An Improbable Peck of Plays

Published in the Weekly Volcano, Aug. 13, 2015

Debbie Sampson, Alayna Chamberland, Christian Carvajal, and Ethan Bujeaud (under the table) in Amenities. Photo by Austin Lang

Aaron Bredlau in Glory, Glory vanish. Photo by Austin Lang

Sara Fiksdal in
Cherry-Flavored Chemistry. Photo by Austin Lang

Eight plays by local playwrights, seven directors, and a dozen actors. What could possibly go wrong? Very little. This cadre of local talent pulled together by Theater Artists Olympia in collaboration with the Northwest Playwrights Alliance is offering a marvelous evening of entertaining one-act plays at the Midnight Sun.

Improbable Peck of Plays Vol. IV is the latest installment in this series, and I’ll go on record right now as saying I hope there will be a volume V, VI, VII, and on and on ad infinitum.

Village of the Sirens written by Sherry Narens and directed by Jackie Nordquist is a poem musically recited by five women — sirens in the Homeric sense who tempt not just with sex appeal but by reciting words signifying desirable qualities/events such as stillness, quiet, comfort, home, sex and so forth. There is a rhythm and a lyrical quality to this that is enticing, and that they memorized the oft-repeated phrases is an amazing feat.

The Restore written by Merridawn Duckler and directed by Lanita Grice was a brilliant idea, but it doesn’t quite work on stage despite some delightful comedic acting by Ethan Bujeaud who plays a living work of art being worked on by the art restorer played by Ellis Tyler-Crowl.

Something More Cheerful by Morgan Picton, directed by Amanda Stevens is a comedy horror show that satirizes politics and show business with Swiftian absurdity. An aspiring actor (Maxwell Schilling) is cast as the President in a something that at first seems to be a movie but then turns out to be real life. Or to put it another way, real life, including the presidency, is a movie cast, written and directed by the Illuminati. Schilling plays the actor well as naïve and overly enthusiastic. Also outstanding as members of the auditioning panel are John Lyons Beck, who reminds me of John Goodman, Aaron Bredlau, who is hilariously over-the-top in this play and in Glory, Glory Vanish (more on that below), Sara Fiksdal and Sara Geiger.

Amenities by Gregory Hirschak, directed by Deane Shellman, with Christian Carvajal, Alayna Chamberland, Debbie Sampson and Ethan Bujeaud, is roll-on-the-floor funny. A couple, Carvajal and his drunken wife (Sampson), are showing off their new condo to a dinner guest (Chamberland). Everything is immense for this wealthy couple, and they are proud of their new home in “The Bohemian” where each unit comes equipped with its own artist. Their artist (Bujeaud) lives under the dining room table.

Sean Raybell is unbelievably powerful and funny as an New England seafarer and Maxwell Shilling plays a wide-eyed hapless college student who encounters him on the docks in The Wisdoming by Gregory Hirschak, directed by Gabriel McClelland.

In Glory, Glory Vanish, written by Eva Suter and directed by Xander Layden, Carvajal plays a Viking who has had “many, many lovers,” and Bredlau is once again outstanding as his buddy, while Bujeaud plays the sincere young Viking who finally has to ask an obviously sensible question that at least temporality pops the fantasy. Carvajal and Bredlau hilariously play the not-so-smart loudmouth braggarts, and Bujeaud is believably down-to-earth.

Schilling stars again at his nerdiest best in Cherry-Flavored Chemistry by Jackie Nordquist, directed by Christopher Rocco. This is a sweet little love story about a pair of loveable chemistry nerds. Fiksdal is oh so loveable as the geeky girlfriend.

The evening ends with the ridiculously funny One for the Chipper by Adam Seidel, directed by Gabriel McClelland in which Carvajal — brilliant again — is a Little League baseball coach giving a pep talk to the worst team in the history of Little League. More than half the team has quite, and it is down to four incompetents: Chamberland, Beck, Raybell and Kadi Burt.

I highly recommend this night of short plays.

Improbable Peck of Plays IV, Thursday through Saturday at 9 p.m. through Aug. 22, 2:30 p.m. Aug. 23, The Midnight Sun, 113 N. Columbia St. Tickets: $15.00 ($16.52 with service fee at brownpapertickets. Available at door night of show or online at brownpapertickets.com, pay what you can tonight (Aug. 13).

9 Circles Canceled

I was just notified that the one-night-only staged reading of 9 Circles by Bill Cain, scheduled for Aug. 16 at Tacoma Little Theatre, has been canceled. It will be replaced by Dying City by Christopher Shinn.

Wunderkammers invade the Seaport Museum

Artifacts, False Memories and Projections curated by Lisa Kinoshita

Published in the Weekly Volcano, Aug. 6, 2015

“illumination” mixed-media by Lisa Kinoshita. Courtesy the artist.

The exhibition WUNDERKAMMER: Artifacts, False Memories and Projections is so uniquely integrated into the projects and collections at the Foss Waterway Seaport that separating the exhibition, curated by Lisa Kinoshita, from the maritime museum’s collections is a scavenger hunt filled with delightful surprises.

The show is a collection of Wunderkammers created by a group of the South Sound’s better-known artists including: Renee Adams, David Blakesley, Justin Gibbens, Chuck Iffland, Steve Jensen, Alexander Keyes, Lisa Kinoshita, Nicholas Nyland, Holly Senn, Jessica Spring, Brent Watanabe, Mishele Dupree Winter, and Robert Zinkevich, plus collaborative works by the teams of Marc Dombrosky and Shannon Eakins; Alice Di Certo and Kyle Dillehay; and Jenny Pohlman and Sabrina Knowles .

And what, you might ask, is a Wunderkammer? Fair question.  Explorers of the Renaissance age collected natural specimens and a variety of cultural, scientific, and religious artifact to fill the cabinets of curiosity, or wunderkammers, of European royalty. They were like museums in a cabinet or collections of strange oddities —precursors, perhaps, of Joseph Cornell’s artistic boxes.

Some of the wunderkammers in this exhibition were built by the artists and some were found or collected by them, many are combinations of found and built assemblages, and all are fascinating. Most relate in one way or another to bones, feathers, skin, body parts and archeological finds. There is a morbid and grotesque fascination to many of them.

"Recycling" glass and mixed media by Alice Di Certo.

Some of the works are free-standing pieces that are not really wunderkammers at all but relate in spirit, such as Jensen’s carved boat funerary objects —free-standing sculptures on plinths that are made of such things as driftwood, chain, boat resin, and a skull, all eerily beautiful. Or Senn’s nests made of shredded book pages and Spring’s accordion-fold books. Or Pohlman and Knowles’ strange wall-hanging sculpture “Homage to the Bush Doctor’s Market,” two rusted chains draped across a four-or-five-foot expanse of wall from which hang a collection of blown-glass vessels with translucent or frosted surfaces within which can be dimly seen various collected items. Also draped from the chains are items such as beads, feathers and boxes. The work is based on healing markets in Zimbabwe seen on a trip to Africa. It is strangely reminiscent of glass art by William Morris.

Another intriguing find is Kinoshita’s “Illumination,” a watercolor, ink and pencil drawing of a man, and a calligraphic quote from Pope Francis on pages of sheet music identified by the artist as the libretto from “La Bohéme.”

And then there’s Watanabe's indescribable tiny video projected onto a picture of a woman. Kinoshita says it is “intentionally infected with a virus so over the course of the show it will pixillate, degrade and possibly disappear.”

There is so much more that I wish I had space to describe, if I even could describe it. See it for yourself, you will be glad you did. Plus, the collection at the museum is something everyone should see. Give yourself plenty of time to investigate everything in the collection.

WUNDERKAMMER: Artifacts, False Memories and Projections, , 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.,
Wed.- through Sat. and noon to 4 p.m. Sun.,  through Aug. 30, admission $5-$8, free to members and children under 5, 705 Dock Street, Tacoma.

Nine Circles of Hell

Note: Just notified on Aug. 13 that this play has been canceled.

Preview: staged reading by New Muses Theatre Company

Published in the Weekly Volcano, Aug. 6, 2015

Katelyn Hoffman and Nick Spencer in New Muses’ recent production of Miss Julie. Photo by Niclas Olson.

From the fringe theater company that brought you the provocative Miss Julie and staged readings of David Mamet's Sexual Perversity in Chicago and Neil Labute's Reasons to be Pretty comes 9 Circles by Bill Cain, another one-night-only staged reading performed at Tacoma Little Theatre on Aug. 16.

A psychological thriller based on actual events, 9 Circles tells the story of an American soldier on trial for his life. The young soldier—honorably discharged but then accused of an unspeakable war crime in Iraq—is forced to navigate a labyrinth of commanding officers, public defenders, lawyers, preachers and military psychiatrists. The actual case upon which it is based that of former 101st Airborne Division Pfc. Steven Dale Green, convicted in a federal court in 2009 of raping and killing an Iraqi 14-year-old girl and murdering her family.

Staged reading of On the Verge by Eric Overmeyer (August 2014 at TLT)

From L to R: Kaylie Rainer, Katelyn Hoffman and Brittany Griffins.

Photo by Bethany Bevier

As described by the company, this play is “shocking, mesmerizing and bitingly funny” and “a tour de force journey to a shattering conclusion in which the infinite size and tremendous power of a young man's soul is revealed.”

The playwright, who is a Jesuit priest, based the structure of his play on the nine circles of hell in Dante’s Inferno.

Denver Post reviewer wrote: "9 Circles is a brilliant play: dark, profane, provocative, profoundly funny in spots, and disturbing. (It also requires an audience advisory because of the brief full male nudity that is neither titillating nor camouflaged.) It's demanding. It asks the audience not only to think and interpret, but to hang on every word…”

9 Circles is directed by and stars New Muses Theater Company founder Niclas Olson as Daniel Reeves, Kait Mahoney as various women and an actor yet to be cast at press time for all the men’s roles.

Olson says: “9 Circles may be the best script I’ve read in the past couple years. It grabbed me from the first synopsis I read, and after finally ordering a copy I became a little obsessed. But unfortunately I couldn’t find a spot for it in our mainstage season. But that’s why this series exists, to tackle the shows we just can’t fit in anywhere else, but need to be seen. I love that Bill Cain in writing this has simplified the war in Iraq into a single soldier’s story. It isn’t over-the-top political, it’s just about one young guy who came home from Iraq and now has to deal with the things he did. And while Cain hints at the larger things going on around him, ultimately it’s a single soldier’s journey and in that way it’s a very timeless, yet timely, story. 

Olson says the company is “dedicated to producing intelligent, thought-provoking, and engaging theatre for a contemporary audience.”

9 Circles, 7 p.m., Aug. 16, pay what you can, Tacoma Little Theatre, 210 N “I” St., Tacoma, www.NewMuses.com.

Driven to Abstraction at B2

Published in the Weekly Volcano, July 30, 2015

Pacific Palisades” by Vic Wade. Photo courtesy B2 Gallery

I’m so tempted to make a play on words from the title of this show, but gallery owners Gary and Deborah Boone beat me to the punch.  Driven to Abstraction showcases the works of three painters whose common thread is abstraction but whose approaches to art are quite diverse.

"Composition #2" by Elmore Williams. Courtesy B2 Gallery

One of the three, Elmore Williams, paints in such diverse styles that he’s like four painters in one. He is extremely eclectic, drawing on inspiration from Pablo Picasso, Jackson Pollock and some of the early 20^th century American abstract artists like Stuart Davis. His “Composition No. 2” and a similar little painting on the adjacent wall are lovely Davis-like paintings with vibrant colors. Going in totally different directions, there are two gritty little paintings near the reception desk with burlap, ivory and fishnet collage, a pseudo Pollock hung high over that same desk, and a whole bunch of cubist paintings, some with Afro-centric figures and themes, that are nicely designed but too derivative.

Picasso stole from everyone and bragged about it, but still, if you’re going to steal from Picasso, the faces and hands should not be so much like those by the master. As for being Afro-centric, he’s just returning the compliment; it was African masks more than anything else that inspired cubism.

South Sound gallery-goers are certainly familiar with Becky Knold by now. She’s one of the most prolific and ubiquitous painters working in the area today. And she’s damn good. I didn’t count, but I estimate there are close to 20 Knold paintings in this show. They are all abstract, many inspired by landscape, and they all have rich but nuanced surface textures and color variations. Most of the colors are muted. They are restful but with an underlying intensity like skies with storm clouds just beginning to gather in the distance. 

In the central gallery area are three large Knold landscapes. Two versions of “Shimmering Bay” depict water with land in the foreground, sky in the background, all in muted tones of brown and shimmering gold. A third in the series is abstract enough that you can’t tell what is land, sky or water, but has the same feel. All three feature gold horizontal bands in the middle.

There is understated expressive energy in Knold’s paintings. The most energetic piece in this show is one called “Unleashed Horizons.”

The most highly expressive paintings in the show are two by Vic Wade, “The Caves of Altamira” and “Pacific Palisades.” These are rough, gritty, tumultuous paintings. I particularly like the floating blue shapes and the contrast between relatively flat shapes and dense lines and swathes of color.

Like Williams, Wade has included works in quite different styles. A real departure and, in my opinion, one of the best paintings in the show is “Origins of the Universe,” a simple painting with a few roughly drawn oval shapes floating over a dark brown and black background that is locked between two broad bands of green. It is the teetering sense of being almost unbalanced that makes this painting stand out. I heard that future shows with Williams are slated for B2, and I look forward to seeing them because he is a man who knows what to do with paint.

Driven to Abstraction, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday-Saturday, through Aug. 15, B2 Fine Art Gallery, 711 St. Helens Avenue, Tacoma, 253.238.5065]