Favorite three moments of Saturday’s JAW (Just Add Water):

Liminal Performance Group’s “Static Theater” piece staged around the main doors of the building. A variety of people attached and unattached physically, split up by musicians riffing off of one another in slow mo. It sounds dull – but somehow the suspension of their mental and physical stillness made it quite arresting. A Dad driving by in his SUV rolled his window down and shouted: “What is this?” I tried to tell him quickly and let him know their was more going on inside. And that it was FREE! He went to park.

Fever Theater’s Physically Dynamic Piece down in the back hallway along the outside of the studio. It was cool just to see “audience” interacting with performers in that industrial space. But the meditation on love and the nature of existence was also pretty interesting. I loved the ending section where performers lay on the floor humming different tunes, and the audience had to walk over and around them to get to the exit.

Dim Sum Puppet Opera Company in the BOILERROOM! I know that no audience members had been in that space before. But even cooler: the performance featured an ancient Chinese Puppet talking about George Williams – the Mayor of Portland 150 years ago who called for the original construction of the Armory to protect the good citizens of the city from the “Communists, Socialists and Immigrants in our midst who threatened our way of life”. (He, of course, meant the Chinese Population. At the time Portland had the second largest Chinese population on the West Coast.)