Ali Ippolito is back this week, TODAY (Saturday, Nov. 14) at 5 pm with Sweet Williams Ghost, the kind of luxurious music that lives in the dreamy recesses beneath the floorboards of roots-rich Americana. It features Ali with Dean Gorman (guitar, vocals) and Ben Cartwright (dobro, lap steel, guitar). And it’s damn fine. You’ll rarely have a chance to hear this kind of thing, this up-close and FOR FREE.  Pull up a chair, get an Armory cocktail and simmer in the sounds. 

LIVE MUSIC EVERY SATURDAY!

PCS & Music Millennium, the place where people and music still matter, invite you to  SOUNDS. LIKE. PORTLAND—our new early evening showcase of the best in local music, every Saturday from 5-7 pm.

November’s artist-in-residence is vibrantly talented Ali Ippolito.

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. This is music that, to paraphrase the poet Mina Loy, “infects us with unendurable ease/touching nerve-terminals.” And that’s a good thing, folks

Join us THIS Sunday, following the 2 p.m. matinee of Josh Kornbluth’s Ben Franklin Unplugged for Formative Stages: Theater and the Life of the Mind, copresented with The Oregon Psychoanalytic Center.

For this installment, Dr. Nancy Winters will delve into issues of independence, family and parental disappointment, and self-reliance in Kornbluth’s play. Winters quipped that Kornbluth’s play is “a great example of psychotherapy in action,”  encouraging, as it does, Josh’s journey to find his own inner Ben Franklin.

One-part cocktail conversation/one-part talk-back session, the lively series, now in its third year, puts theater on the couch and the audience in the conversational driver’s seat for post-show discussions that reveal that the world on the stage is truly a glorious microcosm of life. Join us for this field trip into the nooks and crannies that theater inhabits—from humor and mannered whimsy to the insatiable lust for life to the menage-a-trois between power, justice and truth, to idiosyncratic family dynamics and taboo.

Formative Stages: Theater and the Life of the Mind
Nancy Winters, MD on Josh Kornbluth’s Ben Franklin Unplugged
When: November 8, 2009 (following the 2 pm matinee)
Where: Ellyn Bye Studio , Gerding Theater at the Armory

Discussions take place in the theater directly following the 2 pm matinees. Free with theater admission

Another exciting  IDEAS IN PLAY program
IDEAS in PLAY are free public programs offered by Portland Center Stage that bridge conversations around theater and the arts, sustainability, history, and community. How can we use the lens of the theater to talk about who we are, what we believe and how we connect to one another? IDEAS in PLAY inspires stories to come to life in unexpected ways through conversation-based programs that ask: what’s the big idea here?

more posts about Ben Franklin: Unplugged || Get the Details on the Show || Buy Tickets

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.

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!

Course dates: Mondays, Sept. 19—Oct. 17, from 1pm to 4pm. Tuition: $200. Call or email me to reserve your space – 503-445-3793 and kelseyt@pcs.org

And check out all our fall theater and business classes by clicking here.

Offerings include an audition course taught by Michael O’Connell

Handsome!

Or how about a dance class for beginners with the fabulous
Amy Palomino from Cabaret, West Side Story, and Guys and Dolls.

So inspiring even her cat can tap now

And Matthew B. Zrebski is starting a new year of his popular year long Playwriting sequence with The Dramatist’s Toolbox.

On the outside a smile, on the inside a hurricane of words waiting to hit the page.

We also have classes on the Art of the Interview , scene study for actors, and a sneak peek into Winter and Spring term classes. Reserve your space early!