Just when you thought the Armory was only a place to see the Northwest’s best theater, the Pearl Rotary Club turns it into a Vegas style nightclub bejeweled with gaming tables, live jazz, festive libations and the chance to win-win-win. Although “Bet on the Pearl” is still months away, this event is already creating quite a buzz.  The hard work from the members of the Pearl Rotary Club reaped a pirate’s booty of prizes.  The Grand Prize for the biggest winner of the night is one beachfront week in Mazatlan for Spring Break 2009!! But there are plenty of other fabulous prizes to keep the spirit of “Viva Las Vegas” alive-Pearl Hardware has given a Large Barbecue, Stream Audio & Video has generously donated a HDTV and a one lucky couple will definitely feel like a high rollers on their private plane ride down to the coast for lunch and back! Get your tickets now contact the box office at (503) 445-3700 or go online to www.pcs.org. “Bet on the Pearl” is on Friday August 22 starting at 7:00pm.  Tickets are $125 for an evening of wine, beer, and gourmet eats.  You will receive two free raffle tickets along with scrip worth $25 to start rolling at your favorite game of chance. This is a night of fun as well as an important opportunity to support PCS’s free theater appreciation program to reach students throughout the metro area and extend the humanitarian work of the Pearl Rotary Club. Click here to purchase tickets!!

VOTE FOR THE BEST!

Still humming “Life is a Cabaret?” on your way to the max station? Been waking up your household at the crack of dawn by telling them to “Wag it and Shag it” ever since you saw Sometimes a Great Notion? Still slinging Shakespearean one liners at your co-workers in your best Brent Harris impression?

Now’s your chance to show some love to the people who’ve given you new catch phrases, irritated your spouses and hopefully changed the way you look at underpants forever.

It’s the Willamette Week Best of Portland 2008 poll, and with your help we can win it!

Click here to vote us your favorite Portland Arts Organization. And while you’re there, you can share your favorite Portland watering holes, local weirdos and places to take that cutie you been eyeballing on a first date.

I hear you can even win stuff just by taking the poll!

Happy voting!

Ali Ippolito (of Heroes and Villians, Nick Jaina fame) writes music with a haunting poetry and quiet authority that simultaneously tugs, pulls, coaxes, vexes, and inspires. A mezmerizing singer, Ippolito accompanies herself on piano, accordion, and the curious banjolele, giving us fading, sepia-tinged sonic postcards of love and loss.

Her simmering music–as captivating as Tom Waits’ universe of tattooed,angel-headed sinners and hipster saints, Carlos Gardel’s tango-longing or Edith Piaf’s fragile lyric ache– to paraphrase the poet Mina Loy, “infects us with unendurable ease/touching nerve-terminals.” That’s a good thing.

The Good News from on High is that you can hear Ms. Ippolito for the low-low-cost of FREE in the Lobby of the Gerding Theater at the Armory on First Thursday, May 1, 6-7:15 pm.

Held Over: A mini-expo of iconic paintings by award-winning Northwest artist Michael Brophy, presented in conjunction with the extension of our run-away hit Sometimes A Great Notion.

“A painter of anti-heroic subject matter on a heroic scale, wittily and effectively chronicling the fate of our environment.”
—Art in America

Coming mid-May: Bullseye Gallery presents the exuberant chromaticism of glass artist Ted Sawyer; and selections from the Charles Froelick Gallery.

When we first began discussions about what we’d like our new home to be like, one of the phrases that often popped up was, ‘it should be activated from 10 in the morning until midnight, six days a week.’  It sounded exciting - but perhaps a bit unrealistic.  I mean, were people really going to ‘hang out’ in a theater lobby?

 Last week I arrived at the building at 8 in the morning for some meeting, and was surprised to find a film crew set up in the lobby and swarms of people running back and forth.  I had no idea what they were doing - because I literally cannot keep up with the amount of activity that now happens at the Armory.  The building has become like yeast:  it has a life of its own.

Some examples of activities over the past six weeks:

Oregon Ballet Theater Board Meeting; Henry Condos HOA Meeting; tour for the Vancouver, Washington Parks and Rec board; ”Green Building” event hosted by Former Governor John Kitzhaber and Dick Moe of the Trust for Historic Preservation; Travel Portland Board meeting; Sojourn Theater reception/fundraiser; Powell’s Books bulding committee met to look at our approaches for their future expansion project; tour for Newberg High School students; tour for Portland Adventist School; gathering for ‘Crave Portland’ a group of sustainable entrepreneuers; Juvenile Diabetes Photo Shoot; Equity Foundation fundraiser; Portland Magazine photo shoot (fashion spread); Travel Portland event:  60 meeting planners from across the U.S. here to view Portland venues for potential bookings; Ian Garrett event - young leader in the Green Theater movement in LA; Business Journal banquet; Corley Wedding; Nintendo Video Shoot in the lobby (this is apparently what I stumbled upon); Klosterman wedding; Ken Kesey Symposium with Gus Van Sant; Regionalism Dialogue with William Robbins; tour for PCS Donors; tour for students from Catlin Gabel school; Oregon Council for the Humanities:  ‘Four Questions’ Lecture series; World Affairs Council - visitors from the British Prime Minister’s office; GBD architects (the building’s designers) tour with 15 architects from New Zealand; Oregon Live (news website) reception; Portland Community College Environmental Building class; ‘Good Day Oregon’ TV filming about Green Technology applicable to homeowners; Literary Arts event with Barry Lopez and Paul Hawken; Portland Tribune Home and Garden tour for the ‘Green Homes’ section; PDX ‘Mind Share’ reception.

This doesn’t count the folks just hanging out to have a pastry or cup of coffee at the cafe, or to check out the history of the building at the ‘historiscope’ (last week there was an older woman sitting at the thing with a notebook scribbling notes - for what I couldn’t quite imagine).

 Whew.  I’m worn out just thinking about it.

But it is awfully fun to watch this variety of activity filling up and enjoying our home.

Remember when PCS did ANOTHER FINE MESS? Well come check out what Steven Drukman’s up to now. This Saturday as part of our reading series NOW HEAR THIS we will be reading a never before seen play. Below is some more information. Hope to see you there!!

Portland Center Stage’s

NOW HEAR THIS

invites you to a concert reading of

The Bullet Round

by Steven Drukman

Featuring the talents of Paul Glazier, Tom Moorman, Chris Murray, Nasir Najieb, Amy Newman & Michael Fisher Welsh

April 19, 2008
Noon to approximately 2 pm
@ Portland Center Stage
128 NW Eleventh Avenue (between Couch & Davis)
on the Main Stage

 

Admission is free, but space is limited. Please email Megan Ward at meganw@pcs.orgto reserve your seat.

—————————–

“If you put a gun onstage in Act I, it must go off by Act III.” - Anton Chekhov

Karma’s a bitch, as the hapless inhabitants of this knockabout comedy are about to find out. In the course of a La Ronde chain reaction,an aspiring white rapper gains and loses a gun that continues to change hands, scene by scene, on its way to fulfilling an un-anticipated destiny.

 

About the Author

Steven Drukman’s play IN THIS CORNER (about legendary boxer Joe Louis) opened in January at San Diego’s Old Globe Theatre. Other produced plays include GOING NATIVE (Long Wharf Theatre), FLATTERY WILL GET YOU (Connecticut Rep), COLLATERAL DAMAGE (Illusion Theatre, Minneapolis), THE SNOWMAIDEN (Bob Hope Theatre, Dallas) and ANOTHER FINE MESS (Portland Center Stage), which was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. He has been developed and/or commissioned by the MarkTaper Forum, the Intiman Theatre, South Coast Rep, New York Theatre Workshop, Playwrights Horizons, Sundance Theatre Lab and the Williamstown Theatre Festival. Awards: Paul Green Award, Alfred P. Sloan Award, Heinemann finalist, others. He wrote for many years for The New York Times, was an Associate Editor of American Theatre Magazine, and he just released his book of the edited screenplays of Craig Lucas. He teaches playwriting at NYU.

Now Hear This and Portland Center Stage gratefully acknowledge the support of the Oregon Cultural Trust.

more free events || support programs like this
script submissions || JAW playwrights festival

“Never give an inch” was the motto of the Stamper family–and live it they did!

Recognize that tagline? Well, keep it in mind the next time you play Scene It with your friends. That was the line for the 1971 film Sometimes A Great Notion, directed by and starring Paul Newman. Sharing the title with Kesey’s book in the US, the same film was called Never Give an Inch in the UK due to the abbreviated nature of the adaptation. If you enjoyed the play or are planning to see it at PCS, you might like to check the film out, too. It is a distinctly different adaptation from Aaron Posner’s stage version–the two versions combined and contrasted lend insight and unique perspective on this remarkable story.

We’ve done some of the groundwork for you, in fact, and tracked down a couple of our local, independent video rental stores that stock the film. Of these, Trilogy Video on NW 23rd and Thurman has featured the film (and the PCS play!) on their website. Check it out, or drop into the store to learn more! Movie Madness on SE Belmont is another great location that stocks the film, in case you live closer to that side of Portland.

The screenplay for this film is a completely different adaptation of the book than Aaron Posner’s brand new stage adaptation. Want some more information on the film version? The linked IMDB page has plenty of details, and some interesting trivia. Did you know that SAGN was the very first film shown on HBO when the service first aired in 1972? Truth!

Thanks to the folks at Trilogy for featuring PCS news on their website this month! Though of course we think the play is the thing, we encourage all interested parties to look into book, film, and stage versions and feel good about this remarkable product of Pacific Northwest culture.

blogs about Sometimes A Great Notion || buy tickets || bring a group

{photo: The Stamper family rests a moment, each in their private world. Vivian Stamper (Sarah Grace Wilson, left) samples from Wallace Stevens’ poetry while patriarch Henry (Tobias Andersen, right) does some reading of his own. Leland (Karl Miller, middle), is awakes to visions of older brother Hank (P.J. Sosko, standing) and cousin Joe Ben (Andy Paterson, seated) on the slopes amid the timber.}

It’s been a whirlwind week of rehearsals, interviews, performances and photo calls as we prepare for the historic unveiling of Aaron Posner’s world premiere adaptation of Ken Kesey’s Sometimes a Great Notion.

The play, set in Wakonda, Oregon in the early 60s, pits the fiercely independent Stamper family against their tight-knit coastal logging community, focusing on the relationship of two Stamper brothers whose loves, losses and rivalries pull them into a fierce duel for dominance against a backdrop of Oregon’s magnificent, dripping, coastal forests.

{photo: Older brother Hank Stamper (P.J. Sosko) sizes up his little brother Leland (Karl Miller), who has just returned home from the civilized, highly intellectual world of the Ivy League East Coast to help his family fulfill a logging contract (and plot a little revenge).}

Sometimes a Great Notion asks huge and fascinating questions about the rights of individuals, the relevance of intellectual pursuit and the deep mysteries of the human heart. It gets you right where you live… especially if you live in Oregon.

How does it translate to the stage? This has been the question of the hour for weeks as designers, directors, dramaturgs and actors wrestle with a novel whose sprawling intensity led to it being named #1 in the Seattle Post Intelligencer’s list of Essential NW Books.

And it is a question that is still in the process of being answered as we enter the final hours before opening.

{photo: Designers and carpenters survey the set on the eve of tech rehearsal}

Last night, the preview performance featured the re-arrangement of several significant scenes, changing the placement of intermission and sending stage managers and house managers into a whirlwind of small behind the scenes adjustments to keep everything running smoothly. Performers have been in the theater for 5 hours of rehearsal before each evening’s preview, squeezing in every last opportunity to settle this play into their bones before Friday’s sold out premiere. Some of their fingers still have ink smudges from the fresh sheets of dialogue they are tucking in to the cracks of well-rehearsed scenes as adaptor/director Aaron Posner hones Kesey’s sprawling epic into a tightly crafted and highly ambitious work of theater.

There is an extraordinary level of excitement brewing about this production; from the Oregonian, which joined the cast for a field trip to the muddy backwoods of Lewiston to watch loggers in action; to PDX Magazine, whose editor remembers her own logger grandfather; to OPB News, which featured an interview with adaptor/director Aaron Posner on the Friday morning radio broadcast. Down in Eugene, Tripp Sommers of KLCC at Lane Community College called to chat with Aaron about growing up in Eugene and meeting Ken Kesey back in the day.

{photo: Ken Babbs and Ken Kesey with the Merry Prankster bus Further (courtesy Ken Babbs)}

Oregonians from around the state have written in to the PCS website to share their own remembrances of Kesey, including one letter sent from the Washington County Jail, recalling a meeting with Kesey at a gas station. “I told him that I really liked his patches,” the writer recalls, “I will always remember Kesey as the guy with a smile and cool patches.” The remembrances range from cautionary to colorful, but all share a real sense that to have met the man was to be permanently touched by his unique perspective of the world.

Ken Kesey was, after all, a true wild child of Oregon literature, and as a state we seem to have retained our deep fascination with the man and his Dayglo, rough and tumble worldview. As Aaron has pointed out in interview after interview this week, Kesey was fascinated by the theater, and considered his entire life to be a work of performance.

What would he think of this production? I think he would appreciate its wildness, its energy and the way scenic designer Tony Cisek has captured the scale and majesty of the Oregon woods (without stooping to faux greenery or trick timber).

{photo: The view from the top platform of the set- a dizzying 15+ feet from the stage floor}

I think he would groove along with Jim Ragland’s bass guitar and mountain dulcimer score, which drives the play to its galloping, haunting conclusion. And I think he would appreciate the honesty and searching intensity with which the performers have approached their characters. Each actor has had to bravely face some aspect of the play that grates against their own sense of civility or decency. Aaron keeps pushing the actors to fight their own complacency, to stay uncomfortable with the secret places the play asks them to go. Kesey, who spoke of “staring unflinching into the abyss of the new American wildness,” would have gotten a kick out of the bounding ambition of this production that leaps (sometimes literally) into every nook and crevice of the stage, pushing out past the proscenium to touch audiences with laughter, shock and even tears.

The fiercely independent Stamper family seems to strike a chord with Oregonians… whether they are native born or new transplants recently arrived in search of the state’s fabled creative energy and self reliant spirit. Perhaps it is because the two brothers at the heart of the play (the reticent, unflinching Hank and the questing, discontented Leland) navigate a tricky terrain all too familiar to Portlanders on the cusp of an urban/rural divide.

{photo: The Brothers Stamper: Older brother Hank (P.J. Sosko) surveys the damage after little brother Leland (Karl Miller) ends his first day of back breaking labor as a ‘choker setter’ at the Stamper logging site.}

It is heady, deeply personal stuff, and the post-show conversations swirling through the lobby sparkle with intimate memories of grandfathers brave and uncouth, mothers whose beauty mixed uneasily with their intellect and siblings whose fierce loyalty to each other was only matched by the ruthlessness with which they plotted each other’s destruction. Arching over it all is the heady sense of having had a personal encounter with literary history, and with a legend whose voice has deeply affected our perceptions of what it means to be an Oregonian.

I invite you to see this play, to map it against your own memories of the novel, of Oregon, of life back before yesterday became today. And when you’ve seen it, join the conversation, whether online in our discussion forum or at one of the many public events around Kesey and his novel being planned for the month of April.

It is, after all, your reaction to the play, in that darkened room and after, that will bring this heady tale of the Oregon forest to life.

buy tickets || single ticket prices || bring a group || free community events
cast and crew || photos || more blogs about Sometimes A Great Notion

photo: Ken Babbs and Ken Kesey with Further (courtesy Ken Babbs)

As both a singular voice of Northwest literature and a restless, animating spirit of the ‘60s counter-culture, Ken Kesey widened perceptions and challenged American values at many turnpikes over the last several decades.

Which is why the world-premiere staging of Sometimes a Great Notion was an ideal opportunity to not only ask questions about Kesey, the importance of this book–considered by many “the quintessential Oregon Novel” and a landmark statement about the West–as a seminal work of art, and moreover understand a little more about who we are and how we define our place in the landscape of the Northwest.

Throughout April we’ll take a broad look at Sometimes A Great Notion and Kesey’s impact on literature, ideas, and other great notions around regionalism, nature, labor and activism, family, and sustainability.

Saturday April 5 2 pm
Never Give A Inch: Kesey on Stage, Screen, and Beyond
An exploration of Kesey’s vital legacy and its transformation to stage, screen and beyond with KEN BABBS, Merry Prankster and co-author with Kesey of The Last Go ‘Round, Sometimes A Great Notion playwright/director AARON POSNER, and filmmaker GUS VAN SANT, who is working on a film adaptation of Tom Wolfe’s Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, about Kesey’s trip with the Merry Pranksters.On the Mainstage

Sunday April 6 12 pm
Kesey and the Regional Spirit: Oregon in Life and Letters
Sometimes A Great Notion-inspired discussion of sustainability, forestry, labor, family and ideas about the “Oregon character” set the stage for a conversation with esteemed historian and author WILLIAM G. ROBBINS, nature essayist/poet DAVID OATES, Native poet-artist ELIZABETH WOODY, Director of Ecotrust’s Indigenous Leadership Program.
In the Studio

Plus:

Sunday, April 6, Post-matinee discussion

PCS & Oregon Psychoanalytic Center present
Formative Stages: Theater and the Life of the Mind
“Sometimes A Great Notion” with Scott Murray, MD.

With wit and acumen our Murray will delve into the play’s pathos, humor, the primitive drive of the pleasure-loving id, intimacy, trust and the limits of belief, family dynamics and power, taboos, and all the curious nooks and crannies that Notion inhabits–revealing that theater is truly a microcosm of life.

Ken Kesey: On the Page/On the Stage at the Public Library
Sunday April 13 2 pm
DAVID SUMNER, director of Linfield College’s Writing program and WENDY WILLIS, Social Sustainability program manager at Oregon Solutions lead a discussion of Kesey’s novel, Sometimes a Great Notion.

Wednesday April 16 6 pm
A discussion of Sometimes a Great Notion through the lens of regional identity, eco-criticism and sustainability with JOE BOWERSOX, Dempsey Professor of Environmental Policy and Director, Center for Sustainable Communities at Willamette University.

Multnomah Central Public Library (US Bank Room), 801 SW 10th Avenue. FREE ADMISSION

All events are free and open to the public.

…
buy tickets to Sometimes a Great Notion || read blogs about Sometimes A Great Notion || top of page

This project was made possible in part by a grant from the Oregon Council for the Humanities, a statewide nonprofit organization and an independent affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities, which funds OCH’s grants program. This project also made possible by a grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and with support from the National Endowment for the Arts.

TS Eliot once said that April was the cruelest month, but that was probably because he never got to participate in a free legal workshop for scribble-centric modernists and other creatives…who knows, perhaps The Wasteland might’ve been populated with a few more hopeful Frostian roads less traveled.

Ever had a big idea swept away from you by a nemesis, wished you’d copyrighted that recording, negotiated for digital rights on your tell-all, or wondered what-the-heck’s a 501(c)(3)?!

Then join us for high tea on the legal high seas on Thursday, April 3 for a Community Artist Lab—So Sue Me: Sound Advice from Peter Vaughan Shaver, Esq.—a free, informal, legal workshop geared for actors, performers, artists, band managers, cartoonists/designers, filmmakers, writers, and, yes, even big-time theater directors.

The Community Artist Lab takes place at 4 pm in the Lobby of the Gerding Theater at the Armory. FREE ADMISSION

Peter Vaughan Shaver is Portland-based arts & entertainment attorney with a fully packed bandolero of legal expertise. His firm Sound Advice, LLC is a go-to for a plethora of creative people and businesses of all kinds and he lectures regularly on topics like copyrights, trademarks, music and art law, non-profits, Internet law, licensing, and business creation widely at schools, arts organizations, and for many educational and community groups.

Ebullient, knowledgeable, and savvy, Shaver will tell it plainly: “Protecting yourself as an artist. . ..understanding copyrights and contracts. . .these are the facts of life in the art business.” He’ll take the “YER” out of Lawyer, demystify the arcane “Legalese” and point artists and creators toward the path of empowerment and sustainability.

An important step for every artist and creative professional is solidifying the nuts-and-bolts business end of showbiz—and that means becoming the master of your fate, the captain of your destiny (plus residuals).

So consider this your one-stop intro to art law, entertainment and music law, intellectual property, nonprofit organizations, publishing and contracts and even–gulp!–wills.

COMMUNITY ARTIST LAB—So Sue Me: Sound Advice from Peter Vaughan Shaver, Esq. takes place just prior to First Thursday, featuring the music of Leviethan Cecil. Coffee, tea, wine, or other tonic for your torpor available at the Armory Café.

The event is free and open to all. Call Tim DuRoche, Community Outreach Coordinator at 503-445-3794 or email timd@pcs.org to RSVP.

Photo credit: Brian Libby

Recently we overheard some rumbling, dyspeptic piffle about the Vera Katz Park being “underwhelming…feels a little too cement,” or brazenly dismissed as, in fact, “Not much of a park.”

Well there’s no pleasing some folks—seems a shame to squander all of life’s joy on being a grumbly Old Sneep—but it does bring up a couple of things:

What is a park? What function does it serve? And just what does public space like this symbolize?

Consider this. The Park is in many ways an apt reflection of Mayor Katz’s legacy: it literally embraces arts and culture and the rebirth of a historic landmark and nurtures connections between civic space, the creative spirit, innovation and reuse, and the public good. The 18 x 200-foot urban oasis’ native plants and bioswales (which filter and reduce stormwater runoff) contribute to neighborhood livability—and the “delicate sidewalk ballet” that accentuates the vitality of the Pearl.

The gentle rhythm and flow of Scott Murase’s black granite’s recycled rainwater channel echoes Katz’s gentle reminder that, “A great city never sleeps…A great city never stands still. A great city shares its vision with its community and makes it very clear that we are going to work together to make it happen. A great city thinks about its future.”

So what is a park?

Parks have an ability to accommodate many different types of uses and people. They are where you might meet a friend for lunch, stage an outdoor concert for thousands, or just relax and read a book.

Originally parks were seen as a respite from the Zola-esque grit and grime of city life and work. But it’s easy though to assume too much pastoral primacy when thinking about parks, as historian William Cronon has noted, “idealizing a distant wilderness, too often means not idealizing the environment in which we actually live.”

Portland is at the forefront of cities that are reframing our understanding of parks and public spaces. On the one hand we’ve got Forest Park, the US’s largest urban forest (and fourth largest park) and we’ve got the world’s smallest park (look it up in your Guiness Book): Mill Ends Park—the thoughtful little-park-that-could that measures two feet across in a traffic median along Naito Parkway. The Project for Public Spaces reminds us that Pioneer Courthouse Square, “Portland’s Living Room,” is one of this nation’s most successful public spaces, an electrified “volksgarten” and a great park, despite there being not one blade of grass growing there.

Of the many intrinsic values Portland possesses, our necklace of parks, open spaces, squares, greens, plazas (a veritable strings of pearls caressing the city’s urban fabric) are among the dearest. The entire notion of the Park is evolving from their recreational role, to “serve as important catalysts for community development and enhancement.” Small parks like the Lawrence Halprin-designed Pettygrove Park, or PCS’ Vera Katz Park can take on the character of urban “rooms of one’s own”—quiet places for reading or recharging, putting the maelstrom of 9-5 on pause temporarily.

A great illustration of that is the balance between the teeming vitality and serenity and calm, exemplified by Jamison Square and Tanner Springs, just a block or two apart in the Pearl, on a warm day.

We like this city because it gives us choices: A Thomas Merton Moment in Tanner Springs, water fight at Jamison, sneaking a chapter from Elizabeth Gilbert or a poem from Frank O’Hara amid the “hum-colored cabs” at O’Bryant Square, dipping tired feet into Keller Fountain at high-tea; sequestering under a canopy of green or play bocce in the North Park Blocks, or enjoying a breeze on the wood benches “a step away from them” along the Vera Katz Park.

So to Old Sneep, bear in mind: as we all spend more and more time at work, in front of computers, at gyms, malls, disconnected from fellow citizens and neighbors, public space tends too often to come in the form of parking structures—the consequence being that our communities and hope for all that parks can be are being left behind.

We’re in a new age of public space and engagement. Parks are no longer merely passive green tracts, they’re pocket-parks nestled into streetscapes accommodating multiple uses, they’re social capital that knit together the complexity and diversity of our communities. A space like the Katz park helps us nurture a different relationship with public art and civic space–the granite waterways are a subtle bit of functional art that counters Public Art as the out-of-scale sculpture in the bank lobby, embracing instead a more human element that encourages us as Jane Jacobs suggests to “look, listen, linger and think about what you see”—to sit down and relax for a much earned moment or two.

photo credit: Tom Oliver

“If the Northwest has its own musical sound, it’s exemplified on Leviethan Cecil’s 2007 release, Monuments in Memory of Nothing So Far. It’s vintage indie-rock made modern. The lyrics have a dreamlike quality, beautiful and deep. Monuments gets a place in my Top 10 CDs of 2007.”
-Amy Atkins, Boise Weekly

Singer-songwriter Leviethan Cecil (of Heroes and Villians, KBOO Midnight Mixtape and DIY, Portland fame) is in the right place at the right time. And if you’re lucky, you will be too: Cecil performs here for FIRST THURSDAY, April 3, 6 pm –no cover and all-ages.

Building a strong following through the noble art of storytelling and song, Cecil’s music brims with evocative melody and emotion, harmony and a certain honesty and earthiness—values that Portlanders have an insatiable yen for.

Not only does he have a hammer, he uses it, hammering in the morning, producing, “the kind of lo-fi bedroom pop the Northwest seems to have perfected,” according to the PTrib’s Barbara Mitchell.

Cecil’s kaleidoscope presents mesmerizing strands of steely independent punk conviction and a lyrical underpinning of elliptical, folk-rock imperative that seems equal parts Elliot Smith, the Minutemen, Neil Young , Skeleton Key and Fugazi, Sandy Bull, Utah Phillips and Syd Barrett. The result: a keening, inspired tonic that both charms and enlightens.

If that weren’t enough, Cecil tells us he’ll be joined by, “Miss Ali Ippolito, wonder-pianist, vocalist, accordionist from Heroes & Villains and her own band.”

Sample This, then plan on stopping by the Gerding Theater at the Armory on First Thursday for the real thing.

“As compelling as anything in recent memory.”
-Casey Jarman, Willamette Week

…
buy tickets to Sometimes a Great Notion || read blogs about Sometimes A Great Notion || top of page

You know that PCS boasts a theater school, called GreenHouse, right? I’m proud to say I’ve taught for it twice through our popular “Dialogue” series, in which participants read and discuss masterpieces of dramatic literature. We inaugurated GreenHouse with my “Greatest Hits” class, where we read some of history’s most popular plays (Doctor Faustus and Uncle Tom’s Cabin, for example), and last fall I taught a course on Shakespeare’s romances.

Up for the spring semester: “Murder & Mayhem: Three Macabre Masterpieces of the English Renaissance.” This new course explores something we have in common with Shakespeare’s audiences – our love of scary stories involving vengeful ghosts, damp dungeons, secret passageways and grisly undoings, all served up with a ghoulish sense of fun. These influential dramas prefigure the Gothic romances of the 18th Century as well as the horror movies of our own time.

In this six-session theater appreciation course, we’ll delve into three of the genre’s greatest hits, all of which are still frequently performed today: Hamlet, by William Shakespeare; The Revenger’s Tragedy, by Cyril Tourneur; and The Changeling, by Middleton & Rowley.

I still have room for a few more participants – if you’d like to register, contact Kelsey Tyler soon at kelseyt@pcs.org. For more information about the class and its subject, feel free to phone me at (503) 445-3792.

Course dates: Wednesdays, Apr. 2 – May 21, 7-9 pm
Tuition: $150

I would love to discuss these astonishing plays, with their strangely modern mixtures of suspense and humor, with you.

 

Mead Hunter

Find Out More about The GreenHouse School of Theater.

Find Out about PCS’ Other Education Programs.

Read More from Mead’s blog.

This event is free! 7:00pm to 8:30pm on Monday March 10th.

Last month we hosted our Visions and Voices playwriting students from Cleveland High School in our lobby for our first ever V&V playwrights’ slam. It rocked. The students brought along friends and family, some PCS staff attended, the cafe was open, and the lobby was alive with new work being read out loud. This Monday we are doing it again, this time with our students from Wilson High. Hope you come and join us.

Here are some thoughts from two Cleveland students I mentored last month.

“Visions and Voices was something I was told about frequently by my super-thespian senior friends. So not only was I looking forward to it, but I had some pretty high expectations. Looking back, the entire experience brutally surpassed those expections. Being able to write freely and recieve enough friendly critique to make that writing better helped me learn that it doesn’t matter if it sucks, it’s just a draft, life goes on, and nothing is ever, ever perfectly complete. This in general opened the possibilty of enjoying my work, and the process it took to get there. Not to mention I got an excuse to sit at a computer every night and let delightful words escape from my fingers. This is some good shit you got going here, keep it up. I am pleased in an extremely superb fashion that I get to go through this twice more. Thank you.” - Ally Yancey

“Visions and Voices has been a huge highlight of my school year. I’ve learned how to find inspiration anywhere, got a grip on how to at least look professional, found a writing style to call my own and had the pleasure of seeing my work acted out for an audience. For the V&V Playwright’s Slam our Drama class got to hold up on couches and stools together, sipping tea and listening to each other’s favorite pieces from the class. Hearing your work from the point of view of the audience… what an amazing feeling. The air of acceptance and encouragement in the room was unmistakable, and it wiped away any embarrassment or stage fright. Listening to my friend’s finished work, after seeing the same pieces in every stage of growth is, again, simply a great feeling. I know we’ve all gathered something from V&V, and I can’t wait to do it again next year. I’m just jealous of the Sophomores in my class: they get to do it three times.” - Ivy Knight

Read More about Visions and Voices here.

Find out more about PCS’ programs for teens here.

Read More about our Education programs here.

Read more from Education Director Kelsey Tyler’s blog here.

Tinker, Tailor, Commissioner, Scribe—“Meet your ______!”.

Super Project Lab presents Marc Acito and Sam Adams, unplugged, unedited and shooting from the hip!

It’s Leap Year, a time to live dangerously, throw caution to the wind and head out for an evening of madcap introductions to everyday Portlanders—novelists, politicians, urban farmers, opera singers—people just like you and me. Honey, let’s meet our neighbors! In alphabetical order, no less. Starting with the letter “A.”

How’s it work? Marc Acito (author of How I Paid For College: A Novel of Sex, Theft, Friendship, and Musical Theater and the soon-to-be-released boffo hit Attack of the Theater People) and Commissioner (and Mayoral candidate) Sam Adams improvise true-life monologues based on a suggestion from the audience, which in turn ignites rapid-fire improv scenes by the cast of SPL, a core of electric veteran West Coast improv talents that include Shelley Six, Gary Hirsch, Ralph Huntley, Laura Faye Smith. Bottom Row: Mame Pelletier, Phil Incorvia, Chris Thompson.

Take no prisoners improv/sketch theater meets ripped-from-the-headlines Portland! That’s what you get with SPL’s “Meet your ______!”

Laugh with (no, not at) luminaries from the world of politics, the arts, the business world and our community at large—come away feeling a little more in touch with your neighbors in City that Works.

If you miss it you’ll never know which one of these prominent Portlanders:

A) Has a fondness for Scottish writers no one’s ever heard of
B) Won the American Legion Good Citizenship Award
C) Knows a guy to call if you get trapped at railroad crossings for great lengths of time.
D) Has something in common with hookers and Winston Churchill
E) Is known for a particularly fetching Jackie Kennedy Onassis impersonation
G) Highly recommends How to Raise Chickens in The City
F) Could be called A Comic Rat
H) Possesses the secret superhero powers of delectable banana cake baking.

Friday, Feb. 29: “Meet Your Novelist,” syndicated columnist and novelist Marc Acito

Saturday, Mar. 1:“Meet Your Commissioner,” City Commissioner Sam Adams

All shows will be held in the Studio theater, the Gerding Theater at the Armory, 128 NW 11th Ave, Portland, Ore. This is a late night series, and all shows start at 10:30 p.m. Tickets are $10 ($8 for PCS subscribers).

To purchase tickets call The Portland Center Stage Box Office at (503) 445-3700. For more info visit www.superprojectlab.com.

Find Out about other events at the Armory here.

Read more from Outreach Director Tim duRoche’s blog here.

We just announced next season, including a World Premiere from Storm Large. Get the details here.

Sometimes a Great Commotion makes way for a Picnic, Barefoot in the Park.

As seasons begin to change and the construction crews disperse, visitors to the Armory and Pearl District will begin to notice an early spring bloom along the Davis Street cultural corridor: the freshly minted Vera Katz Park—named for Portland’s vibrant and beloved 45th Mayor, an inspirational, unswerving champion for the arts and culture of this city.

A sublime 18 x 200-foot urban oasis, the park (designed by local landscape architects Murase Assoc.) continues PCS’s story of sustainable community development out into the neighborhood with a features like drought-tolerant trees, native grasses and perennials that will cut exterior irrigation by 100%, pervious pavers that filter stormwater, sociable and comfortable hardwood seating, a bioswale that runs along three-quarters of the block, and includes a stunning black-granite water channel supplied by recycled rainwater.

This is just the kind of pivotal public place the late visionary urbanist Jane Jacobs was referring to when she said: “People in Portland love Portland. That’s the most important thing. They really like to see it improved. . .and not with a lot of gimmicks, but with good, intelligent reuses of the old buildings. They’re good at rehabilitation. As far as their parks are concerned, they’ve got some wonderful parks with water flows in them. It’s fascinating. . .They’re unusual parks. The amount of space they take and what they deliver is just terrific.”

We can’t wait to spill the barely-contained excitement that happens inside the Armory out onto the street, animating the neighborhood with concerts, site-specific performance, tai chi, readings and speakers’ corners, sustainability talks, and shaded areas to simply sit and relax or organize an urban picnic.

We’re really hoping this can be a valuable amenity (alongside the Streetcar, short blocks, pedestrian rule, Powell’s, and Jamison Sq) contributing to the Pearl District neighborhood’s reputation as one of the 60 greatest places in the world.

Did you know:
• Building a new 50,000 square foot building releases as much carbon into the atmosphere as driving a car 2.8 million miles.
• Demolishing a 50,000 square foot commercial building creates more than 4,000 tons of waste – enough to fill 26 railroad boxcars – a train one quarter mile long
• Over the next 23 years nearly 1/3 of our existing buildings – 82 billion square feet – will be demolished, according to the Brookings Institute. Absent any recycling, that will create 5.5 billion tons of waste, enough to fill 2,500 NFL stadiums.
• The energy to demolish and replace those buildings could power the state of California for 10 years

Crikey. Who knew?!. But lucky for us, Richard Moe, President of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, does know and will be on hand here at the Gerding Theater at the Armory on Wednesday, February 27 at 4:30 pm to give a momentous presentation on Sustainable Stewardship: Historic Preservation’s Role in Fighting Climate Change. Addressing that challenge is the goal of the National Trust’s new Sustainability Initiative, which aims “to help people better understand preservation’s value in fostering development that is environmentally, economically and socially sustainable. We’re challenged,” Moe says, “to find a way of living that will ensure the longevity and health of our environmental, economic, and social resources.  Moe and The National Trust for Historic Preservation have long been instrumental for in guiding us with responsible stewardship of America ’s past—and are ready now to step up and play a similar role in the arena of sustainable stewardship for America ’s future. 

And what better place for Moe to rollout a sustainability initiative on rehabilitation and reuse than right here—center stage at Gerding Theater at The Armory— in the first historic building to receive LEED Platinum certification. The story of the Portland Armory is a shining example that exemplifies what historic preservation is all about: peeling back policy and rhetoric to show that preservation, according to Moe and the Trust, “is simply having the good sense to hold on to things that are well designed, that link us with our past in a meaningful way, and that have plenty of good use left in them.”

A bonafide rockstar in the world of historic preservation, Moe has old-school street-cred (including working as chief of staff to Vice President Walter Mondale, a member of the Carter White House senior staff and serving on the board of the Ford Foundation) and is a 2007 recipient of the prestigious Vincent Scully Prize from the National Building Museum, as well as the co-author of Changing Places: Rebuilding Community in the Age of Sprawl and will be the first to tell you: “We can’t build our way out of our environmental problems.  We have to conserve our way out.  That means we have to make better, wiser use of what we’ve already built…It makes no sense to recycle aluminum cans while throwing away entire buildings.”

We have a choice: We can do nothing for a while longer – until the realities of climate change, the disappearance of irreplaceable resources, and soaring energy costs force us to take action. Or we can take steps now to develop a smart, sustainable development ethic and the policies that will support it. 

But I do believe that historic preservation can be – and must be – a key component of any effort to promote sustainable development.  Indeed, preservation is sustainability. . .preservation is “the ultimate recycling. . . I intend to address that challenge. . . sharing my views on what I believe is preservation’s essential role in fostering development that is environmentally, as well as economically, sustainable. The key phrase is “sustainable stewardship.” It all comes down to this simple fact: We can’t build our way out of the global warming crisis. We have to conserve our way out. That means we have to make better, wiser use of what we’ve already built.”

It’s truly inspiring to see ideals firmly grounded at the intersections of past-present-future, deftly practicing and maintaining a precious balancing act supporting permanence, change, innovation, and deep social value—and everything in between.Understanding that often form supports function and being open to the need for change and having the reflexivity to enact that change brings history into focus with an unswerving sense of responsibility to public spaces, civic engagement and architecture as both artifice and edifice.
 
We’re deeply excited to have Moe speaking on the essential role that preservation plays in supporting and enhancing place-making, community values, and an abiding sense of stewardship. Like the clarion call of historic preservation, theater is an art that traffics in a rich civic currency—it’s about bringing people together, amplifying the bricks and cultural mortar that define and unite us as a nation, one very forward-thinking city, and as a people. We can’t wait.

Richard Moe will be introduced by First Lady Mary Oberst and National Trust for Historic Preservation Trustee Barbara Sidway, of the historic Geiser Grand Hotel in Baker City, Oregon.
 
All welcome. Free.  Reservations required.
RSVP by phone at (800) 315.6847

Read More about PCS’ sustainability efforts here.

Read More from Outreach Director Tim duRoche’s blog here.

Find Out about renting the Armory for your own lecture or event here.
 

 

 
 

 
 

Our mission ’round these parts is “bringing stories to life in unexpected ways. . .Theater brings us together, to sit near one another, to hear stories, to lift our voices in song. Theater creates worlds like no others; its immediacy cannot be duplicated; its intensity cannot be matched. A playwright’s miraculous words, directed with insight and acted with passion, elicit laughter, sorrow, astonishment, enlightenment, inspiration. Suddenly, we are not alone.”

Theater in that regard has a close cousin in Pop Music–which at its best shares that galvanizing, emotionally charged power. It’s mysterious and unpredictable, but beautiful when it all lines.

They’re playing our song, where were you when [insert life-changing moment] happened. . . .We are the champions, let it be, it’s all for you body and soul, Come as you are/as you were. . .

That’s why every First Thursday we invite musicians (as independent of spirit as the great playwrights we know and love) to share their stories and songs in this hearth we call the Gerding Theater at the Armory.

February brings us a rock-star. Yes, that’s right, rock-star (albeit in a lower-case, humble way). From Los Angeles, singer-songwriter WISELY .

A performer with seemingly bullet-proof critical raves, Wisely’s beautifully melancholy video featuring Jenna Fischer (of NBC’s The Office) recently brought Wisely to a new wider audience.

Fans of Michael Penn’s raw, reflective snapshots of the human condition (or those of Jason Falkner and Owsley for that matter) will appreciate Wisely’s exceptionally well-crafted songwriting ethic -–brimming with heartfelt immediacy, melody, with a finish that is deliciously hummable. According to Entertainment News, his is music “Like Lennon and McCartney, Ray Davies and others of that ilk, he knows how to weave his way t