Horatio’s black box stage could be a bright spot

Over a cup of coffee at Tullys on Broadway, Erik Hanberg convinced me that Tacoma is ripe for a theater the likes of The Horatio -- Hanberg’s new theater.

I hope Tacomans will prove him right. Some say the only kind of theater Tacoma will support is Sondheim and Agatha Christie. If that’s true, The Horatio doesn’t stand a chance. On the other hand, it may be there’s a huge audience awaiting the kind of edgy, grown-up theater Hanberg plans to bring to town.

“A lot of good plays never make it to this area,” Hanberg said. “Only five Pulitzer or Tony Award winners since 1995 have made it to this area.”

He laughed at that, catching himself in an obvious contradiction. After all, truly edgy theater never wins establishment prizes such as the Pulitzer. So perhaps when he speaks of fringe theater he is not so much thinking of cutting edge or experimental as simply going beyond tried and true crowd pleasers to plays that might challenge an educated audience. That doesn’t necessarily mean weird or far out. One play he mentioned, for example, was “Proof” -- a winner of both the afore-mentioned awards, which is very accessible despite being a play about a math genius.

Hanberg said he wants to stage plays that are “exciting, intimate, daring, relevant, funny, and maybe occasionally profound.”

More specifically, on The Horatio Theater Web site Hanberg says they intend to produce “high-quality plays not produced in the South Sound, plays that only professional theater groups can stage because they're a little racy, or have some bad language, or take firm stands on controversial social issues.”

It might be pointed out that theaters in Olympia have proven that South Sound audiences will support theater of that quality. Olympia Little Theater had a successful run of “Proof” last year, and this year they plan to run the highly controversial “Take Me Out” (albeit with most of the nudity hidden behind screens). And I can’t imagine anything more edgy than last year’s “Frozen” at Harlequin Productions. If Olympia can do it, there’s no reason the more metropolitan Tacoma can’t.

Before we sat down for coffee, Hanberg gave me a tour of The Horatio Theater’s performance space. It a gutted-out, red brick building on Opera Alley that will soon be a black box theater with a spacious lobby. It is much larger than I expected, since fringe theaters tend to be tiny. The lobby area, which will eventually have a bar, is about the size of the lobby at Tacoma Little Theater, and the stage area is comparable, if not larger than Lakewood Playhouse, the largest black box in the area. Like Lakewood Playhouse, this black box will have the flexibility of having either a thrust stage or theater in the round, depending on the needs of performances offered.

The Horatio will not be an Equity house, but it will be professional. Staff and casts will be paid a percentage of ticket revenue.

The Horatio’s first offering came long before they even had a theater. It was a staged radio broadcast of “It’s a Wonderful Life” at the Proctor Blue Mouse movie theater, directed by Tacoma Actors Guild production manager James Venturini and starring John Munn as George Baily (reviewed in The News Tribune by Rosemary Ponnekanti).

Their first performance in the new theater will be “Molly Sweeny,” put on by local independent theater company Studio 21. “Sweeney” is Irish playwright Brian Friel’s play about a 41-year-old woman who suddenly regains her sight after being blind since infancy. Hanberg said it will open sometime in February.

In addition to staged plays, Hanberg hopes to create a regular late night venue for improv and skit comedy as well as regularly scheduled radio broadcasts. And he says he may bring in shows from Seattle. “I want to have as much theater there as I possibly can,” he says.

He says he has received a lot of help so far from other theater people in the area, including actors, directors, talent scouts and agents. “I’m just one guy. I can’t do it all.”

When asked if he was confident Tacoma is ready to support the kind of theater he wants to bring to town, he said, “That’s the million dollar question.” He explained that the challenge is, “If the audience is expecting Sondheim and I give them Mamet, they’re not going to be happy.”

So expect David Mamet and perhaps Sam Shepard, and Tom Stoppard. I, for one, can hardly wait.

Further information on The Horatio is available on their Web site at http://www.thehoratio.com.

Looking ahead

Here are a few visual art events that you should ink into your 2007 calendar

Published in the Volcano Dec. 28 '06

Christmas is over. It's time to relax. Enjoy yourself. Visit a museum or gallery. Is that what I do with my free time? No way. You wouldn't catch me dead in a museum if it wasn't my job. But I'm not you. You appreciate the finer things in life. So as we enter a brand new year, what fine things are in store for you in area museums and galleries? Let's start with a couple of my favorite galleries - Art on Center and Ice Box.

Art on Center is showing new photography by Alice Di Certo. De Certo's photographs are surrealistic abstractions made by the simple act of getting so close with the camera that it is almost impossible to see what you're looking at. Examples of her work pictured on the AOC Web site include a photograph from a series called "Skin & Flesh" that is recognizable as a close-up of fingers (one African and one Caucasian) with creases in the knuckles that look like craggy, dried mud in a desert. A hot-off-the-press release from AOC says she "explores dreams and the unconscious, human behavior and relationships" and "issues of both racial discrimination and racial interaction."

Opening Saturday, Feb. 17, at AOC is a show of new works by Ron Hinson, a personal favorite of mine and one of the best painters in the state.

"In the Shadow of the Dome," new works by Marc Dombrosky, continues at Ice Box through Friday, Jan. 12. Dombrosky finds old, discarded letters, maps and drawings and stitches over them to create delicate line drawings in thread. Coming up next will be Jessica Balsam's greatly enlarged drawings of microorganisms and installations of bacteria-resistant materials.
The gallery at Tacoma Community College is showing the Baroque Revival exhibition (Jan. 8 to March 16), a juried show featuring many of the best known artists in the South Sound area. The Baroque period of the Italian Renaissance was an attempt to restore passion and drama in a reaction against the cold sterility of classical art. At its height, the Baroque period brought the world such magnificent works as Michelangelo's "Last Judgment" in the Sistine Chapel. Obviously we can't expect to see anything like Michelangelo in this show, but it should be interesting to see how contemporary American artists reinterpret this tradition.

The Museum of Glass offers a kind of glass art 101 in an exhibition called "Contrasts: A Glass Primer." The exhibition includes about 50 works by international glass artists grouped in ways to illustrate the many styles and techniques of glass art and the history of glass art. Works date from a 1st century Roman urn to contemporary works by such renowned artists as Louis Comfort Tiffany, Frank Lloyd Wright, Dale Chihuly and Ginny Ruffner.

Coming to Tacoma Art Museum Saturday, Jan. 27, is an exhibition of photographs by Paul Strand, who is famous for his photographs of New Mexico and the Southwest. And coming Saturday, Feb. 3, is a tribute to the great Frida Kahlo in the exhibition "Frida Kahlo: Images of an Icon." Kahlo's exotic, romantic and tumultuous life is laid bare in intimate photographs by friends, lovers and relatives picturing Kahlo from childhood to deathbed in her home, her studio, her garden and her hospital room. As an adjunct to this exhibition, TAM will show works by contemporary Northwest artists who have been inspired by Kahlo. This ancillary show will feature new works by Randy Hayes, Alfredo Arreguin, Jim Riswold and others.

The Kenneth J. Minnaert Fine Arts Center at South Puget Sound Community College will present its second annual regional juried exhibition opening Friday, Jan. 5. The gallery, which opened a year ago, is one of the finest exhibition spaces in the South Sound region. Last year's juried show was a mixed bag with some wonderful works and some in the whatever-were-they-thinking category. Coming in February will be works by fiber artist Faith Hagenhofer.

So, despite my curmudgeonly opening paragraph, it looks like we're in store for some exciting art in the coming months. Happy New Year!

Meaning of life

Holly Senn brings her life cycle of ideas to the Gallery at Tacoma Community

published in the Volcano Dec. 21, 2006

pictured: installation shot (detail)

Over the last three years, I have watched Holly Senn gradually and methodically refine her art. Her materials and themes never change, but her statements are becoming clearer, and she is fine-tuning her use of words, materials and space. Her latest work, now on view at the Gallery at Tacoma Community College, combines a room size installation with freestanding sculpture and two-dimensional wall hangings. The show is called "Enchanted Forest of the Mind."

Senn defines her work as being about the life cycle of ideas. Her materials are discarded books, tree trunks and branches, and printed text. It is crucial to her way of thinking that all of the materials she uses have been discarded.

A coherent installation fills the back room of the gallery. It is a forest of constructed trees. Three walls are fully wallpapered with pages from books. Evenly spaced around the walls are starkly naked trees spray painted on the pages with black paint. In the center of the room are two tree stumps and three gnarled trees that stand on islands of books. Giant globe-shaped leaf pods constructed from paper with printed text hang from the branches. The islands of books are carefully arranged with an eye toward the overall shape and the colors and textures of the books. This forest has the contemplative ambiance of a Japanese garden. Viewers are invited to wander through and even sit on the stumps. Sit and think about the beauty of trees and the loss of those that have been cut down to make room for commercial development or to make lumber for building or paper for books - books that nourish our minds but eventually get tossed onto the trash heap.

In the middle gallery are two related wall pieces and a few freestanding sculptures. The larger of the two wall pieces consists of three large sheets of cardboard. Tree shapes are cut out of the cardboard and are seen as the glaring white of the wall shining through the negative cutout shapes to form the image of three trees, hung upside down on the wall. The stark contrast of the white tree limbs is enhanced with black spray paint around the edges, which resonates with the black spray painted trees in the back gallery. The pieces that were cut out to form the tree shapes are hung on an adjacent wall stacked one on top of another and are also hung upside down.The freestanding sculptures all consist of leaves or pods made from paper with printed text hung on tree limbs. Most are approximately two to three feet in height and stand on standard sculpture pedestals. Most have a blunt and emphatic look with a small number of pods that are, relative to the size of the branches, huge. But one, titled "Narrative Redux," is delicate and lacy. The limbs are thin. Hanging from the branches are tiny tags, each with a single word printed on them. Its base is an old history book. Some of the words printed on the tags are: Cities, Lender, Greeks, Church, Clash, and Control.

In the front room stands a massive tree with a trunk about eight inches in diameter and huge seed pods made from paper with digitized print in type fonts ranging in size from approximately 36 to 78 point. They look like hanging paper lanterns. Like the others, this tree stands on an island of books; unlike the others, these books are randomly scattered. The papered wall behind the tree is painted green.

This is the fifth Holly Senn installation or exhibition I've seen, and it is the most fully realized. My challenge to her now would be to fill a space equal to or larger than the TCC gallery with a single installation in which all of the pieces are fully integrated into a visual and thematic whole as opposed to being a hybrid between installation art and separate art objects.

The Gallery at Tacoma Community College, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., Monday-Friday, 6501 South 19th St., Tacoma, 253.566.5000.

new gallery shows Shaw Osha

Published in the Volcano Dec. 14 2006

At last Olympia has a real art gallery. Not to slight the previous galleries in town, but let’s face it: even though Olympia galleries have shown excellent art in the past, they’re essentially gift shops and hobby shops that also show art. But Black Front Gallery (newly opened in a tiny space at 106 4th Ave. E.) has the look and feel of a big city gallery, with hardwood floors; clean, uncluttered walls; and serious art that doesn’t have to compete with crafts and gift items for the viewers’ attention.

Currently showing are works by Olympia painter Shaw Osha. I have reviewed her work in the past, and have generally been impressed. There are a couple of works in this show that are outstanding. A few others not so much.

There are six paintings in the show. All are abstract paintings in oil with subjects derived from nature or from the human figure. Each painting is done in two panels. In three of the paintings, the panels are joined together, while the other three are displayed with six-inch gaps between them.

“I Want to be Your Lover Man” is large and expansive. Swirling abstract forms in orange and blue lock together on a flat surface like land and water coming together or like autumn leaves clumped together in blue water. It is beautifully painted with exuberant brushstrokes, layered space and an all-over consistency of paint application. Like the best Abstract Expressionist paintings of the past, it looks as if every brushstroke were applied with the same speed and energy. It has a loose and open feel, and a nice balance of broad strokes with sharp lines.

“Las Meninas” is more densely packed. About five feet square, it seems to be an abstraction of an urban scene with old buildings and a jangle of power poles and wires. Broad strokes in rich browns and reds, both transparent and opaque, are intersected by heavy black marks and delicate areas of white. Black drawing reminiscent of Franz Kline overlaps flat areas and depicts figures and what may be a network of bridges in the background.

The two paintings just described tend much more toward the non-objective than abstraction from nature. The other paintings in this show are much more explicit in subject matter, and that is their downfall. Osha’s way of painting is much more about the act of painting and the relationships between abstract elements than it is about subject matter, and when her subjects become more explicit, they detract from what the paintings are really about.

“Whether to Go to 75th St.” is the perfect example. It is a painting of figures on a street, walking in front of a store with display windows. There is a terrific interplay of light and dark, flat areas and areas of layered depth, broad strokes and sharp lines, thin and thick paint. The composition is solid. The placement of figures is critical. Small things such as the way the color change on the central figure’s arms lines up with the bottom of the window indicate a mastery of color and design. But the illustrational nature of this painting detracts from all of Osha’s painting skill.

The other three paintings are a trilogy based on ancient myths and universal themes (and, I suspect, homage to Michael Spafford’s paintings based on Greek and Roman myths). These paintings, titled “Circa Warns Odysseus Against the Sirens,” “Foot Race on Behalf of War and Democracy” and “Sleep and Death” all depict heroic struggles between wrestling figures, with the figures spanning two separate panels in each painting. In two of them, the figures are black with red-orange backgrounds, and in the third the figures are red-orange on a black background. I don’t think these work. They look like studies for larger paintings and the trick of spanning adjoining panels is way overdone.

Black Front Gallery has limited hours: Thursday through Saturday, 11 a.m. to 7 p.m.

(pictured: “Las Meninas” by Shaw Osha

Campy ‘Cannibal!!’ mixes music, mayhem

Published in The News Tribune Dec. 8 '06

I simply could not resist Theater Artists Olympia’s “Cannibal!! The Musical,” written by “South Park” creator Trey Parker and billed as “All singing! All dancing! All flesh eating!”

Apparently I was not the only one seduced by their outlandish advertising, because the opening night performance was not only sold out, it was over-sold. They had to squeeze extra chairs into the black box theater at South Puget Sound Community College’s Center for the Arts.

The play is based on the true story of Alferd Packer, the first person in the United States to be convicted of cannibalism. In 1873, Packer accepted the position as guide to a group of 20 prospectors from Utah headed into the Colorado Territory. Stopped by mountain blizzards, the party wintered over with a tribe of Ute Indians. But six of the men, led by Packer, forged ahead and got lost. Packer was the only survivor from the party of six. He was accused of murdering and eating his companions, brought to trial and convicted. Yet many people in the territory believed he was innocent, and he became something of a western folk legend.

Trey Parker turned the story into a campy feature film that gained a small but dedicated following.

The stage version is unique in that there is no script for it. Instead of a script, there are a few songs and an official adapter’s guide; theater companies are free to do whatever they want with these. TAO has chosen to present it as an outrageously campy musical with ludicrous costumes, silly fake beards, bad singing and dancing, a hilarious slide show projected above the set, a narrator right out of a 19th century carnival, a sexy but overweight woman in the role of Packer’shorse, an Indian tribe in drag, liberal usage of words you can’t say on television, sly references to “West Side Story” and “Mr. Ed,” buckets of blood and body parts strewn all over the stage (they even list a “blood wrangler” on the technical crew).

TAO has done outrageously campy shows before, such as last year’s “Vampire Lesbians of Sodom.” They have demonstrated a penchant for excessive blood and gore, as in their particularly graphic “Macbeth.” But this one goes above and beyond anything they’ve done before. It is also their first musical. None of the actors are outstanding singers or dancers, but they at least manage to (almost) carry a tune and do a bit of hoofing.

Songs guaranteed to stick in your mind include “Shpadoinkle Day,” “Don’t be Stupid,” “When I was on Top of You” and “Hang the Bastard.”

Elizabeth Lord narrates the tale. Lord is well known in the area as a professional story teller, and she has extensive theatrical experience in both performing and directing. She manages to maintain a serious demeanor when fools are cavorting all around her in most ridiculous ways. Robert McConkey is Alferd Packer. He plays the convicted cannibal as an earnest but bumbling innocent who is deeply in love with his horse, Liane.

Kimberley Holm is a scene stealer as Liane the horse (of course). She prances with panache and chews her food in a most delightful manner.

Russ Holm, a veteran of many Shakespearean plays with TAO and Harlequin productions, plays Israel Swan, a nasty old miner whose greatest thrill is building snowmen.

Heather R. Christopher is charming as Polly Pry, the reporter who interviews Packer in jail and is seduced by his charms.

Also outstanding are Paul Purvine as the sex-obsessed young prospector, George Noon, and Dennis Rolly is the nefarious prosecutor, Warren Mills.

This show is not for everyone. People who enjoyed the bloody fight scenes in “Monty Python and the Holy Grail” should love it. Everyone beware.


SIDEBAR: Cannibal!! The Musical
WHEN: 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday and 2:00 p.m. Sunday through Dec. 17
WHERE: South Puget Sound Community College Center for the Arts
TICKETS: $12 online at www.buyolympia.com/events or at the door
INFORMATION: 360-357-3471

Navigating Mental Geographies and Natural Histories

Installation artist Eugene Parnell
published in Art Access Dec.-Jan. '06-'7

Eugne Parnell is a sculptor and installation artist with the kind of imagination one might associate with a writer of graphic novels, and an insatiable curiosity about things most people never think about, such as why museum dioramas look so strange and what he calls "the mental geographies of childhood and the politics of Natural History and its presentation."

photo: detail from "Life in the Seas Part I: The Cambrian"

Read the story in Art Access.

“Twelfth Night of Stardust” at Harlequin

Published in The News Tribune Dec. 1, 2006


Every year Harlequin Productions puts on an original musical comedy for the holiday season. They are showcases for 1940s swing music centered on light, holiday-themed romance stories set in Manhattan’s Stardust Club. This year marks their twelfth “Stardust” show. Appropriately, this one is called “The Twelfth Night of Stardust” -- a title with multiple references: the twelfth night of Christmas, the twelfth show in the series, and Shakespeare’s “Twelfth Night,” which is lightly lampooned in the story line.

I’ve seen three shows in this series. Of the three this is the best. The cast and the script are superior to the last two.

It’s Christmas Eve, 1946. The performers in the Stardust Club are waiting for the arrival of R. Morino, a heartthrob crooner in the Frank Sinatra mold, who has contracted to headline the club’s Christmas Eve floorshow. All of the club’s ensemble performers are looking forward to Morino’s arrival, but none so much as Roxie Grover, who spent one evening with him a few weeks earlier and who recently received an invitation to be his date at a prestigious holiday ball. But when Morino arrives at the club, he is arrogant and dismissive of the other performers, and he acts as if he doesn’t even recognize Roxie. She is devastated and confused.

That’s all I’m going to say about the story line.

The nightclub setting is beautiful. This is not a cheap club. It looks more like a country club than a cabaret, with dark wood, a hanging chandelier and tasteful holiday lights.

The five piece band is made up of some of the best jazz musicians in the South Sound area -- Keith Anderson, drums, Drew Gibbs, piano, Rick Jarvela, bass, Steve Munger, sax, and Syd Potter, trumpet.

The ensemble cast includes actors who are fast becoming household names in South Sound regional theater -- such as Antonia Darlene, Brian Claudio Smith and Geoffery Simmons. Darlene, who plays Cleo Jackson, was recently seen as Deena Jones in “Dreamgirls” at Tacoma Little Theater and in last year’s wonderful production of “Ragtime” at Tacoma Musical Playhouse. Simmons, in the role of Wade Mitchell, was my pick for best actor in a musical last year for his performance in “Ain’t Misbehavin’” at TLT, and was also outstanding in “Ragtime” and in Harlequin’s “Let the Good Times Roll.” Smith (Morino) is a Shakespearean actor who was a great comedic success in “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” and outstanding as the tragic-comic Mercutio in “Romeo and Juliet,” both at Harlequin. This is his first venture into musical comedy, but you’d never suspect it from this performance, since he immerses himself into the role so thoroughly.

Other performers include Caitlin Finne as Roxie, LaVon M. Hardison as Loretta Mae, Loni Cappus as Rita Norman, Jason Thayer as Stuart Henry and Deanna Marie Molenda as Zoe Grover.

The show opens with “Brazil,” a showcase musical number with samba dancing and the cast resplendent in red hot South-of-the-border costumes. Some 20 song and dance numbers follow, featuring swing-era classics like “Ain’t We Got fun,” “Taking a Chance on Love” and “There’ll Be Some Changes Made.”

Simmons blows the house away on bluesy and mellow renditions of “As Time Goes By” -- with great sax and trumpet solos by Munger and Potter -- and the smoky Thelonius Monk hit “’Round Midnight.” Darlene shines on “Waitin’ on the A Train,” combining versions by Peggy Lee and Duke Ellington. Mixing, genres, there’s even a brief ballet performance by Molenda to Potter’s arrangement of Tchaikovsky’s “Waltz of the Suger Plum Faries.”

All singing and dancing, with a surprisingly clever story, the show runs a little over two hours, with a 20-minute intermission, ending with a great tribute to Broadway as the chorus line sings and high-kicks to “Lullaby of Broadway.”Some performances are sold out, but the Harlequin Web site lists possible extra shows. Call or visit the Web site early for tickets.

WHEN: 8 p.m. Thursday-Saturday, 2 p.m. Sundays, 3 p.m. Dec. 16 and 23, 7 p.m. New Years Eve, with extra shows possible

WHERE: State Theatre, 202 E. 4th Ave., Olympia

TICKETS: $38 -$12 (student rush)

INFORMATION: 360-786-0151; http://www.harlequinproductions.org/

Frank d'Ippolito at Art on Center

Published in the Volcano Nov. 30, 2006

photo: "Dance" by Frank d'Ippolito

After seeing a number of Frank d’Ippoilito’s paintings reproduced on the Art on Center Web site (http://www.artoncenter.com), I was excited to finally get to see them in the flesh in his current solo exhibition. On my computer screen, they appeared to be some of the most luscious paintings I had seen in a long time, combining a creamy surface like that of Wayne Thiebaud’s early paintings of pastries with the depth of Jasper John’s encaustic flags and targets.

Paintings such as “Dance,” “Optic Opus,” “5 Pieces” and "Perpetie" did not disappoint. These are abstract paintings with dense surfaces and solid, architectonic compositions. They are complex paintings employing encaustic and other varieties of media to create interwoven squares and rectangles and vertical bands of color with great depth and a fascinating interplay of marks: here a flat shape, there a luscious transparency, somewhere else splatters of paint that look vaguely like birds.

“Dance” may well be the best painting in the whole show. A dense network of vertical bars in yellow, green, blue and a variety of earth tones is intersected by broad swipes and swirls of paint. The planes jump back and forth in prismatic effects, and throughout are flowing lines that are scraped and dragged across the surface. The painting is loose and expressionistic, yet well controlled.

“5 Pieces” is a grouping of layered boxes with squiggly marks and drips of paint overlaid with a network of precise lines looking like carpenter’s chalk lines and used as a unifying element.

“Optic Opus” balances horizontal and vertical bands of gray, blue and red on one side with an almost empty expanse of white on the other, all swirling around a hot spot of red and black

“Perpetie" is a dense mass of gray, yellow and white that reminds me of some of Willem de Kooning’s early paintings such as “Gotham News.”

These paintings are the best of d’Ippolito’s works. Ideally, being his most fully resolved, these would represent his latest series. And that might be the case, since none of the paintings are dated. But my gut reaction tells me his latest series constitutes a bunch of paintings with extremely thin washes of color on almost bare canvas. These paintings are risky precisely because they are so minimal, with none of the variety of detail and surface richness of the afore-mentioned series -- a few swipes of the brush and that that’s it. Hit or miss. I have a feeling d’Ippolito knows he’s reaching in these paintings. In a couple, notably “Painting in 2 Parts” and “Painting in 3 Parts,” he comes close to something great. But a number of the paintings in this series look unfinished, and some are just boring. I think he hasn’t yet found what he’s searching for in these, and probably should have held off exhibiting them.

Two other distinct styles of painting can be seen in this exhibition, both of which were a letdown to me. There are two paintings of vertical bands in monotones that look like abstractions taken from forest scenes -- all-over patterns of tree trunks with the trees and the spaces between them painted in various hues of the same color (blue in one, and I can’t remember the other). These are not striking paintings. They look like something decorative and non-threatening you might find in a furniture store. Another two paintings that seem to be from a separate earlier series are abstractions taken after Mark Toby, with clusters of calligraphic squiggles in the center bleeding out to the edges. These are a little richer in tone and texture than the “forest” paintings, but they are still rather decorative and too safe for my taste.

A gallery filled with works in the vein of “Dance” and “Optic Opus” would have made for a much better show.

Art on Center at 1604 Center St. is open noon to 5 p.m. Wednesday through Saturday and by appointment. Call 253-627-8180.