy.  I don’t want to be a scrappy DIY-er self-producing in warehouses forever.  I had a low point last year around this time, where I just hit a wall – as we all do from time to time – because I had written what I thought was a really awesome play with my writing partner Gilberto Martin del Campo, and we were really proud of it, but we kept applying for all these grants and opportunities and it was no after no after no after no.  And one night I just lost it.  I kept thinking, “If I’m secretly really terrible at this and it’s never going to go anywhere, I just want someone to TELL me so I don’t keep breaking my heart over it.”  I just wanted ONE institution to put their stamp of approval on something that I wrote – a fellowship, a grant, a professional reading, a real review, anything – so I didn’t feel like I was just a “hobby” playwright who was never going to go anywhere.  I was stuck in neutral, waiting for a sign that I had what it takes to be a real writer.  I was closer to throwing in the towel than I’ve ever been.   And then the very next day I got an email that said I had been picked as the 2010-2011 Oregon Literary Fellow for Drama.  So I guess the moral of the story is, all that crap people always say about it being darkest before the dawn is actually really true.  I asked for a sign, and I got one.  I just had to keep pushing through.

What’s next year’s Claire Willett Fertile Ground project?

Well, hopefully Dear Galileo again, as a real production.  That’s the dream.  And then maybe if it’s done in time, you’ll also get to see the postmodern chamber opera inspired by Norse mythology that I’m co-writing with a terrific L.A.-based composer named Evan Lewis.

*     *     *     *     *

Click here for more information about the show.

Click here to listen to Claire’s recent Stage & Studio radio interview about the project.

Click here to read Claire’s blog about the writing process from her summer writing residency.

Click here for a video of Claire reading excerpts from the play.

Click here for more information about Claire.

Nameless Playwrights: New Plays for Fertile Ground 2011 January 15, 2011

Portland, Or. – January 1, 2010 – Nameless Playwrights, a group of eight Pacific Northwest playwrights, is pleased to announce its participation in Fertile Ground 2011, the annual city-wide festival of new plays and other performance works, with a selection of staged readings of two full length plays and an evening of six 10-minute plays to be held at the Someday Lounge at 125 NW Fifth Avenue, Portland.

“We’re excited to participate again in Fertile Ground with examples of our latest work,” said Ellen West, a founding member of the group. “Last year, several of us put together Foreplay at the Someday, an evening of short plays about funny or strange things that can happen on the way to a relationship. This year we cranked it up a notch and will be offering two full-length plays, as well as shorter works.”

Nameless Playwrights kicks off its productions Saturday, January 22, at 7 p.m. with “Past Perfect” by Ellen West (Yearning for the one who got away, an older woman encounters a charismatic guru who claims he can manifest her lost love).

At 7 p.m. Sunday, January 23, audiences will see “The A List” a two-act play by Dalene Young (Caitlan, a Hollywood producer, has been given a deadline by the Studio Head tie up the deal with the star by Christmas Eve or the film is off. Instead, she woos a billionaire couple, hoping they will finance the film. By Christmas morning Caitlan’s marriage–and career–explodes).

And on Monday, January 24, at 7 p.m. Nameless Playwrights offers an evening of short works, all comedies: “Aged Meet” by John A. Donnelly (Seniors have found computer dating. But when they meet, do opposites attract?); “The Great Tit” by Gretchen O’Halloran (When a psychiatrist and her ornithologist husband go on their honeymoon, they find leaving their work behind is easier said than done.); “Food for Thought” by Rich Rubin (In the battle of the sexes, is food the ultimate weapon?); “Queen Victoria’s Secret” by Sue Parman (A sizzling 19th-century invention may have enabled the Queen to return to public life ten years after the death of her beloved Albert.); “Spoused” by Mark Saunders (A telemarketer for a small theatre company gets a quick lesson in the pitfalls of love, divorce and pitching the new theatre season.); and “Reality Lit” by Molly B. Tinsley (A young woman discovers a new writing genre and marvels at her own discovery.).

As seating is limited, early reservations are encouraged. Tickets may be purchased in advance for $8 at www.bumpintheroad.org or $10 at the door. Active theatre goers might prefer to buy a Festival pass, available at www.fertileground.org, for only $50 and enjoy unlimited access to shows and events throughout the 10-day Fertile Ground run.

Nameless Playwrights is in a fiscal partnership with Bump in the Road Theatre, a 501 (c) (3) non-profit. For more information about the playwrights or their plays, visit www.bumpintheroad.org or contact Ellen West at 503-680-4432.

A Very Special Episode of “Claire’s Playwright Interviews” January 12, 2011

 

In Which Fertile Ground Blogger Claire Willett Subjects Herself and Her Writing Partner To Her Series of Playwright Interview Questions, and Reinforces Traditional Gender Roles By Color-Coding Their Answers Pink and Blue, Although Really, If You’ve Ever Met Either Of Them, You’d Be Able To Tell Whose Was Whose Purely By Length.

NAMES: Gilberto Martin del Campo & Claire Willett

PROJECT: That Was the River, This Is the Sea

That Was the River, This Is the Sea plays at 6 pm Monday, January 24th – Thursday, January 27th, and 7 p.m. Friday, January 28th at The Art Department (417 SE 11th Avenue).  Tickets are $12 (cash-only Monday).  Friday is a joint event with Candace Bouchard and Christian Squires of Oregon Ballet Theatre ($20 cash at door for both shows).  More info here. [Please note that the Art Department's address has changed and is INCORRECT in the festival program and website listings.  The SE 11th address is correct, not the SE 9th address.]

ABOUT CLAIRE & GILBERTO

Claire Willett is a three-time Fertile Ground Festival playwright; her play Upon Waking was produced in the 2009 Fertile Ground Festival, and her play How the Light Gets In was produced last year, where Portland theatre guru Mead Hunter called it “a sassy psychological breakthrough story that deftly avoided the usual traps of sentiment and sententiae, and showed us that Claire is very much a writer to watch.” Claire has a B.A. in Theatre from Whitman College, where she was voted “Best Student Director” in 2003, and where her first play Requiem: God Breathing took 3rd Prize and was the top faculty pick in the 2002 student-written One Act Play Contest.  She has also directed for a short play festival at Ensemble Studio Theatre in New York, and directed the Irish premiere of Moises Kaufman’s The Laramie Project in Galway.  An arts grantwriter and development consultant, Claire has worked for nonprofits all over Portland, from Artists Rep to Hand2Mouth. She is the Grants Manager for Oregon Ballet Theatre.

Gilberto Martin del Campo is a film, television and stage actor. A graduate of the Portland Actors’ Conservatory, he has been working in Portland for the last five years at companies such as Artists Repertory Theatre, Miracle Theatre/El Teatro Milagro, Northwest Children’s Theatre, Northwest Classic Greek Theatre, Oregon Children’s Theatre, Portland Actors’ Conservatory and Stark Raving Theatre, among others.  Favorite roles include Don Quixote in El Quijote (Miracle Theatre), Orpheus in Eurydice (Artists Repertory Theatre), and D’Artagnan in The Three Musketeers (Lakewood Theatre Company).  He recently played King Florestan in Oregon Ballet Theatre’s The Sleeping Beauty, choreographed by Christopher Stowell.  He has worked on nearly a dozen films in Portland over the last few years, and appeared on TNT in December playing a featured role on the season finale of Leverage.

TEN ONE-WORD ANSWERS

1. A Writer I Admire Is . . .

Margery Allingham

Truman Capote

2. My Writing Style Can Be Described As . . .

Nora Ephron Meets the last page of The Great Gatsby

The sandbox Meets the gutter

3. The Portland Theatre Company I’d Most Love To See This Show Produced By Is . . .

CoHo

CoHo

4. The Celebrity I Would Most Like To See Star In This Play On Broadway Is . . .

Zooey Deschanel

Jimmy Smits

5. A Portland Artist I Admire Is . . .

Christopher Stowell

Trish Egan

6. I Am Terrified Of . . .

Snakes.  Also falling.  And anything touching my wrists.  And sleeping in a first-floor room without curtains on the windows.  And that part in Disney’s Sleeping Beauty where Maleficent’s eyes appear in the fire.

Not seeing my family again

7. I Am Obsessed With . . .

Watergate

Food

8. The Book Currently On My Nightstand Is . . .

Eating the Dinosaur by Chuck Klosterman, which I bought for Gilberto for Christmas but decided to keep instead.  Nobody tell him.

Ulysses by James Joyce

9. Three Adjectives That Describe This Play Are . . .

Intimate, Dreamlike, Honest

Deep, Funny, Moving

10. In the Indie Art-House Biographical Film Of My Life, I Should Be Played By . . .

Queen Latifah

George C. Scott

FIVE QUESTIONS OF DEPTH AND SUBSTANCE

1) Tell us about your Fertile Ground Festival play.

When Leo takes his American girlfriend Rose to Mexico for his sister’s wedding, she is ecstatic to meet his family for the first time. But she finds herself in the middle of a family conflict when Leo’s cousin Javier skips the wedding. Leo and Javier have not spoken in years, though nobody can tell her why. Determined to mend the rift and get answers, Rose digs relentlessly into Leo’s family history. But what she finds may change their relationship – and their lives – forever. As Leo’s past and his future are drawn inexorably towards each other, a Greek chorus of Mexican aunts and uncles guide the audience on a journey through two countries and into the furthest reaches of the human heart. This world premiere staged reading is a bilingual, multimedia collaboration by Claire Willett and Gilberto Martin del Campo.

2) How did this story come about?  What inspired it?

It was originally a short story that I had to lay out after experiencing a very emotional trip home.  It’s a play that deals with loss – of  a loved one dying, from a breakup, of your own self – and finding, either by chance or instinct of survival, your way back into being part of a brighter life.

I’ll pick up where he left off.  (And then go on much, much longer . . . )

Gilberto and I met a jillion years ago when he was in Take Me Out at Artists Rep, and we reconnected last January when he auditioned for, and subsequently played the lead in, my last Fertile Ground project, a play called How the Light Gets In.  We liked working together a lot, and he liked the way I write, so after the show ended he came to me with this short story/memoir piece, and asked if I would read it and give him some feedback.  Cut to one year (one long, semi-exhausting year of extremely hard work) later, and that five-page story is now a 100-page play.

What I really love about it is how universal the story is; our families are so different from each other, but we can both relate to this family, to these characters and what they go through and what happens to them.  And sometimes, as we worked, the things that really leaped out at me as being full of emotional resonance were different from the things that really hit home with Gilberto; for example, the character of Gabriela, who becomes in so many ways the emotional anchor of the story, was only mentioned in the initial short story in passing.  She was there in the background, but she wasn’t a character.  But when I first read the story, she leaped off the page to me, and I felt a tremendous sense of obligation to do justice to the real-life girl she was based on, to tell her story right.

Turning a 5-page nonfiction piece into a full-length fictional drama was tricky but exciting.  We had to take the characters and their relationships to new places that stretched them beyond the real-life people who inspired them. And there were a few times when we had different opinions about how a certain part of the story should come together – including some moments where the real-life basis for the story was actually LESS believable than fiction.  Like, the real story was based on a trip Gilberto took home to see his family for both his sister’s wedding and his grandmother’s funeral.  But when I read it I told him, “No one is going to buy that both of those things happened back-to-back.  We have to pick.  Wedding or funeral.  Not both.”  I was convinced it would feel way too clichéd, too Lifetime-Movie-of-the-Week, too the-circle-of-life-continues . . . even though it was really true. But in the end, I feel like the characters we created are wonderful, flawed, interesting, engaging people that audiences will enjoy getting to know and spending time with.  I think it’s a beautiful story, and it was such an honor for me to get to help turn that beautiful story into a play.

3) Talk about your writing process.  (How do you write?  When do you write?  What gets you writing?)

I write when I’m with my partner [Claire]; she brings structure and sense to the entanglement of emotions and ideas.  We sort them out together and find a logical, emotional way to tell the story.

I write best late at night, with some background noise, and horizontally.  In college I wrote my thesis papers sprawled on the living room floor on my stomach, with Friends on the TV behind me.  I don’t know why this is true, but it is.  I hate chairs.  Also mornings.  This was occasionally problematic working with Gilberto, because he’s the exact opposite – in bed early and up early.  So we had to compromise.  Normally what seemed to work best would be to get together and talk through whatever scene we were working on until we both knew what we wanted to say, and then sometimes we would split up and write stuff and send it to each other, while other times we would sit there with our laptops and hash it out until we had something we both liked.

This project was a totally new experience for me as a writer.  I’ve never written with a partner before, and I had to stretch a lot.  Like, I hate when people read drafts before they’re finished.  HATE IT.  But Gilberto wanted to see everything the second we had words on paper.  So I had to get over a lot of my hangups about that.  I have to admit there was a tiny part of me that kept thinking, “Is this really going to work?”  Like, I’ve never been to Mexico, I don’t speak Spanish (well, I speak Sesame Street Spanish).  I had a lot of concerns about whether I could really do justice to somebody else’s story. But we have a really amazing partnership.  We both had moments where we were discouraged, but neither of us were ever discouraged at the same time, so one of us could always give the “Buck up, soldier” pep talk to the other one.  I was actually kind of surprised how well we complemented each other, both personally and as writers.

One of the interesting elements about my role in this process is that I was essentially being brought in to help write someone else’s story.  In the past, all the plays I’ve written have sprung from something that I felt really passionately about, and I really wanted to tell that particular story for a reason that had personal emotional significance to me.  I’ve never really adapted anything or worked with a partner, so the challenge for me was, how do I find my own emotional truth inside a story that I didn’t write and that has, on the surface, very little to do with me?  Plus I’d always sworn I would never write a relationship play.  I think they’re boring.  But Gilberto is such a beautiful writer, and there was so much going on below the surface of this story that I felt like it could become something really extraordinary.  And I really feel like it did.

Some people who have read the script, or who came to our first batch of table reads, have asked questions or proposed theories about what parts are Claire and what parts are Gilberto; but it’s not something you can split down the middle like that.  I mean, there are occasional lines here and there that sound more like his voice or my voice, but you can’t pull out a chunk and say, “Oh, he wrote that scene and she wrote that scene.”  It was a real partnership; it evolved through both of us working things out together, so it’s not 100% my voice or 100% his voice in any one place.  It’s hard to explain.  Usually if someone asks me to quantify it, what I tell them is that Gilberto’s the heart and I’m the head.  The emotional core of the story came from him; a lot of the process of shaping that core into a story that flowed and had a concrete structure came from me.  That’s not to say that Gilberto did no editing or that I had no emotional investment; it just means that it was a really organic meshing of my strengths and weaknesses as a writer with his, to create something that was bigger than both of us.

Oh my God, that’s so sappy.

4) What is the most exciting/inspiring piece of theatre you’ve seen in Portland?

There’s so much to choose from – every performance has so much to offer.  But I would say that I recently saw Everyone Who Looks Like You at Hand2Mouth, and that has stuck with me.

I was working at Artists Rep when they did Assassins and I think I saw it nine times.  Sweet frosted cupcakes, what a cast!  Wade McCollum, Sharonlee McLean, Isaac Lamb, Randall Stuart . . .   And I had SUCH a crush on Kirk Mouser after that show – not actual real-life Kirk Mouser (although he is a dear), but Kirk Mouser as John Wilkes Booth.  Which means I sort of indirectly had a crush on John Wilkes Booth.  Which is really not the kind of thing I should be admitting in public.

5) What are you up to these days when you’re not writing?

Swimming, swimming a lot.

Well, I just bought a house over the summer, so I spend a lot of time daydreaming about things like wrought-iron gates and hand-painted Italian wallpaper that I’ll never be able to afford on my nonprofit salary.  I watch a lot of cooking shows (I’m a tiny bit obsessed with Nigella Lawson.  Also the Chairman on Iron Chef).  I care more about celebrity gossip than is strictly healthy.  I spend a lot of time re-reading my stash of Agatha Christie mysteries, buying jewelry at Portland boutiques (Moxie and Redux are faves), and kicking around Alberta/Killingsworth.  I love going out for breakfast.  I love naps.  I love going out for breakfast and then coming home and taking a nap.  And I love coffee.  Like, I really, REALLY love coffee.

New Works Workshop Hosted by Hand2Mouth January 7, 2011

One of the things that I love most about Fertile Ground is how everyone gets so excited about new works. New plays are the lifeblood of the theatre. It’s what keeps the art form alive. Having a good idea isn’t enough, however. You need to work with people who are experienced in bringing new ideas to the stage, so that you can have a fully realized idea.

Hand2Mouth, one of my personal favorite new companies, is hosting an exciting workshop for new performance works.

New Work Workshop Series

Venue: the mOuth (inside Zoomtopia, 810 SE Belmont St.)

Dates: Jan 22 & 29 @ 1:30pm and Jan 23 & 30 @ 9am

Tickets: $20 each ($15 w/ Festival Pass or if registered for multiple workshops) | www.Hand2MouthTheatre.org

 

Join some of Portland’s brightest minds in new performance as you participate in up to four workshops during the Festival, each providing a taste of creating new performance work in a unique and exciting way.  These intense three-hour workshops will get you on your feet and involved in creating performance, generating text, improvising, clowning, and much more.  Workshops will cater to all skill-levels, from the curious beginner to the advanced performer/creator. This year’s series includes:

Jan 22: Jonathan Walters (Artistic Director of Hand2Mouth Theatre)

Jan 23: Rachel Fachner (founding member of Collective Dance NY)

Jan 29: Heather Pearl (founding member of Nomadic Theatre)

Jan 30: Kate Sanderson (founding member of Fever Theatre)

Find details about each workshop and register at www.Hand2MouthTheatre.org.

Register early as enrollment is limited!

Playwright Interview #8 – Mark Saunders January 6, 2011

NAME: Mark Saunders

PROJECT: Spoused

Spoused is presented by Nameless Playwrights in partnership with Bump In the Road Theatre and plays at 7 pm on Monday, January 24th at the Someday Lounge (125 NW 5th).  Tickets are $8 in advance, $10 at the door. More info here.

ABOUT MARK

Mark, a playwright, screenwriter, and cartoonist, writes short plays befitting his attention span. His plays have appeared in more than 20 theatres across America, from Portland to New York City, as well as several stops in-between. He once owned a Yugo.

TEN ONE-WORD ANSWERS

1. A Writer I Admire Is . . . Mark Twain

2. My Writing Style Can Be Described As . . . Mad Magazine Meets Moliere

3. The Portland Theatre Company I’d Most Love To See This Show Produced By Is . . . Portland Playhouse

4. The Celebrity I Would Most Like To See Star In This Play On Broadway Is . . . Anne Hathaway as Nancy

5. A Portland Theatre Artist I Admire Is . . . Scott Palmer (Artistic Director at Bag & Baggage in Hillsboro)

6. I Am Terrified Of . . . Right-wing gun nuts waving flags, Bibles, and birth certificates

7. I Am Obsessed With . . . My wife’s Spaghetti Carbonara

8. The Book Currently On My Nightstand Is . . . Moneyball by Michael Lewis

9. Three Adjectives That Describe This Play Are . . . Funny, Romantic, Short

10. In the Indie Art-House Biographical Film Of My Life, I Should Be Played By . . . Anyone who is tall, dark, and handsome since I am none of those things.

 

FIVE QUESTIONS OF DEPTH AND SUBSTANCE

1. Tell us about your Fertile Ground Festival play.

First, I’d like to mention that I am a proud member of Nameless Playwrights Group, a new gathering of eight writers dedicated to creating original plays for all ages. You could say we’re Portland’s “newest-oldest” playwrights group since all members are 60 or older and we held our first meeting in 2010. Collectively our lives span more than half a millennium. Nameless Playwrights will be running a showcase of new plays over three consecutive nights (Jan. 22-24, 2011) during Fertile Ground.

My play, “Spoused,”  is a three-character play about a young telemarketer for a small theatre company who gets a quick lesson in the pitfalls of love, divorce and pitching the new theatre season. It’s a whimsical play for theatre lovers and lovers in general. If you’ve ever been pitched over the phone to buy a season ticket, you already know the experience from your side of the conversation. This is what happens on the other side.

2. How did this story come about?  What inspired it?

I worked for a few months as a telemarketer for Portland Center Stage. Although I had been in software marketing for several years, I was always more of a word and picture guy and knew very little about telemarketing. First, let me just say it’s not easy. Second, let me add that I was never good at it. But I did gain a new appreciation for what it takes for a theatre company to stay in business, and how creative such companies must be these days to attract an audience. I also came to appreciate why “Coffee is for closers.”  One evening, while working the phones, I overheard one of the employees tell another employee he had been “spoused.” I loved the name and concept and filed it away on the hard drive of my mind for future use. I have a mind like a steel sieve, so it’s lucky I remembered my telemarketing experience some two years later.

3. Talk about your writing process.  (How do you write?  When do you write?  What gets you writing?)

I follow a production process, of sorts: I usually first create a high-level outline of where I want to go and what I want to say. I’ll email myself bits of dialogue or story notes or thoughts about a character during the background processing stage, when I’m chewing on an idea. I generally know when I’m ready, and when I am I sit at my computer and try to complete a first draft as quickly as possible. Then, I rewrite and rewrite again. I feel most productive in the morning and late evening hours. I’m so torpid in the afternoon I might as well be in a coma. Once I came up with a title first (“Oedipus and Hamlet Walk into a Bar”) and then crafted a play around the title. In every other case, however, the idea for a play, including plot and characters, always comes first, as it should. Initially, I focused on writing short plays to fit my worker bee schedule, short attention span and juvenile need for instant gratification. Then, I started writing full-length screenplays and continued creating the short stage plays on the side. I’m now working on a couple of full-length plays, instead of screenplays, and I find the transition very rewarding. Pretty soon I hope to be able to sit at the grown-up’s table. What gets me writing? For whatever reason, I always seem to need a deadline, either self-imposed or otherwise.

4. What is the most exciting/inspiring piece of theatre you’ve seen in Portland?

Artists Rep’s 2009 production of The Seafarer; it made me regret that I didn’t have more Irish and alcohol in me.

5. What are you up to these days when you’re not writing?

When I’m not writing plays or screenplays, I try to work on my non-fiction humor book about living in the middle of Mexico for two years (We’ll Always Have Parasites: The good, the bad, and the not so pretty about dropping out and moving to Mexico). Somewhere between finding your spiritual self and getting your head shot off by narcos there exists a huge pool of expat experiences, and that’s where you’ll find my book. To help buy food and pay bills and generally stay alive, I also develop marketing copy for a small number of supportive and generous clients. Most recently, however, my primary purpose in life seems to be walking the dog, a male Standard Poodle who, when he stands upright, is almost as tall as I am and easily twice as smart.

Playwright Interview #7 – Jenni Miller January 5, 2011

NAME: Jenni Miller

PROJECT: Hello, My Name Is

Hello, My Name Is is presented by PDX Playwrights and plays at 7 pm on Sunday, January 30 at Hipbone Studio (1847 E. Burnside).  Tickets are Pay-What-You-Will at the door. More info here.

 

ABOUT JENNI

Jenni Miller is a local actress, playwright, storyteller, community advocate.  She’s performed locally with Sowelu Theater Company, Curious Comedy, Artists Rep, Lakewood, Brainwaves, Hart, and the Magdeline Theater Company.  She’s a current member of Playback Theater Company and PDX Playwrights.

TEN ONE-WORD ANSWERS

1. A Writer I Admire Is . . . Gertrude Stein

2. My Writing Style Can Be Described As . . . Ionesco Meets Salinger

3. The Portland Theatre Company I’d Most Love To See This Show Produced By Is . . . Defunkt

4. The Celebrity I Would Most Like To See Star In This Play On Broadway Is . . . ???

5. A Portland Theatre Artist I Admire Is . . . Chris Harder

6. I Am Terrified Of . . . Having my picture taken

7. I Am Obsessed With . . . Finding a job

8. The Book Currently On My Nightstand Is . . . The Working Poor by David Shipler

9. Three Adjectives That Describe This Play Are . . . Sad, Wild, Scary Real

10. In the Indie Art-House Biographical Film Of My Life, I Should Be Played By . . . Some unknown actress that makes an awe-inspiring, award-winning performance, catching everyone’s eye, then slowly fades back into obscurity.  You know, that girl that was in that show about you know and there was the and that thing and she wore a blue dress and was in a Sprint commercial once . . .

FIVE QUESTIONS OF DEPTH AND SUBSTANCE

1. Tell us about your Fertile Ground Festival play.

It’s a story about a Man and a Woman.  It’s about the heartbreaking circumstances that change her life.  It’s about how she cannot amend her circumstances and her struggle to regain her innocence in an institutionalized world. It’s about time, the reality of time, time without hope, without revolt.  It’s about forgetfulness and passing into nothingness.  It’s about loss, it’s about rape and it’s a wild ride . . .

“All rape is an exercise in power, but some rapists have an edge that is more than physical.  They operate within an institutionalized setting that works to their advantage and in which a victim has little chance to redress her grievance.” –Against Our Will: Men, Women & Rape by Susan Brownmiller

2. How did this story come about?  What inspired it?

I started writing this story several years ago in a playwriting class taught at PSU by Karen Magaldi (one of my favorite local dramaturgs and directors).  I had 10-15 pages and put it to rest for several years, but I couldn’t stop thinking about the main character and what her journey was supposed to be.  Then I read Susan Brownmiller’s book Against Our Will and realized what the play was about.  Brownmiller’s book both intrigued and angered me but most of all what I heard between the lines was this woman’s story.  This play has had many lives and I’m hoping to find a place for it to either rest or be sent off . . . I’m extremely curious to hear what people think.

3. Talk about your writing process.  (How do you write?  When do you write?  What gets you writing?)

Deadlines get me writing.  I write whenever the inspiration hits and suffer through the moments when it doesn’t.  I find that the most interesting stuff comes when I’m running or driving in my car far away from my computer, then a blank mind as soon as I put finger tips to the keyboard.  I wonder sometimes what it’s all worth but can’t stop thinking about storylines in my head.  I have a difficult time leaving these characters be, and an even more difficult time reacquainting myself with them.   I feel they deserve some type of redemption or the satisfaction of moving on but I know they have to live in the pages of the play and because of this I struggle with endings.  I write Wednesday nights with Portland Women Writers and find the prompts and feedback so beneficial.  I write early mornings and late evenings and like to bake when I write.

4. What is the most exciting/inspiring piece of theatre you’ve seen in Portland?

Years ago I saw Defunkt’s production of the Charles Mee play The Investigation of the Murder in El Salvador. Still probably one of the best pieces of theater I’ve ever seen – the timing and delivery was amazing.  Also, Artists Rep’s How I Learned to Drive – Bruce Burkhartsmeier’s performance . . . WOW!

5. What are you up to these days when you’re not writing?

I’m trying to find a job.  I’m a mom.  I perform with the Portland Playwright Group.

Playwright Interview #6 – Brad Bolchunos January 4, 2011

NAME: Brad Bolchunos

PROJECTS: Up, Up and Away and Backtalk

Up, Up, and Away and Backtalk are presented by PDX Playwrights and will play Friday, January 21st, at 10 pm on the mezzanine of the Portland Armory (128 NW 11th Ave) as part of the It Takes All Shorts program.  Tickets are $10. More info here.

ABOUT BRAD

Years as a newspaper reporter in Colorado and Oregon enabled Brad Bolchunos to make a living as a writer for a time, but a stint as a humor columnist as well as experiences acting on stage spoke closer to the tangled scribblings in his heart. He was honored to see his short play Death Wears Fishnets as part of the Pulp Diction lineup for Fertile Ground last year, and delighted to see a Readers Theater Repertory production of his 10-minute piece In the Bag in April. This latest offering via Portland Playwrights adds to the thrill.

TEN ONE-WORD ANSWERS

1. A Writer I Admire Is . . . Tom Stoppard

2. My Writing Style Can Be Described As . . . Roald Dahl Meets Ghostland Observatory

3. The Portland Theatre Company I’d Most Love To See This Show Produced By Is . . . Imago

4. The Celebrity I Would Most Like To See Star In This Play On Broadway Is . . . Judi Dench as Beverly in Backtalk

5. A Portland Theatre Artist I Admire Is . . . Don Alder

6. I Am Terrified Of . . . Brussels sprouts.  Especially if they talk.

7. I Am Obsessed With . . . Old-fashioned gadgets.

8. The Book Currently On My Nightstand Is . . . Tin House Magazine.

9. Three Adjectives That Describe This Play Are . . . Dark, Silly, Serling-esque.

10. In the Indie Art-House Biographical Film Of My Life, I Should Be Played By . . . Alec Guinness?  Wait, he’s dead.  Maybe a young James Spader . . . but he’s not wiggly enough.  Buster Keaton?  Dead again.  Hmm.  This could be tricky . . .

FIVE QUESTIONS OF DEPTH AND SUBSTANCE

1. Tell us about your Fertile Ground Festival play.

Backtalk: When a passenger on the back of a bus dares to object to another passenger’s behavior, the ride takes a turn into the surreal.

Up, Up and Away: Desperation drives a balloon pilot and her husband to question their relationship, the nature of power, and existence itself in this darkly comical flight of fancy.

2. How did this story come about?  What inspired it?

The idea for “Up, Up and Away” arose years ago after I covered a hot air balloon competition — a gig which, thankfully, included a sample ride. The composure of the pilots impressed me, as did the possibilities of conflict in what might otherwise be considered a tranquil activity. The elements of “Backtalk” percolated into my head quite recently while riding (and writing) on a TriMet bus.

3. Talk about your writing process.  (How do you write?  When do you write?  What gets you writing?)

I try to write at least a little bit every day, keeping a journal, and when I don’t I seem to go a bit nuts. Usually I write when taking the bus or MAX on my way to work downtown. Often the material is humdrum nonsense, but sometimes — with enough nurturing — the meanderings can sprout into saplings and trees.

4. What is the most exciting/inspiring piece of theatre you’ve seen in Portland?

Third Rail’s Dead Funny and Kiss Me Like You Mean It spring to mind among many stirring shows I’ve seen in Portland, but I’ve also seen amazing, edgy, hilarious work from the theaters that end in “oh!” — CoHo, Imago and Vertigo.

5. What are you up to these days when you’re not writing?

Recently I finished a zany, fun run playing the lead in the North End Player’s production of The Seven Year Itch by George Axelrod.  I continue to enjoy participating in PDX Playwrights, hearing and reading new work.

Playwright Interview #6 – Nick Zagone January 4, 2011

NAME: Nick Zagone

PROJECT: The Missing Pieces

A workshop production with Portland Playhouse, January 20 – 30, 2011.

ABOUT NICK

Nick Zagone grew up in Portland, OR. His plays include David and Goliath in America: A William Kunstler Story (Mark A. Klein Playwriting Award, Artistic Director’s Achievement Award by the San Fernando Valley Theatre League Alliance, Los Angeles Ovation Award Nomination), Driving Under the Influence (Fulton Opera House Award, JAW Festival Reading Selection, Mark Cohen Playwriting Award Nomination), Howard’s Hand (New York MultiStages Festival) Ohio (Northwest Playwright’s Series Finalist), ETA: Phoenix (a Seattle Times Footlight Award), Our LA Man from Vegas (Prospect Theatre Playwriting Competition Winner), American Dodo (Northwest Playwright’s Series Finalist) and Brainstorm (winner of the Lamia Ink! International One-Page Play Competition in New York). His short plays The DMV One, The Pink Fancy, Amorica, The Mint Juleps and The Coors Lights have been seen in England, Scotland, Canada, Australia, Germany, Chile, India, the Virgin Islands, Singapore, over 40 US States, over 50 Colleges and Universities and translated into 5 foreign languages. Nick is proudly a Founding Member of Open Circle Theatre in Seattle WA. Nick’s work has been developed and produced at East 3rd Productions(NYC), Portland Center Stage, Printer’s Devil, Sierra Repertory Theatre, Prospect Theatre, No-Shame Theatre LA, Iron Ring Theatre, and Pavement Productions. He has a Bachelor of Theatre from Willamette University and a Master of Fine Arts in Playwriting from University of Nevada-Las Vegas. Nick’s screenwriting credits include a short film of Brainstorm and the feature Ricky is Famous. Nick’s been recognized by the American College Theatre Festival, Association of Theatre in Higher Education, and the Seattle Schools Interagency Arts. He has worked with Cal-State Stanislaus in Turlock, Stage 3, Pasadena City College, Mark Taper Forum, Seattle Repertory Theatre, A Contemporary Theatre, Whitman College and Willamette University.  Nick is also published by Dramatic Publishing and Black Box Press. Nick now lives in Portland, was a member of Portland Center Stage’s PlayGroup and is now a member of Playwrights West.

TEN ONE-WORD ANSWERS

1. A Writer I Admire Is . . .

David Mamet. I hate him in many ways (let me count), but I have to admire him. He keeps kicking out something smart and interesting and even if it’s a big steaming pile of crap he still has the best actors beating their breasts to be in it. And often he garners their best performances.

2. My Writing Style Can Be Described As . . .

Zagonian.  A director friend of mine called it that once.  What is that?  I don’t know.

3. The Portland Theatre Company I’d Most Love To See This Show Produced By Is . . .

Portland Playhouse in Cooperation with Portland Center Stage at the Armory. It’s not unheard of. In Seattle it happened all the time; professional theatres pulling from the fringe.

4. The Celebrity I Would Most Like To See Star In This Play On Broadway Is . . .

Oh my God, if it’s on Broadway I guess I really wouldn’t give a shit! You get to that point and wow, “Frances the talking Mule? Well I never thought of that but ok… I guess, I’d have to hear her read.” I have to say this though, and Deirdre Atkinson knows this so I won’t be upsetting her, but I always had Storm Large in mind for Lillian. And I usually don’t do that: Have actors in my head… but she was just there during the writing of this.

5. A Portland Theatre Artist I Admire Is . . .

Mead Hunter. And he is an artist. Steve Patterson. He’s done it all man, from way back, his whole freakin’ life has been devoted to Portland Theatre. Hunt Holman. We’ve been friends since high school. Writing Monty Python rip-off sketches and pushing them on our drama teacher Tom Graff. Who I admire as well; Multi-talented and has been involved in Portland theatre in one way or another his whole life. Deirdre Atkinson is a workhorse man, also a friend since college. And! My wife Kat, who is my best editor.

6. I Am Terrified Of . . .

Ghosts manifested as little girls in blue dresses reaching out to you with dead hands at the top of a stairway with blood pouring out of the side of their head where they’ve been shot at close range. “Niiiiick… Niiiiick help me cross over….”

7. I Am Obsessed With . . .

Blazers. Can’t help it. There’s a theory you always will love the team you loved when you were 9. I’m giving away my age, but when I was 9 the Blazers won the championship. It’s really my only vice. I don’t have the time for anything more.

8. The Book Currently On My Nightstand Is . . .

“Furious Love: Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton and the Marriage of the Century.” Read it. A blast! It’s the last time in the history of the world a Shakespearian actor had more fame, money and jewels than any royalty on earth. They WERE Royalty.

9. Three Adjectives That Describe This Play Are . . .

Man I suck at this. Um… Off-Beat, Hilarious, Unconventional…….****!, Thumbs-up!, Wow! A triumph!

10. In the Indie Art-House Biographical Film Of My Life, I Should Be Played By . . .

Stanley Tucci. Or Brad Pitt. Ok, ok, seriously? Cate Blanchett.

SEVEN QUESTIONS OF DEPTH AND SUBSTANCE

1. Tell us about your Fertile Ground Festival play.

It’s Portland. 1980. Mt. St. Helen’s has just erupted. Do you know where your stack of Playboys are? 12-year-old Timmy comes from a broken home in the West Hills and he’s decided he wants a new Dad: Hugh M. Hefner. Timmy recruits his burnt out brother and an alcoholic ex-Playboy Playmate to get to meet the Playboy icon. But Timmy’s Irish Catholic mother might have something to say about it.

2. How did this story come about?  What inspired it?

A gentleman never tells. Let’s just say it’s my “coming of age” play.

3. What # draft is this?

7 and 1/2.

4. Who’s your favorite character (you don’t have to tell us why, but you can).

12-year-old Timmy. You’ll see why.

5. Talk about your writing process.  (How do you write?  When do you write?  What gets you writing?)

I write on a MacBook about anywhere from 5-8am to noon-1pm about 5-6 days a week when I’m really into something.  I decided to do it this way when I read that Steinbeck did the same. (I wrote a one-man show about him for a grant.) He said mornings you’re just more fresh (still a little in a the dream state) and writing is easier. What really gets me writing is just sitting down and writing. I know that sounds stupid, but just sitting down to do it is the toughest part of writing; there’s ALWAYS a reason Not to.  But I’ll look up and it’s been 5 hours.  Where did it go? Ann Bogart believes there’s something divine in that, that there’s a connection to God. I don’t know about that….But it is often a time when I am most happy.

6. What is the most exciting/inspiring piece of theatre you’ve seen in Portland?

Easy. When I was a kid, my brother was Artistic Director at Storefront Theatre in the 70′s and 80′s and much of what I saw was inspiring/exciting to the point where I said to myself, “I just don’t want to do that, I want to know where it came from… who the hell wrote that?” Some of what I saw… Sam Shepherd’s True West, Romulus Linney’s Holy Ghosts, August Wilson’s Ma Rainy’s Black Bottom come to mind and, of course, Angry Housewives. The sisters had no idea why a young boy in Catholic School would be singing “Eat Your Fucking Corn Flakes.”

7. What are you up to these days when you’re not writing?

Playing with my son Ike. 6-year-olds need a lot of help with their Legos.

The Missing Pieces plays at The Church (602 NE Prescott) January 20 – 30, 2011.  Thurs – Sat, 8pm; Sunday, 2pm.

As always, the beer…is free.  Buy tickets here.

Playwright Interview #5 – Rachel Tusler January 3, 2011

NAME: Rachel Tusler

PROJECT: The Dark Things

The Dark Things is presented by PDX Playwrights and plays at 9pm on Sunday, January 30 at Hipbone Studio (1847 E. Burnside).  Tickets are $7 at the door. More info here.

ABOUT RACHEL

I grew up in Eugene, studied Literature and Theater at Occidental College in Los Angeles, and have happily resided in Portland for the last 4 years.

TEN ONE-WORD ANSWERS

1. A Writer I Admire Is . . . Lynda Barry

2. My Writing Style Can Be Described As . . . Grand Guignol Meets Margaret Wise Brown

3. The Portland Theatre Company I’d Most Love To See This Show Produced By Is . . . A vacant lot next to a Portland bar.

4. The Celebrity I Would Most Like To See Star In This Play On Broadway Is . . . Tom Waits as The Thing, with makeup by the team from Pan’s Labyrinth

5. A Portland Theatre Artist I Admire Is . . . The whole team behind Roadhouse: The Play

6. I Am Terrified Of . . . Tigers

7. I Am Obsessed With . . . Tigers

8. The Book Currently On My Nightstand Is . . . Middlemarch by George Eliot

9. Three Adjectives That Describe This Play Are . . . Disturbing, Dystopian, Dirty

10. In the Indie Art-House Biographical Film Of My Life, I Should Be Played By . . . A tiger.  The one that got Roy.

FIVE QUESTIONS OF DEPTH AND SUBSTANCE

1. Tell us about your Fertile Ground Festival play.

It’s twelve years since the war against the vicious Dark Things was won, but the air is still filled with smoke and the stench of death. A group of young people face their initiation into adulthood: Sam wants to prove he’s a real man, Thea wants to trick the others into thinking she’s one of them, and Ross just wants to cause trouble. But will they survive their initiation into society? And what abominable acts will be required of them to do so?

2. How did this story come about?  What inspired it?

I started with a vivid picture of an imagined world: a dystopian society still in ruins since the end of a recent war. I was interested in exploring some political ideas: the construction of masculinity, the enforcement of gender roles, and the process of creating oppressive societies. I was also interested in how a fantastical setting, graphic acts of violence and a stylized ritual could be used to explore those ideas.  A lot of different media influenced this play, including: graffiti on the street, the obscene messages in my junk mail folder, and TV commercials. I was also influenced by scholarship on Greek theatre, ancient initiation ceremonies, and the construction of race in the United States.

3. Talk about your writing process.  (How do you write?  When do you write?  What gets you writing?)

Always in the evening, often in long sessions, usually on my computer.

4. What is the most exciting/inspiring piece of theatre you’ve seen in Portland?

Too many to name . . . I’ve really enjoyed what I’ve seen at Portland Playhouse, much of what’s been produced at IFCC, Hand2Mouth, and many others. I’ve also been very affected by particular shows in the last few years: The Pillowman at PCS, and Eurydice at Artists Rep. I like theatre experiences that feel transformational—even if what you’re transformed to from the beginning of the play is from a somewhat coherent person into a total fucking mess.

5. What are you up to these days when you’re not writing?

I’m the Development Associate at Oregon Children’s Theatre; I also like reading books, seeing plays and concerts, visiting vintage and antique shops, hanging out at bars with friends, going to the zoo, perusing cookbooks.