4/25/2011

I Was There

I've recently started another blog, over in the Tumblr universe. It's nothing but scans of all the various concert/movie/event tickets I've held onto over the years.

It can be found at:

http://ticket-taker.tumblr.com

Come on over!

4/21/2011

Stumptown 2011

This past weekend was the 2011 Stumptown Comics Fest. Again, I volunteered for a few hours during the festival in exchange for free entry. Saturday, I spent my time chatting and catching up with friends, sported my Vic Boone hoodie to try and raise awareness for an awesome upcoming new comics series, bought a lot of shit, and had my sketchbook filled in a little.
Sunday was my work day, so I didn't do much other than say my farewells before heading into my real job.

Here are some of the sketches now filling up my book:









a Wuvable Oaf sketch from the wonderful Ed Luce



a sketch from Julia Wertz, formerly of Fart Party



a Spacetrawler-related sketch from Christopher Baldwin




SAILOR MOON, as sketched by Katie Shanahan




from Erika Moen, half of the Bucko team




Hellboy, as "sketched" by Vinny Navarrete



a top-notch top-knot from Sarah Olekysk



a Sex Wizard from Carolyn Main's Sex Wizards

4/17/2011

Appreciation: 'Opus'

For the second outing of my Theatre Appreciation class, we went to see Michael Hollinger's play Opus performed by Portland Center Stage. I've been to a few PCS performances, but not many of their contemporary productions -- I've seen them perform King Lear, The Importance of Being Earnest, the obligatory production of A Christmas Carol; but the only modern/contemporary production I've seen from them was The Pillowman, which was merely OK. And therein lies my problem with most contemporary theater productions -- I find them only to OK, usually I find them to be incredibly pedestrian and predictable.
Case in point, Hollinger's Opus. While it wasn't a bad play (it was competent enough and the actor's all had their chops), it certainly wasn't an interesting piece, nor was it as provocative as it thought itself to be.
It was very much a "white people's problems" story ("Do I join the nice small quartet or do I take the audition for the Pittsburgh symphony?"; "If we perform at the White House, do we really have to play 'Hail to the Chief?'"; "We're gay professional orchestral musicians, yet we're still in the closet!"), like one long, highly produced, live episode of Friends. And had I come in with a check list of everything I'd expect to be in a modern/contemporary play, about modern/contemporary "problems," I would have checked off every single plot point on that list.
I find myself having the same issues with most of other contemporary forms of art, but that's another post for another day.

4/09/2011

Appreciation: 'The Adding Machine'

This semester, I'm taking a Theater Appreciation class, wherein we will be taking in numerous productions throughout the Portland area. The first one of these was Theater Vertigo's production of Elmer Rice's The Adding Machine -- an American Expressionist piece from the 1920s.
It is the story of Mr Zero, a downtrodden, faceless, nameless man who, on the day of his twenty-fifth anniversary with his company, is told that he will be replaced by an adding machine -- a piece of machinery that not only will make his manual job obsolete, but that "can be operated by a high school girl" for less pay. Zero's reaction is to murder his boss. He is then tried, convicted, and sentenced to death.
In the play's second act, Rice skews the audiences expectations for Zero's redemption -- showing his fate to be anything but redemptional.

Expressionism is defined as a movement that "present[s] the world in an utterly subjective perspective, radically distorting it for emotional effect, to evoke moods or ideas." And this where Theater Vertigo's production really shined. The set was incredibly minimal, with only the most basic props used, and the makeup was stellar: masks and half-masks used to wonderful effect, helping to stretch a small company of actors into a much larger number of unique individual roles.

The story itself also hit a little close to home for me -- my employer having recently laid off nearly 10% of its unionized work force. Fortunately(?), I was not one amongst that number, but more than a few friends and co-workers were. So, seeing such a play as The Adding Machine with those lay-offs still in mind added another layer to the experience.


The Adding Machine runs 4/8/11-5/7/11, Thursday/Friday/Saturday only, with Thursday nights being pay-what-you-can. And, it's at Theater Theatre on SE Belmont -- a fantastic establishment for smaller local theater productions.
If you're able, I highly recommend this one.