Happy Days

As you read this, I am currently laying on the beach on Mexico's Pacific Coast, watching the waves come in. Or maybe I'm already in the bar, drinking a Negra Modelo and eating fresh ceviche. Happy Days.

Back home in Seattle, another woman is spending time on the beach. However, seeing as how her travel agent is one Samuel Beckett, one can assume her time is somewhat less enjoyable. In fact, actress Mary Ewald is currently buried in sand up to her neck, getting ready for her turn as Winnie in the New City Theater production of Beckett's play Happy Days.

The ironically titled play is indeed a beach scene of sorts - the action takes place on an endless expanse of beach, with harsh sunlight beating down on the protagonists. Winnie, the main character, is buried in sand, completely immobile, engaging in her tedious daily routine. There is no relief from the heat - at one point even her parasol, her only protection, bursts into flames. Meanwhile her only companion in the world, Willie - played by Seanjohn Walsh - grunts with irritation, works Vaseline into his privates and sleeps. In short, this is theater not be missed.

Happy Days opens on March 1st. Tickets are available right here. Now if you'll excuse me, I've got a margarita demanding my attention.

New City New Year

For close to 30 years New City Theater has been a vital force in Seattle, creating dramas of great subtlety and powerful impact using - to say the least - limited resources. The company has been nomadic for much of its existence, producing their work sporadically in improvised places. In 2010 founders Mary Ewald and John Kazanjian received grants from 4Culture, and a nod of approval from new landlords, to take over a small storefront venue at 18th Avenue and Union Street on Capitol Hill.

For the first time in recent memory New City announced a full slate of productions for 2011. The season starts this week with David Mamet's political satire "November," opening Jan. 21; Elizabeth Kenny's world-premiere show "Sick" opens April 8, and Sam Shepard's "Curse of the Starving Class" runs from May 20-June 12.

In the fall, New City will debut a new work by Seattle playwright Curtis Taylor, and present Oscar Wilde's "The Importance of Being Earnest." In addition New City will host a late-night poetry-performance series, curated by agent provocateur Seanjohn Walsh and a short run of a new piece by Seattle author Rebecca Brown.

Queen Shmooquan: Plugged

Queen Shmooquan - the quasi-religious ultra-bizarre high priestess of junk culture - was all set to become the brightest star in Seattle's absurdist firmament. She wowed the crowds at Northwest New Works, blew them away at the Erotic Art Festival, unexpectedly opened for a Stone Gossard side project...and then she went and got herself knocked up.

Two upcoming "UnPlugged" shows (at the Rendezvous on May 6 & at the Can Can on May 13th) are our last two chances see Queen Shmooquan in pre-natal action before she goes on an indefinite hiatus. Parenthood changes everyone, and there's no telling what sort of effect it will have on the psyche of the preposterously political, riotously scatological, preciously sexual wild-child we call Queen Shmooquan. See her while you can.

Hippochondriac

Andrew Kim, who was once of Seattle's most ingenious puppeteers, left our shores some time ago to ply his trade (and try his luck) in Northern England. Andrew's been getting steady work since then, and his most recent piece is this very attractive and mobile hippopotamus with a puppet stage inside. The hippo's interior structure is built around a tall bike frame, giving the puppeteer amazing control of the creature as well as a bird's eye view of the landscape. As I said, ingenious. Kim, his hippo, and his theatre troupe "Thingumajig" will be touring the English landscape this summer. The full show schedule is here.

Grupo de Rua

Bruno Beltrão's dance company Grupo de Rua comes straight from the streets of Brazil with a uniquely high-energy blend of hip hop, capoeira and lyrical movement. The company is well known for pushing dancers to a point at which their bodies and their movements become unsettling. Dancers bend backwards, crane their necks, twitch hyperactively and slam their bodies to the floor and into each other. Hip hop dance moves, already explosive, verge on the downright violent.

Likewise, Beltrão pushes hard against conventional dance and music structures. Dancers pile on top of each other or run backwards in circles at extreme speeds. His extraordinarily acrobatic approach to B-boying is mind-boggling. The hour-long dance "H3," currently touring the U.S., dispenses with music altogether, the choreography performed to city sounds, electronic noises, sampled squeaking of the dancers' shoes and the sounds of a prepared piano. This is no ordinary street dance, this is raw and daring 21st-century expression.

Bruno Beltrão’s Grupo de Rua performs "H3" at On the Boards Jan. 28-31.

Mysterious Gifts

A guest post from my friend Brooke.
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I work at the Seattle Children's Theater, and I don't normally try to push our productions on my friends and family, and usually don't feel like I need to. SCT is a jewel, and anyone who knows anything about the arts in our city knows that.

However, I really wanted to make sure that everyone knows about the show that we are currently putting on. Mysterious Gifts: Theatre of Iran is part of a project titled Connecting Stories which is an international collaboration of artists creating theatre for young audiences from the United States, the Netherlands, and Iran. Each country has committed to hosting a performance for four consecutive years from 2009 to 2012. The SCT show is the very first performance in this series, and Iranian artist Yaser Khaseb has created such a beautiful show of puppets and movement. After just two weeks here, the show will travel to Tempe and Minneapolis, and the Iranian theater company will have a chance to connect with artists and production staff at each theater. The performance is simply stellar, the whole Connecting Stories project is powerful in so many ways, especially in that it is giving people an opportunity to see the Iranian culture in a brand new positive light.

During opening night of the show this past Friday, the audience, myself included, was captivated. What these artists are sharing is truly something special and unique. Our friends from Iran are only here for a short 4 weeks before they must return home, and the show runs only 2 of those weeks. I am telling you now, you do not want to miss it. It is truly amazing.

Two Wheels North

Seattle's Book-It Repertory Theatre, well known for their theatrical adaptations of assorted literary treasures, is partnering with 4Culture’s Site-Specific program to present their version of the historical novel Two Wheels North - the true story of two teenage boys who cycled from their home in Santa Rosa, California to Seattle, Washington in 1909. Roads hardly existed along most of the route at the time, and the boys rushed headlong into natural and mechanical challenges of all kinds in pursuit of a promised $25 prize from the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.

The book, by Evelyn McDaniel Gibb, granddaughter of one of the cyclists, received the Pacific Northwest Writers Association Nonfiction Book Award in 2003. The dramatic re-telling will be presented free of charge at venues throughout King County beginning September 25. See here for full schedules.

Bloody Henry

Seattle puppeteer Brian Kooser is currently in London, researching locations, costumes and period language for his upcoming epic "Bloody Henry," a puppet show "wildly based" on the life and times of King Henry VIII. Kooser has working steadily on his craft for years - through his journeyman efforts with Thistle Theatre, his group work with Monkey Wrench Puppet Lab, and his turns as the creator-in-chief of Frankenocchio and Dracula: A Case Study. Still, puppets have a hard time reaching a mainstream audience and Kooser's increasingly excellent work has garnered a cult following but has otherwise been ignored by local audiences and media. Bloody Henry may well be Kooser's breakthrough. The show has been awarded funding from the Seattle Arts Commission and Artists Trust, and Kooser has been laboring on the production all year as an Artist in Residence at Seattle University. Bloody Henry opens at SU's Lee Center on September 24, and Kooser will be showing selections from the work in progress at the Frye Art Museum on July 30th.

He is Risible

Performance artist Kaleb Hagen-Kerr has been a presence on left-of-center Seattle stages for years, creating the endlessly entertaining Big Wheel Bingo, curating the long running burlesque variety show at the Pink Door, hosting Drunk Puppet Nite and acting in the 14-48 festival, among other appearances too numerous to count. His mimicry skills are legendary and his ever-increasing cast of unusual and well-drawn characters is impressive to the point of scariness. One almost suspects Hagen-Kerr of having a genuine personality disorder.

Every Easter, Hagen-Kerr dons a priest's frock and becomes the somewhat-holy, somewhat-ribald and somewhat-drunk Pastor Kaleb. This Sunday, April 12th, Pastor Kaleb celebrates the 10th year of his Easter Service at the Pink Door in the pike place market. As always, the service welcomes children, encourages crowd interaction and promotes liberal drinking. The service also features an all-star gospel choir directed by Sari Breznau of Circus Contraption and Orkestar Zirconium. Social to begin at 11:00 am, and the service begins at 12 noon.

Zou Zou & Princesse Tam Tam

As part of the ever-expanding footprint of Seattle's "Moisture Festival" vaudeville extravaganza, the SIFF Cinema is presenting a week long film program highlighting the world of cinematic varietè, circus, and burlesque. On Sunday March 22nd, SIFF is showcasing a rare Josephine Baker double bill - the 1934 film "Zou Zou", followed by "Princesse Tam Tam" from 1935.

Baker, who was born Freda Josephine McDonald in 1906, had a minor American career as a vaudeville comedian and chorus girl, but like any Black performer at that time she was seriously limited in the level of success she could attain. However, when Josephine traveled to Paris with a new venture, La Revue Nègre, she became a sensation. Everything about Josephine Baker was new and exotic - her famously bold costumes, her uninhibited dancing, and her unabashed sexuality. Her career thrived in integrated Paris society, and by 1927 she was the highest paid entertainer in Europe. She tried to return to the United States a number of times as a star performer but the ventures proved disastrous and Josephine lived the rest of her in France.

The two films being shown in Seattle, created specifically as starring vehicles for the charismatic performer, represent Baker at the height of her career.



The film series, which opens on March 20, also features the Wim Wenders film "Wings of Desire", the Jacques Tati opus "Playtime", and the film "Gypsy" which stars Natalie Wood as burlesque legend Gypsy Rose Lee.

Place Your Bids!

Theater director Richard Foreman — the creator of expressionist spectacles so brilliant, so inspired, so lunatic that no one has ever adequately described one — is letting go of some of his famously baroque prop pieces in an online auction that starts today. The auction includes a Large Hypnotic Heart ("Viewed by some as a melancholic target and others as a spellbinding vortex pulling them into a trance"), Bejeweled Axes ("The masculinity and destructive quality of the Axes reverberates against the femininity of the plumage and the multi-colored jewels") and a Jewish Fish Wrapped in Silk ("The gold and green fish, wrapped in silk with Hebrew letters...is a little atom of total potentiality.") Even if you have no room for an 8 foot tall feathered ax, the site is worth visiting for the descriptions alone.

Foreman's latest offering, Astronome, plays in New York City through April 5. He also recently released the handsome DVD Compilation Sophia: The Cliffs and 35+ Year Retrospective Compilation, which casts an eye back over a truly mind-boggling career.

Seanjohn Agonistes

Seanjohn Walsh is a local treasure - an actor, performance artist and theatrical jack-of-all trades who has set fire to Seattle-area stages for 20 years. After a long run of being everywhere all the time, a few years back Seanjohn disappeared from large scale productions. This month, he's appearing in a new show called "Blind Spot" at Annex Theatre, which is running until February 14. I had the good luck to track him down and get him to answer a few questions before he disappeared into a cloud of dubiously-legal smoke.

Hi Seanjohn. What's shaking?
Well, very happy we have President Obama, he’s the first President that’s younger than me. I hope to be invited to dinner, since there’s all that noise about the arts. I could recite some poems for my supper. And I’m still glad I sold my car, turned off my landline and my laptop was stolen. Very glad to not have a cellphone, either.

How do people get in touch with you?
There’s a pencil on a string outside my window, hanging on the wrought iron, and a pad of paper under the windowsill brick. We call it Phony Express. That should impress the White House.

How long have you been working on the Seattle stage?
My first play in Seattle was for a now-defunct family company called World Mother Goose, a show called "The Blue Bird" in the fall of 1989.

We haven't seen you in a main stage production in years. Where have you been hiding yourself?
I’ve been focusing on cameos and appearances for a few years, in cabarets, festivals and almost anywhere performance art wasn’t tolerated. I like to cause a commotion, you know. It got to be too difficult showing up night after night in productions I didn’t feel particularly connected to, or for audiences and fellow thespians that would hold artists at an arms length, you know: entertain me but please don’t be real in a conversation. I had to reassess who, when, and where I could trust to cultivate expression and not be compromised into “politeness.”

Tell me about the new show, Blind Spot?
It’s a wonderful ensemble show, written by Juliet Waller Pruzan and Bret Fetzer. A little girl does NPR style reports about civilizations that live under the bed, in the china cabinet, the lighting fixture. It’s very imaginative in both the writing and staging. Annex has consistently produced these awesome shows in small spaces without much of a budget. I wear an Andy Warhol wig! And there’s always the Act II villain, which is a major reason I signed on.

What's coming up?
I am scheduled to do a reading of Woody Allen’s "Don’t Drink the Water" in April with Our American Theater Company. Their season this year is ‘Americans Abroad’ and it is a very funny play that starred Jackie Gleason back in the day. It was the first community production I did after high school in 1979! I grew a beard to be the communist secret police; nowadays, I’m sure secret police have shaved heads and ex-wives. In May, I’m playing a dirty old Frenchman in Steve Martin’s "Picasso at the Lapin Agile," at Balagan on Capitol Hill.

Are we ever gonna see that long rumored one-man show?
We’re talking to producers, we want to tour colleges and coffee houses from Bellingham to Portland with “Jupiter Dash’s Stationary Caravan of Literary Wonders.” We’ll see.

How does the current Seattle theatre scene compare with what you think of as the glory days? Are things getting better? Getting worse?
In the 80’s and 90's, artists were moving to Seattle in droves, from all corners and all categories: theatre, music, film, comics, you name it. And there was money, low rent for apartments, rehearsal space, backroom bars, underground cabarets, storefront galleries and theaters, great cheap cafes. When regional people like Sky Cries Mary met Kultur Shock, the Northwest Film Forum was about to start, Annex and The Compound were at their peaks, Wayne Horvitz, Bill Frissell, and Eyvind Kang were playing down the street; New City was bringing Richard Foreman and Marie Irene Fornes to town on original commissions. The do-it-yourself atmosphere was fostered and nurtured and promoted.

We lost most of that after some of our rockers died, the stadiums got built and the WTO brought the polite fascists into the woodwork. So for a lot of the arts, it is worse now than it was; artists migrated to other cities out of economic necessity, and Seattle stopped being the faraway magnet. There is a dearth of eclectic, independent voices sprouting here; it’s not enough to get some training, you have to breakaway from society a little and contribute back to the over-all dialogue. There are a number of polite, unchallenging companies producing in Seattle now, it’s really almost community theater. If art doesn’t matter, really, in that way that screams “I’m Alive Dammit!”, why bother?

Any new performers/directors/playwrites/events you're excited about? Any who really piss you off?
The Native American theater artist Gene Tagaban has done some great performances for the community. The Seattle International Children’s Festival is one of the most vital organizations in the country. Catch Queen Schmooquan whenever you can, because she will belong to the world one day. Paul Mullin is a playwright that has combined science and literature in a very imaginative way; he too is going to be creating ground-breaking literature come later in the century. My favorite dancer nowadays is Monica Mata Gilliam. I miss the Typing Explosion and the Rollvulvas. Paul Gasoi, truly the epitome of a genius artist, is now living in the woods, surrounded by his family, painting 25 hours a day. And I’m very glad that even though Curtis Taylor isn’t producing for the stage much, he’s making great films and paintings. Britta Johnson has done some very cool shit, stop-motion animations. And Specs! Specs is great, we met while working in a refrigerator magnet factory years ago. We have the same birthday, and he creates fabulous comic books and still leads the way with his hip-hop recordings. I enjoy all kinds of artists, I guess.

What’s started to excite me is this new ensemble we’re creating, a new iteration of the Lab at Freehold. We have at least four playwrights, a core of wicked actors and directors. The idea is to kick some major ass. Because art and theater matter, every day and every night. It’s vital.

Give us some words of wisdom, man. We need some wisdom.
Seattle theater has experienced a stock market-like decline, and we need our own spiritual bailout. We’ve lost some great performers, like Richard Waugh, Glen Mazen, Anthony Lee, and recently Douglas Paasch. I am confident that their spirits will band together at the foot of Queen Anne with giant jumper-cables to charge the scene and wake-up Prometheus. Theater started out as religious experience, and if it’s dead or dying, it might as well go out with a vengeance. And let it rip.

An Ontological Night At The Opera

This goes under the category of must-see performances. For the first time ever, the unbridled and unpredictable geniuses Richard Foreman and John Zorn are collaborating on a work of theatre. Foreman has written, directed and designed nearly a hundred plays in New York and around the world. He's received uncountable awards, including five Obie Awards for Best Play of the Year. Zorn is a multi-instrumentalist, composer, and producer who has thousands of records to his credit, including those released under his reknowned Tzadik record label. Together, they are busily writing and rehearsing the new play "Astronome: A Night At The Opera" which opens at Foreman's Ontological Theater in downtown Manhattan on February 5. According to Foreman's hysterical press release, "Astronome" is a work dominated by ecstatic groans, grunts and babbling, and explores the initiation of a group of people into a world where ambiguous behavior alone leads to freedom. I do not know what that means, but if anyone can make sense of it, it's Richard Foreman.

In one more unprecendented move from the two iconoclasts, they are live streaming their rehearsal process each Wednesday until the play opens. Live video is available on free103point9 every Wednesday until the end of January, 10am - 4:30pm, New York time. This play cannot be extended and is very unlikely to ever tour. If you are in or around NYC before April 5, see it.

Teatro Mexicano en Ruedas

Teatro UNAM is a mobile theater company based in Mexico City. They travel with a specially engineered trailer that transforms into a full stage complete with props, puppets, wardrobe, the works. The company roams throughout Mexico, and at each stop they set up the stage and perform, often in rural areas of the country where stage drama is rarely seen, if ever. This video shows one such transformation, in a high school in Mexico City, for a performance of J.M. Synge's "The Playboy of the Western World," under the direction of Alonso Ruizpalacios.

Silhouette Masterpiece Theatre

Seattle puppeteer and playwright Scot Augustson has been performing shadow puppetry for 10 years under the name "Sgt. Rigsby and His Amazing Silhouettes." The writing and aesthetic have evolved considerably since Scot's early days of struggle at the Annex Theatre, but the best Sgt. Rigsby episodes still proudly feature horny preachers, merry drunks, lovable hookers and operatic chickens.

Sgt. Rigsby's most recent show, A Boy in the Beastly City, which played at the Theatre Off Jackson in February, has been brilliantly filmed and turned into a two-part online epic. Newly recorded music and sound effects are by the much beloved Circus Contraption Band. The show is bawdy, witty, nostalgic, and profoundly fun. And you can only see it on Sgt. Rigsby's website.

And speaking of silhouettes, extraordinarily clever graphic designer Wilhelm Staehle has been busily expanding his ouevre over at Silhouette Masterpiece Theatre. Staehle exposes even more of his warped and nostalgic worldview at his blog, The Dollar Dreadful Family Library. "There is something to be found for all, be it occult adventures, mysterious crimes, woodsmen, foreign lands, or domestic disputes!"

Aurelia's Oratorio

Aurélia Thiérrée was born in Lausanne, Switzerland, into a family of renowned performers. Her grandfather was movie icon Charlie Chaplin, and her mother was Victoria Chaplin, one of eight children born to Oona O'Neill, daughter of the playwright Eugene. Her father, Jean-Baptiste Thierree, was a French film star who acted for directors like Fellini and Alain Resnais before becoming a full-time ringmaster. The counter-cultural circus family had an epiphany in 1978, dispensed with animals altogether, and redefined circus for a modern audience with the frills-free touring show, Le Cirque Imaginaire, in which Aurélia and her brother James made their theatrical debuts as scurrying suitcases.

Thiérrée is bringing her acclaimed show Aurelia's Oratorio to the Seattle Rep for only seven shows over five days, May 7 though 11, as an opening spectacle for the Seattle International Children's Festival. Thiérrée is a gifted acrobat, illusionist and puppeteer, and Aurélia’s Oratorio is an upside-down, inside-out world of reversals and altered states. A place of clocks and whistles where time and people disappear, coats wrestle and dispatch their owner, dresses twitch and dance alone, limbs take on a life of their own as if a poltergeist has taken over the stage. Buy tickets here. I got mine already.

The Stranger Slog has a short and intriguing interview with Ms. Thiérrée.

From the Sacred...

I had the great pleasure of watching the final installment of the Queen Shmooquan "Say My Name" show at the Rendezvous Jewel Box theater. Queen Shmooquan is a character created by Jeppa Hall, who is part sex goddess, part retarded child. Queen Shmooquan is a kind of priestess of strange rituals in which the stuff of religion gets tangled up with the trappings of politics, as performed by a sexually precocious wild child. Even with a history of extreme weirdness, "Say My Name" raises the bar on entertaining perversion. Jeppa was featured earlier this year in the Seattle Weekly. Playing through this weekend ONLY at the Rendezvous.

And Speaking of Trains...

I found out last night that a fond friend is on her way to Colombia to perform at the IberoAmerican Theater Festival, billed as the largest theater festival in the world.

Sharing what little I knew about Colombia (mostly gleaned from the pages of 100 Years of Solitude) I remembered the tale of the amazing 1993 Mano Negra musical expedition. The Spanish punk band, in the full throes of their success at the time, commandeered an old freight train, which they rebaptised "l'Expreso de hielo" (the Ice Express) and embarked on a trip through rural Colombia on the country's rusting old railway lines. They ran the show like a circus, randomly arriving in small mountain towns and opening the box cars for side shows, freak shows and opening acts. The day-long spectacle would culminate in Mano Negra's famously riotous performances.

Midway through the tour, the band was joined by the journalist Ramon Chao (father of band members Manu and Antione Chao) who wrote the book "Un Train de glace et de feu" based on his observations of the ambitious journey. By all accounts, the "Ice Express" was an exhausting, often grueling, experience which ultimately led to the collapse of the band. I can only hope for something equally momentous for my theatrical pal.

Meanwhile, this is an excellent video of Mano Negra's biggest hit, "La Mala Vida."

All my heart to Pepita, who first told me about this Spanish punk experiment.