Jean (and John) and the Northcoast Prepsters

set for Light on the Piazza

Jean Heard Bazemore began directing theatre on the North Coast in 1969.  She directed and taught at HSU until the late 1990s.  In my almost-decade of reviewing, I saw two shows she directed for the Humboldt Light Opera: Souvenir, a small-scale production of a play about Florence Foster Jenkins, and a large summer show, Light on the Piazza.  But mostly I saw the shows she directed with high school students of what came to be called the Northcoast Preparatory Academy.  She began that school, and has been its director ever since.

I'm reproducing two of those pieces below. The first is about Strindberg's The Dream Play she directed in 2007.  It was also the play she directed in the same theatre (the Van Duzer) in 1969-- if I recall correctly what she told me, back then she had been drafted to do it on short notice when another production fell through.  This column squares the circle further by telling the story of local musical favorites Joyce Hough and Fred Neighbor, who met when acting in that play.

But mostly this column is a decent introduction to the work she did at Northcoast Prep.  The school's productions were (and are) part of the educational process, and usually involve a long period of study and discussion.  (The actual productions I believe tended to get put together pretty quickly.) The students select the plays they want to do, which in some years meant the plays they wanted to combine, or perhaps do two.  Generally the first and second years did one show, the third and fourth years another.  The shows they did--and the editing Jean did on the scripts--favored participation by as many students as there were that year.

Cyrano

So the student experience came first.  But audiences (even apart from parents and relatives) got the benefit.  For one thing, they saw plays that they could not see elsewhere on the North Coast--plays that not so long ago used to be part of the repertoire for any student of the theatre, casual or serious.

The Northcoast Prep students always brought something special to these plays.  Their commitment, first and foremost, and enthusiasm, but also talent and skills.  Still, these shows depended on Jean Bazemore's taste, talent and skills as a director.  And on the elegant stage designs by Gerald Beck.  They ensured that the audience got clarity, as well as a viewpoint, an illumination.

Sancho Panza and Don Quijote 

So we got Brecht, Shaw, Strindberg, Arthur Miller as well as Shakespeare and Sophocles.  We got a youthful presentation of older heroes to youth:  Don Quijote de la Mancha , Cyrano.  And of an elder tragic hero, in Lear.

Their youth was also an asset in itself: adding verisimilitude to the young women in Arthur Miller's The Crucible, for instance.  But most impressively in Spring Awakening, which concerns adolescent feelings and experience.  That they could also do the adult roles convincingly in these same plays made them all the more compelling.

cast of Spring Awakening

For me the most memorable were The Crucible, Shaw's Joan, the version of several Henry plays from Shakespeare with a strong point of view about war in Mortal Men, Mortal Men.  And Spring Awakening.  The age of the actors relative to the characters and the play added a dimension, but it did not dominate the experience. I'm not even sure how they did it, but in most of these productions they had my complete confidence, and I was absorbed in the play itself.  Since they were different groups of actors, I have to conclude that a lot of it was due to Jean.

I am also appending to this column another (from 2006) that doesn't appear elsewhere on this site. Its only other virtue is that it concerns two directors I admired then, and admire still for the work they've chosen and produced: Jean Bazemore and John Heckel.   The first play I saw on the North Coast was directed by John Heckel--it was the 1996 winner of the national playwriting contest that HSU Theatre Arts department used to run.  Shortly after that, John directed a play by my partner Margaret Thomas Kelso at HSU, to which I contributed two songs.

But beside his good taste in directing several of Margaret's plays, he was responsible for some of the best theatre I've seen here.  His direction of both parts of Angels in America, in the relatively intimate space of Gist Hall Theatre, was mesmerizing.  He did a play by Cree playwright Tomson Highway that was astounding.

The Homecoming at HSU

I wasn't crazy about every move he made in his shows, and sometimes they took me out of the trance.  But his instincts for the mythic could add another dimension, and there were few others willing to take the chance on trying.  In more recent years, he directed some modern classics that nobody else would touch in this neck of the woods, Harold Pinter's The Homecoming at HSU and John Osbourne's Look Back in Anger at Ferndale Rep (which only happened because another show fell through.)

These two directors have very different approaches and get different results, but their choices of plays and playwrights are similarly rewarding, and for the North Coast, unfortunately unique.

The Dream Play  January 2007

The Dream Play by August Strindberg is performed at the Van Duzer Theatre by the Young Actors Guild. These shows from the Northcoast Preparatory and Performing Arts Academy are unique. They bring together young people devoted to an arts-based education with visionary theatrical veterans (director Jean Heard Bazemore and set designer Gerald Beck) in adaptations of stylistically unconventional and substantive plays that these days just aren’t seen much on the North Coast.

 The play’s not the only thing of interest on the stage. As with performances of other high school, junior high and young people’s group (such as those at Dell’Arte, Ferndale Rep and NCRT) that aren’t reviewed here, the experience of witnessing young people discovering themselves on stage can be inspiring, resonant and educational for the audience as well as the students. The play in turn can itself be infused with more meaning by youthful enthusiasm and sincerity.

 The Dream Play has all of that, plus an efficiently flowing, focused production, and Beck and Bazemore’s magnificent stage pictures: there’s a scene with a trapezoidal door suspended in space, with similarly shaped screens floating above an elegantly composed set of actors that’s breath-taking.

 These are juniors and seniors, some of them in their fourth or fifth play, and some on stage for the first time. The cast also includes exchange students from China, Germany and Ghana. A school production allows large casts, and there are as many as 20 actors on the stage in this one, with a Greek-style chorus that big enough to suggest the power of the people’s voice, whether used for good or ill.

 I saw Saturday’s performance, with Isaiah Cooper deftly expressing the Officer’s changing moods and circumstances (he alternates with Sterling Johnson-Brown), and Tehya Wood, stately, radiant and beautifully costumed as the Daughter of the god Indra (she alternates with Hanna Nielsen and Nicky Vakilova.)

 Bohdan Banducci, blessed with a fine stage voice and presence, plays the impoverished Lawyer whose marriage to the Daughter reveals earthly woes. Fiona Ryder’s aria wowed the crowd, student James Forrest composed the dramatically effective video projections, and all the actors capably brought out the humanity and the humor of the characters and the play.

 This isn’t pure Strindberg—there are musical interpolations and a much different ending, extolling the virtues of relationship and group action rather than the author’s emphasis on the eternal tensions of the human condition. But that’s also fitting for a youthful vision, and I found that seeing this play in action illuminated a further reading of Strindberg’s text.

 Saturday’s audience, which was clearly involved in each stage moment, included a certain couple with an extra interest. Joyce Hough and Fred Neighbor are familiar figures in the North Coast music scene. Jean Bazemore directed an HSU production of A Dream Play in the Van Duzer in 1969. Joyce Hough played the Daughter, and Neighbor was the Lawyer. They met while doing the play, and their nightly 20 minutes alone crouched in a crawlspace waiting for their entrance might have had something to do with an ensuing romance and marriage a year or so later. They were there together Saturday, sitting in front near Gerry Beck, who also designed the 1969 production.

The Accidental Brecht-a-thon  February 2006

Bernadette Cheyne as Mother Courage

By sheer coincidence, this week the HSU campus will become the Brecht capital of the world. At least I know of nowhere else that is hosting two productions of Bertolt Brecht plays in the same fortnight, with two nights that both plays are staged simultaneously.

 The HSU Department of Theatre, Film and Dance production of Mother Courage and Her Children begins tonight at Gist Hall Theatre, directed by John Heckel. Next Tuesday (Feb. 28), The Caucasian Chalk Circle opens at the Van Duzer, mounted by the Young Actors Guild of the North Coast Preparatory and Performing Arts Academy, directed by Jean Bazemore.

 Although it’s accidental, this local Brecht-a-thon is not eccentric. The unique ways his plays address searing issues that are suddenly central to this moment is a chief reason that Brecht is being revisited on stages from Los Angeles to New York, where a new adaptation of Mother Courage by playwright Tony Kushner will appear this summer, starring Meryl Streep.

 Bertolt Brecht was a central figure in Berlin’s vibrant theatre scene in 1928 when became famous for “The Threepenny Opera,” with music by Kurt Weill. By the time Nazi Germany invaded Poland in 1939, Brecht had escaped to Scandinavia, where he wrote Mother Courage and Her Children. Brecht uses plain language and dark humor to tell this story of a woman trying to eke out an existence selling goods from her cart to armies on the road, while protecting her three grown children from the very war that feeds them.

 Commenting on this play, Brecht said: “War is a continuation of business by other means, making the human virtues fatal even to those who exercise them.” For director John Heckel, the core question Mother Courage faces is: “How do you remain soulful, how do you retain a sense of nurturance?” in this situation.

 Brecht himself directed this play’s official premiere in 1949, with his wife, actor/director Helene Weigel, as the first “Brecht girl” to play Mother Courage. HSU actor, director and teacher Bernadette Cheyne plays her here, surrounded by a mostly student cast.

 For the songs in the play, popular North Coast singer-songwriter (and recent HSU grad) Lila Nelson wrote the music to Brecht’s lyrics, and leads the live band during performance.

 While Mother Courage is a kind of tragedy, The Caucasian Chalk Circle is a comedy with a happy ending. Brecht escaped to America in 1941, thanks to the support of a large expatriate German colony in Hollywood (including actor Peter Lorre, who’d worked with Brecht in Berlin) and the sponsorship of Luise Rainer, star of The Good Earth, even though they’d never met. But when they did take a walk on the beach together, Rainer suggested he try a story using the “chalk circle”—a kind of King Solomon method for deciding a child’s true mother. Brecht agreed, and eventually wrote this play while living in Santa Monica. (He returned to Germany after the war.)

 Director (and teacher) Jean Bazemore staged it about five years ago, when the Academy was new and only fifteen students were involved. This production, which uses only freshmen and sophomores (juniors and seniors did the fall show, Antigone & St. Joan ), has a cast of more than thirty actors and musicians, with music composed by students Izzy Samuel and Greg Moore.

 Her students respond to this play, Bazemore says, because of its humor and its core message--“that there are good people who take risks and make difficult choices in difficult times. They love it. The opportunity to meet characters who make courageous choices is really appealing to them.”

 Now I need to disclose that writing this column is one of my freelance gigs, and another I started at about the same time is doing publicity for this semester’s HSU-produced shows. That’s why I don’t review those shows here, but it’s still pretty awkward, because it’s impossible to write about North Coast theatre and ignore HSU. So I can only ask you to decide on how many grains of salt you want to apply to my remarks.

 In the nine years I’ve been here I’ve seen most of the plays these two directors have done. I also know them, and I wrote two songs for a play by my partner, Margaret Kelso, that John Heckel directed. (So add more salt and let simmer.) As directors, they have in common a strong visual sense, a feeling for theatrical space and the rhythms of performance, and a sure touch with actors.

 Their shows and choices of plays aren’t to everyone’s taste. But I know of no better directors on the North Coast than John Heckel and Jean Bazemore.

 Schools like HSU and the North Coast Academy are best able to do these plays because they can supply the large casts, live music and other production requirements that further their educational mission.  But since Brecht is a unique playwright not often performed, these are particular opportunities for audiences as well.

 For many years Brecht’s plays have been obscured by theatrical theories (many of them his own) and Cold War politics (due to his Communist sympathies.) But it’s said that the motto he kept above his writing desk was: “Simpler, with more laughter.” This may be the moment his plays can be seen for themselves, without the baggage.

Time's Person of the Year is Ours

Time Magazine has chosen its Person of the Year for 2014: The Ebola Fighters. One of the covers belongs to Ella Watson-Stryker, the Doctors Without Borders worker I referred to without naming in a previous post at Dreaming Up Daily. She's one of our own here in Humboldt--the daughter of HSU professor and long-time friend, Betsy Watson, and a person we've watched and been proud of for a long time.

 According to the magazine's description, Ella didn't even want to spend the ten minutes on having her picture taken, as it was distracting her from her work.

 Her mother, currently traveling, writes that Ella is good health, and very proud of the work they and the US military did in Liberia, where Ebola has been virtually eradicated. But after some time in Europe training other workers and some r&r over Christmas in the states, she's back in the fray in Sierra Leone, where things are dire indeed.

 I didn't mention her name before because of the stigma that was ignorantly attached to these heroes. And even now, Ella has to go out of her way in entering the US to avoid airports where she could be forced to spend her holidays in quarantine.  (She of course has been thoroughly checked as part of Doctors Without Borders procedure, and has been back from Africa for some time.)

 It's hard to have much faith in humanity after something like the wanton torture the US engaged in, as we are being reminded again. Then there's Ella, and Doctors Without Borders. And even Time Magazine, for doing this. A better world is possible.

Coming and Going with Sanctuary Stage

The origin story of Sanctuary Stage, begun in Eureka by Dan Stone and Tinamarie Ivey in 2006, is reproduced below.

Dan Stone learned commedia del'arte in Italy, and that was an early emphasis--for example, in their commedia version of A Christmas Carol I wrote about in 2006. But they were soon exploring other theatrical avenues.

At a certain point, Dan and Tinamarie also took over the management of the Eureka Theatre, that amazing, huge old building from the deco movie palace era. It was there I saw Memories, an experimental production in a year-long look at aging ("Shades of Grey.")  It was Dan Stone's mash-up of two plays by Samuel Beckett and a comedy by Mary Louise Wilson that explored two aspects of memory, both of which are emphasized with age: the reassertion of the past, and forgetfulness in the present.  It was experimental in its approach as well, using elements of commedia and other techniques.

In my fake April Fools column (that only the Arcata Eye would publish) I teased Dan for his combining disparate plays as well as the nature of some of his selections, like the Kopit he directed at Arcata Playhouse: Dan Stone combines elements of plays by Beckett and Eugene O’Neill with Neil Simon and the Firesign Theatre in the Santuary Stage production of Waiting for the Iceman or Someone Like Him, starring Tinamarie Ivey as Tina Fey playing the Virgin Mary, and Bob Wells as Father Time. “It’s even more obscure than usual,” Stone promises.

Dan Stone

But in fact nobody else did the kind of work Dan did here, and nobody is doing it now.  He took chances, tried things, and since he usually had actors up to the task, what he produced was interesting and exciting.

I have Dan and Tinamarie to thank for my only North Coat appearance as a playwright, in their first 24/10 production: a half-dozen or so playwrights are given the topic and about 12 hours to write a ten minute play, then matched with a director and a cast, so the play is performed about 24 hours after the process began.  It was completely insane, utterly exhausting, but it was fun and illuminating.  Of course I wrote extensively about the experience here.  (Apparently Plays in the Park is doing something similar in the summer of 2015.)

But the Eureka Theatre was snatched away from them, and soon they found a livelihood elsewhere, in Oregon.  But Sanctuary Stage didn't die--it just relocated, and focused on a new mission--"community-engaged theatre"- that had begun with Jason in Eureka, which Sanctuary had hosted.  Cornerstone Theatre from LA set up shop at St. Bernard's while they were here, and at a dinner there I met members of the company.

Tinamarie later returned to Humboldt with The Logger Project, as written by Jackie Dandeneau and directed by Ken Gray, an LA playwright who'd spent a year at HSU and who was one of the other playwrights at 24/10.

Tinamarie Ivey

Dan and Tinamarie are still producing theatre. Tinamarie became exec director of the Majestic Theatre in Corvallis, Oregon. Dan's website has illustrations of, among other productions, his direction of Macbeth. The Sanctuary Stage website seems active as well.  Just not here anymore.

The Birth of Sanctuary Stage 2006
It’s an old story but an important one for North Coast arts: theatre artists Dan Stone and Tinamarie Ivey came from southern California to HSU for their MFA degrees and decided to stay so they could raise their children away from L.A. “We’ve been trying to figure out a way to do our art and still stay here,” Stone said.

Stone teaches drama at St. Bernard’s high school, and Ivey is teaching this year at HSU. But they’re combining on a new venture called Sanctuary Stage that involves training actors and producing plays, beginning in October.

 Stone sees this as an opportunity for actors of any age (beginning in the mid-teens) to learn a couple of specific approaches in depth. He will teach the pure Comedia dell ‘arte he learned from Maestro Antonio Fava in Italy, and Ivey will instruct in the Michael Chekhov Acting Technique she learned at the New York Experimental Wing, among other places. (A nephew of the famed playwright, Chekhov studied with Russian acting god, Constantin Stanislavsky.)

 Sanctuary Stage will perform in the St. Bernard Theatre that Stone has been busily refurbishing. Its first production in late October is Love Is a Drug, a classic sixteenth century commedia scenario “developed in rehearsal through improvisation.” Auditions are open, although preference will be given to students enrolled in Sanctuary’s classes.

Arcata Playhouse: Start to Now

The origins of the Arcata Playhouse are described in the 2007 column I also reproduce at the end of this one.  Since then there have indeed been many physical improvements in the theatre, and the Playhouse has been the energetic center of the ongoing revival in the old Creamery district of Arcata.

For awhile, I was going to the Arcata Playhouse regularly to review shows (and indulge in the homemade, still-warm chocolate chip cookies.)  Several notable shows premiered there: the two versions of Crawdaddy, and Tyler Olson's Quake: A Love Story stand out in memory.  Redwood Curtain produced shows there during its exile, and Dan Stone's Signature Stage brought Kopit's Sing To Me Through Open Windows. Jane Hill returned with Getting There.  Shake the Bard company produced a memorable Othello there, which was the basis for a later North Coast Rep production.  While the NCRT production was more polished, I found the production at the Arcata Playhouse to be more exciting as live theatre, possibly because the audience was in the thick of it.

There were also a number of visiting shows: Elizabeth Fuller and Independent Eye,  Cal Pritner's Mark Twain, Ghost Road's Elektra,  Donald Lacy's still relevant Color Struck for example.

Mostly through Four on the Floor Productions, the impressarios of the Arcata Playhouse provided original material: Jackie Dandeneau was a major creative force behind the epic Women of the Northwest, and David Ferney co-wrote and performed a solo show, The Misunderstood Badger. Ferney's brand of humor, in this show and in his part of the first Crawdaddy show, is unique.  There should be more.

 And there are the annual holiday shows, the latest of which played this past weekend.

In the last several years, the Playhouse has concentrated on music acts and family or children's theatre.  This perhaps reflects a dearth of funding for traveling troupes, and the demise of groups like Sanctuary Stage and Shake the Bard, with none replacing them in the theatrical ecology. But it seems to be also a preference for physical theatre (clown, mask, acro.)

It's interesting to note at the end of the article below that at first David and Jackie were hearing from people interested in reviving the kind of productions that Pacific Arts Center Theatre did.  That is not happening.  There was, David said, the opportunity for someone to mount, in his example, Ionesco’s Rhinoceros.  No one has taken that opportunity, or anything like it.  The PACT dream has apparently faded from the scene.

In any case, the direction that the Playhouse has gone in the past few years limited my attendance (I don't really know how to review clowns and acrobats.)  So I missed the kind of shows I used to see at the Arcata Playhouse, and I really miss the chocolate chip cookies.

Before I wrote the column below in 2007, I'd written about the first phase of reclaiming this Creamery space for stage: the Star Garden Theatre and its first non-children's theatre production of a play by veteran North Coast news broadcaster Dave Silverbrand.  Here are a couple of relevant passages from my draft of that March 2006 article:

Pacific Arts Center Theatre created challenging theatre on the North Coast for a generation, first in Arcata in the 1970s and then in the early 90s in Manila [This is where I saw its exciting production of Edward Albee's Three Tall Women.] Along the way, it spawned the children’s theatre group, Vagabond Players. After leaving Manila, both groups moved for about a year to the Eagle House, then to a Eureka warehouse space. Then PACT stopped producing completely, and Vagabond reconstituted itself as a program of the Ink People... 

Coming in from the March mist and cold, the space inside the Creamery building now known as the Star Garden Theatre feels immediately welcoming. The very high ceilings add to a sense of spaciousness and possibility, and there’s a warmth in the combination of modest fixtures and the theatre’s elegant wood floor. The homey reception area has a refreshment bar, topped with the large masks from Where the Wild Things Are[Star Garden's first production], and a revolutionary new concept in local community theatre---two (count’em, two!) restrooms, one next to the other.  

New Life for An Arcata Landmark?  February 2007

In big cities and small across the country, new artistic energies have often found focus in abandoned industrial districts, where superior buildings with lots of space offer opportunities for lofts, studios and performance venues, plus the people-oriented businesses that come to surround them.

Now and again the old Creamery in Arcata, in the largely depopulated and marginal area west of K Street, has suggested this potential. It hosts the Arcata Ballet, DanceCenter and New World Youth Ballet, with spaces for rehearsal, classes and performances. Years ago, the legendary Pacific Arts Center Theatre began here.

 Still, it hasn’t reached the critical mass to transform the area into a familiar audience destination. But there are signs that may be changing—specifically, a new sign in front saying “Arcata Playhouse,” and new paint being applied to the foyer last week from a tall ladder to which is affixed a small red teddy bear.

 Though the fresh paint outside and inside is only the first step in the planned transformation, this venue’s potential is being suggested and perhaps tested with a gala opening event this Saturday, featuring local luminaries such as Rudi Galindo, Jeff De Mark, Joyce Hough and Fred Neighbor, and hosted by the couple that comprises one-third of the partnership attempting to create a viable and affordable playhouse for theatre, music and other forms of performance, with a family emphasis and a community reach.

 They are Jackie Dandeneau and David Ferney, whose Four on the Floor Productions is partnering with Shoebox Puppet Company (Corey Stevens, owner of the Muddy Cup) and Vagabond Players, which most recently operated the space as the Stargarden Theatre.

 Pacific Arts Center Theatre had spawned Vagabond, which struggled on after PACT faded away, but, true to its name, it was homeless in 2005 when Carole Wolfe, its volunteer artistic director, called the Creamery looking for storage space. Instead she found Vagabond’s new home, in the same place where PACT had begun some thirty years before.

 Other groups also used the space (including Four on the Floor) but this summer Vagabond had fallen several months behind in the rent. That’s when Dandeneau and Ferney put together the partnership and became the venue’s managers. Now all three enterprises—Four on the Floor, Shoebox Puppets and Vagabond—have a home, and the rent is split three ways.

 Ferney and Dandeneau are Dell’ Arte people. Ferney graduated from its school about 20 years ago, and became a member of the locally famous family comic acrobatic troupe, Los Payasos Mendigos. The troupe also traveled far and wide, which is how he met Dandeneau at the Edmonton Fringe Festival, where she was with a traveling feminist sketch comedy group called Full Figure Theatre.

 “We would hook up in New Zealand, and hang out together in England,” Ferney recalled. “Meanwhile I was living in San Francisco, and she was in Vancouver. Finally we realized we would either have to shack up or call it quits.”

 They chose the former, moved to an island between Vancouver and Victoria, started a small theatre company, and a family. Then Dell’Arte called, and hired them both.

 They recently began branching out to produce shows through Four on the Floor, which brought them to the Stargarden Theatre, and to the managing partnership of the Arcata Playhouse. Noting the couple’s professional experience, Ferney said, “I’m interested in exploring a hybrid of professional and community theatre.”

 Upgrading the space is a major goal. ”Getting a decent lighting and sound system, some decent drapes, figuring out the best seating arrangement,” Ferney said. “Corrie is a great partner because he just took over that café, and he’s really interested in getting concessions together, and taking care of all that. So we want to elevate the venue and make it a happening place in Arcata.”

 “I’m excited,” Carole Wolfe professed in the Playhouse lobby, paint roller in hand. “There’s all this new energy—it’s fun again!”

The Playhouse is going forward with a performance later this month by Mookie Cornish (Cirque de Solei clown and Dell’Arte grad) and the Faust Mask Works from Toronto in May. Synapses, which lost its Eureka home, is one of what they hope will be many local groups to perform here.

David and Jackie talked enthusiastically about the possibilities, especially for family-oriented shows and filling community needs, such as a place for young people and seniors to hold performance events.

 But they’re also thinking of adult theatre—the kind the Pacific Arts Center Theatre used to do. “I’ve met a lot of people who are really excited about the rejuvenation of the old PACT space,” Jackie said. “I’d like to do a PACT-style show, with some of the actors who were involved in it.” “You know, pretty much anything is possible, once you’ve got the space,” David observed. “You might be thinking, ‘oh, I’ve always wanted to do Ionesco’s Rhinoceros, so why not?”

This North Coast Monday: Not Just A Movie House

A staged reading of the first play ever produced at what became Humboldt State University happens one hundred years to the day later, on Monday December 8, at the same place: the Minor Theatre in Arcata, which is using this event to help celebrate its own centennial.  It first opened on December 3, 1914.  The reading is at 7 p.m., and is a benefit for the Emma Center.

The first staged readings this year of Her Own Way were held at HSU in October, and I wrote about that, and researched and wrote about the anniversary, the play and the playwright at HSU Stage.

Though I have nothing to do with this particular event on Monday, I did ascertain the dates that everybody is accepting.  First, there's the date of the Minor opening.  There are at least three dates in various stories that ended up on the Internet, but the most thorough of them (probably derived from the contemporaneous story in the Arcata Union) set the date at December 3.

The date of the production however comes from one source, sort of : a history of the HSU Theatre Arts Department written by its legendary chair, John Pauley.  It has the details about Humboldt State at the time, the show itself and even some information on the many other live stage presentations at the Minor in its first years.

But in the text, it gives the date of that first Her Own Way performance as December 3.  Not once, but twice.  It does however reproduce a facsimile of the poster or handbill that announced the performance, and on it the date is December 8.

The two numerals look alike so a typo is possibly, but which one?  If it's December 3, then the date for the opening of the Minor is wrong.

I concluded that the poster, not the text, was correct.  Sure, it could have been a mistake, but it's less likely, since it is contemporaneous, the kind of document an historian would accept over a later account. But what cinched it for me was that  it included the day: Tuesday, December 8.  And in fact, Dec. 8, 1914 was a Tuesday. The stories that said the Minor itself opened on Dec. 3, said it was Thursday, and that's also correct.

Pauley writes that Her Own Way was the first locally produced theatre event at the Minor.  But opening less than a week after the Minor itself opened for business with its first silent movie, makes it probable that it was the first stage event of any kind there.

As for the event on Monday, if it is the same as the reading in October, it's a kind of hybrid of a staged radio drama and a staged reading (with everybody at music stands) which I found unsatisfying as either.  But the play itself is actually involving.

The original play by the prominent and pioneer Broadway playwright of the time Clyde Fitch, has been cut considerably, and at least for the October readings, its most popular character in its Broadway run in 1903 was cut out entirely.  But she was comic relief in a way that may not translate, and not integral to the story.

The stars are the Stockwells--Danny, Greta and Glenys.  Everybody reads their parts from loose-leaf script binders, except Glenys, who even at the publicity photo shoot had her part memorized.  At the first performance she seemed to know the cues for other performers as well.  Who knows, by now she may be directing the show.

The Long and Winding Redwood Curtain

I've seen the saga of Redwood Curtain from its public beginning, from its first production at the Eagle House, of A Perfect Ganesh by Terrance McNally.  I still remember that production fondly.  I couldn't anticipate what would happen next, and at least once, I was thrilled by what did.  (Even though in its Internet descriptions, the play sounds awful.)

We saw subsequent plays at Redwood Curtain's first permanent home, in the Henderson Center shopping center.  Their homeless period coincided with the first years of my Stage Matters column.  For awhile they had a property in view, which ultimately fell through.  That's the one described in the interview from 2006 I did with Redwood Curtain's founders, Peggy Metzger and Clint Rebik.  I've attached that column to the end of this one.

There were empty years (2006 itself) but also some very good productions at the Arcata Playhouse, though they tended to be very small scale: two of the ones I liked best were basically one person shows: Randy Wayne as genius physicist Richard Feynman (and come on--what other reviewer could comment on how Feynman said "in-ter-est-ing"?) and especially Tinamarie Ivey in Bad Dates.

Then at last in 2010 the strange boxcar-shaped theatre (which could actually have been a trolley barn) on Snug Alley in Eureka.  Redwood Curtain started off gloriously in its new and present home with Lynne Wells' tour de force in Glorious!  

In old home and new, Redwood Curtain seems to have specialized in contemporary domestic comedies of a kind often described as "quirky."  I can't at the moment think of a word I despise more than "quirky."  It's a lazy, smirky way to avoid taking the pains to actually describe something.  It's very much akin to the all-purpose, supposedly neutral but backwards damning "different."

But these comedies do share certain qualities--unusual location (i.e. not Manhattan apartments), and/or characters with perceived social, class or physical disabilities, with narratives that wobble and wander unexpectedly, or are told in a not strictly realistic style.

I was charmed by many of these comedies on the nights I saw them, and some left lasting impressions: Fortune with Clint Rebik and Cassandra Hesseltine; the  historical Hollywood comedy Moonlight and Magnolias with James Floss; The Language Archive with Craig Benson, Terry Desch, Lynne and Bob Wells; and two shows this past season, Christopher Durang's Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike, and the witty yet substantive Equivocation.

I also recall some charming moments in the virtuoso comedy Almost Maine, the energy in the clever if superficial For Better and Circle Mirror Transformation. I suppose superficial is the right word for a number of these--or Skin Deep as one play was called.  Even when these plays don't have narrative problems of one kind or another, they are like confections: fun at the time, but not very nourishing.

Redwood Curtain doesn't do many dramas, but a couple remain favorites and strong in my memory (I didn't see the most recent show.): The Pitmen Painters, and Craig Benson's direction of A.R. Gurney's Far East. It actually started me on a couple of months of reading Gurney's plays.

Common to all Redwood Curtain productions (even the ones I really didn't like) has been the quality of the acting.  It's the gold standard for the North Coast, and that is beginning to extend beyond acting.  The parts in these contemporary plays aren't greatly challenging, but often require virtuosity and subtlety.  Just physically, the actors are credible as their characters--not a luxury that every theatre hereabouts enjoys.

This 2006 interview refers to the dream or goal of creating "Ashland By the Sea," but at the time I didn't realize how literal that description might be.  For it seems many of the plays that end up at Redwood Curtain were first spotted at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival.  Sometimes contemporary plays that arrive via that route (as well as from other regional theatres) are bit homogenized or confused in the "development" process.  They typically have a high concept premise (you know, a quirky one) and include a thesis statement speech in case you missed the point.  They might come stuffed with ideas and bits, per the suggestions of countless workshops, even when the narrative strains to the breaking point.

But where else are new plays going to come from?  Not many from Manhattan anymore.  And some extraordinary plays survive the process.  I'm  not sure extraordinary playwrights do, but that's another subject.

The vision described below from 2006 includes the theatre as tourist destination. Earlier that year I'd proposed something like that independently, in a column about uses of the Balloon Track/Tract that didn't involve a shopping mall:

There's been talk of a bay research facility on the waterfront, and the proposed eco-hostel may include research labs. Maybe there's potential for creating related tourist destinations that show off the science that also shows off this region's natural wonders and independent spirit. Because all the waterfront's a stage.

 There are other possibilities to give people more to do, and more reason to come to the waterfront, like a park, a lively museum of regional history, and -- an actual theatre, on the waterfront. 

I imagine a modest but adaptable theatre space, for a rotating menu of productions by local theatre groups and individuals, with daylight programs of children's theatre, street theatre and short plays based on local history and themes, to give tourists a destination and the North Coast some fun. And to provide theatre people some paying work, assuming they don't all die of heart failure at the prospect.

 It's just an idea, but it might be useful to explore how theatre can contribute to making the waterfront a special, signature place, while working with compatible businesses and cultural attractions beyond the waterfront. With lots of balloons, track or no tract.

So far this hasn't happened, but Redwood Curtain's current location holds that potential.  As described below, their dreams of a theatre and restaurant, and other daring innovations (two multiple occupancy restrooms!) got scaled back, but the artistic goals seem pertinent still.

 I was very impressed with how Redwood Curtain supporters stayed with them through the years of exile.  Now that loyalty is paying off.  Plus there are Klondikes.

  
Ashland By the Sea (2006)

It's been almost exactly a year now since Redwood Curtain closed its last show. A compact legacy of costumes, props and scenery were hauled away from its abandoned digs in a Eureka shopping center and stored. But its current homelessness has not darkened the vision its founders have always had.

 "It's been a roller coaster ride," admitted one of those founders, Peggy Metzger, in a recent conversation on the HSU campus, where she works as Associate Director in the Financial Aid department. "But right now we're in negotiations on a space we really want."

"Our vision has always been to be a professional theatre providing living wages to artists," she said, "and to be a tourist destination — to be part of that economic development world. That's one of the reasons a Eureka waterfront location would be ideal — right where redevelopment is happening."

So no surprise that this is the location of the building that Redwood Curtain hopes to soon inhabit. "It's a big building in Old Town that's been abandoned for years, that's never been a theatre," she said, and laughed. "Even though we can't say what building it is, everybody figures it out pretty quickly from that description."

 If ongoing negotiations are successful (they've been proceeding for about six months), Redwood Curtain has the designs ready for the construction of a brand new theatre. But there's another key piece of the plan as well.

 "We've partnered up with Curley Tate, of Curley's Bar and Grill in Ferndale, who always said, 'wherever you guys end up permanently, I want to be with you.' So half of the space will be the new theatre, and half a fabulous new restaurant."

Besides the negotiations, Redwood Curtain has been active in other ways in the past year. They've ducked out from under the umbrella of the Ink People and are organizing their own non-profit. With Cassandra Hesseltine presiding, there's the new casting agency and a conservatory that's offered acting classes. But always the main attention has been on finally making the theatre vision a reality.

 "We learned a lot from our last space," Metzger said. "So the playing area we've designed is basically the same — a three-quarter thrust stage — but the backstage will be very different. We've also designed it so it can be used for other events like weddings, conventions and conferences, with catering available from Curley's. We'll build a classroom and rehearsal space, so we can do events in the theatre and still rehearse and hold classes."

But perhaps the most immediate revolution in Humboldt County theatre will be the restrooms: two new ones, each accommodating four people at once.

 Artistically, Redwood Curtain will maintain its niche of offering mostly contemporary plays that haven't been performed elsewhere in Humboldt before. "Fresh, thoughtful and funny, sometimes a little edgy," as Metzger described it.

"Even if we would do a classic, it would be a rethinking of it. We want to produce the highest quality we can manage, using the top talent we can find, even bringing in outside talent."

"Contemporary work that excites our artists and our audience," added Clint Rebik, Redwood's Artistic Director, who joined the interview from his job in the HSU Registrar's office. "Work that we feel a connection to."

 Both Metzger and Rebik travel to other theatres, always looking for ideas they can use at Redwood Curtain. But there's one particular model, or at least ideal. "Ashland has been kind of a guiding force for us," Rebik said, "because of their rural, small-town location, and what they do and how they do it, the venues, how they've grown. Of course, they have a 60-year head start on us."

But that's the nub of the vision, as Metzger described it: "Ashland by the sea."

Eventually they hope to be doing two plays in repertory in the summer, "so that tourists who wouldn't come here for one play might come for two," she said, referring to Ashland's system of multi-play packages that attract visitors from up and down the coast. Restaurants and other businesses in Ashland have adapted to serving visitors that the theatres attract, but Redwood Curtain hopes to build in part of that process with Curley's.

"Imagine having a great grilled salmon dinner," Metzger said, "and when you get your bill, your theatre tickets are tucked under it, and your server tells you, 'your performance starts next door in 10 minutes.'"

Getting a good beginning on this vision may not be so very far away, either. "We're hoping for a 2007 season in our new venue," Metzger said, "four shows, beginning in spring."

Bah Humboldt! Christmas 2006

This is my draft of a column from December 2006: an account of three productions I saw on one Sunday.  It's notable for the Sanctuary Stage commedia del'arte performance at Mazzotti's (what I didn't say was that, the morning I attended, I was the only person there) as well as the Dell'Arte holiday show, and the Redwood Curtain fundraiser.  Plus the Christmas party afterwards, at which I snapped the photos published here, one for the first time. When I realized the Journal wasn't going to pay me for taking pictures for them, I stopped.

 Last Sunday began with Jupiter, Mars and Mercury clustered in the pre-dawn sky -- the first time since 1925, the last until 2053. Not that I saw that particular performance -- getting to brunch for a noon "curtain time" was early enough for me. I was beginning my Christmas show marathon.

 "It's a raincoat and sunglasses day," remarked the woman behind the counter at Arcata Liquor, where I bought my Sunday newspapers (with my book review in the Chronicle) before crossing the Plaza to Mazzotti's Restaurant. There, with your choice of broccoli and pancetta quiche with fresh fruit, or eggs Benedict with prosciuto puff pastry and champagne, you got A Christmas Commedia, served piping hot by Sanctuary Stage.

 The show is itself a mercurial combination of classic commedia dell'arte -- right down to the characters from its Italian origins -- and Charles Dickens' fable, A Christmas Carol. Scrooge as the commedia's Pantalone (also a rich miser who abuses his servants, as Scrooge does Bob Cratchit) is just the starting point of the interplay. Factor in the contemporary references (like the very recognizable face on the Ghost of Christmas Past) and there's another source of unexpected energy, and laughs.

"Bah, Humboldt!" Pantalone shouts, and we're off. The cast is outstanding, led by Tinamarie Ivey in a tour de force as Pantalone. Though all the performers (including Carrie Hudson, Melissa Lawson, Dan and Zachary Stone) have physical comedy skills, and fine comic timing and presence, the intensity shoots up to the roof as soon as Heath Houghton bounds on stage. He's always one of those actors you have to watch, but he adds both an individual and a cohesive energy to this ensemble -- and he does a jump on his knees from the stage to the floor that will drop your quiche-filled jaw.

What most impressed me about this show (scenario by Dan Stone, elaborated by cast improvisation in rehearsals) is the combination of physical humor, verbal wit and a mostly efficient and forward-moving story with the major narrative virtues: You could follow it, and it kept you involved, even when you basically know what's supposed to happen next.

 There's the traditional slapstick, chases and double-takes, but also wordplay, topical asides and in-jokes (anybody who recognizes the "I'm alive" intonation from James Whales' Frankenstein gets an extra laugh) that fly by almost as fast as in a Marx Brothers movie.

Though Dickens' story retains its prominence and power on its own, this is a well-performed, well-crafted entertainment, and an intelligent companion to the Sunday papers on the table. With cleavage and toilet humor, of course.

You've got one more chance to see A Christmas Commedia -- this coming Sunday (Dec.17) at Mazzotti's. Brunch starts at 11, and the show at noon.

 There was a lot of Christmas-related theatre happening on Sunday. I saw three shows and still didn't have time to get to the matinee of Cinderella (packing them in at Ferndale Rep) or the back-by-popular-demand Humboldt Light Opera show, King Island Christmas, both beginning at 2 p.m.

 The next event I could attend was the Redwood Curtain benefit at the Bayside Grange in mid-afternoon. Co-founders Peggy Metzger and Clint Rebik seemed overcome by the impressive turnout when they took the stage to introduce a reading of David Sedaris' Santaland Diaries, performed by Edward Olson.

"You can brag to your friends you were here for our entire 2006 season," Rebik quipped. Redwood Curtain's year in the dark, and its prospective future, were on everyone's minds. But after referring to the still-ongoing search for new digs, Metzger flat-out promised: "We are going to produce a season in 2007, come hell or high water."

The Sedaris piece is an account of an actor new to New York who takes a job as a Christmas elf at Macy's department store, where an army of elves run a huge, season-long assembly line of kids and their parents past multiple Santas. Olson, having donned the gay apparel called for in the story, effectively rendered the humor and human observations of this pleasant, contemporary tale.

Then while most of the audience moved to the munchies supplied by Curley's Bar & Grill, others went up on stage to be photographed with a leering Santa (Bob Wells) and a sweet Mrs. Claus (Lynne Wells).

 Next I finally caught up with the Dell'Arte Company's holiday show, Entrances and Exits, at the Adorni Center in Eureka, where it had to compete with the entertainment value of the ballet of little birds seeming to glide along the waterline in the darkness, feeding in the shallows of the bay.

The core idea of this show is vaudeville farce, with the inherent impudence of opening, closing and skittering doors punctuating the sketches, along with music and requisite, child-pleasing clowning.

All the members of the ensemble (Tara Cariaso, Carlos Alexis Cruz, Gulshirin Dubash, Kajsa Ingemansson, Morgan Jarl, Andrew Phoenix, Helga Rosenfeldt-Olsen and Freddy Villano) are young, skilled and very appealing. The show itself seemed uneven -- tight and incisive at times, slack and virtually incomprehensible at others. The clarity of situation and form of vaudeville theatre was lacking, and while that may have been part of the experimental intention, easily grasping the premise and form allows the audience to recognize surprise and relax into the laughter.

 But there are plenty of delights anyway. I'd love to see this group do Second City-style improv, especially after a few months in front of audiences. This weekend you can see this very watchable ensemble do the Carlo Theatre version of this show, Thursday through Sunday, Dec. 14-17.

 Finally, very late last Sunday, the hemisphere premiere of the annual Geminid meteor shower began. I didn't see that either. I was writing this column.

Dell'Arte Memories

When we were living in Pittsburgh, Margaret came back from a national theatre conference somewhere with a load of brochures and other handouts.  One day I spread them out on my bed and began reading the ones that looked most interesting.  I read about this theatre called Dell'Arte in some place with the lovely name of Blue Lake.  I liked what I read about theatre and community, theatre of place, nurturing and generating new work on the spot.

Margaret and I were both playwrights at the time.  It was more or less how we met.  When in the course of time she interviewed for some teaching jobs in California,  I was rooting for Humboldt: because of the climate, the redwoods and the sea, and the proximity to Indian tribes.  Nearby Dell'Arte was also part of the draw.

It turned out that Dell'Arte was not going to be a creative home for me, and I got a different role to play, as a theatre columnist, which I performed as best I could for the past 9 years. Dell'Arte was a big part of those years.

We started seeing Dell'Arte shows as soon as we got here in the fall of 1996.  I began writing about their shows in 2005.  I laughed, I was dazzled, I was frustrated, I appreciated, I was puzzled, I learned. But after all that time and all those shows, I'm still not sure what I think or feel about devised work or commedia.  Which means I've constantly been challenged and engaged, in the process of learning about these ways of doing theatre, and learning about my own responses.

I've certainly come to know more about and appreciate commedia and its role.
I've learned enough about "devised" or group-created theatre to know I can't understand it from the outside, though I expect the process is different for each project and with each group.

I love the idea (and when I've experienced it, the process) of a seat-of-the-pants group creation that's funny--a cabaret, a burlesque, a series of skits.  One of my dreams was a kind of theatrical That Was the Week That Was every month. But for a sustained, single theatre piece, i.e. a play,  I certainly haven't lost my preference for a playwright.

Of course the playwright's process may well include others. Some, maybe many playwrights work with the director, cast and other creative agents on the production, often reimagining and rewriting parts of the play.  I knew of one wonderful play that began with creative contributions from a class (Becoming Memories by Arthur Giron, which I've seen in three different productions, including one directed by Margaret Thomas Kelso.) And I've seen close up the contributions that actors as well as others can make to a play in process, at the O'Neill Center.

 But I can't help believing that the inchoate quality of some such productions, the missed opportunities for both depth and finish, for a vision is often a result of compromise or just too many cooks.  However, I've felt this not only with devised work, but with some plays that go through the workshop and development process, and come out homogenized or confused, or both.

It may not even be fair to compare devised work with the work of a playwright.  But I get the feeling that the first is fashionable now, crowding out the other.

But on with the shows...

Out there right now is the latest of Dell'Arte's annual Christmas holidays shows.  The performers and co-creators are generally from the Dell'Arte School, directed by Michael Fields, Joan Schirle or Ronlin Foreman.  Over the years I've seen them in at least four venues: the Carlo, the Van Duzer, the Adorni Center and McKinleyville High School.

For Dell'Arte, it keeps them visible in the communities, and gives the school's students some experience before audiences and especially in touring--that process of packing out, setting up, playing the show, breaking it down, packing it back in the truck, and heading for the next venue.  For audiences it is free holiday season entertainment,  near where they live.

I recall The Hunting of the Snark as the most visually impressive, with sets by Jody Sekas and costumes by Lydia Foreman.  This interpretation of the Lewis Carroll poem happened the same year (2007) as Ferndale Rep did a children's show based on the Mad Hatter's tea party in Alice in Wonderland.

I remember images and impressions from other shows (one with a lot of doors and people running in and out, for instance.)

  But my favorite is the 2009 show, A Commedia Christmas Carol. That was the Dickens Christmas year, as NCRT did A Christmas Carol and Ferndale Rep did Oliver!

  This show gave us the framework of the familiar Dickens story but with contemporary twists (though none of them were Oliver.)  Scrooge's nephew and his wife, paragons of middle class virtue in Dickens, are spoiled Yuppies.  Most daring and most effective was Tiny Tim, not as a crippled waif, but as afflicted with the contemporary American scourges of obesity and asthma.

So it was contemporary, full of verbal as well as physical humor, and it was commedia, for Scrooge is a version of the ancient character type, the Miser.  And while it was not entirely faithful to the spirit of Dickens' tale, it gained by both resemblances and contrasts, and it pleased both children and adults on different levels.  This is perhaps different from saying it was a family show--I suppose some others were better at being that.

Throughout the year there might be another Dell'Arte Company show locally, they might tour, or simply be involved in other projects.  The School produces shows as projects from courses in clown work, melodrama, tragedy and so on.  In the spring are the culminating shows, the Finals and the Thesis Projects.

I've previewed and reviewed a number of these shows over this years.  For the purposes of this retrospective, I'm most interested in what simply comes to mind, without refreshing my memory by looking back at what I wrote about these shows, though doing so does tend to organize the fragments and images I spontaneously recall.

I remember the excitement, the ambition of Between Two Winters, a project in tragedy that had enough legs to travel.  I remember vividly the lovely story of Annie Edison Taylor, the first woman to deliberately tumble over Niagara Falls in a barrel, as one of the 2012 Thesis shows.

Many shows seemed like lesser variations on themes of Beckett, Kafka, etc. or constructed from a checklist of physical theatre skills, or elaborate illustrations of a complex and heartfelt idea that only the participants and their friends understand.  In other words, student work.

Occasionally however something original and whole emerged, and this happened just last spring with 'Night Mother, a Comedy.  The characters were believable, not caricatures, and the situation was fresh.  They reacted to each other, they changed or revealed other aspects of themselves.  But at the same time, there were familiar comic bits and tropes and basic situations. The performers were excellent.  It was a real play and a very funny one.

Not everything on stage has to be "a play" in that sense.  Using physical movement, visual design, sound and music, and words, a piece can be created with beautiful parts, images and impressions, that relate to each other and the whole, and to an  effect that is both cumulative and unified.  Care must be taken not to disturb it with anything that pushes the audience out of the experience; this is usually a narrative problem.

 But it is something else that Dell'Arte does--most recently with Elisabeth's Book, played last spring and summer.  This piece made very strong and lasting impressions.

Then there are the big, sprawling summer shows.  Unique on the North Coast, the Dell'Arte Company is a theatrical presence elsewhere in California and especially in Europe where it is artistically respected.  But the parent Company always returns for the outdoor show that begins the annual Mad River Festival.  There its relationship with a broad local audience is renewed.

My own favorite as the most successful evenings of theatre among these shows I've seen remains Blue Lake: The Opera.  But the most significant must be the Mary Jane shows.  There had been a long silence about Humboldt County's most important cash crop, which the first show broke in a big way.  Dell'Arte took a real chance doing it, and I believe they knew it.  But by the second, darker version, the engagement was firmly made, and the topic opened up more generally.  Now there's to be a movie combining the theatrical elements with documentary.  It's the apotheosis of theatre of place.

Dell'Arte is also remarkable for the other theatrical groups it has spawned, and though they've spread out across the country and the world, many have visited (some more than once) with productions.

Dell'Arte is also unique for its continuity, and the continuous contributions of its principals, most notably Michael Fields and Joan Schirle.  I wrote about the extraordinary year that Michael had in 2013 (once I had the title "Plenty of Fields," the column was inevitable), at HSU and beyond as well as at Dell'Arte.  But that's just one year among many.  His presence, inspiration and his work have been of inestimable value to North Coast stage for many years.

The same can be said of Joan Schirle, whose contributions to Dell'Arte and North Coast theatre have been profound.

She brought Mary Jane to life and infused those shows with continuous energy.  Her performance was also the occasion of my favorite Stage Matters lines: Surely Schirle should eschew sleuthing and choose chanteusing.  I know, easy for me to say.

 I am particularly grateful to Joan for including me in the anniversary readings of  It Can't Happen Here by Sinclair Lewis that celebrated the great unknown triumph of the Federal Theatre Project in the 1930s.  She helped organize a national series of readings, and gave me a part at Dell'Arte.  So now I've looked out from that Carlo stage as well as looked into it.

Big Fat Liar and Mad River Fest 2006

I started this blog in January 2007, so the reviews, previews and so on I wrote in 2006 and 2007 aren't here.  Some of them now aren't accessible anywhere.  So for the record, here is what I wrote about the 2006 Mad River Festival, beginning with an unusual piece previewing the opening production in the backyard, Big Fat Liar. 

 This year’s [2006] Mad River Festival begins Friday in Blue Lake with the Dell’ Arte Company production of Big Fat Liar. It’s the second of their three collaborations with a Danish theatre based on Henrik Ibsen’s Peer Gynt, a play about a man who lives by lying and by making up stories with himself as the indomitable hero.

 Using an NSA mole and the GPS interface in my Blackberry, I located its director, Michael Fields, lounging at Sacred Grounds. I read the five-act verse play, which Ibsen never meant to be performed, while my driver weaved through the Arcata traffic. I like to be prepared for my ambush interviews.

 I found Fields at a table by the door, sipping absinthe and munching on a Danish. I think her name was Freja.

 “Are you really going to ask me a question wearing your shades?” he inquired.

 “I’m legally blind,” I retorted.

 “That explains some of your reviews.”

 “With these glasses I can see everything. Into the infrared. Into the future.”

 “Really? What do you see about me?”

 “I see a letter to the editor complaining that I have not described your beauty in enough detail. Or Freja’s.”

 “My assistant writes a good letter,” he smiled, “when not playing a flying pig.”

 “I can understand Dell’Arte being interested in Peer Gynt, the most physical and fantastical of Ibsen’s plays,” I said, baiting the trap. “But why three different versions? Why don’t you just, you know, do the play?”

 Fields talked about researching past productions, seeing films and videos of the Berliner Ensemble, the Royal Swedish ballet, and the production Ingmar Bergman brought to New York, among others.

He read a version set in New Orleans translated into Cajun. “I met the head of the Norwegian national theatre who has directed it 17 times. He’s doing two productions now—one with a deaf theatre company in Oslo, and he’s going to do part of it in Egypt in front of the Sphinx. He says the play is like a prism—you break it apart and put it back together. You can’t do the full thing—it’s six hours at least.”

 “We decided to explore it from three different angles,” Fields continued. “We did our first adaptation, Myth-o-mania, as our Christmas holiday show, and in September we’ll do our final version, The Lie, in the Carlo, and take it to Minneapolis, New York and Denmark. It’s a kind of comedia noir cabaret piece with three of our actors, and three actors from the Danish company. They’re called Jomfru Ane Teatret, which means ‘the Virgin Mary Company.’”

 “No thanks,” I said. “I’ll stick with the absinthe.”

“Big Fat Liar, the one we’re doing for the Mad River Festival, is the spectacular outdoor version. We’ve got a burning ship, monkeys and levitating trees. We’re using every actor at Dell ‘Arte. Our live band, with the entire Arcata Gospel Choir singing brand new songs, and a hard rock version of ‘Mr. Sandman.’ We’ve got our teen ensemble. We’ve got children on stage, including a nine month old baby.”

 “And Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie,” I suggested.

 “That’s a lie!” he said. “They will not be in the show. They’ll just be in the audience. Watching their lovechild Shiloh play a troll.”

 “Trolls? They live on the Internet, don’t they?”

 “ Some of them. The story of Peer Gynt is based on Norwegian mythology and fairy tales. But there are Peer Gynts in every culture. We try to make it relevant—we talk about the Arkleys, Dave Meserve, the Blue Lake laundry thief. But it’s still Peer Gynt’s story---a guy who is full of possibilities, but who wastes every opportunity because he has no capacity to reflect and learn. He has these amazing adventures, but all he does is repeat his mistakes in different ways. He lives in fantasies, the way we’re taught by commercials to live in their fantasies of a perfect life. We basically follow Ibsen’s story to the end of Act 4, when Peer sails home, still hoping that he can say someday that he did something with his life.”

 We talked about which parts of the play are supposed to be real and which might be Peer’s dreams, but I suddenly sensed I was needed elsewhere and it was time to shed this secret identity. “Michael, I’d love to chat about this all day,” I said, “but I’ve got to answer these text messages from Tom Hanks, who just told James Lipton on “The Actor’s Studio” that what he really wants to do is write a column, and he wants some pointers. And I have to find a phone booth, or at least a police box.”

 “Right,” he said with a sigh. “And I have to go back to Blue Lake and see if the pig can really fly.”

 “Which is where Dear Readers must go,” I added, “to learn how much of this was a lie.”

 Big Fat Liar plays at Dell’Arte’s Rooney Amphitheatre from June 23 through July 1. Try http://www.peergynt.org for more info on the Peer Gynt project.

  In a later column, a brief comment on the production and more about that year’s Mad River Fest: 

 As for Big Fat Liar, with his boyish charm and energy, Jaese Lecuyer was a perfect Peer Gynt to anchor this outdoor romp. All the elements of production and all the performers (including the band) made quality contributions to a successful and crowd-pleasing show. Maybe because I’m partial to the Marx Brothers and their vaudeville-derived routines, my favorite bit was Ronlin Foreman as the crazy asylum director. Not everything worked, but a lot of the excitement comes from Dell’Arte pushing the boundaries, so it’s still a good time. I’m looking forward to the third Peer Gynt production getting deeper into Ibsen’s creation.

 After the rousing extravaganza of Big Fat Liar, this summer’s Mad River Festival resumes with a new one-person show by Sara Felder, called “OUT OF SIGHT: A Blind Comedy about God Israel and My Mom,” beginning Thursday in the Carlo Theatre and ending Sunday.

 With her virtuoso juggling and use of comedy, movement, shadow puppets and audience interaction to explore her themes, Felder has dazzled North Coast audiences before. (Formerly from San Francisco, she’s relocated to Philadelphia.) Describing the content of this show, Felder says: “What’s important to me is that I’ve been performing in and out of the Jewish community for almost 20 years, and I’ve been scared to talk about Israel on stage. So the play is really a piece about trying to find my voice in the conflict, and the complexity and poignancy and heartbreak of many American Jews as they struggle with conflicting emotions. But specifically it’s a piece about this mother and daughter trying to maintain their relationship in the face of these differing views.”

 Next weekend (July 14-16) is the second Dell’Arte players show,“Artesmisia,” an original work directed and principally written by Guilio Cesare Perrone (whose version of “The Illiad” was presented last winter), with Barbara Geary in the lead role.

 An imperious and statuesque Woman in Green in “Big Fat Liar” (the stilts helped), Geary is also “Artemesia’s”co-creator. The show features choreography by Yong Zoo Lee (who also worked on “The lliad”) and original music by HSU student YounJoo Sin. It’s based on the life of Artemisia Gentileschi, one of the few recognized women painters in the post-Renaissance, Baroque period. Her father (Orazio Gentileschi) was a well-known Roman artist who encouraged his daughter’s talent. But he brought charges against the friend he hired to teach her about perspective, Agostino Tassi, for raping her when she was fourteen.

 Though Tassi was jailed during the proceedings, it was Artemisia who was on trial. Then 19, she was tortured while being questioned by Tassi. Though he was convicted, his friends in high places got him released, and he subsequently disappeared. But he remained a presence in Artemisia’s art. She painted portraits of Judith, who in the Apocrypha to the Bible, beheads her seducer, the Assyrian commander Holofernes.

 “She kept returning to that theme over and over again,” Geary observed. “Some say so she could paint Tassi’s face on Holofernes, getting his head cut off.”

 Sensational enough for a Harlequin romance novel (and there is one), and a 1998 French film (very romantic and historically inaccurate), Artemesia’s story will get a different treatment at Dell’Arte. “I play Artemesia,” Geary said. “As she revisits scenes of her rape, she becomes Agostino Tassi in her imagination. Her model, named Julia, becomes Judith in her mind. In our terms, she works through what happened to her. It all helps her realize that she can move on—that she has other things to paint.”

 Geary describes the production as “visually lush, emotionally intense and ultimately redemptive.” There is even an aspect that might relate to Sara Felder’s piece, in that Geary was initially fascinated with Artesmesia choosing to paint strong Hebraic women instead of the more passive Catholic saints, which were more traditional subjects of the time, especially for women.

 The Dell’Arte portion of the Mad River Festival concludes on July 16 with the annual Annie and Mary Day parade and pageant in the afternoon, and a cabaret show in the evening. Tyler Olsen, Dell Arte’s assistant producing artistic director and part time flying pig (in “Big Fat Liar”) is directing this year’s pageant. “For the last few years we’ve had a theme, and this year it’s ‘A Parade of Nightmares,’”Olsen said. “We’ve gone out into the community to get ideas. We asked people to tell us their nightmares, which could be personal or social, like war and pollution.”

 The North Coast community also participated through the Mobile Mask Project, which set up at various Farmers Markets and other venues where people could help make masks that will be worn for these events.

 This year the cabaret has been moved from the afternoon to the evening to accommodate an “edgier, adults only” performance of songs and short theatrical pieces by Dell’Arte actors and staff, and outside performers. It may get “a little raucous and a little lewd,” Olsen said. “but it’s a lot of fun.”

The Parade featuring salsa band, stilts and giant heads, begins at 4pm in Blue Lake’s Perigot Park and ends at Dell’Arte for the Pageant. The Cabaret (organized by Kate Gleason) starts at 8 pm in the Carlo Theatre. The Mad River Fest concludes with the week-long Humboldt Folklife Festival, July 17-22. Check http://www.dellarte.com for performers and times.