Danyna Hanson's "Gloria's Cause," part of the TBA Festival starting this weekend in Portland. Photo: Ben Kasulke.
If there's one thing Seattle sadly lacks, it's a big festival of contemporary performance, like Austin's Fusebox, New York's Under the Radar, or even Vancouver, B.C.'s PuSH. Yes, On the Boards brings in touring artists like that all year long, as well as serving as an incubator for local talent. And Theatre off Jackson does, too (them being, in their own words, "the working women's On the Boards"). And finally, there's plenty of smaller presenters doing the leg-work to bring high quality art to Seattle (did you know that Paula the Swedish Housewife is bringing in Taylor Mac for an intimate, one-night-only performance at Oddfellows?).
Well, as much as we all may wish that, on top of all that, we could be subjected to a big, two-week festival as well, it ain't happening anytime soon. But a short drive down to Portland this September gets you to the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art's 2010 TBA Festival, one of the country's premier showcases of performance (with film, music and visual art thrown in).
Starting Thursday, Sept. 9, Portland plays host to a fantastic line-up of artists from around the world, as well as showcasing some of the Northwest's top talent.
On the theatre front, the first weekend features a pair of amazing solo performers. Mike Daisey is already pretty well known in the Northwest, having began his career as a lectern-based monologuist in Seattle, tackling the New Economy absurdity of Amazon.com. For TBA, he's returning to similar territory with The Agony and Ecstasy of Steve Jobs, a new work which explores the rather unpleasant process by which Apple's beloved products are made in Chinese factories where workers toil in subpar working conditions. Also appearing is Conor Lovett of the Gare St. Lazare Players, performing two of Samuel Beckett's prose pieces as monologues. If that sounds odd, trust me, it's not to be missed. There's a long tradition of presenting Beckett's prose work theatrically (it's laugh-out-loud funny), and this weekend I did a phoner with Lovett, so expect more soon.
As for the non-solo performer theatre, TBA features three big names: the Wooster Group, the Nature Theatre of Oklahoma, and Theatre Stefan Zeromski. The Wooster Group, perhaps America's most well-regarded still0functioning avant-garde theatre company, is bringing in a piece called There Is Still Time...Brother. That said, There is Still Time...Brother is an "interactive, 360-degree war film" installation piece featuring no live actors. So, um, yeah. I'm sure it's technologically impressive (that's what Wooster does) but I'm less than stoked about a play with no actors.
Still, Nature Theatre and Stefan Zeromski more than make up for Wooster Group's (no matter how interesting I'm sure it really is) profitably tourable no-man show. Nature Theatre is bringing in their beloved (well, not by most mainstream critics) Romeo & Juliet. Anyone who caught their No Dice last year when OtB brought it to Seattle has maybe an idea of what to expect, but basically, for several years Nature Theatre has been exploring memory through performance. Romeo & Juliet isn't a traditional performance of the play, nor even an avant-garde reimagining; instead, Nature Theatre collaborators interviewed people and asked them to describe the plot and dialogue of what's probably the best known play in the English language, then used that recorded text to stage their own version. The result is actually a remarkably endearing quilt that demonstrates what many different people take away from the play, the lines and moments and narratives and characters that stick with people years after they've read the play in school. It's a beautiful idea, and apparently amazing in performance.
As for Theatre Stefan Zeromski, they're some of the big up-and-comers on the international touring circuit on account of their bad-boy director Radoslaw Rychcik, whose press materials make him out to be more of a hard-partying rock star than a studious theatre director. And that's okay, because with In the Solitude of the Cotton Fields, Rychcik reimagines Bernard-Marie Koltès's experimental play as a rock performance, complete with a live Polish rock outfit, the Natural Born Chillers. Theatre Stefan Zeromski will be appearing later in the season at OtB, but why not take the chance to see them before everyone else does?
As for contemporary dance, TBA features a hell of a line-up. French choreographer Jérôme Bel is offering up Cédric Andrieux, part of a series of solo performances choreographed for specific dancers, in this case...Cédric Andrieux, a former member of the Merce Cunningham company. John Jasperse Company will be in town the second weekend with Truth, Revised Histories, Wishful Thinking & Outright Lies. Danielle Kelly and Noelle Stiles, collaborators split between Portland and Las Vegas, will be presenting a piece called Blanket for limited audiences. And Greek Cypriot-born, NYC-based choreographer Maria Hassabi will bring in SoloShow, a beautiful piece in which Hassabi constructs a movement work from more than 300 distinct images of female beauty from sculptural antiquity to contemporary hiphop publicity photos. I sat down with Hassabi in a Chelsea cafe for an interview this week, so expect more shortly.
And then, there's Dayna Hanson. One-half of the creative duo behind 33 Fainting Spells, the company that, along with Pat Graney, put Seattle on the international dance map, debuts her newest work, Gloria's Cause. It's as much an experimental rock performance as a dance work, which takes the American Revolution and its attendant iconography and puts them through a blender of movement, visual, and musical re-interpretation and re-imagination. In addition to longtime collaborators like Dave Proscia, who will be playing in the live band, Hanson will be putting some of my favorite Seattle dancers onstage, including the well-loved and -respected Wade Madsen, and the always marvelous Jim Kent. Gloria's Cause, co-commissioned by TBA, NYC's Under the Radar Festival, and On the Boards, will be at OtB in December.
And that's only, like, half of it. TBA isn't limited to outright performance--the name (TBA is short for "Time-Based Art") comes from a now sort of outdated Seventies term for performance that blurred the lines between dance, theatre, and performance art, and true to its lineage, TBA Festival presents visual art, music, and video in addition to dance and theatre. The festival kicks off with an orchestrated performance by Rufus Wainright (as we've already mentioned), and in addition to the various series we've only briefly touched upon, PICA headquarters TBA at a bar/performance space called "The Works," which nightly provides for the alcoholic imbibing of artists and patrons alike, facilitated with an ever-changing roster of performances that range from indie rockers Japanther to Ten Tiny Dances, which this year will feature Seattle's own Michael Rioux.
Also, during but independent of the TBA Festival, Portland's Hand2Mouth Theatre will be premiering the second installation of their new work Uncanny Valley. The show runs two weeks starting this Wednesday at Reed College. Hand2Mouth is an amazing devised theatre company. Most recently, long-time company member Erin Leddy presented her new solo work My Mind is Like an Open Meadow at OtB's NW New Works Festival. It wasn't exactly a Hand2Mouth show, but it was created in a crucible of mutual support.
The TBA Festival runs at various venues around Portland from Thursday, Sept. 9 through Saturday, Sept. 19. Tickets: this is a festival, featuring multiple options. Individual tickets can be purchased online here. See the festival homepage for remaining festival pass options.
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