Suppose Your New Job Was To Betray Your Brothers

Two couples have tried to create the Perfect Arrangement.  It's the 1950s.  Bob Martindale works for the State Department.  Neighbor Norma Baxter is his secretary.  They live in adjoining apartments, appropriately connected by a closet.

March 19 - April 4 Thu/Fri/Sat 7pm

Out North - Primrose and Debarr (kitty corner from Costco)

So this doesn't get lost:   this is a funny play, and you'll laugh, but it packs a punch.  

Bob's assignment of late, has been to root Communists out of the State Department, but they're mostly gone and now his boss has assigned him the task of getting rid of the deviants.  He undertakes this job knowing that he and his lover and Norma and hers are safe in their Perfect Arrangement.

Opening Night Reception After The Performance at Out North

This is a neatly done play by Topher Payne - who was here last Thursday for the West Coast premiere of his work.  There's lots going on in the play.  There are the two different worlds - a social facade of voice and intonation and topic for straight visitors where the ladies chatter about recipes and shopping, the men disparage the women,  and then there's the more open expression of ideas in uncensored vocabulary when the two couples are alone.

But the play is not simply a play about being in the closet or homosexuals for that matter.  Rather it's about marginalized people who have learned to act one way in the outside world and another at home, and who are always worried that their real being will be discovered and always tortured because it can't be.  This play could be about black slaves in the south, or women in a male dominated work place, or undocumented workers. . .

And as the tension rose when Bob was required to make lists of deviants to be fired, I couldn't help think about the Jewish capos in concentration camps who got slightly better treatment for cooperating with the Nazis and keeping tabs on the others.  The dialogue was explicit about the conflict between trying to save oneself and one's duty to the others.  About the small benefits of blending in versus the great losses of denying one's true identity.  We could see the characters' slow debilitating stress of staying hidden, the fear of being discovered and the change it will mean, and the enticing but dangerous thought of standing up and declaring one's identity.  Echoes of the struggle in Selma.  

This is a powerful play with strong acting -  well worth seeing.  Below is a video of the playwright, Topher Payne, talking at the reception after the performance.  You can also see a video with directors/actors Krista Schwarting and Jay Burns here.

"Hold on, Millie Martindale (Raven Bonniwell)! You got some ‘splainin’ to do."

"You’ve just tried to break a date with your husband’s boss’ awful wife Kitty Sunderson (Karen Lange) by pretending you had an appointment with a butcher on U Street – and now Kitty wants to go to the butcher with you! How are you going to get out of that?!!
And not so fast, Bob Martindale (Andrew Keller)! You got some ‘splainin’ to do too. You’re in charge of the State Department program to root out communists on the payroll, and your boss Ted Sunderson (Zach Brewster-Geisz) has just put you in charge of a new program to get rid of all the sexual deviants in the State Department – and you’re one of them yourself!
Although you have a sham marriage to Millie, you actually live in unholy bliss with your neighbor Jim Baxter (Kiernan McGowan), who is legally married to your secretary Norma (Natalie Cutcher) – who is in reality Millie’s lover! How are you going to get out of that?!!"

So begins a 2013 review of Topher Payne's play Perfect Arrangement in the DC Theater Scene.

I knew nothing about the review, but I did know the play was coming to Anchorage, when I stopped by Out North to see about tickets for next Thursday's  (March 19) opening of the play.    The box office wasn't open, but two of the producers (and actors) were inside, the set was ready, and Krista Schwarting and Jay Burns told me about the play. 




In the video they briefly discuss the play - a West Coast premiere.  Maybe you can hear some hints of playwright Topher Payne's Mississippi childhood in this post's title.  The story takes place in the 1950s as homosexuals, following the purge of communists, were being rooted out of the State Department.  We're getting the play here in Anchorage because Krista knows a friend of the Topher Payne.  And  Topher Payne will be here for the opening.

This was happened in the early 1950's - about the same time that Alan Turing (see Imitation Game)  was arrested in England for being a homosexual.   A commenter on the review that opens this post wrote:

"The man sitting next to me said “Young people have no idea … Everyone should see this play.” I totally agree, and only wish these people could also be there: the woman I know who was an Army nurse in Korea and had to stand by, with her lover, and watch her friends being routed out and dishonorably discharged, and the woman who was the best record promoter in Chicago in the 60s who got caught trying to escape from a police raid of a second floor lesbian bar and lost her career. This is a fabulous comedy that touches on their tragedies."

People growing up today have trouble grasping what 'in the closet' meant back then.  And perhaps they can better understand the negative reactions many in the older generations against gays because of what they were taught when they were young.   This trailer for a movie about the time gives a little sense.  (I was way too young at the time to be aware of any of this.)





The Reemergence of Out North

I'm delighted this enchanted piece of real estate at Primrose and Debarr is coming back to life. The building started as some sort of electrical station. When we got to Anchorage in 1977 it was Grandview Garden library, a wonderful funky old library. When Loussac library opened in 1984, Grandview was scheduled to close. The community kept it open a bit longer, but eventually it was shut. But the building was reincarnated as Out North by Jay Brause and Gene Dugan.  And Jay and Gene (and their successors) always brought thought provoking performances - whether from Outside or from Anchorage or around Alaska - to their stage.  Stuff that made you rethink things you thought you knew.  You can read some more of the history here in the description of the Out North now housed at the University's Archives and Special Collections.

"Two things I’d never written: a love story and a science play. So I wrote THE ICE-BREAKER."

So writes playwright David Rambo on his website.  Two things I've blogged about are plays and climate change, but I've never written about them in the same post.  Rambo's notes go on:

"Following the success of Randall Arney’s production of GOD’S MAN IN TEXAS at the Geffen Playhouse, I was offered a commission from the Geffen and A.S.K. Theatre Projects. We kicked some ideas around, but nothing stuck – until I read a New Yorker article by the marvelous writer Elizabeth Kolbert about discovering the history of climate over millennia through drilling into the Greenland ice cap. I gave Randall the article with a note, “I think there’s a metaphor here I can’t resist.”
Thus began a year of research about climate science. I sought out geologists and climate specialists, read everything I could find on the Arctic and the logistics of ice core drilling. My initial sense was that the play should be intimate, about people more than science.
To let all the research settle in my mind, I gave myself a retreat: a drive through the southwest in the summer. My route was chased by wildfires, the desert sky turned purple and threatening with hailstorms, I went for days without having to speak to another human – it was an extraordinary couple of weeks.
The play took shape. I loved it, but the Geffen didn’t. Happily, The Magic Theatre in San Francisco did. Director Art Manke introduced it to them and we got a Sloan Foundation grant to help mount a premiere, along with the National New Plays Network. Art later staged it at The Laguna Playhouse, which was about as perfect a realization of the play as I could have hoped for.
THE ICE-BREAKER isn’t produced as much as it should be; maybe some theatres feel climate science is too controversial. That’s a shame; it’s a lovely, heartbreaking, thought-provoking visit with to people as strong and as vulnerable as the planet."

 He ends with this note:

THE ICE-BREAKER isn’t produced as much as it should be; maybe some theatres feel climate science is too controversial. That’s a shame; it’s a lovely, heartbreaking, thought-provoking visit with to people as strong and as vulnerable as the planet.

Well, it's not too controversial for Cyrano's and opening night is tomorrow  Friday at 7pm.
And the opening night proceeds go to Citizens Climate Lobby Anchorage chapter which I've written about now and then.  CCL is the most efficient and organized and no-nonsense group I've ever seen close up.

They will have their international call in meeting Saturday morning after the play at 8:30am at UAA Rasmusson Hall 220.

Tents, Trailers, and Vans

Making movies (and other entertainment) is big in LA.  Here's what I saw riding to, along, and from the beach Wednesday and Thursday. 

The Cirque du Soleil tents are up just north of the Santa Monica pier right along the bike trail.  And yes, I did some photoshopping because the grey sky was just too boring.  And the whole picture was a bit faded.  

Here is the tent for the ISFA (Independent Spirit Film Awards) which will happen Saturday, March 1.  This tent is on the bike trail about a quarter mile south of the Santa Monica pier.  And you can see on this picture why I played with the sky in the first picture. 

And at Rose Avenue hosted these trailers  for a commercial they were filming on the sand.  Those are bags of ice melting in the lower right. 

And less than a mile up Rose inland (this picture was taken the next day) there was another film crew at Superba restaurant. 

 

And this less commodified form of art was parked on Rose too.

Jesus Is Deep Inside Me, And He Ain't Pulling Out"

That was probably the most over-the-top lyric of any of the songs in Paradise, which we saw last night, at the Ruskin Theatre in the Santa Monica Airport.   But it's the sort of humor this play relied on. 

The fact that we can walk over in ten minutes, and its intimate 90 or so seats, makes this our go to theater when we're visiting my mom.

J felt all the female characters were awful.

• A sparkly prostitute turned Jesus freak, named Chastity Jones. 
• A full figured lusty disgusty dynamo with a muddy face who tells everyone that just like Jesus, she was born in a barn named Cinderella Tiara Applebaum (Cyndi).
• A ratings obsessed reality show producer named Rebecca Washington.

I wasn't quite sure how to react to her comment.  I hadn't seen it that way.  Was I blind?  The other female character, Louanne Knight, preserving her dead mom's legacy by keeping the small dead coal mine town general store running and taking care of the the sundry inhabitants, was pretty close to normal and even noble. 

And the men were all very broad caricatures as well. 

• Mayor and Tater Gayheart - the easy to sway mayor who wants to bring money and attention to his town, plus his black son who wants to be an IT billionaire, not the broadway musical star his dad wants him to be.  And no, the name isn't accidental. 
• Old Man Johnson - the bluesgrass banjo and fiddle player is right out of Deliverance
• Rev. John Cyrus Mountain - the fast talking preacher who's sold his reality show idea to Hollywood so he could build his mega church above the coal mine.
• Peter Silverman, Rebecca's cameraman who just keeps the camera running. 

I think in farce broad character stereotypes are probably ok.  The audience knows each type is being made fun of.  Though J's comments are making me think about this.

All the cast were good.  Jonathan Root acting and singing as the Reverend (and a few other brief roles) stood out for me. And while they could all sing, Michael Rubenstone (the cameraman) had a really beautiful voice I wanted to hear more of.

Essentially this was The Music Man, with Harold Hill being the Rev. bringing in both a megachurch and reality tv to River City instead of a band.  And I don't foresee too many high schools putting on this musical.   Louanne is Marian the Librarian, who sees through the Rev who brings his own sweety with him (Chastity).  It's the cameraman who loses his heart to Louanne.

This is billed as a world premiere and it was, they said, the sixth or seventh sold out performance.  The music keeps your foot tapping and covers a lot of little flaws, but it's no Music Man.  In the end though, I have to admit, I was really getting upset as Louanne's resolve to keep reality tv out of Paradise is broken down - clearly the play had hooked me.

Set and Audience for Paradise just before the play began

Peggy Shaw Took Me Inside Her Stroke

No one wants to go see a performance about a stroke, it sounds way too depressing.  But Peggy Shaw's bio already suggests she's not your run of the mill performer.  She's gotten three OBIE's* and several other impressive sounding awards, like a Lambda Literary Prize for Drama and Performer of the Year from the Foundation for Contemporary Performance Theater.




[LAST SHOW:  Saturday, Dec. 23, 2012 - 8pm Out North]

This is a serious performer who invited the audience into her brain through her monologue, her virtual on the wall band that appeared and disappeared throughout.  She had three large monitors with her script - memorizing is hard for people who have had strokes - which she shared with the audience.  She talked, she sang, she danced, and she exposed her lapses along with her powerful personality as part of the show.

The photo was taken after the show. The show is dedicated to Ellen Stewart, La Mama, who never allowed green on stage because it was bad luck.  Peggy had her stroke right after Stewart died, and in this piece uses this huge roll of green paper which seemed to be a loud declaration of independence from Stewart, despite the clear admiration and love for her. 

Things went from normal music and video to sounds and visuals that probably simulated what the world is like to a stroke victim.  There was a great 60 second or so spot on how to know you're having a stroke.   There were floating fish.  Audience members were asked to hold onto things for Peggy until she needed them.

After the show

There was an intro that warned us of things that might happen - like she could start coughing, in which case to just hold on until her cough drops take effect.  What that did for me and I think the others there, was to include us as part of the insiders rather than just being an audience.  It was as though she were relating things to a friend rather than to an audience of strangers.

For people looking for drama with a plot line, this isn't it.  For people who find drama, as I do, in a heart-to-heart with someone who shares their near death experience and its aftermath, this is definitely worth attending.  And the show I saw Friday night was only the second time this piece has ever been performed before an audience.  The first time was a dress rehearsal Thursday night.  Shaw is still getting aligned with all the audio-visual aspects.  Though I was pretty impressed by how most of the time she was already synchornized with  the sound and video.

Out North consistently gives Anchorage audiences these incredible opportunities to be on the inside of contemporary international art and theater.  Here's this serious, award winning, very New York performer with helpers from Australia and Boston here as they spent ten days in Anchorage getting this performance piece ready to take to New York and London.  It's amazing what we have here.


The performance made me think of Anchorage's Peter Dunlap-Shohl, the cartoonist who has been communicating with the world about his Parkinson's through his medium - comics on his blog.  Like Peter's work, Peggy's uses art to experientially, and with humor, share her stroke experience with the world. For me the content was interesting as was the presentation. For someone with a close friend or relative who's had a stroke, this is the artist's, rather than the doctor's story of a stroke, that helps you understand a little of what is going on.  And it follows the stroke's story line, which includes lack of clear direction, even knowing where one is, not Hollywood's neatly packaged kind of story line.


The second video is mostly Shaw's co-writer, director talking after the show.  This is just a snippet.  She's talking about the moving images that had been on the green space that I had thought were brain scans.  It turns out they were the signals from an actor's body that are used in animation to get the character's body movements right.  Then she talks about the band.

*The Village Voice OBIE Awards were created soon after the inception of the publication in 1955 to publicly acknowledge and encourage the growing Off Broadway theater movement. The VOICE OBIES were purposely structured with informal categories, to recognize those persons and productions worthy of distinction each theater season. The OBIE Awards are an important part of the VOICE's long history of championing Off Broadway and Off-Off Broadway productions. [From The Village Voice]

Petoskey Project - Reading of New Play - Sydney Laurence - Tonight 7:30pm Free

So if you're still wondering what to do on this grey and chilly Saturday evening, let me offer some options.  

Long time friend and participant, Richard Benavides, recommends in the Petoskey Project.  I know nothing else about it, but I really like the poster.
It's free, as you can see, but you can donate to Alzheimer's Resources of Alaska.

[UPDATE:  Here's an audio YouTube interview with Ann Reddig and David Haynes about the Petoskey Project from KONR (106.1fm).  I just listened to enough to know it was about this play.  I prefer to be surprised.]

OR

Out North shows The Brits and their Telly - award winning British television commercials.  In past years this was a collection of quirky, mostly funny, and original ads.  Last year I was put off by the number of McDonald's and other international corporate ads in the collection.  But I decided to give it another try last night, which was better than last year.  But there were several packages of ads that looked like they were put together by an advertising firm that described the whole advertising campaign.  Perhaps if they had really described the campaign instead of making a slick short that was basically promoting their products I'd have been more interested.  I would say the whole evening for me was worth it just to see a very neat public service ad that was made up of  animated graffiti people walking along walls.  7pm tonight and again next Friday and Saturday.

Ex-CIA Man Cooks For Out North Fundraiser

Out North is a tiny (seats about 90) theater in Anchorage that has regularly brought often edgy, sometimes beautiful performances that usually challenge my stereotypes, assumptions, and even my world view.

It’s what art is supposed to be - blasts of blasphemy piercing through the facades society  constantly creates to hide the uncomfortable by-products of how we live. Not every event is great, but if you aren’t making mistakes now and then, you aren’t pushing the limits.


So, when we were invited to a fundraising dinner for Out North, we said yes. 
It was a little pricy, but the tickets at Out North are usually much less than the more proper venues and we’ve gotten far more stimulation than we’ve paid for.  And we want to make sure that Out North is here a long time.  It’s one of the parts of Anchorage that sustains my brain and soul. 

Entering the Green Connection from a decidedly ungreen early May Anchorage was already a treat.  We were treated like VIP’s - creative name tags, a glass of bubbly, and hors d'oeuvres tucked away amongst the greenery. 

And there was music.  I’m pretty sure they were part of the group Super Sweet Sugar Strings. 





And then we were called to take our seats for a gourmet dinner.  Yeah, I can hear you saying, “What do you know about gourmet food?”  And you’re right.  As a mostly vegetarian who also east fish, but rarely meat, I do now and then stray from my normal diet.  But if I’m going to eat meat, it better be really, really good.  (It was.)

Our dinner was a lot of very fresh local and wild treats, combined in unexpected ways, cooked by chef Carlyle Watt, a graduate of the CIA (Culinary Institute of America), Napa Valley branch.  Some people we already knew.  Others we know now.  

OK, I thought I better check the criteria for gourmet food.  From Ask.com:

"Gourmet food is of the highest quality and flavor, prepared well and presented in an artful manner."

I forgot the artful manner part, but you can judge for yourselves.  Click the pictures to enlarge if the text is too small.

Since it was a fundraiser, there were some auction items between courses.  We ended up with two punch cards to the Spenard Jazz Festival. 

Someone else bought this Out North poster with Out North founders Jay Brouse [Brause] and Gene Dugan demonstrating their willingness to provoke some folks in the community for the sake of not self-censoring their work.  It made their lives and Out North's existence more difficult, but it also made it more real.  And they attracted true artists up here. [I know that some people will look at the poster and wonder what I'm talking about.  But remember, just last month 58% of the voters turned down an amendment to the local non-discrimination ordinance to add LGBT folks to the list.  This wasn't about marriage, it was just equal rights to not be turned down for a job or an apartment or loan because they're gay.]

Check out their website.  Sign up for their email alerts.  If you don’t want to become mentally and spiritually lazy, monthly visits to Out North are highly recommended.