Archive for August, 2010

John Jodzio, Becca Yenser, Jason Maurer and Myself at Reading Frenzy, Sept. 4th

You may think you’ve read enough stories about penniless gay clowns who can’t get over the loss of a dog, but — I assure you — you have not. John Jodzio is the best kind of modern fiction writer: a thematic traditionalist who feels totally new.  — Chuck Klosterman, author of Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs

A middle-aged masochist in love with a comatose man. A gay birthday clown lamenting the loss of his beloved dog. An amateur veterinarian keeping watch over his suicidal daughter. And a bikini model with a barnacle stuck to her butt cheek. These are just a few of the characters who populate the quirky, offbeat world of If You Lived Here You’d Already Be Home (Replacement Press, 2010) — a world that feels at once alien and strangely familiar. In these 21 brief, funny stories, John Jodzio documents his characters’ disappointment, frustration, and longing for a home that seems forever out of reach. By turns bleak and hopeful, cruel and tender, this is an exciting literary debut by a writer to watch, a writer with a unique and compelling voice.

Catch John on tour reading and signing at Reading Frenzy along with Becca Yenser, Jason Maurer and myself.  I’m excited to be reading a few numbers from my poetry collection Body Making Cookery, including “How to Boil an Egg” which the short film I’m making with Jason Bahling, The Body Show, is based on. Next Saturday the 4th, 921 SW Oak, 7-9PM, FREE.

Transmission from Mt. Angel: Vodka Abuse

A few months ago, I met Meg in a Writing for the Radio class with Kim Stafford. Meg has very large blue eyes which telegraph the funny or tragic in what she is saying.  When she talks, she tends to look around at who she’s talking to and make good eye contact.  She once studied acting in NYC where she lived for 18 years before moving back to Mt. Angel where she grew up. In Mt. Angel, she lives in a farmhouse close to a 130 year old Benedictine monastery. It’s a very small community where people know a person’s entire family history for generations. All they need is the last name, and they know a lot about you. She volunteers listening to elderly people who confide secrets to her they don’t tell anyone else because if they did, that person would probably know too much.  Here’s a little story by Meg about her vodka-making project, which she did despite the disapproval of some of her family.

Oregon is a Citadel of the Spirit: Matt Love at the Walt Curtis Benefit

Matt Love, publisher of Nestucca Spit Press and Newport HS English teacher, has been in love with Oregon for a long time. I originally met Matt because I heard him read at the Blackbird Wine Shop and tell a story about a guy named Todd he met in the woods along Fish Creek near Mt. Hood.  Todd was swaying visibly from what Matt believed to be a mixture of meth and malt liquor.  He said to Matt, My name’s Todd.  I was born by Todd Lake, Oregon.  I live in Oregon City, and I love Oregon. It don’t get no more Oregon than that! I knew right away I wanted to interview Matt for the New Oregon Interview Series.  Matt is always talking about what Oregon is, what it means in terms of place.  In the video below at the Walt Curtis Benefit at Berbati’s he talks about a story Walt told him about Ken Kesey.  Apparently Kesey told Walt that Oregon is a citadel of the spirit. In the introduction to Citadel of the Spirit: Oregon’s Sesquicentennial Anthology, Matt writes A citadel towers over all it surveys.  It is a fortress seen from afar protecting something important, perhaps even sacred. I think Oregon does offer the chance to start afresh, to create something outside of the blueprints used in other locations such as New York, the Midwest or Los Angeles, even in this day and age, and it was certainly true in the days of the Oregon Trail.  Folks who wanted quick gold-mining cash and easy sunshine took the turn to California.  Folks who were willing to create their own farming setups and barn-raise with like-minded individuals, they took the turn for Oregon. Today, the distance from major industry and infrastructure in film, literature, visual arts and many other disciplines means independent artists and makers collaborate and create their own infrastructures often outside of corporate or governmental structures to make work that often is marked by a purity of artistic intention, because that is what people come here to do. It’s a petri dish, an incubator, a microclimate of creativity that needs this particular combination of scarcity and resources to flourish.

The video’s a bit dark, but Matt’s voice is well worth watching for.

Matt Love at Walt Curtis Benefit from Nora Robertson on Vimeo.

Just so you know what I’m talking about in terms of Oregon love, here’s Matt accepting the Stewart Holbrook award from Literary Arts.

Chloe Eudaly’s Kickstarter for Reading Frenzy

I don’t know about you, but my most pivotal cultural experiences growing up didn’t happen at the art museum, the ballet or the symphony.  —Chloe Eudaly

Reading Frenzy, if you don’t already know it, is a Portland treasure.  Located across Burnside from Powell’s, it is a specialty bookstore that has been supporting and promoting independent publishers and artists, with a special focus on “zines, mini comics, alternative and d.i.y. culture, progressive politics, rebels, renegades and full on freaks,” since 1994. This support includes an open door consignment policy for all local authors and publishers, dozens of free literary events every year and monthly art shows. To be able to continue bringing all this goodness together, owner Chloe Eudaly of Reading Frenzy could use a little help.  Here’s a video made by Karl Lind of In the Can Productions to get the word out through Kickstarter.

More testimonial from Christopher Peralta here.

NEW OREGON INTERVIEW SERIES PERFORMANCE NIGHT

NOISwebbanner AN EVENING OF CONVERSATION WITH THREE PORTLAND PERFORMERS
HOST NORA ROBERTSON WITH ADRIENNE FLAGG, LINDA AUSTIN, AND BETH HARPER

The New Oregon Interview Series brought three prominent Portland performance figures together for an evening of intimate conversation. IFCC creative director and actor/director Adrienne Flagg, Performance Works Northwest founder/director and dancer Linda Austin, and Portland Actors Conservatory founder/artistic director and actor Beth Harper sat down to discuss their work and how our performance culture is evolving on September 30th at Urban Grind East. A Drammy winner who trained in NY’s New Actors Workshop, Adrienne Flagg has directed for TCP, Stark Raving Theatre and Integrity Productions and can be seen in the sketch comedy group, Soap St. A presenter at PS 122, the Kitchen, and Danspace Project during two decades in NY before returning to her native Oregon, Linda Austin has performed at Northwest New Works at both On the Boards and as part of PICA’s TBA Festival as well as at Velocity (Seattle), Conduit and the Echo Theatre. Austin’s collaboration with Seth Nehil, Bandage a Knife, premieres November 13-22 at her home studio, Performance Works NorthWest. A Leslie O. Fulton Fellow for Artistic Excellence, Beth Harper directed William Hurt in Drawer Boy at the Artists Repertory Theater and has toured with Arts America.

Host Nora Robertson conceived the New Oregon Interview Series to find out how Portland’s blossoming creative culture has developed and where it’s headed. “A lot has changed in the past decade,” Robertson says. “The best perspective comes from the artists themselves—and the designers, writers, chefs, and venues who make things happen here.” “A lot has changed in the past decade,” Robertson says. “The best perspective comes from the artists themselves—and the designers, writers, chefs, and venues who make things happen here.” The Oregonian’s Barry Johnson remarked “at this point, we don’t know whether we’re headed back where we left off 18 months ago or whether we’re going somewhere completely new. That question is at the center of the New Oregon Interview Series.”

The New Oregon Interview Series is presented by New Oregon Arts and Letters, a 501c(3) nonprofit organization formerly known as 2GQ, the publishers of 2 Gyrlz Quarterly.  Photo credits: Steve Fritz.

LISTEN FOR YOURSELF

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As the Creative Director of the IFCC, Adrienne Flagg facilitates artistic programming, and develops arts education and artistic partnerships for the IFCC. She is the Artistic Director of The Portland Theatre Brigade and is the former Artistic Director of Toad City Productions. Adrienne trained in New York at SUNY Purchase and the New Actors Workshop with Gene Hackman, Paul Sills, Mike Nichols and Elaine May. In addition to directing many young people’s plays throughout the Northwest and developing new work with playwrights, Adrienne has directed for TCP, Stark Raving Theatre and Integrity Productions. Some of her favorite Portland performances include the lead in The Choice (Stark Raving), Cat in References to Salvador Dali… (Miracle Theatre), Cynthia in The Real Inspector Hound, Jingle Spree (CoHo), Izzy in Rabbit Hole (ART) and the lead in The Waiting Room (Bump in the Road) for which she was awarded a Drammy for best actress in a lead role. She can currently be seen in the sketch comedy group, Soap St.


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Linda Austin returned to her native Oregon in 1998, after two decades in New York, where, from 1983 to 1998, she presented work at venues such as PS 122 and the Danspace Project. In 1999, Linda founded Performance Works NorthWest, an artist-run incubator for live and media arts in Portland, OR. In the last few years, she has performed at Northwest New Works at On the Boards in Seattle and at PICA’s TBA Festival in Portland, where she and Tahni Holt danced their solo adaptations of Deborah Hay’s Room in 2006. Recent Portland projects include an architecturally-defined simultaneous three-part dance in a SE Portland warehouse; as well as a site-specific piece for the Lawrence Halprin-designed Lovejoy Fountain. Her next project, Bandage a Knife, a collaboration with Seth Nehil, premieres Nov. 13-22 at Performance Works NW.

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Beth founded the Portland Actors Conservatory in 1985. As the Conservatory’s Artistic Director, she designs the curriculum for both the Studio and Conservatory training programs, teaches several acting classes, selects the season of plays, and directs one of the season’s productions. In addition to leading the Conservatory, Ms. Harper has served as an adjunct faculty member at Lewis & Clark College since 1992. An award-winning actor, Ms. Harper has been involved in local, regional and national theatre for the past 20 years. She has toured Southeast Asia, Africa and the Middle East with Arts America, and performed in a Northwest tour of Voice of the Oregon Trail. Area directing credits include Drawer Boy featuring William Hurt and Allan Nause at Artists Repertory Theatre, A Piece of My Heart and The Dancers at Lewis & Clark College, Sylvia at Laughing Horse Summer Theatre, and How I Learned to Drive at Artists Repertory Theatre. Ms. Harper did her graduate work in theatre at Portland State University and was a recipient of the 2000 Leslie O. Fulton Fellowship for Artistic Excellence.

Photo Fun with Dan Kvitka + Body Show cover art

I had a ton of fun yesterday doing a photo shoot for the cover art of the Body Show DVD with Dan Kvitka of Kvitka Photography who made me very comfortable by telling me that us girls get crazy with our obsessions about our figures and that the 60′s had it right — or right-er —  in terms of what was considered womanly.   Which made me think a little because that idea of womanliness is part of what I’m trying to talk about with this film, to hold up some of those 50′s or 60′s ideals about femininity and poke a little pin in the idea of the housewife keeping her family safe and well-fed, in the possibility of being completely hygienic.  The thing is that food and where it comes from is never completely safe.  It is messy and involves some sacrifice.  I think some of those old cooking shows and representations of the housewife from back then kind of gloss over that messiness of life and how it sustains itself.  I think part of what David Lynch does is show the underbelly of some of those mid-century types of ideas.

We got a lot of cool shots and now I have to pick one to make halftone for screenprinting.  I liked this profile shot even if it’s not right for the project.