SOUNDS. LIKE. PORTLAND, Music Millennium & PCS’s new early evening music showcase continues this Saturday (and every week) from 5-7 pm in the Lobby of the Gerding Theater. Free—and all ages.

For October, in conjunction with our production of Ragtime, we feature blues/ragtime guitar master Mary Flower, jazz-blues-gospel pianist extraordinaire Janice Scroggins +  Nafisaria Scroggins Thomas, Spud Siegel, Alan Hager.

Did I mention it’s free? Come early–it’s the weekend, it’s 5′0′clock,  areety: have a drink and a delectable snack from the Armory Cafe.

Summer’s end and the beginning of fall not only mark the start of the performance season, it’s also the time of year when many public funding agencies announce their grant awards to eager arts companies. Portland Center Stage is off to an encouraging start in reaching our 2009/10 fundraising goals, thanks to the following recently received grants:

• An operating grant of $87,366 from the The Regional Arts & Culture Council, which includes a $6,680 community outreach grant for our Visions & Voices student playwriting program and a $14,505 allocation from Work for Art.  RACC is funded in part by local, regional, state and federal governments to provide grants to artists and operating support to art organizations in the tri-county region.

• A $50,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Arts through funding from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. Recognizing that the non-profit arts industry is an important sector of the economy, the Recovery Grant program focuses on preserving jobs in the arts.

• A $17,000 grant for operating support from the Oregon Arts Commission. Established in 1967, the Oregon Arts Commission, now a division of the Oregon Economic and Community Development Department, aims to foster the arts in Oregon and ensure their excellence.

We want to express our appreciation to each of these agencies, especially to the volunteers who participate in grants panels and represent the community in the decision-making process.

How do stories come to life in unexpected ways? Sometimes through very unexpected partnerships. And sometimes by just asking the right questions.

Like for example: how might the story of Ragtime illuminate salient truths and metaphors for homeless and at-risk youth in Portland?

One word that answers both questions is “empathy” – the ability to see the world through the restorative lens of someone else’s journey.

Next week, October 6-8, PCS will be sponsoring a workshop with two invaluable service organizations, New Avenues for Youth and Outside In and Write Around Portland around themes and ideas in Ragtime. It’s a great opportunity to use arts-integrated teaching (that is learning in and through the lens of creativity and the arts) and participant-centered, experiential learning to talk about real world skills.

As happenstance would have it:
Outside In (through their education program that helps youth obtain their GED and enter college) has been studying American Labor history, including the Lawrence, Massachusetts IWW textile strike of 1912 –which figures into the plot of Ragtime–and the Portland Longshoremen’s Strike of 1934.  As part of their study they’ve talked about the power in organizing.  To get beneath the surface a little more have even engaged in role playing games around the 1934 event–to understand the issue more deeply.

Throw into the mix: Youth working with New Avenues’ Skill Building component (which includes a similar GED prep program) have been using the notion of “perspectives” as guidepost in their creative writing.

Over the three days next week, youth from New Avenues and Outside In will work with workshop facilitators from Write Around Portland exploring empathy, multiple perspectives–engaging in free-writes; seeing Ragtime and participating in a Q & A; and diving into another day of writing using the idea of Historical fiction, employing images or events in history as “Prompts” to craft story. In this case the prompts are Ragtime and images of Portlanders of different age, class, and ethnic make-up from the era currently on view (courtesy of the extensive Nelson Photo Archive) in the lower lobby gallery spaces of the Gerding Theater.

Since I began working at PCS, I’ve been searching for the right fit to do a project with Write Around Portland. I’m a big fan of their work and find their commitment to the literary arts as an empowerment tool very inspiring.

A fantastic community-based literary arts organization, Write Around Portland has facilitated more than 370 creative writing workshops, unleashing the creative power of more than 2,400 adults and youth by helping them access the literary arts and community. Their traditional workshops are held in partnership with social service agencies, community organizations, health care providers, correctional facilities and schools (see list at bottom of this page). These workshops are offered free to people living with HIV/AIDS, veterans, survivors of domestic violence, adults and youth in addiction recovery, low income seniors, people in prison, homeless youth and others who may not have access to writing in community because of income, isolation or other barriers. To ensure that everyone in our city has access to the power of writing in community, writing journals, pens, bus tickets, childcare and snacks are provided for participants in these workshops.

I’m excited and curious to watch as the ideas unfold and the writing pours out. We’ll keep you posted on the results!

Recently I was talking to Terry Currier, the sage force and owner of Music Millennium, a 40-year-old icon of indie-biz that’s quite literally a “place where people and music still matter. After talking a bit we realized that the arts and the independent music and book fields share similar struggles—competing with online entertainment, building and retaining audience and the need to foster a larger sense of community to ensure a durable future.

I threw out the idea that while public spaces for creativity (theaters, clubs, art galleries) are vital we actually probably have a symbiotic relationship with “third-spaces” and creative free spaces like the indie-record store, bookstore, library, etc.—we both nurture wonder, conversation and the development of artists. I know that for myself, hanging out in the local record store, listening to the wise-acre behind the counter who knew every nook and cranny of jazz history was every bit as valuable as the teachers I studied with or the gigs I played in clubs.

So in an effort to support locally grown talent, locally grown business and give you all some good music to listen to in the process, Music Millennium joins forces with PCS to present SOUNDS. LIKE. PORTLAND—an early evening showcase of the best in local music, every Saturday from 5-7 pm in the Lobby of the Gerding Theater. Free—and all ages.

For October, in conjunction with our production of Ragtime, we feature blues/ragtime guitar master Mary Flower, jazz-blues-gospel pianist extraordinaire Janice Scroggins + special guests

Harry Houdini in Portland in 1915 suspended from Oregonian building at SW 6th & Alder (Nelson Photo Archive)

In the “melting pot” of the new America depicted in Ragtime, all things seemed possible: planes, cars, sky-scraping, gravity-defying towers fueled by power and wealth. Like Ragtime-New York, the Portland of that era experienced similar visions of open-ended possibility coupled with mounting tension between progress, tradition and rapid cultural change. As writer Daniel Arizona notes, Ragtime deftly captured, “the class struggles and human foibles that underpin moments of innovation and crisis.”

Many accounts of “the Progressive Era” have centered on the concerns of people like Ragtime’s Mother, Father, Younger Brother —and Portland was rife with similar stories and families with names like Corbett, Failing, Elliott, Ladd, and so on. An account of Portland of the same era could easily have issued a similarly startlingly remark as the opening chorus number: “There were no Negroes. There were no immigrants.” But in Portland, as in New Rochelle, that was all changing.

Unidentified woman on bearskin rug, photographed in the “Evelyn Nesbit-style” (Nelson Photo Archive)

Portland in many respects was poised to be a mid-sized Ragtime Metropolis. As jazz historian Bob Dietsche irreverently remarked: “Portland had what it takes to be a jazz city. . .First of all, you had to have a railroad. And a considerable black community, a totally corrupt city hall, illegal gambling and booze, and someone to look after the whole thing.”

Portland grew from 161,000 to 270,000 residents between 1905 and 1910, making it the third fastest growing city in the nation. This also meant that the overwhelmingly homogeneous picture of Portland had to contend with waves of European immigrants (Jews, Slavs, Italians), the fast money that railroads and shipping brought, a growing African-American population, the 1905 Lewis & Clark Expo, labor strife and women’s suffrage, and a widening gulf between the upper and lower classes, among other things.

Mr. E. D. Cannady, one of the founders of Portland's African American newspaper, The Advocate. Cannady worked checking hats and coats at the Portland Hotel. (Nelson Photo Archive)

During the first years of the 20th century, most African Americans in Portland (around 1900, that was about 1,000 people, mainly living near Union Station) were employed with the railroads, as domestics, or by large employers like the Portland Hotel and the Golden West Hotel (which was the only hostelry that catered to African Americans).   Most African Americans lived and worked in downtown, until after the construction of the Broadway Bridge (1913) when much of the African American community moved into the Albina neighborhood. Writing in the Oregonian, Erin Hoover Barnett notes that, “as steamships and railroads flourished, African Americans gained better-paying jobs as Pullman porters, barbers and hotel cooks and waiters, giving rise to a middle class.”

Historian Joseph Schafer, remarked in 1918, “although the populations of Northwestern cities are less complex than are those of Eastern and Middle Western cities, nevertheless one finds everywhere the deep social rift between the ‘masses’ and the ‘classes’ which constitutes the special problem of American democracy.”

PCS’s production of Ragtime offers us an opportunity to take a keen look back at the physical and socio-cultural forces and aspirations that shaped our city (and in many respects continue to influence how we imagine progress and change), as well mine some of the historic connections between Ragtime-era New York and Portland.

JOIN US FOR IDEAS IN PLAY
Portland Center Stage’s IDEAS in PLAY series asks: What do shared stories tell us about who we are and what we believe? Come explore theater, culture and community interconnectedness. Let stories come to life in unexpected ways through conversation-driven programs that ask—what’s the big idea?

History Pub: “The Other Portland: Ethnic Groups & Workers in
Portland’s North End during the 19th and 20th Centuries”
Monday, September 28, 7 pm
McMenamins’ Kennedy School (5736 NE 33rd Avenue)
“There were always two stories of Portland. One was the story of a proper white- and rain-washed town peopled by enterprising New Englanders like Captain John Couch. The other story is closer to reality. In 1890, one third of Portlanders were foreign-born. It was a little United Nations: German brewers, Irish maids and laborers, French prostitutes, Chinese railroad and restaurant workers, Japanese hotel and laundry keepers, African American barbers, porters and waiters; Scandinavians loggers and fishermen, Jewish wholesale merchants, Greek grocers, Filipino cannery workers and Roma fortune tellers.” This month’s History Pub tells the story of that “Other Portland:” Jacqueline Peterson Loomis, Ph.D. of the Old Town History Project shares her insight about multi-ethnic history in Portland’s North End during the 19th and 20th Centuries. Beer & History meet every last Monday at Kennedy School.

Copresented by McMenamins, Oregon Historical Society & Holy Names Heritage Center, in conjunction with Ragtime. History Pub is supported by a grant from Oregon Humanities. FREE; bring canned goods to donate to Oregon Food Bank | All ages welcome

North Portland: from Ragtime to Our Time
Tuesday, September 29, 6 pm
North Portland Library (512 N Killingsworth St)
Lively program looking at race, class, culture and progress in North Portland during the era of Ragtime (1900-1917) and contemporary parallels and patterns—from the Portland Realty Board’s “red-lining” to the development of the Albina Community Plan—with Cathy Galbraith, Bosco-Milligan Architectural Heritage Foundation; Carl Talton, Portland Family of Funds; Jo Ann Bowman of Oregon Action. Panel discussion moderated by Judith Mowry, Office of Neighborhood Involvement. Cosponsored with Coalition for a Livable Future and Multnomah County Library.

Formative Stages: Theater and the Life of the Mind (with Scott Murray MD)
Sunday, October 4, following the 2 pm Matinee of Ragtime
Main Stage, Gerding Theater at the Armory (128 NW Eleventh)
Now in its third season, the Oregon Psychoanalytic Center-cosponsored series delves into issues of power, justice, family, betrayal and bigotry in the award-winning musical. Free with theater admission.

Redirect! Law & Order in the Theater (with Judy Snyder)
Sunday, October 18, following the 2 pm Matinee of Ragtime
Main Stage, Gerding Theater at the Armory (128 NW Eleventh)
A new partnership between Multnomah Bar Association and PCS invites attorneys to roll up their sleeves and take part in lively post-show conversation around themes of law, liberty, justice and freedom in Ragtime. Free with theater admission.

Architecture, Power & Justice in Ragtime-era Portland
Sunday, October 25, 2 pm
Central Library (801 S.W. 10th in downtown Portland)
Discussion moderated by Portland Monthly editor Randy Gragg, featuring historians Jan Dilg and Chet Orloff, and Philip Niles, author of Beauty of the City: A.E. Doyle, Portland’s Architect. Cosponsored by AIA Center for Architecture, in conjunction with the Portland Architecture and Design Festival. FREE

PCS’s Community Programs made possible in part by grants from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, James F. & Marion L. Miller Foundation