Center Stage at Portland Center Stage (and the Portland Art Museum)

Portland Center Stage Artistic Director Chris Coleman ain't fiddlin' around in his performance in Michael Hollinger's Opus, in which he plays the first violinist in a fractious string quartet.
I've known Chris for ten years. He directed the workshop of my play Birds of a Feather at PCS's JAW Playwrights Festival. We've hung out, gone to the beach. He even once heckled me while I was raising $20,000 for the theater, so he's damn lucky I didn't return the favor on his opening night.

Seeing him act for the first time was a revelation. First off, there was the immense relief that he didn't suck. Quite the opposite, he was fantastic--real, exposed, raw. It was a particularly brave performance for a public figure because the character can be such a jerk.

I'm immensely proud of him and look forward to seeing how it affects his directing of both plays and the theater itself. According to his blog, it's already given him new insights into both.

Working on more than one side of any equation really helps your understanding of your own discipline. Like Chris, I'm a product of the Carnegie-Mellon theater program, where studying acting and directing really informed my career as a writer. Being an opera singer gave me an education in 400 years of western history. And I know I'm a better writer because I teach.

That said, I seldom take center stage. I'd much rather write a musical than be in one. But I will tread the boards this Friday night for my last public appearance in Portland before moving to New York. I'm the emcee of Objectivity, a game show produced by my partner the Long-Suffering Floyd, to promote Object Stories, an innovative installation created PAM's education director Tina Olsen, in which regular people (and irregular, I suppose) bring their personal objects to the museum and record a commentary about them.

Here's the deeply moving one Floyd did, of which I could not be prouder, and not just because it makes me sound like a helluva guy.

Objectivity is one-night only this Friday. Admission to the museum is free, so seating will be limited. I'll be joined by a panel of Portland luminaries, including NY Times bestselling author Chelsea Cain, Mayor Sam Adams, Oregon Ballet Theatre's Christopher Stowell, Daria O'Neil Eliuk of The Buzz and Helen Raptis of AM Northwest.

Here's our groovy game show music, as performed by Gwen Verdon to the Bob Fosse choreography that inspired Beyonce's "Single Ladies."

Jeez, could I drop any more names?

New Day #246

Today I got hit with a pie in the face. Repeatedly. On local television.

Once again, I sat in as co-host on AM Northwest. They wanted me to do Something New on the air and, ham that I am, this is what I came up with.

I suppose I should have expected a pie tin of Cool Whip to be, well, cool, but it was still colder than I expected and surprisingly refreshing. It also blurred my vision for the next two hours.

My skin is so soft, though.

For those of you who may be wondering how the pie thrower had such spectacular aim, I did have a smock to protect my magenta tie, which I wore in honor of President Obama.

New Day #162

When I was a boy, I envisioned it was my destiny to be a charming, affable talk show guest, but today I kicked it to a new level by co-hosting the "chat" segment of AM Northwest with my buddy Helen Raptis. No video, I'm afraid, but I think I managed to get through it without humiliating myself or saying any of the seven words you can't say on television.

I did get to stick around to be the "celebrity guest" for the Pizza Hut Pasta Run, which just proves there's nothing I won't do.

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New Day #119

As someone who stares at a blinking cursor for a living, I'm not accustomed to seeing myself. Okay, that's not entirely accurate. I constantly check how I look in the mirror, my rampant narcissism tempered by insecurities bordering on body dysmorphic disorder. In other words, I have no idea what I really look like.

So imagine my shock when I watched myself on AM Northwest yesterday. Actually, you don't have to imagine because I'm going to tell you. That's what blogs are for—to provide more than you want to know. Forget the Information Age, we're living in the Too Much Information Age.

Anyway, while I was relieved that I managed to speak in complete sentences, all I could think was "What's up with that vein in my neck?" and "Why didn't I trim the hair on my chinny-chin-chin?"

So, after visiting KBOO for my second interview of the day (where I made up the word "relevatory"--aka "revelatory"), I decided to take my five o’clock shadow to Chopperz, the "non-salon men's grooming lounge," for an old-school straight razor shave.

Chopperz is designed specifically for “retrosexuals,” offering sports on hi-def plasma TVs at each station, as well as a selection of microbrews and specialty cocktails.

I understand why they serve booze. While men have shaved with straight razors for centuries, Rebecca, the pretty, twenty-something stylist with the sparkly makeup certainly hasn’t.

Since I don’t drink, Rebecca put me at ease with various lotions and hot towels.

But once she came at me with the blade, all I could think of was blood gushing from that ropey vein in my neck. In that vein—pun intended—I asked Rebecca whether she'd seen the Tim Burton film of Sweeney Todd.

"It made me cringe," she said.

“It was pretty gory,” I agreed.

"No, not that," she said. "Johnny Depp's shaving technique was all wrong."

Maybe that’s why so many writers subscribe to the Hemingway and Bukowski school of personal hygiene.


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