Under 30 at Out North

Under 30 means the piece has to be under 30 minutes. We've gone to a number of these in the past and this set of four pieces was by far the most polished we've seen. For very different, very striking short pieces. B. Hutton's time machine was center stage for the first piece as he explored various aspects of time. Great sounds, including the two violins on stage.

Gabrielle Barnett's riff slid from cliche to cliche spoofing (at least that's what I got out of it) those with simplistic answers to life's complex issues from the environmental/eco crowd to those who invoke Jesus for everything.

These first two are not for those who like concrete linear action.

Allison Warden and Wendy Withrow were much more straight forward. Allison was various arctic players from a polar bear to different villagers as she interpreted different stories about polar bears from her hometown of Kaktovik. In the background on a large screen we saw images of ice and polar bears.

Wendy talked and sang us through her college years 1965-69 in a Christian girls college in Texas.

One test of good theater for me is when you forget there are actors on stage. In each of these the character was real, completely into their parts. B.'s was probably the most abstract, but I like that sort of play of music and sounds and ideas that doesn't necessarily have a beginning or end, and whose meaning isn't obvious.

Good stuff. One more performance as I understanding - Sunday afternoon at Out North (kitty corner from Costco on Bragaw). And in the Q&A at the end, they said they would do this again in Homer late February.