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Who says theater has to be highbrow? Can't there be quality for the TV crowd? Action/Adventure Theatre's second Pilot Season recaptures audiences numbed by endless zombie killing and incestual hate sex with the magic of theater.
Like TV networks, Action/Adventure solicited pilot pitches for their next serial production and picked four shows for four weekends. Audiences vote for their favorite, and the winner gets a fully produced main-stage run next season.
The first pilot in Action/Adventure's small, converted warehouse was the period horror comedy From Beyond, aptly described by creator Brian Kuwabara as a "Lovecraftian farce." With blood splatters and creative shadow puppetry, From Beyond finds friends and colleagues Randolph Carter (Adam Rosko) and Dexter Tillinghast (Nathan Ayling) in search of a rare translation of the Necronomicon, a text so evil it transforms sane men into raving, self-pleasuring deviants. What follows is a gleeful romp through murder and mayhem, complete with a mad scientist, reanimated witch, lengthy monologues about peeling flesh from bone, plus cake and hate-fucking. Think The Evil Dead as directed by Terry Gilliam.
Like Carter and Tillinghast, our intentions may be earnest, but when dark desires break free it's a slippery slope to murder by bludgeoning. Creating well-realized characters and a satisfyingly absurd storyline in the barely 60-minute run time is a feat from Kuwabara (and the four-member cast). But with almost everyone dead at the end of the show, it's difficult to say where the story would go from here if intended to be a serial production.
From Beyond's run is over, but there are three remaining pilots: Punching and Wizardry by Ben Coleman, a comedy of relationship issues and Dungeons and Dragons (March 19-22); Joel Patrick Durham's Nesting, a semi-improvised horror thriller a la David Lynch (March 26-29); and Brenan Dwyer's No Man's Land, which follows three Catholic schoolgirls in a semi-improvised comedy (April 2-5).
With TV networks continually recycling tropes and aging actors, it's heartening to find fresh creativity nurtured on local stages. Action/Adventure deserves kudos for highlighting Portland's burgeoning talent and actually giving screen addicts a good reason to like theater. It's not like there's anything good on TV.
SEE IT: Pilot Season: Punching Wizardry is at Action/Adventure Theater, 1050 SE Clinton St., action-adventure.squarespace.com. 8 pm Thursday-Sunday, March 19-22. $12.
WWeek 2015
