This North Coast Weekend and This Week's Column

A stage-related film, Wrestling with Angels: Playwright Tony Kushner will be shown at the Morris Graves Museum in Eureka on Thursday at 6 PM. Discussion afterwards will be led by Michael Field and Joan Schirle of Dell'Arte and Christina Accomando of HSU.

At the Arcata Playhouse on Friday and Saturday at 8PM, the Redwood Curtain production of Blown Sideways Through Life concludes its run. I review it in my North Coast Journal column this week, and Barry Blake reviews it in the T-S. We both praised it, and coincidentally both found it worthwhile noting (with gratitude) that Christina Jioras, the star and only actor in it, didn't attempt the Brooklyn accent of the writer of this apparently autobiographical piece, Claudia Shear.

A word missing in the first paragraph of my column makes the sentence seem a little odd, as if answering the phone at a whorehouse is a fairly common job for actors. It's not, of course, but on the other hand, Claudia Shear's is not the only account I've heard by someone in show biz who did this.

Also I forgot to change a word in another paragraph, which I will now do without saying which one it is:

Part of the brilliance of this piece is that audiences can connect with her unique experiences while recalling moments of their own lives and their own similar feelings -- not only about crappy jobs, but the anxieties, indignities and injustices of almost any job, from the "no reading" and "no opinions" rules of busywork to the arbitrary bosses whose cold ire appears as mysteriously and disproportionately as their praise.

I note in my "Coming Up" paragraph that Jeff DeMark will be bringing one of his one-person shows to the Arcata Playhouse next weekend--specifically on Saturday, Sept. 15 at 8 PM. The show is his most recent composition, They Ate Everything But Their Boots. I note that, like "Sideways," it deals with insane jobs, but Jeff corrects me: there's a story or two that touches on the subject but the show with jobs as the main topic is Went To Lunch, Never Returned.

This will be Jeff's second show at the Arcata Playhouse, and the second time I'll be out of town at the same time. And I don't get out of town that often! I'll be in Ashland to catch most of the remaining plays of this season at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, for my column the following week. But I have seen the show he's doing--and so should you.

Jeff DeMark will be performing his baseball show, Hard as a Diamond, Soft as the Dirt at Ferndale Rep on Saturday, September 29. That's the one show of his I haven't seen yet, and as far as I know, I'll be around to see it this time.