Lit Service

[July 7th, 2004] Not content with just bringing leading writers to town, festooning public transport with poetry or constructing writing workshops in Portland schools, Portland Arts & Lectures is now launching a new program, Verb, which will dramatize pieces of literature for stage performances.

Staged readings have long been a staple in Portland, particularly with Cygnet Productions, where actors (often with costumes and props, and fully blocked) performed short stories or plays while holding the book in hand. Arts & Lectures, however, will be offering fully dramatized renderings of short stories on a theatrical stage.

Inspired by Seattle's Book It and San Francisco's Word for Word series, program director Howard Aaron decided to try a similar format here in Portland. "Verb will be a fully theatrical event," Aaron says. "This will be nothing like a staged reading."

Aaron chose to begin the new series with Northwest writers, selecting Raymond Carver and Ursula K. Le Guin as the premiere subjects. Both Carver's widow, writer Tess Gallagher, and Le Guin will be on hand for post-production discussions. "We've been working very closely with both Le Guin and Gallagher," Aaron says, "and we're excited that they have agreed to take part in the series."

"Carver Country" (which has a three-week run, July 8-25) will include three dramatized short stories: "What We Talk About When We Talk About Love," "Why, Honey?" and "Cathedral." Profile Theater Project's artistic director, Jane Unger, will direct the Carver pieces with a cast headed by Ted Roisum and Deirdre Atkinson.

Aaron and Unger both stress the collaborative effort behind the dramatizations. "Cast members will be taking on different characters in each story," Unger says. "We are working quite a bit with what the actors create in rehearsal."

The words of the narrator, in those pieces that are not written in the first person, will be divided up between the players. "The pieces are fully dramatized," Aaron says. "The actors will not punctuate each line of dialogue with a 'he said' or 'she said,' and if the story directs a character into performing an action, like picking something up or leaving the room, that action will be seen by the audience, rather than being read as narrative."

The second part of the series will be dedicated to Portland's literary grand dame, Ursula K. Le Guin. Two of Le Guin's short stories, "Half Past Four" and "In the Drought" (both taken from the author's collection Unlocking the Air and Other Stories) will run from July 29 to Aug. 15. Former Tygres Heart director Jan Powell will take on the directorial duties with Le Guin's pieces.

Aaron hopes Verb will become a permanent summer feature of Portland Arts & Lectures' season, and PAL would like to perform the final pieces before schools. "I think it would be a great way to introduce kids to short fiction," Aaron says. Actually, considering our media-soaked age, it might work wonders on a few adults as well.