Theater

The Story of Stu Rasmussen, America’s First Openly Transgender Mayor, Now a Musical

Wed, 22 May 2013 09:00:00 -0700

Astandoff was forming outside city hall in Silverton, Oregon, a quiet Mayberry community of fewer than 10,000 people—and more than 20 churches—that wasn’t fond of controversy. Some strangers had sauntered into town, wielding protest signs that shot off hate like a bullet from a gun. “You’re Going to Hell.” “God Hates You.” “Fag Media Shame.”

These mal mots came courtesy of four representatives of Westboro Baptist Church, an antigay Kansas congregation known for picketing events nationwide to promote its cause. (Just to hammer home the point, the church’s website is godhatesfags.com.) In the past year, Westboro said it planned to picket the funerals of the victims of the Sandy Hook Elementary shootings and the Boston bombings, but on this November day in 2008, the object of its wrath was Silverton mayor Stu Rasmussen, America’s first openly transgender mayor.

To an outsider, Rasmussen looks to be straddling the line between Mars and Venus. He’s a tall man with broad shoulders, long curly fire-kissed hair, expertly manicured nails, and a pair of surgically augmented breasts. He also has smile lines around his eyes and can rock a miniskirt. Rasmussen had “transitioned” well before being elected, he told me when we met in February. Now, at age 64, his identity “spectrum goes from macho male to…”

“…fairy princess,” finished his partner Victoria Sage. She sat close to him during the interview, sometimes holding his hand. The couple met nearly 40 years ago, when Sage was working at 5th Avenue Cinema in Portland and Rasmussen was a regional projectionist. “I saw this cute little thing at this theater, and then it became one of my regular stops,” Rasmussen said. “The projector always seemed to need some adjusting.” It’s an old-fashioned love story—with a twist or two. No one knows Rasmussen better than his life partner, though in his hometown of Silverton, the mayor is still much more than his gender, Sage noted.

“They know Stu with so many different hats on,” Sage said. “As the cable guy, the guy who crawled around in your living room. You’ve seen him tearing tickets at the movie house for years and years. You’ve seen him on the city council. It’s like, okay, it’s Stu.” So when word got out of his mayoral victory in 2008, making national news and prompting protests, “Silverton kind of resented it. They were like, why is this news? It’s just Stu.”

So the good people of Silverton took action. A crowd of about 200—grannies and strollers, mothers cradling babies, and men dressed in drag for the very first time—marched to city hall to face off against the four members of Westboro Baptist Church. They banged drums to drown out the homophobic chants, but their homemade signs spoke even louder. “My love is bigger than your hate,” read one. “We love Stu (and so does God),” read another.

“Even now—and it’s five years later—when I talk about this I tend to tear up,” Rasmussen said. “It’s such an incredible community.” True to his word, he paused to fight back the tears that welled in his eyes. “It’s not a Stu story. It’s a Silverton story.”

And soon, it will be a musical.

That’s right. A musical. The world premiere, produced by Seattle’s Intiman Theatre and championed by artistic director Andrew Russell, has been in the works for years. Russell had heard the story of Stu that aired on NPR’s Radiolab in 2009 and decided, “If this isn’t a musical, people aren’t doing their jobs.” He enlisted New York singer-songwriter Breedlove, a Lady Gaga collaborator, to compose the music and lyrics, and asked Peter Duchan, who penned the libretto for the off-Broadway musical Dogfight, to write the book. Based on early workshops, Stu for Silverton had an air of The Book of Mormon—irreverent and sweet in turns—and like 2012’s surprise Intiman success, Miracle! (a drag adaptation of The Miracle Worker), offers an underdog story with a lesson on compassion.

Since reorganizing last year as a summer theater festival rather than as a regional theater, Intiman has found a receptive audience for its riskier fare. Last season’s lineup balanced Miracle! with classic dramas (Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler, Romeo and Juliet), but this summer Russell has picked four plays about topics that are verboten around a Seattle dinner table: sex, race, politics, and money. In addition to Stu for Sil-verton, Intiman’s repertory company will perform Trouble in Mind, Alice -Childress’s Obie-winning 1955 dramedy about a racially integrated acting company; Aristophanes’s sex-strike story Lysistrata; and We Won’t Pay! We Won’t Pay!, one of the most famous political farces by Nobel Prize–winning satirist Dario Fo. The shows run June 21 through September 15, but there will be much ado about the Stu-sical. Even Rasmussen is excited to see how his life story plays out in song and dance.

“This tickled my funny bone,” Rasmussen said. “When they said it’s a musical, well, that’s a hoot!”

Sage, without missing a beat: “What could be funnier, an opera?”

Stu for Silverton at the Intiman Theatre Festival
June 21–Sept 15, Playhouse at Seattle Center, intiman.org

Published: June 2013

Seattle’s Secrets Are Revealed During ‘Seattle Confidential’

Wed, 17 Apr 2013 09:00:00 -0700

Image: Philip Cheaney

"I never told this story to anyone.”

It’s a thrilling first line. What could the storyteller possibly have to say that’s so embarrassing? Shameful? Criminal? And why share it with a roomful of strangers? Those of us in the audience for the first installment of Seattle Confidential leaned forward in our seats and placed our plastic cups of wine gently on the table. Inner voyeurs perked up, eager to hear something good. It’s rare in Seattle to confront such a public, naked exposition of the soul—but thanks to local actor-director Ian Bell, the city is sharing its best and worst secrets.

That debut performance was back in 2011, not long after Bell returned newly inspired from a Northwest road trip where he was struck by the easy—and very personal—conversations he had with random travelers. What would Seattle have to say under the veil of anonymity, he wondered? He launched his social-theater experiment by soliciting anonymous stories on the topic “Virginity Lost” on his website, seattleconfidential.org, and admonishing readers to “Spill the beans!” No surprise in our hyperliterate city: Bell received poems, songs, sketches, short plays, and anonymous monologues that he gamely calls “anonymonologues.” He picked the best half-dozen samples and recruited local acting pros—Emily Chisholm, Nick Garrison, Gretchen Krich, and the late Mark Chamberlin—to perform dramatic readings of the most private, cringe-inducing diary entries to a sold-out room at ACT.

“Most people—99 percent of people—lose their virginity, but it’s a very personal experience and not always something we talk about freely,” Bell said during a recent interview. “The basic idea is to use anonymity to start a conversation about things we usually keep to ourselves. … It brings up a specific kind of eloquence.”

The evening of sexual misadventures covered a lot of territory, from post-coital guilt to coming-out tales of self-discovery. A boy deflowers his Mormon high school girlfriend on her parents’ bed and is so amped and frightened, he falls off his bike on the way home. Some confessions delivered valuable lessons, like “Never do it with the mayor’s daughter” or “Don’t use toy handcuffs—they break.” And the story that no one had ever been privy to? Let’s just say it “smelled of vinegar and Indian food.”

Throughout the show, Bell sat stage right with his laptop, acting like a cross between a game-show host and a statistician. He encouraged us to keep our cellphones on—ringers off—during the performance and filled the breaks by polling the audience via text with questions about its collective virginity. (See the results below, “Anonymonology.”) With the help of a marine-biologist buddy who had experience collecting data, Bell would then project graphs showing real-time results on a screen behind him. Wouldn’t you know it: The audience played along, even the 46-year-old “kinky virgin” in the crowd.

Bell, amazed by the response, has since made Seattle Confidential a quarterly event. Over eight shows, Seattle dished on its sex life, the perfect crime, adventures abroad, holiday horror stories, how people met, 15 minutes of fame, unforgettable summers, and most recently, ghost stories and the afterlife. (“Have you ever seen a ghost? Have you ever been a ghost?”) Mostly men submitted secrets about the perfect crime and the afterlife, said Bell, while more women weighed in on love and personal discovery. Crime was an interesting one, Bell recalled, noting that submissions were lower than usual. “That’s not something you often admit to yourself, much less other people, that maybe you’ve done something bad. … Most people don’t think they’re criminals. I think it was revelatory for a lot of the audience.”

In May, Bell will look back at the body of written work amassed over two years and restage two tales (give or take) from each past confession session, calling it Rewind. As a New Yorker–turned–Seattle theater veteran who’s been on stage everywhere from Seattle Rep to Re-bar, Bell has a special fondness for the Confidential series. It’s a rare opportunity to draw Seattle out of its shell while simultaneously blurring the line between artist and audience.

“We’re a city of pretty shy people—shy, bookish, geeky people,” he said. “And this suits us well. … We may say things quietly, but we’ll say them really well.”

Seattle Confidential: Rewind
May 9 & 10 at 7:30 $20, ACT Theatre, 700 Union St, 206-292-7676; acttheatre.org

Anonymonology
Definition: (n.) the study of anonymous monologues

Poll results from “Virginity LOST”
Sample Size: 65 Responses

How good was it?
“Not great, but had potential and promise,” said 56.9%.
At what age did you lose your virginity?
A majority (52.3%) said between the ages of 14 and 17, though someone was “46 and still a kinky virgin.”
Were you sober?
An overwhelming 73.8% said yes.
What position?
58.5% said missionary, 9.2% said doggy style, and 1.5% said “Freaky Friday.”
Was it an expression of love?
You bet, said 46%.
Or strictly business?
Business time, said 20%.
Are you… Straight?
70.8%.
Gay?
10.8%.
Bi?
12.3%.
Asexual?
1.5%.
Other?
4.6%.

Published: May 2013

Nothing and Everything Is Sacred in Saint Genet’s ‘Paradisiacal Rites’

Wed, 17 Apr 2013 09:00:00 -0700

Image: Courtesy Dan Hawkins

Seattle art-mayhem maestro Ryan Mitchell conducts performance art that intentionally disquiets viewers with scenes both beautiful and disgusting. For one past work, he covered his arm with leeches while the cast did whippets; for another (pictured), a talking bouquet—known to friends as Kate Ryan—delivered less-than-flowery prose and dancers rose from beneath funereal piles of dirt…an hour into the show. So when Mitchell and his experimental troupe Saint Genet say their next act, Paradisiacal Rites, will be fueled by “blood, booze, and bands,” take them at their word.

Saint Genet: Paradisiacal Rites
May 16–19 at 8, $20, On the Boards, 100 W Roy St, 206-217-9888; ontheboards.org

Published: May 2013

The Girls of Grunge

Wed, 23 Jan 2013 08:00:00 -0800

Image: Courtesy Kelly Evans

We Are Young Carrie Akre fronts Hammerbox.

It’s hard to imagine there’s an untold story of grunge in our city, given the tomes (and art exhibits and documentaries) on Nirvana alone. But when a 250-page history of Seattle’s rock heyday, The Strangest Tribe, only includes a page and a half on the women of the era—calling it “The Female Presence”—something feels…wrong. Like a female guitarist was some kind of elusive Bengal tiger, caught only briefly on tape.

As cocreator of the new play that rocks, These Streets, writer and performer Sarah Rudinoff aims to give the women of grunge their due. “When people think of the women of the scene, they go, oh yeah, Riot Grrrls. Which was completely different. It was women in Olympia and a totally different scene,” she says. “Not every band in the Northwest was a Riot Grrrl.”

Which local female rockers can we name from the late ’80s and early ’90s? The ones that stand out come tagged with tragedy: Mia Zapata, lead singer of punk band the Gits, who was brutally raped and murdered on her way home from a Capitol Hill bar in 1993, or guitarist Stefanie Sargent of 7 Year Bitch, who died of a heroin overdose in ’92. The hard-rocking women succumbed to the same demons as their male counterparts—and had similar out-of-body experiences when their hometown music scene was suddenly thrust into an international spotlight. Their successes and struggles, though, are largely overlooked and their music in dire need of proper play, says Rudinoff. That’s where she comes in. Rudinoff is in a unique position to turn a part of our city’s history into live theater. In addition to being a Stranger Genius–certified singer and actress—and one-half of the rock duo We Are Golden—she’s a product of the time. A native of Hawaii, she moved to Seattle a year out of college, in 1994, just after Kurt Cobain’s suicide. Cue the record scratch.

With bandmate Gretta Harley, a New York–born guitarist who relocated here in 1990 and rode the grunge wave, Rudinoff spent the past two years interviewing 40 local players from that decade—Lazy Susan’s Kim Virant, Kim Warnick of the Fastbacks, Carrie Akre of Hammerbox and Goodness. Some enjoyed success; others just a brief mention in the University of Washington student newspaper. All informed the script—written by Harley, Rudinoff, and actress-playwright Elizabeth Kenny—and the ’90s punk-rock soundtrack, which will be performed live nightly. These Streets, opening February 21 at ACT, distills the most dynamic tales as a blending of two fictional narratives. One thread sounds like a Real World premise: Five musicians in their 20s share a house in Seattle from 1989 to 1994, when the city throbbed with heavy guitar riffs and everyone’s attire was thrift-store chic. The other story line finds these women in the present day, reflecting on those darker, scrappier times with a KEXP DJ.

“We created conflicts that were realistic to the time and things that happen to bands and why they break up and why people get pissed off at each other,” says Rudinoff. In the process of writing the play, they catalogued dozens of first--person accounts that will be archived at the UW as an oral history of grunge (the untold story) and gathered memorabilia for an accompanying exhibit at the Project Room in Capitol Hill. Excerpts of the interviews have been posted online and include telling statements about female artists in a man’s world. Start with former Bell guitarist Vanessa Veselka: “When I was growing up on guitar, there were, like, no women guitarists, and people would say to me, That’s not true! And they would name the same 10 female guitarists including every genre. There’s Charo, there’s Joan Armatrading, there’s Joni Mitchell, there’s Bonnie Raitt, there’s that chick from Heart… I was 24 years old before I met a female guitarist who played like I did.”

Female guitarists aren’t as elusive anymore—the new Bengal tiger is the female rapper. She too has a role in this story. By casting rising Seattle musicians in their 20s to play…well, rising Seattle musicians in their 20s, These Streets manages to look both backward and forward. Hollis Wong-Wear, a 25-year-old spoken-word artist who holds her own freestyling in a circle full of men, joins the show shortly after being on the Heist tour with hip-hop duo Macklemore and Ryan Lewis. (Wong-Wear is featured on their track “White Walls.”) She says the parallel between her character, Kyla, and career is striking.

“Attention is coming to Seattle in a really new and exciting way because of hip-hop that could be comparable to, like, what the grunge movement became,” says Wong-Wear over the phone, en route to yet another airport. “There are so many people that are becoming successful…and none of their success is threatening anybody else. It’s all raising the profile and raising the awareness of our city. For a new sonic identity and new sonic personality, ’cause everywhere else it’s still ‘Seattle Nirvana.’ ”

THESE STREETS Vanessa Veselka Interview from wes hurley on Vimeo.

These Streets Feb 21–Mar 10, $15–$30, ACT Theatre, 700 Union St, 206-292-7676; acttheatre.org

Published: February 2013

Debunking ‘The Book of Mormon’

Wed, 19 Dec 2012 09:00:00 -0800

Image: Courtesy Joan Marcus

Good satire, it’s been said, isn’t cruel. It isn’t spiteful or petty. When it does its job, it makes people reevaluate the world they live in, maybe even learn a thing or two while having a laugh. And for the past decade, no one’s written better satire than South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone. Whether they’re lampooning Tom Cruise or tackling an entire religion as they do in the Broadway musical The Book of Mormon, it’s with wit, empathy, and a healthy dose of profanity.

But how many of their Mormon gags, penned with the help of Avenue Q cocreator Robert Lopez, ring true? What’s this about God living on a planet called Kolob? We turned to Nicole Hardy for a debunking session. Hardy—a local writer raised Mormon whose upcoming memoir, Confessions of a Latter-Day Virgin, details her crisis of faith—dissected lyrics from two Book of Mormon songs, “All-American Prophet” and “I Believe,” and rated their authenticity on a scale of truthiness (truth, truthy, not so much). But at the end of the day, lds.org is the authority and the Book of Trey and Matt is the escape.

There’s a part three to the Bible, Joe! / And I, God, have anointed you to dig up this part three / that is buried by a tree on the hill in your backyard. Truth.
“So the story is: An angel appeared and told prophet Joseph Smith that there were these golden plates, and he dug them up, he translated the plates, and that is what became the Book of Mormon.”

I believe / that God lives on a planet called Kolob / I believe / that Jesus has his own planet as well / And I believe / that the Garden of Eden was in Jackson County, Missouri. Not so much.
“I feel like those were things that people talked about a lot when we were growing up, but if you go to the website now and try to find the real answers to those questions, they don’t say those things. They say that the planet is a metaphor for the greatness of Christ and they believe that when we’re exalted, we will become ‘like God.’ … They will say the Garden was here but they won’t say the exact location.”

I believe / that God has a plan for us all / I believe / that plan involves me getting my own planet. Truthy.
“All of that is 100 percent true (but I believe the planet is an exaggeration). It’s the no. 1 premise of the whole entire church that God has a specific plan for you. I think there’s a million ways to be of value on the earth, but they will say for both man and woman that the greatest work you’ll ever do in life is within the walls of your own home. They will say things like: raising a family and having a happy family that is devoted to God is the most important thing you can do; I don’t know many women who have had high-powered careers. I know a lot of women who have part-time jobs.”

My family and friends all said I was blessed. Truth.
“I think that there is definitely a feeling among Mormons that they are sort of a chosen people, and I think the urge to go out and do missionary work comes from this place of really wanting to spread truth—more than wanting to upset other cultures and make people assimilate. … I didn’t [go on a mission]. I felt like if God wanted me to give up life as I knew it and go preach the gospel that I would have some spiritual confirmation of that, but I never did.”

You cannot just believe part way / You have to believe in it all. Truth.
“That’s for sure. You can’t just pick and choose the way you want to live. You’re either all in or you’re out, which makes it really tough if you have questions. Questions aren’t encouraged. If you’re struggling with your faith, often the advice is to wait for a change of heart. Obey and wait. … Everything that is a challenge for us is a test to work through and a challenge to overcome, and hopefully that will bring you closer to God in the end. But I think some questions can’t be solved through silence. …

You never stand up and say, ‘I believe.’ You always get up and say, ‘I know.’ ”

Final thoughts…
“It’s difficult to find something that’s poking good-natured fun [at a religion], and maybe that’s the genius of The Book of Mormon. I don’t think it’s meant to be mean spirited or exploitive. And there’s a lot of stuff about it that sounds weird from the outside, and even from the inside we know it’s a little kooky.”

The Book of Mormon
Jan 8–20, sold out (ticket lottery will be held close to opening), Paramount Theatre, 911 Pine St, 206-682-1414; stgpresents.org

Published: January 2013

Book-It Repertory Theatre Stages The Art of Racing in the Rain

Fri, 23 Mar 2012 09:00:00 -0700

DAVID S. HOGAN SOUNDS like he’s training to be a boxer: weight lifting, resistance training, jogging. Six days a week of workouts, more than he’s ever done to get ready for a part in a show. Then again, he’s never had to play a different species before.

Hogan has big paws to fill this month when he stars as loyal mutt Enzo in the stage premiere of Garth Stein’s best-selling novel The Art of Racing in the Rain, newly adapted by Book-It Repertory Theatre. Not only is the character beloved by pet owners and animal apathetics alike, but playing the furry narrator demands hours spent crawling (or racing) around on your hands and knees. Anyone over the age of two would agree: That ain’t fun.

The even greater challenge, though, is embodying a not-so-ordinary pooch who dreams of being reincarnated as a man. He yearns for opposable thumbs and scorns the monkeys who don’t deserve them. While the theater has produced other stories featuring dogs—John Steinbeck’s Travels with Charley, Pam Houston’s Cowboys Are My Weakness—Book-It co–artistic director Myra Platt, who adapted Racing for the stage, said “we still struggled with Enzo’s particular desirous destiny to become human…. Casting an actor to portray a dog: we wondered, would there be enough dramatic tension in hearing a dog talk on and on about how much he wished he could talk?”

Book-It’s style is to have its cast recite narration as dialogue—and in this case, the dog has plenty to say. As Enzo tells the story of his life spent with owner Denny, a semiprofessional race car driver, Denny’s wife Eve, and their daughter Zoë, he’s the wryest fly on the wall, observing how silly humans are when they’re full of fermented drinks, or how they stubbornly refuse to visit the doctor even when Enzo can smell the cancer. He’s a moralist (“Why can’t they see that spiritualism and science are one?”) and a dramatist (“For me, a good story is all about setting up expectations and delivering on them in an exciting and surprising way”). At times his primal nature overcomes him, and he’s forced to rip apart a squirrel to cope with the pain of losing a loved one. But, namely, Enzo is a philosopher pup that doles out wisdom like this is Zen and the Art of Racing in the Rain. His mantra? “That which you manifest is before you,” or simply stated, “We are the creators of our own destiny.” It’s a T-shirt waiting to happen. Wait, it’s already happened.

Fair to say that Hogan can’t just go around shaking his rear in this role. “I don’t want this to become a cartoon or a bunch of cliches. It’s not children’s theater,” he said. “I made it jokingly clear that I’m not going to be wearing a tail and ears. I’m going to have to portray a dog without being a dog.… I’m trying not to overthink it.” Still, the Seattle actor is uniquely positioned to embrace his inner Enzo. When he’s not in rehearsals or auditioning for local film spots, Hogan is a dog trainer who runs a dog-walking company in West Seattle (Google “David the Dog Trainer”). “I wouldn’t call myself a dog whisperer,” he demurred. That’s best left to Cesar Millan. But reading The Art of Racing in the Rain had Hogan looking into the eyes of his wards a bit more closely. “Dogs don’t process information the same way humans do, but they show emotion.… They communicate in all kinds of wonderful ways.”

No need to tell Seattleites that. We have doggie therapists, pet insurance—and when the going gets rough, our pooches can pull up a stool at Norm’s Eatery and Alehouse. When Stein penned his novel in 2008, he tapped a nerve. He gave a voice to man’s best friend that wasn’t cloying; Enzo might as well be a teenager for all his smartassery, his inability to vote, and his reliance on Denny to drive him places. The Art of Racing in the Rain paperback practically lives on the New York Times best-seller list—143 weeks and counting—and has already been adapted for children and optioned by Universal Studios. The film is slated for release in 2014 with Dr. McDreamy himself, Patrick Dempsey, playing Denny, but Stein is even more excited about Book-It’s production.

Stein has handed off his DVD collection of “important racing films that Enzo wouldn’t want you to miss, like Le Mans” to Carol Roscoe, his friend and the director of the Seattle staging. Otherwise, he’s staying out of the adaptation process, “for the same reason I have nothing to do with the film,” he said. “The book is my thing. Trying to adapt it or even to be involved with it—you might as well ask me to adapt it as a haiku. It would take a fresh set of eyes, because I would want to keep everything in it. It’s best to let the talented people do what they do best.”

The Art of Racing in the Rain
Apr 17–May 13 $22–$44,
Center House Theatre, 305 Harrison St, Seattle Center,
206-216-0833; book-it.org

Seattle Summer Events Guide: Theater & Dance

Tue, 21 Jun 2011 04:00:00 -0700

Theatre

Seattle Shakespeare Company’s Free Wooden O Summer Shows

July 7 @ Issaquah Community Center Open Space – Macbeth | @ Luther Burbank Park Ampitheatre – Comedy of Errors
July 8 @ Luther Burbank Park Ampitheatre – Comedy of Errors
July 9 @ Volunteer Park – Macbeth | @ Mercerdale Park – Comedy of Errors
July 10 @ Mercerdale Park – Macbeth | @ Volunteer Park – Comedy of Errors
July 13 @ Lynndale Park Ampitheatre – Macbeth
July 14 @ Lynndale Park Ampitheatre – Macbeth | @ Luther Burbank Park Ampitheatre – Comedy of Errors
July 15 @ @ Luther Burbank Park Ampitheatre – Comedy of Errors
July 16 @ Pine Lake Park – Macbeth | @ Luther Burbank Park Ampitheatre – Comedy of Errors
July 17 @ Luther Burbank Park Ampitheatre – Macbeth | @ Luther Burbank Park Ampitheatre – Comedy of Errors
July 20 @ Luther Burbank Park Ampitheatre – Comedy of Errors
July 21 @ Luther Burbank Park Ampitheatre – Macbeth | @ Luther Burbank Park Ampitheatre – Comedy of Errors
July 22 @ Luther Burbank Park Ampitheatre – Macbeth | @ Angle Lake Park – Comedy of Errors
July 23 @ Luther Burbank Park Ampitheatre – Macbeth | @ Pine Lake Park – Comedy of Errors
July 24 @ Luther Burbank Park Ampitheatre – Macbeth | @ Edmonds City Park – Comedy of Errors
July 27 @ Richmond Beach Community Park – Comedy of Errors
July 28 @ Luther Burbank Park Ampitheatre – Macbeth | @ Issaquah Community Center – Comedy of Errors
July 29 @ Luther Burbank Park Ampitheatre – Macbeth
July 30 @ Luther Burbank Park Ampitheatre – Macbeth | @ Desmoines Beach Park – Comedy of Errors
July 31 @ Seattle Center – Macbeth | @ Seattle Center – Comedy of Errors
August 4–7 @ Luther Burbank Park Ampitheatre – Comedy of Errors

Dance

Dancing til Dusk

Tuesdays @ Westlake Park
July 19 Kevin Buster’s Lunch Money | Blues/Swing
July 26 Ambiance | Golden Era Swing
Aug 2 Glenn Crytzer and his Syncopaters | Swing
Aug 9 DJ Sean Donovan | Zydeco
Aug 16 Solomon Douglas Swingtet | Swing/Blues
Aug 23 DJ Robb Bryan | West Coast/East Coast Swing

Thursdays @ SAM Olympic Sculpture Park
Aug 25 Solomon Douglas Swingtet | Swing/Blues
Sept 8 Tumbao | Salsa and Latin
Sept 15 KGB | Waltz, Swing, Foxtrot, Polka

Saturdays @ Occidental Park
July 30 DJ Vassili | Salsa
Aug 6 DJ Nick | Salsa
Aug 13 Christian Pepin Y Su Conjunto | Salsa
Aug 20 Tumbao | Salsa

Rage Against the Machine

Wed, 16 Mar 2011 07:00:00 -0700

IF MY PHONE CONVERSATION with Mike Daisey in December had been monitored by the FCC, half of it would have been bleeped out. Yet dropping the more-than-occasional F-bomb is an endearing trait of Daisey’s: an extension of his passion for life, its ironies and atrocities. In his unscripted monologues—delivered from behind a desk, with just a handwritten outline and glass of water at hand—he unleashes tirades on Amazon, the banking crisis, Scientology, the failure of theater in America, 9/11. His face reddens; sweat drips down his neck; he gesticulates like a symphony conductor. But mostly, he gets personal, telling self-deprecating stories about the self-proclaimed “chubby little man” sitting behind the desk.

Daisey, 38, draws on a range of experiences, going back to his childhood in a small town without a traffic light in the northernmost part of Maine. He moved to Seattle in the mid ’90s to “reinvent himself,” as many did, trying his luck in theater before taking a job in customer service at Amazon (“for the health insurance”). After a few years with the online retail giant, Daisey learned two things: He would never work for a corporation again, and the off-the-wall emails he sent to CEO Jeff Bezos (all unanswered) made great material.

After the success of his breakout performance 21 Dog Years: Doing Time @ Amazon.com in 2001—including a book deal and his Letterman debut—Daisey relocated to New York City, but the Pacific Northwest left its mark, instilling in him a geek’s appreciation of gadgets. He will wax philosophical about the MacBook Air (“it has the strength of a netbook, but it’s beautifully miniaturized”), yet it makes him feel dirty to talk lovingly of Apple products—considering what he knows. In his latest one-man rant, The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs, Daisey exposes devastating details about the Foxconn iPhone 4 manufacturing plant in Shenzhen, China, where he went undercover last year, posing as a prospective client. “iPhone 4s are all created by people who are paid abysmally, who work hideous hours under terrible conditions,” Daisey said of the experience. A 2010 Apple audit confirmed his allegations of underage labor; last month’s Wired magazine dedicated its cover to Foxconn’s 17 suicides. “Many of these changes don’t require much money—just changing the labor laws. Human rights!” he yelled into the phone.

Daisey the Raconteur has become Daisey the Activist, using his storytelling skills to deliver a message about responsible consumerism. He’s not calling for a boycott of Apple—and he hasn’t tossed his iPhone 3 into the Hudson River. “I totally know I’m complicit.… These devices change how we see and interact with the world, and I would not stop using them any more than I would cut off my arm,” he said. “[But] I feel it’s my duty to advocate. No one cares because they don’t know.”

Daisey has a message for all the Microsofties in the audience: Don’t think this isn’t about you. Problems are endemic to the entire industry and our collective thirst for the latest and greatest. We’re all gonna feel guilty. But he also wants us to laugh, and to feel empowered to make changes. Simply put: “We need to grow the fuck up.”

Fantasy Frye-land

Tue, 15 Feb 2011 11:15:00 -0800

BET CHARLES and Emma Frye never saw this coming: Sixty years after donating their collection of late nineteenth-century German paintings to Seattle, wildly surreal multimedia now shares a wall with bucolic landscapes. And around the corner from the gilt-framed oil paintings stands a ceiling-high sculpture—a coy giantess who lifts the hem of her skirt and beckons you to browse a video collage beneath the folds.

The latest avant-garde explosion at the Frye is courtesy of Degenerate Art Ensemble, a Seattle-based performance art group that defies definition. Founded as an experimental orchestra in 1999, DAE is an evolving collective of anywhere from six to 20 sound engineers, artists, filmmakers, composers, photographers, and costume designers, descendants of alternative circuses and “militant marching bands.” They take their name from the 1937 Degenerate Art exhibition in Munich, in which the Third Reich showcased 650 modernist works they pulled from German museums and derided for failing to live up to National Socialist standards. If purity was the Nazis’ party line, the DAE salutes mashups. They embrace all disciplines—with influences ranging from punk rock to Butoh to fairy tales—to create theater that’s been called “whimsically disturbing” and eminently memorable.

Performances are a mad mix of dance, music, video, and sculpture—nothing is as it seems. Case in point: The steel-framed “weeble-wobble skirt” from the 2009 work Sonic Tales doubles as a prop and instrument, allowing its wearer, codirector Haruko Nishimura, to spin about the stage battling ninjas without toppling over. Designers also tricked out the costume with chimes so Nishimura could hammer a battle hymn of atonalities with a set of kitchen utensils. In the spirit of collaboration, audiences are part of the spectacle. When Sonic Tales debuted at the Moore Theatre, everyone in attendance was asked to make it rain: 1,700 pursed lips collectively sputtered pewp, pewp, pewp while a sea of fingers wiggled high in the air. Video excerpts of the Moore event, along with the utiliskirt, will be on display at the Frye.

“It’s almost like we’re setting up scenes,” deputy director and curator Robin Held said of the exhibit. Another scene will focus on the DAE’s 2006 performance Cuckoo Crow, a mythical story of a fallen baby crow transformed from bird to beast, with prosthetic spring-loaded hooves that function as instruments. In its entirety the exhibit covers the spectrum of the group’s work since its formation, some 100 compositions that have been performed around the world. “For [almost] 15 years DAE has done some of the richest, most interdisciplinary, immersive, gleeful work in Seattle,” Held said. “We are so overdue to showcase all that they do in a context where people can spend time with it.”

Or under it: Madame Giantess, aka The Hidden One, was created just for the Frye exhibit, and the DAE has also prepared The Red Shoes Project, a traveling adaptation of the Hans Christian Andersen tale of a ballerina whose toe shoes threaten to dance her to death. This performance comes complete with a marching band and chorus, and will take to the streets of First Hill around the Frye in May. It’s a fairy tale with special significance to the artists, says Nishimura, who sees in its lead character the sacrifices made to pursue passion.

“We wanted to give people an experience that they wouldn’t be able to have at one of our performances,” DAE codirector Joshua Kohl added. “We’re used to making things that people see at a distance, instead of making things that people will see from all sides and close up.”

What would Charles and Emma think? Not a problem, wagers Held. “The Fryes were extremely forward-thinking in their day—they’d probably be thrilled.”

Spring Arts Preview: Top Seven Strategies Seattle Arts Should Copy

Fri, 21 Jan 2011 04:00:00 -0800

SHAMELESS? WHO, US? We proudly salute arts organizations around the world using creative approaches to reach new audiences.

In no particular order…

1. Make yourself accessible. The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts stays open 365 days a year, and in 2010 even hosted a well-attended Thanksgiving lunch—complete with roast turkey—for 100 people. (Don’t worry: Museum workers got overtime.)

2. Get on the Web. In 2009, the famed Berlin Philharmonic became the first major orchestra to broadcast all of its performances live online—they call it the Digital Concert Hall. Viewers pay 9.90 € for a “ticket” or 149 € for a season pass, and they get a rich concert-going experience in return, including innovative angles from six remote-controlled HD cameras.

3. Get on the Web, Part 2. The Los Angeles Philharmonic now makes many of its recordings available on iTunes.

4. Culture: Live in HD. Ever since the Metropolitan Opera started simulcasting performances of Carmen and Turandot in movie theaters around the world, a handful of other arts organizations have jumped on the “Live in HD” bandwagon. Now the National Theatre in London broadcasts performances of Hamlet worldwide, Broadway producers just announced Memphis would be coming to a big screen near you, and the LA Phil beamed its orchestra, led by charismatic conductor Gustavo Dudamel, into theaters for the first time last week.

5. Create space. Pasadena nonprofit SideStreet Project literally takes its work on the road. Based out of a solar-powered trailer, the 2010 winner of the MetLife Foundation’s Innovative Space Award is a mobile contemporary arts unit, going from one community to another teaching local artists how to be self-sufficient.

6. Offer a cultural workout. If you’ve attended a performance at Seattle’s ACT, A Contemporary Theatre, in the past year, you might have gotten a phone call recently about a new subscription package they’re offering. The ACT Pass is reminiscent of a gym membership: Pay $25 a month ($20 if you’re under 30) and attend an unlimited number of shows—plus, friends who come with get 50 percent off tickets.

7. Look elsewhere for funding. Now more than ever, fledgling artists—filmmakers, comedians, and musicians alike—turn to kickstarter.com to raise money for their projects. Kickstarter is a marketplace for good ideas: Post your idea and a projected budget on the site, and if a private funder is interested, a match is made.