Arts & Books It is a wonderful thing to be able to revisit a strong performance piece almost a year later, and to notice entirely different things in it. During my first viewing of Teeth’s moving dance piece Home Made, in November of last year, my overwhelming impression was of its harrowing nature, its demanding emotional seesaw that left one, at the end, entirely spent. I wasn’t alone in this: a pair of friends ...   More

Arts & Books In the push-pull between hostility and tenderness, hostility dominates the stage for the majority of Home Made, a work by Portland-based company tEEth, under the direction of Angelle Herbert and Phillip Kraft. Inside the Mouth at Zoomtopia, stretched white fabric frames the space and expands across the floor with a raised and illuminated lump in the middle created by the bodies of Keely McIntyre and ...   More

Arts & Books In conjunction with Rude Mechs’ run of The Method Gun at PICA’s Time-Based Arts festival, Austin’s Fusebox Festival director, Ron Berry, discussed process and group dynamics with two of the company directors, Lana Lesley and Thomas Graves. During the installment of the TBA Institute Tuesday afternoon at the Pacific Northwest College of Art, one thing became clear—consensus rules in this company ...   More

Arts & Books There’s a moment in The Method Gun in which a character is being interviewed for a television show. To the host’s consternation, the guest is of the irascible persuasion, and isn’t much interested in sticking to the subject. The funny thing about television, she tells her host (and I’m paraphrasing) is that you only see what the camera wants you to. In the theater, everything’s all around ...   More

Arts & Books It didn't take long for things to get very awkward last night at the first performance of Get Mad at Sin!, actor Andrew Dinwiddie's uncannily faithful reenactment of a Jimmy Swaggart sermon, delivered in Van Buren, Ark. and released on vinyl in 1971 under the title The Ring of Fire: A Message for the Young People of Today.Let me back up a moment: Andrew Dinwidde is a New York actor, who has undertaken ...   More

Arts & Books It’s high time I saw a performance by tEEth, the wildly popular dance company reprising its critical success Home Made in this year’s TBA Fest. Judging from the mob scene at Zoomtopia on Monday evening, I’m the last guy in town to find out about the company’s powerful work, choreographed by co-artistic director Angelle Hebert. “Audience response is critical to the work,” Hebert said ...   More

Arts & Books Some advice if you’re planning to see the Japanese company Offsite Dance Project at TBA: wear heels, no matter your height, and clothes in which you can comfortably stand, sit or kneel on pavement. If you’d like to bring a Siberian Husky as your date, that’s allowed, provided he or she enjoys site-specific performance and doesn’t mind crowds. You’re also allowed to bring children, although ...   More

Headout “Don’t forget to close the flaps!” That’s the last thing you’ll hear as you climb into the rectum of a 20-foot elephant. Don’t worry: It’s art. Oscar’s Delirium Tremens is the star at   More

Arts & Books Stories This Thursday marks the beginning of Portland Institute for Contemporary Art’s ninth Time-Based Art Festival, a 10-day rush of dance, theater, comedy, music, film, visual art and other assorted w   More

Arts & Books I am writing this on a 12 inch Apple MacBook. Its sleek, light aluminum body and bright screen are the last word in cutting-edge product design, it responds to my every whim like some sort of genie and, if monologist Mike Daisey is to be believed, it was likely assembled by a 15-year-old working a 16 hour shift in an unthinkably massive factory in ShenZhen. The writing of The Agony and Ecstasy of ...   More