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International travel will not be possible for most of us this summer. As good puritans, Americans enjoy the lowest rate of free time in the western world (perhaps dying on a low-paid job is our patriotic duty). But even if we did have the temerity to reclaim our own lives, there's the expense involved with such an undertaking, which leaves the canals of Bruges and Britain's fields of rape even further from reach. For those of us forced by circumstance to languish in Portland this summer, there is a marvelous alternative to travel. The seventh-annual Portland International Performance Festival--or PIPFest, as it has come to be known--provides the discerning theatergoer with a feast of drama that, in quality, matches anything offered abroad and more than makes amends for the grim diet of local fare. PIPFest creator Michael Griggs, a producer whose imagination greatly exceeds the dimensions of the small screen, has again scheduled a unique and daring showcase of dance, music, film and theater, complete with workshops, courses and lectures by some of the leading artists here to perform. As with last year, when the anarchic Ken Campbell launched the festival with his brilliant Jamais Vu, another important British artist will officially open the summer. Anyone familiar with the dagger-edge of performance art will know that DV8 Physical Theater is the benchmark by which all movement-based theater is measured. From their astonishing Strange Fish to their later and all-too-infrequent collaborations, Lloyd Newson, Nigel Charnock and Wendy Houstoun have shoved the boundaries of dance in all directions. Outside of her work with DV8, Houstoun has also established herself an audacious solo-artist who has created a feverish cabaret; here she will perform her triptych Haunted, Daunted and Flaunted. Haunted is an evocation of the recent past: a purging of old hurts, petty grudges, criminal acts and old lovers. Daunted, with a specially commissioned score by John Avery, is a spot-lighted joke, a stand-up dancer, a possessed spirit, a tongue-tied visionary anticipating the future tense with a smile. Flaunted, in its première, mediates its way into the present as a spiritual vaudeville act. The triptych plays at 7 pm Thursday, July 9, and 8 pm Friday and Saturday, July 10 and 11. Houstoun's lecture, "The Body as Diary: Revealing Memories and Spirits Within," will initiate the free public lecture series at PSU at noon Thursday, July 9. Fast on the heels of Houstoun comes actor and writer Rick Najera with his acclaimed lone-actor piece Pain of the Macho. Like the superb John Leguizamo and the less than adequate Guillermo Reyes, Najera charts the Latino experience through sketches, providing a panoramic survey that is both profound and humorous. Najera will perform at 7 pm Thursday, July 16, and 8 pm Friday and Saturday, July 17 and 18, and will offer a lecture entitled "The Best Writing Is Discovered, Never Written" at noon Thursday, July 16. This year also marks the longed-for return of Poland's Wierszalin Teatr, which will be performing Michael Griggs' own version of Ansky's The Dybbuk. Already acclaimed in its homeland, as well as at last year's Edinburgh Festival and the Toronto festival of Jewish art, Wierszalen's The Dybbuk may well create the stir that its Turlajgroszek caused among local artists in 1994. Amazingly, we will be treated to two productions by Wierszalin this summer, with Doctor Felix, which won the Fringe First award at Edinburgh last year. This production will also mark PIPFest's first collaboration with Puppetry on the Edge, which will be hosting the Northwest Regional Festival of Puppeteers of America come August. The Dybbuk plays at 7 pm Thursday, July 30, 8 pm Friday and Saturday, July 31 and Aug. 1, and 7 pm Sunday, Aug. 2. Doctor Felix will be performed at Lewis and Clark's Fir Acres Theater, 0615 SW Palatine Hill Road, at 7:30 pm Thursday and Friday, Aug. 6 and 7. Returning this year will also be visiting artist Mahesh Dattani, who will present an evening of traditional Indian stories accompanied by dance, music and mime. Author and PSU professor Laurence Kominz will again provide an expert tour of Japanese theater, along with an insightful look at the cinema of Kaneto Shindo, Masahiro Shinoda and Akira Kurosawa. The highly inventive "Home Is Where the Art Is" also returns, with performances by Dmae Roberts and Elaine Low, Sue Brantley, master puppeteer Yuqin Wang, Imago collaborators Waltzing Mice, and multidisciplinary artists Chisao Hata and Thara Memory. With such a wealth of theater here at home, the temples of Mandalay and the ruins of Chichen Itza can safely be left for next year. PIPFest is travel for the mind. |
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