Autobiography??????????

I received an email from an old friend who is a book reviewer. His comment upon finishing The Wives of Marty Winters was “Not bad, although it was impossible to read it without picturing you, Gabi, etc. in the characters. Of course, I didn't know the middle-aged transsexual, but I kept picturing John Lithgow anyway ;-)”

Interesting comment that brings up some interesting thoughts about how much a fiction writer should draw on personal experience. In my more self-critical moments I feel that my last two novels, and especially the latest, were more autobiographical than my first one. Lew Hamburg, in a review for the Olympian, called my second novel, Imprudent Zeal, “a tour de force of autobiographical fiction.” But, in fact, only one small section of that book was autobiographical, and I acknowledged it in an author’s note in the book. It was the section about Scully McDonald and Everything for Everybody. It was based on Jack Scully and the organization of the same name he founded and Gabi and I worked for. But Scully’s complete history from childhood through young adulthood -- including his relationship with the drug addict/prostitute Becca -- was 100 percent imagination, as were the complete life histories of Becca and her daughter, McKenzie.

As for seeing me and Gabi in The Wives of Marty Winters, those characters were based on people we have known –- primarily Carolyn Wagner, a dear friend and former national PFLAG vice president and a tireless warrior in the battle against bias-based violence. This is really a PFLAG story, and Marty and Selena are every PFLAG family.

Still, I have been thinking for quite some time now that my next work of fiction needs to be far more imaginative and that I need to challenge myself to construct a story that does not draw on personal experience. With that in mind, I have already written a synopsis and an opening chapter of a new novel with the working title The Backside of Nowhere.

Stay tuned.

Thriller follows Centerstage director to Federal Way

Alan Bryce, artistic director of Centerstage Theatre in Federal Way, is no Johnny Come Lately to the world of theater. He’s an actor, a director and a playwright with extensive experience in New York and London. We are fortunate that he decided to settle in the Puget Sound Area.

And now we are blessed with the opportunity to see a revision of one of his earliest plays, “Nightmare of a Married Man,” which was a big hit in the London fringe circuit back in the late’70s.

“A long time ago,” Bryce recalls, “I was Artistic Director of the Overground Theatre, which for a brief and brilliant few years was one of London’s leading fringe theatres. We transferred some shows to the West End, to BBC TV, to BBC Radio and to commercial success elsewhere. It was a very exciting time for a young guy in his twenties.”

At that time, Anthony Shaffer’s play “Sleuth” had been enjoying phenomenal success, and Shaffer followed with another play called “Murderer.” Bryce says the follow up to a successful play is “the most difficult play of all to write – my point being that after you have had a major commercial hit with your first play the next play is the tough one, because everyone will compare it unfavorably with the play that made your name.”

“Murderer” was a conventional stage thriller with one unusual twist: in the first 35 minutes there is no dialogue. Instead, there is 35 minutes of Grand Guignol humor. That’s a style of theater popular in Paris in the Belle Époque – the same period that produced “A Flea in Her Ear,” which Centerstage recently performed. Grand Guignol focuses on the macabre; it is not funny.

In Shaffer’s play, the protagonist is an artist who slips his attractive female model a Mickey Finn. She passes out; he strips her naked and carries her up to the bath – “and then proceeds to extract a lot of comedy (would you believe?) by dismembering her.

“Well, the West End Producer thought the old ladies wouldn’t be able to take the dismembering. So all that was cut. There was not much to the rest of the play, and it closed in a week. It was then revived by a small regional theatre (the now defunct Redgrave Theatre in Farnham), was treated as a melodrama...and bombed again.”

Bryce selected “Murderer” for the Overground, and they played it not as comedy but as “absolute reality.” He said it was a huge success and Shaffer was overjoyed.

Bryce was inspired by “Murderer,” both on a commercial and artistic level. He said he “saw what sold” and set himself the task of writing something that would be popular. “I had always felt that stage thrillers never addressed the real world. Whether it was Agatha Christie and her high society types or the assortment of artists, playwrights and theatrical caricatures that seem to populate more contemporary thrillers. I wanted to write a play with all the twists and turns of the genre, but set in a world most theatergoers could relate directly to. So I set it in the suburban world in which I grew up.”

The play was a big success in London, and film director Piers Haggard wanted to direct the play on the West End. He got his friend Oliver Reed to agree to do it, but the producer couldn’t come to terms with Reed’s agent, and the deal fell through.
Bryce calls it the play where he lost his innocence. “I thought I had it made,” he says. “Such is the reality of the business.”

Bryce recently re-read the script and thought it was “pretty good.” He revised it extensively and presented it in an audience poll along with a number of better-known plays such as “Lost in Yonkers” and Stephen King’s “Misery,” and the audience voted for it overwhelmingly. He says he thinks it is the title they liked.

“It would be a mistake to say that ‘Nightmare’ is a Grand Guignol-style play,” Bryce says, “but it does have one element that echoes the Grand Guignol spirit.” (He would not clarify what that “one element” is, preferring to maintain some mystery.)

“Immodestly, I have to say that it was a huge hit for us in London. It ran in repertoire with the English premier of Edward Albee’s “Seascape.” It got much better reviews than the Albee and did much better business. I think Centerstage audiences have to prepare themselves for a rollercoaster ride of twists and turns where you can never be certain what will happen next. And plenty of laughs. I like to describe it thus: It’s not a whodunit. It’s a WHOWILLDOWOT?”

“Nightmare of a Married Man” opens Feb. 29 and runs through March 16.

WHEN: 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday and 2 p.m. Saturday and Sunday, Feb. 29-March 16
WHERE: Knutzen Family Theater, 3200 SW Dash Point Rd., Federal Way
TICKETS: $8 to $25 depending on age
INFORMATION: 253-661-1444, www.centerstagetheatre.com

Winter warmth

Dying to get inside One Heart Cafe

published in the Weekly Volcano, Jan 3, 2008
pictured: Untitled, collage by Elaine Faaborg
Photo by Julie Bennett

Saturday morning I waited outside of One Heart Café with a bunch of artists from the gallery formerly known as a.o.c., hoping someone would come and let us in. There was supposed to be a meeting over coffee of these artists who are taking over the management of the gallery. But the café was not open. A flashing neon sign said OPEN, and the hours posted on the window seemed to agree with our watches, but we couldn’t get in.

And I very much wanted to get in, not only because it was cold outside but because I could see through the window a display of collages by Elaine Faaborg that I wanted to get a closer look at.

The artists’ meeting moved to Tully’s, and I never did get that close look at Faaborg’s collages. I did, however, see a bunch online.

Faaborg, I’m told, is an octogenarian. That in itself is fairly fascinating. But her art should be recognized for its intrinsic value, not because the artist has been on this earth a long time.
Faaborg’s collages — made mostly of materials traditionally associated with women’s crafts and including any old thing she can find around the house — have a homespun look and are beautifully designed, although some are a bit too cute for me.

According to Shari Hart from Tacoma’s Community & Economic Development, Faaborg “is an artistic gem. She finds and defines beauty in ordinary and unusual found items. Her artwork will draw you into layer upon layer of created pieces, collaged with a variety of materials and repurposed elements” including “the magic of old metal computer tape incorporated into beautiful weavings, embellished with square glass tiles and the beauty that can be created from old magazines.”

Hart goes on to say that Faaborg “has spent most of her 85 years refining her skills and giving workshops in basketry, batik, weaving, stitchery, painting, etc.

Elaine’s work has a world/tribal feel and each piece is a work of love-filled art. She reminds us all to look for beauty and possibility in ordinary life, in everyday things, and in everyone.”
Wow! I really regret not getting to see her show, but I will go back.

Judging from the photographs, the best of her works are a group of collages made from paper beads that she makes by cutting up old magazines and rolling them into tight cylinders and pasting them on a flat surface. These look like elegant and densely-packed logjams flowing in curvilinear patterns. I love them.

Proceeds from the sale of art in the exhibition will support Project One Heart, a non-profit that provides art-related youth outreach activities through the YWCA.

And now a word or two about the meeting of artists that was relocated to Tully’s on Broadway. The artists involved are the core group of artists who now own and operation the cooperative gallery once known as a.o.c. and soon to be re-named Gallery Impromptu (you heard it here first).

They are: Bill Colby, Trinda Love, Bea Geller, Chip van Gelder, Dorothy McCuistion and Jason Sobottka. And they are recruiting other artists.

I can’t say much more about their plans for the gallery, which is next door to One Hart Café, which is next door to the Grand Cinema, which is next door to Two Vaults Gallery — what an amazing block — because it’s not clear how solid their plans are right now. But they plan to have group shows and possibly one-person shows of their own work and works by guest artists, plus, tentatively, a juried exhibition to come in February or March. In the meantime, the sign on the window still says a.o.c. and the works on display are by the same artists who were in the “Own It!” show in December, but with all new works.

The bottom line is, if you like good art and coffee and movies, you can’t beat the 600 block of Fawcett.

[One Heart Café, Elaine Faaborg, through Jan. 31, 604 Fawcett Ave., Tacoma, 253.722.2940, www.oneheartcafe.com]

Playhouse comes alive with ‘Sound of Music’

Published in The News Tribune, Dec. 28, 2007

Pictured,top: The cast of the Lakewood Playhouse production of “The Sound of Music” includes, from left, Olivia Seward as Liesl, Hunter Larson as Friedrich, Kat Christensen as Louisa, Justin Neidermeyer as Kurt, Adrienne Grieco as Maria, Hanna Thoresen as Marta, Anna Rose LeMaster as Brigitta and Claire Thoresen as Gretl.


Certain roles by certain actors are so indelibly etched in the minds of theatergoers that they simply cannot be done by anyone else. Gregory Peck as Atticus in “To Kill a Mockingbird” comes to mind, and Jack Nicholson as R.P. McMurphy in “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” and, perhaps the most iconic of them all, Julie Andrews as Maria in “The Sound of Music.”

And yet, 10 minutes into “The Sound of Music” at Lakewood Playhouse I forgot all about Julie Andrews. Adrienne Grieco is Maria. Seldom if ever have I seen an actor in a community theater so completely become a character.

Her voice is sweet and pure, her look wholesome and her emotions unabashedly right on the surface. Her expressions of pain and joy and her love for the von Trapp children go right to the heart. In the oh-so-popular film version, the sentimentality is sickeningly overdone, yet there is no taste of that false sentimentality in Grieco’s performance.

The same can be said for the actors who play the younger von Trapp children: Kat Christensen as Louisa, Anna Rose LeMaster as Brigitta, Justin Niedermeyer as Kurt, Hannah Thoreson as Marta and Claire Thoreson as Gretl. It is a joy to see their distrust of the new governess begin to melt away as Maria teaches them the delightful song “Do Re Me” and then turn to pure adoration as she sings “My Favorite Things” while the children huddle in her bed for protection from the scary thunder and lightning of a storm.

Christopher Gilbert as the crusty Capt. Georg von Trapp is stiff and unbending at first. Unlike Grieco and the children, he seems to be acting more than inhabiting the role – until he, like the children, melts under the warmth of Maria’s love. By the second act, the audience is as much in love with him as they are with Maria and the children. And his voice, though not as strong as Grieco’s, is mellow, warm and especially engaging on his duet with Grieco on “Something Good” and his solo on the touching “Edelweiss.”

Other performers who are outstanding are Carol Richmond, who plays housekeeper Frau Schmidt and doubles as one of the nuns; Marie Kelly (a terrific singer) as Capt. von Trapp’s fiancée, Elsa; and Ted Fredericks as Uncle Max Detweiler. (If there is such a thing as comic relief in this show, it is provided by Fredericks, who plays Uncle Max as a pompous rooster but ceases to be funny when he begins to cave in to the Nazi invaders.)

Lakewood Playhouse does all of their shows in the round, which means that set changes in a show like this are a huge challenge. But director Scott Campbell and set designer Doug Kerr solve it with simple pieces that are quickly moved by actors as they enter and exit the stage area.

Special recognition must also go to the band: Larry Trop, keyboard and conductor; Hanna Jepson, keyboard; and Jack Lake, percussion.

I saw a preview performance, meaning it was the first performance with full set and lighting in front of a live audience. There were one or two entrances that were too slow, and the nuns singing “How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria?” were somewhat tentative. But these slight problems were insignificant and fixable.

I wish it could have ended with the von Trapp family exiting the stage while singing the “So Long, Farewell” reprise. Everything after that – including the scene with Liesl’s boyfriend turned Nazi, Rolf (Steve Barnett) – was anticlimactic. But contrived as that scene is, it is necessary to the story, and a lot of people would probably be disappointed if it were left out.

For all its sentimentality and familiarity, this show is wonderful to watch. And as Lakewood Playhouse artistic director Marcus Walker warned in his welcoming remarks, it is hard to resist the temptation to sing along out loud.

WHEN: 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays and 2 p.m. Sundays through Jan. 13. No performances Dec. 28-30.
WHERE: Lakewood Playhouse, 5729 Lakewood Towne Center Blvd., Lakewood
TICKETS: $22 general admission, $19 senior and military discount, $16 younger than 25, $14 younger than 15
INFORMATION: 253-588- 0042, www.lakewood-playhouse.org

Gift of art

Tacoma receives two new galleries


Published in the Weekly Volcano, Dec 27, 2007
Pictured "Ka (Who)" painting by Donald Cole


Christmas is not the best time for artists and art galleries. Nobody ever gives art for Christmas. They should, but they don’t. I, for one, would love to get a painting by Ron Hinson or Chauney Peck or one of Holly Senn’s sculptures made from old books. But most people are afraid of giving art as a gift — remembering, perhaps, how they hid the painting of dogs playing poker Aunt Suzie gave them and drag it out only when she visits.

Art galleries tend to run group holiday shows, meaning they pull out the paintings that have been stored in a back room all year.

But Tacoma’s newest galleries either don’t know what a dreary time of year the holiday season is for art businesses or they are too optimistic to care. Not one but two new galleries have just opened in Tacoma, and another has reopened in a new location.

Fulcrum Art Gallery opened last week with a multimedia installation called “Lambscapes” by Joseph Miller. I haven’t had a chance to see the show yet, but I hope to see it soon. I’ve been told that shows at Fulcrum will run for two months with the main gallery focusing on sculpture and installation works and a smaller gallery focusing on design work. Fulcrum shows will be curated by glass artist and interior designer Oliver Doriss.

The second new gallery is The Lark Gallery located inside Sanford & Son Antiques. Its opening show is “Pixelations: Beyond the Visible,” paintings by Danielle McClenahan. An opening announcement proclaims that the gallery “proposes to display original artwork from emerging artists from Tacoma and around the globe while offering art prices that make it accessible to many budgets. The gallery will have rotating monthly artists as well as items from an ongoing cadre of local artists such as Niels Wacht, Kari Thoreen, Mindy Barker and James Hume.”

Mineral is reopening in the old Ice Box Gallery space at 301 Puyallup Ave. Currently showing is an exhibition of clown paintings by Seattle artist Cathy Sarkowsky, plus a display of new bronze and silver jewelry.

Up north in the Emerald City there’s a marvelous painting exhibition by a transplanted New Yorker that is really worth seeing — even if it means braving holiday traffic. The painter is Donald Cole, and he’s one of the best pure painters to come our way in a long time. Cole was a successful artist in New York, showing in such prestigious galleries as 55 Mercer and Nancy Hoffman, but he left the Big Apple to settle on Vashon Island and is now showing his most recent paintings at ArtXchange on First Avenue near Pioneer Square.

Cole makes simple but graphically rich abstract paintings based on Sanskrit and other Asian languages and imagery. “During the last twenty years my main inspiration has come from extensive travel in Asia where one is bombarded by complex layers of forms and colors and by the many creative expressions of spirituality that pervade Asian life, especially in India,” Cole writes in a personal statement on his Web site. “The signs and symbols and the effects of time and weather on the shrines and walls affect the content of my work and balance my formal concerns with human and caring concerns.”

Finally, I just received an urgent e-mail saying I absolutely have to see the Elaine Faaborg show at One Heart Café, next to the Grand Cinema. This is another show I haven’t seen yet, but the note came from C.J. Swanson, an artist and curator whose taste I absolutely trust. I saw images of Faaborg’s work on the Web at www.kodakgallery.com/I.jsp?c=cg7w7tz.9z7fyqbb&x=0&y=-5d6bub, and they look great.

[Fulcrum Art Gallery, 1308 Martin Luther King Jr. Way, Tacoma, 253.250.0520]
[The Lark Gallery, noon to 5 p.m. Friday-Sunday, 5-9 p.m. Third Thursday, 743 Broadway, 253.383.3168, www.myspace.com/thelarkgallery]
[Mineral, noon to 5 p.m. Tuesday-Saturday or by appointment, through Dec. 31, 301 Puyallup Ave., 253.250.7745]
[ArtXchange, through Dec. 29, 512 First Ave. S., Seattle]
[One Heart Café, through January, 604 S. Fawcett]

‘Cinderella’ gets delightful makeover

Published in The News Tribune, Dec. 21, 2007
pictured: Roger Curtis and Terry Moore as The Ugly Sisters, photo by Michelle Smith Lewis

You may have seen other staged productions of the children’s fairy tale “Cinderella.” But unless you’ve seen it performed as a traditional English pantomime, you’ve never seen anything like the absolutely wild and crazy madness of Centerstage’s “Cinderella.”

Unlike the white-face pantomime most Americans are familiar with, the traditional British pantomime, usually performed at Christmas, is a madcap performance of song, dance, buffoonery, slapstick, in-jokes, audience participation and mild sexual innuendo – all loosely based on traditional children’s stories.

All of the familiar Cinderella story elements are in place: the poor, abused child; the evil stepsisters; the fairy godmother; the pumpkin turned into a coach; the beautiful ball; the dance with Prince Charming; and the final fitting of the glass slipper. But unlike the traditional story, this one seems to take place in Fife, and the ugly stepsisters (a pair of male actors in drag) do their shopping at the Commons in Federal Way. And Prince Charming (Hilary Heinz) and his servant, Dandini (Alexandra Blouin), are played by two tall and beautiful girls – changing gender roles being another tradition of the British pantomime.

In addition to the gender swap, there is also the Shakespearean device of one character pretending to be another; in this case, the prince pretends to be Dandini, and Dandini pretends to be the prince.

The fairy godmother (played with charm and grace by Rosalie Hilburn) begins the festivities by scolding the audience for not giving her a proper welcome, thus establishing from the opening curtain that audience responses are expected.

The lovely Cinderella (Alicia Mendez) and the chorus sing a welcoming song, “Gee But It’s Good to Be Here,” and then the ugly, ugly, ugly stepsisters, Britney (Roger Curtis) and Beyoncé (Terry Edward Moore) make their presence known with the rousing and slightly altered song “Sisters,” made famous by Rosemary Clooney and Vera-Ellen in the movie “White Christmas” – twisted versions of familiar songs being yet another tradition of the British pantomime.

Characters not included in the original fairy tale but essential to the pantomime include Cinderella’s father, Baron Hard-Up (Tom Butterworth), who is lovable but bumbling and completely under the thumb of his nasty stepdaughters; and Cinderella’s best friend, the lovable servant Buttons (Scott Polovitch-Davis).

Buttons is in love with Cinderella, and he establishes a special rapport with the children in the audience. Polovitch-Davis throws himself into the role with great gusto, playing to the children in the manner of J.P. Patches the clown or Pee-wee Herman. He asks all the boys and girls to give the secret signal whenever he comes out and shouts “Whassup gang?” and to shout out a warning whenever someone approaches his magic button. As intended, Buttons steals the show whenever he is on stage. Only Curtis and Moore with their outlandish drag queen antics can hold their own with Buttons on stage.

Heinz and Blouin, as Prince Charming and Dandini, respectively, pull off some rousing comic bits: Dandini tries to mimic the prince’s regal walk and ends up walking like a frog, and Prince Charming swings his arms like a gorilla while trying to emulate Dandini’s more casual walk. They are perfect comic counterpoints to the gangly stepsisters as they look like fashion models with long legs accentuated by very high heels.

All in all, this “Cinderella” is wonderfully campy and joyfully entertaining for kids of all ages.


WHEN: 8 p.m. today and Saturday, 2 p.m. Saturday and Sunday
WHERE: Knutzen Family Theater, 3200 S.W. Dash Point Road, Federal Way
TICKETS: $8 to $25 depending on age
INFORMATION: 253-661-1444, www.centerstagetheatre.com

Bending space

Drawing conclusions at Black Front Gallery

Published in the Weekly Volcano, Dec 20, 2007
Pictured: drawing by Justine Ashbee

Driving up Fourth Avenue in Olympia, I glanced in the window of Black Front Gallery and saw what looked like an intricate wall sculpture made of cut paper and swirling strands of wire. From my distance and angle as I drove by — holding up traffic as I slowly inched my way past the window — this Calder-like “mobile” looked as if it extended a few feet out from the wall with cast shadows and lighter colored lines behind it echoing the swirling lines.
When I went back to the gallery the next day, I saw that what had looked like a wall sculpture was actually a drawing done in black, dark blue and aqua markers on paper. It was completely flat, but with an illusion of space that was not as noticeable up close as it had been from my car. What I was seeing was Justine Ashbee’s three-part drawing, “Floating Entity.” It is a drawing of floral patterns done in smoothly flowing lines that spans three large sheets of paper. It’s a lovely drawing that looks like it was mechanically produced, but it was done freehand with marking pens. How anyone can draw lines that smoothly is beyond my comprehension.

On the back wall is a large drawing called “Folds in Battle” that actually does extend outward from the wall, thus combining actual and illusory depth. In this one, the drawings are done on paper that is cut out and pinned in clusters along the outer edges of a white wall panel. Large leaf and blossom shapes, along with delicate tendrils of paper, bend and fold outward up to about six inches and cast real shadows that overlap with illusory shadows created by lighter lines drawn on the flat surface. Lines in black, purple and hot-hot pink interspersed with clusters of leaf shapes made of white lines on black paper give this piece a dramatic punch.
A third wall holds three similar but smaller drawings on paper. The most fascinating of these is one called “Auric,” in which there are miniscule breaks in the lines everywhere they intersect. These breaks in the lines counteract the illusion of depth caused by overlapping lines and give the drawing an optical shimmer. It is also the only one of her drawings that does not have black lines, but is drawn with sweet pink and violet lines.

I generally do not like art that is this sweet and flowery or drawings that are this precise. But I really like these.

In the smaller back gallery are seven portraits by Joey Bates. Each of these is taken from a Polaroid photograph and painted on a wood panel. The painting style is flat and precise with each color area outlined with thin black lines. In an interesting wall commentary, Bates includes a small reproduction of one of his paintings alongside a reproduction of the Polaroid he worked from as an illustration of how he changed the image for compositional and dramatic purposes.

Bates’ paintings are interesting but too illustrational for my taste, and in many of them, the backgrounds seem almost like an afterthought. The backgrounds are painted more expressively than the faces, and the faces and the backgrounds do not always work well together.

Two of his best paintings are “Annie” and “Danielle.” Both of these work well because of the balance and placement of the faces relative to the picture format. However, a kind of clichéd sunburst effect behind Annie’s head keeps this portrait from being as good as it should be.
In his wall statement, Bates says he is tempted to paint more loosely and expressively but paints very deliberately, taking up to a month on each painting. I think these paintings would be better if they were painted more loosely and maybe without the lines circumscribing each area.

[Black Front Gallery, through December, 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. Sunday-Thursday, 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. Friday-Saturday, 106 Fourth Ave. E., Olympia, 360.786.6032, www.theblackfrontgallery.com/]