Tag Archives: Imago Theatre

Link: Imago’s gorgeous jealous fit

Rachael Parrell: the Desdemona dies twice. Photo: Jerry Mouawad

By Bob Hicks

The trouble with being a literary or theatrical icon is that you get into a loop, repeating yourself again and again and again. Think Captain Ahab’s going to catch that whale this time around and become a prosperous maritime merchant with a wife and brood of happy kids? Fat chance.

So, yes, poor Desdemona gets done in again. But because Imago Theatre‘s Stage Left Lost isn’t Othello, at least the circumstances change. And there’s some question about who actually done the deed. Jerry Mouawad’s “opera without words” is a brilliantly accomplished variation on Shakespeare’s themes, meaning that Mouawad and his collaborators aren’t bound by the ordinary rules of literary destiny. As compelling as the show’s emotional and psychological variations are, Stage Left Lost is even more a love letter to the conventions of the theater and a deft rethinking of its central elements: It reshuffles the balance among words (forget about ’em), movement and music to sometimes startling efect. And, of, yes: It puts the audience backstage — stage left, to be precise, from which vantage they view the action from inside out.

You really ought to give this one a shot. My complete review is in this morning’s Oregonian; pick it up in the dead tree version or link to it here.

*

Rachael Parrell: Desdemona dies twice. Photo: Jerry Mouawad

Whose play is it, anyway? On authors and interpreters

Sartre's "No Exit" on the tilt, at Imago Theatre. Photo: Jerry Mouawad

Sartre’s “No Exit” on the tilt, at Imago Theatre. Photo: Jerry Mouawad

Who wrote that play?

I don’t mean, did the modestly talented actor Will Shakespeare really write all those great stageworks, or was he just a convenient front man for Edward de Vere or some other dandy of the ruling class?

I mean, is the production you just saw actually of the play the playwright intended, or did it get reinvented so much in production that it actually became something else?

Charles Deemer has been gnawing on that bone as it relates to Jerry Mouawad’s critically praised production of Jean-Paul Sartre’s No Exit at Imago Theatre — a production that places the actors on an intricately balanced platform that shifts with every movement, echoing the tensions and balances among the characters.

Portland playwright Deemer first raised his objections in an Oct. 18 post on his blog, The Writing Life II. “Imago usually does original work, and brilliantly so,” he wrote. “It does original work here — it’s just misnamed. This production needs a little truth in advertising. It’s not Sartre. It’s variations on themes developed by Sartre. It’s interesting. It’s engaging. It just isn’t what the playwright intended and, as a playwright, I think this needs to be said.”

Deemer then followed up with comments on Martha Ullman West’s recent Art Scatter post about No Exit and a clutch of dance performances. “Composers do variations on a theme all the time and own up to it,” he wrote. “… What if someone went to the theater wanting to see the wonderfully grim original? What’s wrong with grim and cynical anyway?”

Then he added:

Let’s say a director resurrects Christmas at the Juniper Tavern and puts all the actors on roller skates because s/he believes it depicts the fluidity of their life journeys. Would I be amused? Guess.

“Edward Albee once closed down a production of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf because George and Martha were presented as a gay couple.

“I once had the opportunity to ask Arthur Miller what he thought of an all-black version of Death of a Salesman that was done here with Tony Armstrong in the lead. ‘This is not the play I wrote,’ he told me.

“An advantage of the business of playwriting, as opposed to the business of screenwriting, is that playwrights retain ownership of their work. You legally can’t make changes without permission. Consequently I’ve long suspected that many, perhaps most, directors prefer their playwrights dead.”

Theater fans aren’t as volatile as opera fans, and it’s the rage these days in opera circles to boo directors and designers for undermining the music with conceptual approaches. Theater directors have been doing that for years (often, as Charles points out, with the work of dead playwrights who can’t fight back) and are lauded for it.

Interpretation is huge in the theater. But where does interpretation stop and something related but fundamentally different begin? Sometimes it seems like directors and designers use pre-existing works like especially fertile junkyards, discarding what they don’t want and mining them for treasure they can turn into something of their own. Novelists do that sort of thing all the time. But John Gardner didn’t call his book Beowulf. He called it Grendel.

What’s the essence of a play? Is it words? Is it tone? Is it the look of the thing? Or does it shift with every play, according to the play’s own core and elasticity? Putting the actors on roller skates for Christmas at the Juniper Tavern would absolutely change the play into something else. It MIGHT not irrevocably alter The Comedy of Errors.

Continue reading Whose play is it, anyway? On authors and interpreters

Weekend scatter: taiko, missiles and OBT’s arts fair

Korekara, copyright Rich Iwasaki/2007

The Monday trifecta: Portland Taiko, a new CD, and sake. Photo: copyright Rich Iwasaki, 2007

The trouble with traveling is that you miss things at home. The trouble with home is that you miss things in other places, but that’s another story.

*************************************

During our August wanderings we’re missing a lot of stuff in Portland, including Portland Taiko‘s big-bash Rhythms of Change CD release party at Sake One. It’s been reskedded from Friday to Monday, Aug. 31, because of weather, but by that time we’ll have spent our 36 hours in Portland and be on the road again. Still, you might be able to make it. Check the details here. The CD is good! (I speak, mind you, as a Taiko board member. But I really do like this CD.)

*************************************

jpeg

We’re missing Jerry Mouawad’s newest play, The Cuban Missile Tango, at Imago Theatre, which looks like a one-weekend shot, at least for now. Jerry’s been blogging about the process of putting this play together, and he gives some fascinating insights into how a creative person brings a vague idea into specific reality. It’s worth reading, here. The play looks at the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962, a “collision of two worlds” that came who knows how close to sparking World War III. But it looks at it through the lens of a Halloween party. Jerry wrote this in June, early in the process of assembling the play:

“I have an idea of a noisy swinging kitchen door inspired by Jacques Tati’s Monsieur Hulot’s Holiday. So with a big idea, the danger of World War III, I start with a couple of waiters and a swinging door.”

Looks like one show left at 2 this (Saturday) afternoon. Ten bucks at the door, 17 S.E. Eighth Ave.

*************************************

We’re very sorry to be missing Saturday’s free all-day arts fair, Fall.ART.Live, in the studio and parking lot of Oregon Ballet Theatre at 818 S.E. Sixth Ave. across the Morrison Bridge from downtown.

home_fall-art-live_770pxThe intrepid Mighty Toy Cannon has the story at Culture Shock; check it out. From Josie Mosley Dance and Northwest Dance Project to Portland Opera, Do Jump! and Portland Actors Conservatory, a lot of good-sounding stuff’s hitting the stages and the booths. Plus, fancy sandwiches and beer!

It’s a good thing for OBT to be doing now, after Portland and the national dance community stepped up in June to stave off its financial crisis. If the ballet has a newfound sense of being a vital part of Portland’s arts community, that’s terrific: Certainly the company’s dancers and artistic director Christopher Stowell did their part to help Conduit contemporary dance center in its more recent money crisis.

Mighty Toy Cannon points out that Portland Mercury writer Stephen Marc Baudoin took a more snippy view of the whole thing. We think he misses the point. On the other hand, maybe he’s just bucking for membership in the exclusive League of Tough-Guy Arts Observers.