Skip to main contentTheater. The great invalid is on life-support in America. Outside of a few dedicated theater towns (Minneapolis, Chicago, perhaps Seattle), theater has all but flat-lined. Sadly, it's no longer an integral part of the country's culture as it was up until 1975 (the annus terribilis of American culture, when A Chorus Line murdered serious drama on Broadway as surely as Jaws tore into the independent film movement in Hollywood). But there are still devoted cultists worrying the corpse.
One rather quixotic attempt to create theater converts has developed in Portland. StageDirect, the brainchild of Gary Cole (who is also one of the producers of the CoHo Theatre), has begun to film stage plays from around the country to market as videos. Now, viewers can be reintroduced to the pleasures of live performances in the comfort of the own suburban cells. It might even inspire a few to seek out the last vestiges of drama in their neighborhoods.
This week, StageDirect will be enjoying a premiere of sorts, when three of its efforts--Straight, Poona the Fuckdog and The Magnificent Welles--each get a night on the big screen at Cinema 21. Although I have seen David Schmader's excellent one-man show Straight on stage (actually, on a night when StageDirect was filming), I was unable to get a copy for review before going to print. Of the other two, The Magnificent Welles is well worth catching.
Seattle writer and performer Marcus Wolland has created a marvelous stage piece on Orson Welles, whom Wolland has reflect on his life up to the moment that he learns that his masterpiece, The Magnificent Ambersons, is being butchered by Hollywood hacks.
Wolland's script artfully squeezes Welles' rich life into 93 minutes, complete with a rousing retelling of the Cradle Will Rock saga (far more moving than Tim Robbins' plodding, jejune epic), a revisit to The War of the Worlds, and his success as a young actor in Ireland. Wolland's impersonation is honest and near-flawless, so much so that at three times in the film his face and voice literally (and frighteningly) seem to be possessed briefly by Welles' spirit.
Poona, a play by Jeff Goode filmed at its Theatre Vertigo production in Portland, has some great moments of invention but quickly runs out of steam. Goode sends up American culture with a string of corrupt children's tales in which a lonely fuckdog finds help from her Fairy God Penis, a television rules a kingdom (how outlandish), and God vends answers for $5 a crack. There are some good performances by Portland actors Keith Cable, Kam Sisco and Lori Ferraro, but, like too many Saturday Night Live sketches, the show doesn't know when to end.
The two perhaps most interesting videos from StageDirect--Troy Mink's Haint and Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious, by Chicago's Neo-Futurists--will not be getting the widescreen exposure they deserve. Mink's Haint is particularly good, with the Seattle-based actor playing an entire Tennessean town in the grip of a ghost.
Even if StageDirect fails to create new audiences for theater, it is leaving a valuable record of performances for a stageless posterity.
7 and 9:30 pm Tuesday, July 30.
7 and 9 pm Wednesday, July 31.
7 and 9 pm Thursday, Aug. 1. Cinema 21, 616 NW 21st Ave., 223- 4515. $3-$6.
WWeek 2015