Getting Off on Oregon Ballet Theatre

In previewing Oregon Ballet Theatre's ecclectic program "Song and Dance," The Long Suffering Floyd wrote this for the Portland Mercury:

Oregon Ballet Theatre Artistic Director Christopher Stowell wants you to get off—on dance. When asked about the popularity of shows like "Dancing with the Stars" and "So You Think You Can Dance," he says, "I don't like the gossip or the drama, and I don't like the idea of competition within an art form, but I love that people are getting off on watching others move around."

Stowell put together a totally satisfying evening that incorporated square dancing (with a caller), hip-hop, yoga and men dancing to Cole Porter in 1930s underwear - wife beaters, boxers and garters. The mash-up allowed me to experience classical ballet through a new perspective without sacrificing the integrity of the form.

I'm all for mixing the highbrow and the lowbrow into what my Bastard Jones collaborator Amy Engelhardt and I call "the unibrow." But so often the hybrid is just excruciating, like when The Three Tenors revealed themselves to be the only singers on the planet who required sheet music to perform "Singin' in the Rain."



So I felt a carbonated happiness as I watched OBT's program succeed, because my own work seems to straddle opposing worlds - sometimes too weird for conventional people, while too conventional for weird people. Just today Portland Center Stage turned down my new play Tulip Mania for this year's JAW New Play Festival while informing me it's laugh-out-loud hilarious and commercial.

It reminds me of when my cousin Tim was premiering his show Zanna, Don't and a producer told him "the ending takes too long and feels rushed."

Then again, it also reminds me of this bumper sticker I saw recently:
Just because you're misunderstood doesn't mean you're a genius.

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?