Harlequin’s Henry V

The News Tribune, Oct. 11, 2013

Harlequin Production’s Henry V is ensemble theater at its best. With the lone exception of Jason Marr as the title character, every actor in the cast plays multiple roles — eight actors astonishingly playing over 50 roles. The reason I call this show ensemble theater is because any one of these actors could just as effectively play any of the other parts and there are no leading roles, not even Henry. Sex, size and appearance don’t enter the equation. We have men playing women’s roles and women playing men’s roles, and they are all equally convincing. Thanks to Ashley Randolph’s costumes and the actor’s good use of posture, voice and movement it is almost impossible to recognize that the women playing men’s parts are not men and vice versa. Again with one lone exception: Christian Doyle playing two of the women, Nell, a.k.a. Mistress Quickly, and Alice, brings off some hilarious bits of drag performance. His gestures and his feminine voice are right-on, and the fact that he has a beard adds to the wondrous absurdity. 

Apropos to presenting this as an ensemble production, it is all about the words and the action; everything else — sets, costumes, lighting, could be eliminated and it would still be an excellent show. Such theatrical dressing is icing on the cake. Marko Bujeaud’s set is a backdrop of beautiful trees and a huge pageant wagon of a type that may or may not have actually been used by roving players in Shakespeare’s time. Harlequin used the same wagon when they did this play in the Washington Center black box in 1998. It was originally designed by Seattle set designer Jeffrey Cook. It is a large wagon (easily 10 feet tall by my estimate) built of heavy old timber with a side wall that lets down to rest on barrels and serve as a thrust stage and with cleverly designed hand and foot holds actors can use for climbing. This wagon is the only set piece (other than the trees) and it is all that is needed. 

The entire story is a play within a play as a roving band of actors and a narrator (called Chorus and acted by Daniel Flint, who also plays the French Ambassador, a constable, Governor Harfleur, Duke of Burgundy, a soldier and a prisoner) acts out the story of young King Henry V’s invasion of France and his courtship of Princess Katherine (Maggie Lofquist). High drama is mixed with loads of comedy, since the troupe of actors is a scraggly bunch and due to the high comedy provided by Henry’s old drinking and carousing buddies — Pistol (Taryn Pearce), Bardolph (Flint), Nym (Frank Lawler), Mistress Quickly and the Boy (Lofquist).

There are two epic battle scenes, each of which is preceded by inspirational speeches from the king, and each of which is filled with marvelously choreographed sword fights. There is a comic scene worthy of Abbott and Costello in which Alice tries to teach English to Katharine. There are numerous scenes of intrigue, and an excellent if too long denouement in which Henry bargains with the king and queen of France for the hand of their daughter, Katherine.

In many other plays Russ Holm has proven that he has a special knack for playing big, blustery characters, especially ones who are taken with their own authority, and he employs that here as the Archbishop of Canterbury, King Charles VI of France and other nobles.

Casey Brown morphs into many diverse characters and is especially notable as Louis the Dauphin and as the French aide. 

Director Scot Whitney is to be commended for an excellent job and, more importantly, for being the originator of the concept of using eight actors for a play that is usually done with 20 or more.

It is a long play, close to three hours including a 20-minute intermission. I enjoyed it immensely, but I have to admit I got anxious for them to wind things up after the last big fight scene.

WHEN: Thursdays through Saturdays, 8p.m., Sundays 2 p.m. through Oct. 26

WHERE: State Theater, 202 E. 4^th Ave., Olympia

TICKETS: $32, $28 seniors and military, $20 students, discounted rush tickets a half-hour prior to curtain

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

Marilyn Frasca’s “Like This” at Childhood’s End

The Weekly Volcano, Oct. 10, 2013

And Then the Boys Played War

The 71 drawings in Marilyn Frasca’s “Like This,” at Childhood’s End are stunning. It is an exhibition of drawings done since 2001. All of the drawings are done with pastel or other media drawn into monoprints. Each picture tells a story, be it the story of Squaxin Indians recreating an historic canoe trip or depictions of Native American legends, be it a tender rendition of people with their animals, or art about the horror of war and the events of Sept. 11, 2001. They are memories and events real and imagined, created with sensitivity to form, balance, texture; and each picture, no matter how real or how detailed, began with what the Surrealists called automatic writing — marks on a surface derived from the artist’s unconscious.

There is power here. And love. And humanity.

Witness

The earliest drawing in the show is a little black and white image that Frasca created by inking a Plexiglass plate, messing around with it and finally driving her Subaru over it to create an abstract image of densely textured areas.  The piece is called "Terror of the Situation." It looks like a horse’s head. Frasca said, “This is something Gurdjieff refers to in his writings that happens to people when they are pondering very difficult questions. At the time I made this I was deeply disturbed by the USA support for war.”

Every other piece in the show is an outgrowth of this in which she created textured areas on paper

One Song

through similarly made monoprints, and then, over time, studied the textural areas until she found images within the abstract forms and drew them out with pastels or other drawing implements. Many of the earlier ones were reactions to the attacks on Sept. 11. The whole back wall of the gallery consists of war-related images made in this way, including a large drawing of two Palestinian women standing in front of Picasso’s great anti-war painting “Guernica.” One of the women is holding a candle, which resonates with the arm holding a lamp in Picasso’s painting, a metaphor for light shown on the horror of war. A nearby wall text includes a clipping from Maureen Dowd’s column in the New York Times which said that when Colin Powell addressed the U.N. in the buildup to the Iraq War he had “Guernica,” which hangs in the U.N., covered up because he could not make the case for going to war with it in view.

Each picture in Frasca’s show is a dialog between the abstract and the figurative; between smooth, flat areas of color and roughly textured shapes; between the conscious and the unconscious; between images seen and images imagined. 

A drawing called “A Gathering” is almost completely filled with a large textured area that looks like a rugged Cliffside with — as if she grew out of the cliff — a winged angel to the far right. The angel is the only recognizable image, and everything except her face is filled with the original textural marks. At the opposite extreme formally, none of the original texture remains in “Daily Practice.” It is an image of a woman with outstretched arms upon which three birds are perched. Somewhere between these in terms of the balance between abstract textures and realistic figure drawing is “Where Ever We Go,” a drawing of two standing women in which the textured areas become robes or shrouds that wrap around the two figures. Only the head of one woman can be seen, and only the eyes of the other.

Like This

The piece from which the show takes its title is “Like This.” It pictures a person holding two masks in his hands. One is a dull gray mask of a face with no eyeballs. It covers the person’s face. The other mask is yellow and its tongue is sticking out. As the person changes masks he or she becomes “like this” and then “like this.” The artist said that it was only after completing the drawing that she learned that both masks are traditional in Native American culture.

A canoe journey inspired “Leaving Squaxin.” Every year the Squaxin Island Indians paddle more than 100 canoes throughout Puget Sound to celebrate the revival of traditional travel on the ancestral highways of the coastal Pacific Northwest, stopping at indigenous territories along the way for cultural celebration and sharing. In 2012 they landed on the beach below Frasca’s home. She was astounded by the sight and to commemorate this event she created this largest work in the show, a picture of an Indian woman paddling her canoe. It is one of the few pieces in the show in which the textures are allowed on the body. It is as if the woman’s body is transparent and you can see these rich textures through her arms. Metaphorically perhaps that would be the history of the tribe seen on her flesh.

One of my favorite pieces, partially because it is so different from all the others, is “The Far Shore,” showing a fisherman in a stormy sea near a rugged coastline. It reminds me a lot of some of Winslow Homer’s watercolors of fishermen on stormy seas. There are also two little wash drawings that are entirely different from everything else in the show. They are among the newest pieces and may be harbingers of what’s to come next.

This may well be the best show you will see this year. It is an exhibition should that should be shown in a major museum featuring works by a woman who, by all rights, should be represented by big-time galleries in New York and Los Angeles. Count yourself lucky that we have it at Childhood’s End in Olympia.

inH

[Childhood’s End Gallery, Like This, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday-Saturday, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., Sunday, through Nov. 17, 222 Fourth Ave. W, Olympia, 360.943.3724]

The Whirlwind at Hands On Children’s Museum

The Weekly Volcano, Oct. 3, 2013

There’s a maze in a whirlwind in front of the Hands On Children’s Museum in Olympia. Children love it. And so do art lovers, because it is a large-scale work of art by internationally renowned sculptor Patrick Daugherty.

South Sound art lovers will recall Daugherty’s delightful and amazing “Call of the Wild,” an installation in the form of a giant teapot and pitcher made of twisted twigs hanging over and floating in the water feature in front of the Museum of Glass where Martin Blank’s “Fluent Steps” stands today. Daugherty’s piece was installed in the reflective pool for the opening of the museum in 2002 and remained in place for a full year.

Board members at Hands On Children’s Museum had seen Daugherty’s “Call of the Wild” and were so impressed with it that they called on him when they were planning the new museum near the Port of Olympia. Daugherty’s installation at Hands On is the centerpiece and focal point of the Outdoor Discovery Center in front of the museum, which is still being expanded. When completed it will be a half-acre outdoor space designed to encourage children to hike the Trike Loop, dig into Mud Pie Play, enjoy the Driftwood Fort Area and the Children’s Garden.

The new piece, called “Muskrat Ramble,” is a maze of towers and arches and winding circular paths that children can climb and crawl and walk through. For children it is play; for adults it is a powerful work of art. The swirling motion of the twigs — mostly bendable maple vines and some elm and cherry — that make up towers and arches appear to be caught up in a powerful whirlwind. 

The materials were gathered onsite at the Port Blakely Tree Farms in Delphi, Wash., and were donated to the museum. The artist employed more than 40 volunteers, including children and museum staff, to weave the sticks together according to his vision. The work took more than two weeks, from Aug. 1-16.

“The idea of cursive handwriting was a starting point for this sculpture because I thought of children practicing its looping lines and learning to connect letters into words,” Daugherty said. “I used a cursive base for the footprint, drawing it on the ground and then letting those curvy lines suggest where the sculpture should go.  We also needed some height in the form of towers to announce the work so, while the walls run around the outside as part of a continuous loop, they sometimes rise up to stir things up and suggest flying, spinning tops, somewhat like the amorphous shapes that vines sometimes make in the wild when they overtake trees.

“When designing with children in mind, I plan for lots of movement and put emphasis on doors and windows and hidey-holes that are scaled to provide a sense of intimacy for children. Kids are art connoisseurs in their own right and they enjoy visual excitement as well.  

“I have come to believe that one's childhood shapes a sculptor's choice of his or her materials. For me it was growing up in the woodlands of North Carolina, which are overgrown with small trees and where forests are a tangle of intersecting natural lines. In fact, I have always loved the drawing quality of the winter landscape in which one might imagine fantasy shapes drawn into the upper branches of trees. For me, tree branches and saplings also have the rich associations with childhood play and with the shelters built by animals. Picking up a stick and bending it seems to give me big ideas.  I think this ‘know how’ is one that every human carries as a legacy from our hunting and gathering past. When I turned to sculpture in the early ’80s, I had to rediscover what birds already knew: sticks have an infuriating tendency to entangle with each other. It is this simple tangle that holds my work together.”   

Daugherty’s sculptures are monumental in scale and site-specific. Over the last 30 years, he has built more than 230 such works, which can be seen in museums, on university campuses and other public sites all over the world.

When “Call of the Wild,” was installed at Museum of Glass a museum spokesperson said, “Patrick Dougherty's work references architecture, sculpture and the landscape as well as concepts of shelter. … His sculptures are all site-specific and created from branches and cut saplings, which he integrates into buildings and natural structures.”

His “Muskrat Ramble,” at Hands On is expected to last for about 3 years.

The still new and growing museum features eight galleries with interactive displays on such themes as “Our Puget Sound,” “Our Fabulous Forests” and the “Arts and Parts Studio.” There are fire engines and a police car and things to climb in and slide down; nearly everything is interactive, designed for learning and play. And there’s a café and gift shop.

The Museum will participate in the Olympia Fall Arts Walk on October 4-5. The sculpture, as well as the Museum itself, will be open for visitors to tour between 5-9pm for free. The museum is open seven days a week including late hours on Thursdays and free admission every first Friday.

Hello Meghan Mitchell

Meghan Mitchells Drawings at Fulcrum

The Weekly Volcano, Oct. 3, 2013

Meghan Mitchell’s drawings in the show “Hello” at Fulcrum Gallery are delightful. I could easily dismiss them as cute little drawings not really important as art, but I could just as easily dismiss the art of great graphic artists like Saul Steinberg and Jules Feiffer in the same way. I can see similarities between Mitchell’s drawings and some by Steinberg and Feiffer. I also see similarities in style to popular Tacoma artist Sean Alexander.

In this show there are only a handful of drawings in ink, graphite and pigment on paper. They are humorous, quirky, inventive and skillfully drawn. Mitchell’s drawing style is precise and highly controlled.

A wall statement describes the work as being “inspired by zines, comics, and certain trappings of childhood” and as “an exploration of one woman's quest to share her rich inner monologue and myriad selves.”

“Flight From Midgard” illustrates an ancient Norse legend and, simultaneously, makes fun of a contemporary myth held dear by certain religious groups: the rapture. Or does it celebrate the rapture? Perhaps that is up to the viewer to decide. According to Norse mythology, the bravest warriors are taken by Valkyries from Midgard (the land of men) to live in Asgard (land of the gods) in Valhalla. Mitchell’s drawing depicts a colorful tent. Scattered inside the tent are a man and a woman’s underwear, two booze bottles and a book. The couple has been whisked away, and left behind is a spiral of stardust rising to heaven. More to the point, “Raptured” depicts the same scene minus the tent. It is just a clump of clothes and the stardust. Both are lovely drawings.

Flanked on either side of “Raptured” are “Space Cadet” and “Green Thumb.” Both of these are silhouetted figures of women with patterns on their bodies which can be seen either as very tightly fit clothing or as patterns painted directly on their skin. Both have big eyes and glasses. “Space Cadet’s” skin is a field of stars in a dark blue sky; in

 “Green Thumb” (subtitled “Creature from the Black Lagoon”) the woman’s skin is a field of grass. Both are strong graphic images that show otherworldly figures in a comic book fashion. 

Other drawings in the show include a couple of anthropomorphized monkeys with big, black-rimmed glasses, and yet another drawing includes a tent similar to the one in “Flight From Midgard,” but in this instance the tent becomes a fantasy house.

And speaking of tents, there is an actual tent in the middle of the gallery that you can crawl into and play Nintendo games.

[Fulcrum Gallery, Hello, noon to 6 p.m. Wednesday and Fridays and by appointment, through Nov. 13, 1308 Martin Luther King Jr. Way, Tacoma, 253.250.0520]

 March 12th - April 19^th