JAW is long over. But I find myself thinking back to that magical week, when I made some good friends and worked on some of the most amazing writing in the country. There is no place like JAW and all I have to do is click my converse all-stars and I am there again. That being said, it is a wonderful wonderful feeling when a JAW play gets produced.

Last weekend, MIMESOPHOBIA by Carlos Murillo, which was part of JAW 2004, opened here in Portland. Kristan Seemel, who has worked for Portland Center Stage for seven years, directed the play for Sand and Glass Productions, a new theater company in town. Kristan is leaving his position as the corporate development coordinator to attend Brown/Trinity Rep Consortium in Providence, RI to get his MFA in directing. So make sure you take a moment to see this production before it closes. More information at Sand and Glass’ website.

Carlos Murillo came back to JAW this year to help us celebrate our Tenth Anniversary and participate in this years Commission! Commission! event. During his time here he was able to meet with Kristan again and talk about his concept for the production, which includes video and the actors wearing mics. This is pretty incredible considering the play takes place in the tiny Shoe Box Theater, which holds a maximum of 40-50 people. Also, Carlos gave Kristan a brand new draft, so even if you think you remember it from its public reading at JAW, this version is new!

BTW: Make sure to check out the late night: DUTCHMAN by LeRoi Jones @ 10:30pm in the same space. Call 503-781-2156 or www.megankateward.blogspot.com for more information.

More Press: Tribune, Willamette Week, Followspot

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{photo: Rose Riordan, JAW Festival Director turns 10 too!}

The festival is turning ten. Chris wrote a great blog last week called What Is JAW? While he had it mostly right… reading his post took me back to that fateful day when Elizabeth Huddle, then the artistic director of Portland Center Stage, told me she had called Jim Nicola of the New York Theatre Workshop about partnering on a new plays festival and how would I like to pick him up at the airport and get this party started? (I’m paraphrasing but you get the idea) - I was swimming in new territory - I had worked for a new plays festival but had never started, planned or organized one before. Not only that, in 1999 the artistic staff consisted of ME. No interns, no assistants, no nobody. Just me and a telephone. While I was terrified it would be a horrific disaster, nobody would come and everyone would go home crying, I was excited as well. I decided that I would plan everything like I would like an experience to be and go from there. Long story short that first year was magical, crazy and we did, in fact, go home crying - because it was over.

The NYTW involvement was mainly collaboration on what writers would be a good fit and after the first year said they would come back to visit the next year but we really didn’t “need them”. Chris forgot that he came on year two! and with his support JAW became a true laboratory for developing work for Portland Center Stage. Every year we post-mortem the festival in the interest of making it a little better each year. The mission being very clear: it’s all about the playwright. We believe that through conversation, food, a field trip to the coast and incredible hospitality we generate the space for creativity and good work. It’s worked so far.

So it brings me to this: I believe that at the core of the festivals success is a dedicated staff that has multiplied each year and we have amazing retention which helps maintain the mission. In 1999 the artistic full-time staff was one strong and in 2008 we have six full-time staff that devote a part of their job to JAW year round. The festival staff is much larger and includes, directors, dramaturgs, stage management, interns, production: lights & sound, administrative staff and company management. The entire company is usually around fifty people.

Here are some of the JAW alumni that have been with JAW for over five years and have made it what it is today and I’m honored to work with them all:

{Rose Riordan, Festival Director 10 years}

{Kelsey Tyler, Festival Producer 9 years}

{Don Crossley JAW Lighting Designer 10 years}

{Chris Coleman, Artistic Director 9 years}

{Jen Raynak JAW Sound Designer 9 years}

{Mead Hunter, Festival Literary Director 7 years}

{Kristan Seemal, Dramaturg 7 years}

One more thank you to Lisa Sanman Smith our Capitol Campaign/Human Resources Director who brought to a brainstorming meeting the tag line “we play rough” - which I immediately stole for JAW’s tag we.play.rough. THANK YOU LISA, NOW QUIT REMINDING ME IT WAS YOUR BRILLIANT IDEA FIRST!

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Portland Center Stage’s

NOW HEAR THIS

invites you to a concert reading of

Why Love Doesn’t Recognize Its Name

a new play by Lisa Leaverton

*

Saturday, June 28, 2008

Noon to approximately 1:30 pm

@ Portland Center Stage

128 NW Eleventh Avenue (between Couch & Davis)

in the Rehearsal Room

*

Our outstanding cast includes:

Lava Alapai, Mario Calcagno, Drew Danhorn, Cecily Overman,

Amy Palomino, Ben Plont & Heather Nelson Robertson

*

Admission is free, but space is limited

Email Megan Ward at meganw@pcs.org

to reserve your seat

—————————–

At a loss for words? Then come down to Lee’s Expressive! He’s the best! Lee and his team of mechanics help clients whose speech patterns are clogged with words that are too ornate, or have the wrong shade of meaning, or just plain don’t communicate. But only Deep Mystery (that’s you, our audience) can unlock the most problematic phrases.

Please join us for our final reading of the season, which promises to be unlike any other reading we’ve had this year: it’s semi-staged; the audience can affect the play’s plot; AND the playwright herself will be here, all the way from Brooklyn, to celebrate the first fun season of

NOW HEAR THIS.

Lisa Leaverton, Playwright (Brooklyn, NY) runs a collective (inquire within) with Director John Kaufmann, devoted to audience dependent, ephemeral theatre. Her One Act, “PERHAPS,” (2008) was read in Outward Bound Series, at CSPS, Cedar Rapids. WHY LOVE DOESN’T RECOGNIZE ITS NAME, for which she received a Richard Maibaum Scholarship was featured at Iowa New Play Festival, 2008. Theatre of The Body (2001), a series of lecture demonstrations created in collaboration with choreographer Katharine Livingston has been performed numerous times since it sold out at Philadelphia Fringe. A Blue We All Know (2008), will be featured in a Gallery production at University of Iowa, Oct. 2008. Other plays include Who Are These They, (2007) read in Primary Stages Playwrights Workshop, The LONG Night, (2008), and The Countess of Misery (2005), full-length play in verse. Since graduating from Peabody Music Conservatory, Lisa has costumed Theatre and Dance companies, including Headlong Dance and Pig Iron Theatre Co. Lisa participated in Goat Island Performance workshops, and KCCTF, 2007. Recipient of a Felton award, Lisa is completing her MFA in playwriting at University of Iowa.

The Drammy Awards are always a great party, but this year Portland Center Stage had the distinct pleasure of being able to congratulate 12 artists from this season who took home Drammy awards for everything from best supporting role in a musical to best lighting design.

Check out the local coverage from the Oregonian and Willamette Week, and definitely don’t miss Alison Hallett’s blow by blow “Live at the Drammys” blog- the best way to get the flavor of the event if you weren’t able to attend.

Want reactions from performers who won after the show? Eric Bartels interviewed several winners in his coverage of the evening.

Here are the highlights on the record-breaking number of awards Chris had to lug into the theater this morning:

Darius Pierce and Brent Harris (pictured below) won for their delightfully bawdy portayal of the Bard and Edward DeVere in The Beard of Avon.

Michele Mariana secured an award for her work as Fraulein Schneider in Cabaret.

Jessica Wallenfels’ logger ballet choreography for Sometimes a Great Notion picked up an award, as did Tony Cisek’s set design and Dan Covey’s glowing, mist strewn lighting design.

Deborah Trout snagged a Costume Design accolade for her brilliantly hued pumpkin pantaloons in Twelfth Night.

The favorite of the evening, Twelfth Night also garnered an award for outstanding production and a nod to Jane Jones for her masterful direction. Dueling Kenneth Albers and Brad Bellamy took home awards for their supporting actor performances.

Rounding out the awards for Twelfth Night, William Bloodgood was honored for his multipurpose Elizabethan scenic design.

It was a beautiful evening, and we were honored to provide opportunities for so many outstanding artists and performers to shine!

JAW: A Playwrights Festival turns 10! And to celebrate we are pulling out all the stops. For two crazy weeks in July, from July 8-20, JAW: A Playwrights Festival takes over the Armory – and its environs. We will begin on the 8^th with readings of hot-off-the press new scripts by Oregon’s own:

The Cloud-Bangers

by Matthew B. Zrebski

July 8

All the clouds are cumulonimbus in this heady mix of meteorology, migraines and steamy romance. Only an air-clearing storm will reveal who’s zoomin’ whom.

Starvation Heights

by Ginny Foster

July 9

On a lake near Seattle a century ago, lady doctor Linda Hazzard opens a sanitarium with some “advanced” ideas about treatment. When her clients start leaving her care feet first, a mysterious figure known only as Nanny arrives, determined to save two particular patients.

Willow Jade

by Hunt Holman

July 10

Nowheresville, Washington state. Four aging chums attempt to stave off incipient middle age by reviving their high school rock band. That is, if they can keep from killing each other during a disastrous game of D&D – in costume.

And of course there’s more. Our You Are There (site-specific) presentations will spill into the streets. The popular Theater Fair will take on a fresh twist. Promising Playwrights will offer new works created by local high school students especially for the Festival. Three new Community Artists Labs allow you some one on one time with featured guest artists to pick their brains and practice your craft. And our anniversary kick-off event will draw on playwrights from the full span of JAW’s ten fabulous years to create a Commission!Commission! event open to all for the first time. So stop by on July 11 to see familiar faces and help us kick off the public weekend.

PLUS IT’S ALL FREE!

We are proud to announce we’ve expanded the Festival’s centerpiece readings on the main stage of the Gerding Theater this year another workshop — a one woman musical by Portland’s very own Storm Large. JAW received a record number of submissions this year, and although this was not our intention, the festival will have all female playwrights. As a young female artist working in the theater community it is inspiring to see so many accomplished women.

Paradise Street
by Constance Congdon
Jane arrives at her new university post ready to set academic feminism on its head. But when her mind goes wandering, everyone has to improvise, which brings her doddering mother out of semi-senility and inspires an uneducated drifter to impersonate Jane on the lecture circuit. Along the way they all discover that contrary to popular belief, parallel lines do sometimes meet.

Enchantment
by Carson Kreizer

Meet Temple Grandin, engineer and high-functioning autistic, and Bruno Bettelheim, whose book The Uses of Enchantment is notorious for its penetrating analyses of fairy tales. They lived and live on, but this is no mere documentary; as their lives interweave to create a startling, disturbing and effecting dramatic narrative, you may never think of life and its consequences quite the same way again.

 

Crazy Enough

by Storm Large

Drawn from Storm’s life and music, this musical one-woman show is bracingly frank and revealing in a way that only our take-no-prisoners chanteuse can deliver. Her story promises to be as rock and roll as the diva herself.

Pony
by Sally Oswald
You’ve seen these people on the streets and wondered who they were. Now meet them face to face, before they shape-shift. Gender lines merge, twist and double back in this tale of six souls in search of identify that starts where Woyzeck left off.

A Brief Narrative of an Extraordinary Birth of Rabbits
by C. Denby Swanson
Coming up with names is a problem for Mare when she starts giving birth to an endless stream of bunnies. But that’s only the start of her problems, as a whole family of guilty consciences comes to the fore. Who can she turn to? Enter The Stork: raconteur, impresario and OB-GYN, all rolled into one.

JAW is truly my favorite time of year and the 2008 outing is really a must-see, as the art and creation will be exploding out the building. I hope to see you all there!