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Performance
After Hours:
Late night series imprives with new works.
Books
First Novel Delights:
Talented young writer examines that mother-daughter thing.
PLUS: Book Notes.
Theater
Community Art:
Free Shakespeare at Amazon Park.
After Hours
Late night series improves
with new works.
By Aria
Seligmann
Lord Leebrick Theatre Company's Bride of 99 Minutes of Midnight
Madness continues this weekend with a second set of all-new works, much higher
in quality than those that made up the disappointing first set. Rounding out the
show is live music by Boston's Dave Dersham, also worth seeing.
The show opens with Quarters by Patrick Torelle, a dark
comedy that explores the possibility of quite conditional love between a mother and
her daughter. The two characters, a grandmother and her grandson, engage in a frank
discussion of the woman in between them. The grandmother (Sharon Sless) admits her
disappointment in her 40-year-old retarded daughter, while her grandson (Kurt Prather),
tries to explain his mother's survival challenges. What evolves is the grandmother's
abiding love for her grandson and her desire to ensure that he has his own survival
skills.
The script explores new territory, to be certain, and sets the
tone for the darker mood of the following works that play well in a late-night setting.
The theatricality of Mario Tucci's From Here I Can See Past the Hills deserves
praise. Costuming, makeup, dance, movement, music, light and shadows all add up to
a mesmerizing effect of the telling of one individual's experience of war.
A human being turned into a clown manipulated like a marionette,
by -- his mother? politics? government? -- offers a poetic recollection of one night's
attack while he and others -- shaking, terrified from the bombing -- bunker down.
Allison Rickenbaugh's authentic dance movement speaks for itself while the script's
musical language, haunting in Tucci's accent, frees the text's images and allows
visions of war to sweep across the stage in a much broader expanse than the tight,
constricted area the actors play in.
By contrast, Joe Von Appen uses every inch of playing area in his
one-person performance piece, Swearing at God.
Like Tucci's work, the piece has had ample rehearsal time, or at
least appears to have had, plays well, and was a very good choice to end the set
with. Appen's fresh, appealing take on life makes this piece succeed. The script
is divided into several segments, most of which work, some of which could be cut
(particularly the audition scene) for length. I liked his script, his ideas -- especially
the ventriloquist with a mute dummy -- and most of all, his flexibility.
That command of movement is best displayed in the scene in which
he becomes a homeboy student trying to describe to a friend how he found God. He
shows utter physical control while at the same time spouting a seriously challenging
monologue. Another hysterical physical scene chronicles a telephone conversation
that is not quite what one would expect.
Swearing at God works because it is well-written and well-done.
Not all of the ideas are brand new, but they are new to Appen, and delivered in an
innovative way. If Lord Leebrick continues with this series next year, then this
is the type of script to go after. These works are out there, and with some effort,
can be found. Likewise, for writers, this venue and series exists to showcase such
works-in-progress, so get busy. Bride of... wraps up this weekend with two
more performances, Friday and Saturday at 11:11 pm.
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First Novel Delights
Talented young writer
examines that mother-daughter thing.
By Jennifer
Snelling
THE GOOD PEOPLE OF NEW YORK by Thisbe
Nissen. Knopf, 2001. Hardcover, $23.
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Thisbe Nissen,
author of The Good People of New York (Knopf, 2001).
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Twenty-something Thisbe Nissen's first novel begins with the unexpected
and almost inexplicable coupling of brash native New Yorker Roz Rosenzweig and idealistic
Nebraskan Edwin Anderson. These two meet while scrambling around in the bushes looking
for a key outside a New York apartment building. The key has been tossed down from
the party they're supposed to attend upstairs. Amidst the dog shit lurking underneath
the shrubs, the two find true romance.
Readers familiar with Nissen's first collection of short stories,
Out of the Girls Room and Into the Night, will immediately recognize this
situation as one of Nissen's signatures. The guardrails come down, and deeply human
characters expose their emotions, mild neuroses and quirks to find a true connection
with each other. Girls Room, which won the John Simmon's Short Fiction Award,
existed almost completely in such moments.
Nissen has made the transition from short stories to novel gracefully.
The plot follows Roz and Edwin's unlikely marriage that begins happily but ends when
the intervening years expose many differences in their personalities. After their
daughter Miranda is born, Roz devotes herself to the child with a dedication that
eclipses her relationship with Edwin.
Newly single, Roz vows to be the fabulous mom who's more like a
friend. But she has trouble squelching her Jewish mother instincts. Miranda, a precocious,
sexy pre-teen, rebels. As Miranda distances herself from her mother, Roz is forced
to focus on her own life. When Roz finally begins dating again, it is Miranda who
misses their exclusive relationship.
Throughout the novel the focus is the strong mother-daughter bond
between Roz and Miranda revealed through tenderly described, defining occasions.
Most of the big events -- a divorce, lost virginity, a death -- all happen in-between
chapters. Instead of focusing on plot, Nissen crafts each chapter around certain
revealing moments as she did in her carefully written short stories. (Chapters one
and 20 were originally published in Girls Room.) Readers will immediately
recognize the distinctive personalities of Roz, then called Sheila, and her daughter
Miranda.
In Chapter 20 Roz sees Steven, her cheating ex-boyfriend, in Bloomingdales,
and he mentions that his son and Miranda still see each other. This is news to Roz.
The fact that Steven knows more about her daughter's friends than she does is horrifying.
Feeling like "the weekly amnesia victim on 'One Life to Live,'" Roz begins
taking off her coat and scarf and lets them drop to the floor in the course of conversation.
When Steven reaches down to pick them up for her, she screeches at him to leave her
alone. This picture of Roz's raw emotion brings us closer to her than adjectives
describing her personality ever could.
Just as Nissen carefully chooses minutes that reveal the personalities
of her
characters, she also selects their names with thought. Miranda's name comes from
The Tempest, Shakespeare's play that makes several cameo appearances throughout
the novel. This play-within-a-play allows readers additional insight into the characters.
Nissen says her obsession to find the perfect name comes from growing up with her
name, Thisbe. Nissen's parents named
her for a Shakespearean character after watching A Midsummer Night's Dream.
Nissen's debut novel is in many ways a love letter to her hometown,
New York, which she says she fled the first chance she got. "One foot in that
city and suddenly my brain leaves me entirely and the only thing in my head is: I'm
fat and ugly and have all the wrong clothes," she says. She ended up in Iowa,
which she describes as "different. Remember that line from Field of Dreams:
'Is this heaven? No, it's Iowa.'" Now Nissen thinks she's found home, and readers
will note that she's also quite at home with the novel form. With Nissen's instinct
for revealing the tender vulnerability of her characters, the good people of New
York could be the good people of anywhere.
Book Notes:
Congratulations to former EW books columnist Susan Rich for winning
the PEN USA West award in poetry for her collection, The Cartographer's Tongue
(White Pine Press). A former Fulbright scholar with an M.A. from the UO in Creative
Writing, Rich now lives in Seattle and teaches writing and global studies at Highline
College. ...Children's books author and illustrator Kevin Henkes reads at
1 pm Aug. 11 at Borders. ... Also at 1 pm Aug. 11, Ray Vukcevich reads at
Tsunami Books. ...Poets Rob Whitbeck and Leonard Cirino read at 5 pm
Aug. 11 at Tsunami. ...San Francisco poetry group, Molotov Voice, perform
at an open poetry read, with sign-up at 8 pm Aug. 12, Foolscap Books. ...Nye Beach
Writers Series presents Robert Michael Pyle and Barbara Lefcowitz at
7 pm Aug. 18. Call (541) 574-7708. ...Kent Nerburn reads from his new
travel narrative, Road Angels, at 4 pm Aug. 24 at Tsunami Books. ...Mari
Gayatri Stein reads from Unleashing Your Inner Dog at 1 pm Aug. 26 at
Barnes and Noble.
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Community Art
Free Shakespeare at
Amazon Park.
By Quail
Dawning
In 1999, I scored the dream role in William Shakespeare's As
You Like It. The character was Rosalind, and the company was Free Shakespeare
In The Park. I was 16 years old, lying on my back in the soft, flat grass of Amazon
Park, with my eyes tightly closed against the late afternoon sun, when I was brought
back to Shakespeare's day during a warmup. Director Sharon Mann sent my imagination
chasing after her words, twisting their way through medieval marketplaces
and rutted roads, beneath ancient oaks and around the bannered walls of old castles
and forts. I envisioned a bright, loud town square, alive with color and merry voices,
and in the center of it all I found Rosalind, Shakespeare's most presumptuous heroine
and my first lead character, who would become permanently ingrained in my heart and
in my mind.
Mann also began her education at a young age, 19, when she apprenticed
at Shakespeare & Company in Lennix, Mass. That summer, she learned about every
chaotic aspect of Shakespearean theater, from backstage dressing to onstage dancing.
She received her bachelor's degree in liberal arts from the renowned New School for
Social Research. Then, on to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts' intensive Shakespeare
Program, where she learned everything one needs to know to be in a Shakespearean
performance, from fencing to the King's English.
Mann then learned the business end of things through some San Francisco
interning, before moving to Eugene. Once here, she worked with Eugene Playback Theater
and became increasingly interested in youth-oriented theater. Finally, in 1999, it
all gelled, and Free Shakespeare In The Park was born, sparkling into life with
As You Like It, its first production.
Mann followed that success with Twelfth Night last year.
This year, on Saturday, Aug. 4, the company will open its own rendition of
A Midsummer Night's Dream on the community stage in Amazon Park.
As Free Shakespeare In The Park gains popularity and builds itself
a local legacy, Mann remains wholeheartedly dedicated to creating Shakespearean productions
as the Bard would have created them: outdoor performances of his most uproarious
comedies, and press releases and flyers inviting audiences to bring "a picnic,
blanket, friend, family and dog to enjoy an open air performance."
Shakespeare's comedic plays, which often deal with finding oneself
lost in a vast wilderness, are quite aptly placed outdoors, and this year, the midsummer
nights of Amazon Park will be transformed into the enchanted woods of Athens in order
to host a young foursome of squabbling runaway lovers, wee twinkling fairies, a ragtag
company of diligently rehearsing actors, the mischievous creature Puck and the regal
fae Oberon and Titania, who have heated lover's quarrels by pranking each other with
delightfully funny enchantments.
This unique production of A Midsummer Night's Dream promises
to bring new delights and surprises to the Amazon Stage. There are child fairies
who attended "fairy camp" for a week, where they did character development,
learned their lines and the fairy lullaby, and made their own wings and costumes.
Mann has also been working with the Mask-Maker's Guild of Eugene to create the show's
masks. And Mann herself will be playing Peter Quince, the director of the play-within-a-play.
Also, the 2001 Arts & Communities grant the program has received has enabled
Mann to create the costumes she desires for the production.
The company is made up of 26 multi-skilled actors who range in
age from 7 to 60. In past years, the audience has been equally diverse. Free, family-oriented
theater draws folks from every corner of our community to sit on the lawn together
and bask in the sun (or in rare instances, clump beneath umbrellas and brave the
drizzle) and watch the actors bust it out.
A Midsummer Night's Dream plays every Saturday and Sunday,
Aug. 4-26, at 6 pm at Amazon Community Park.
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