On DeMark

Jeff DeMark is a unique presence in the North Coast stage ecology.  He's a storyteller who creates an entire show.  At first, inspired by the likes of Spalding Gray, his shows were mostly stories from his life, punctuated with a little music: Writing My Way Out of Adolescence, Went to Lunch, Never Returned;  Hard As the Diamond, Soft as the Dirt; They Ate Everything But Their Boots. He still does these from time to time.

 In recent years however he's increased the musical component, working with  established bands or a band he organized.  Sometimes there's been a theme, titled That Train Has Sailed, or The Thong Remains the Same.

At times he's put together an evening that I once referred to as tending towards something like a North Coast Home Companion. That came to a kind of fruition this past summer, when he played to a large, enthusiastic crowd in the Big Hammer Tent at Dell'Arte as part of the 2014 Mad River Festival. He hosted various musicians and other storytellers, with a house band and his own stories as well, with the general theme of summer.  They repeated the show at the Arcata Playhouse.

The Jeff DeMark label in the list over there to the right leads to mentions that suggest the range of venues and configurations of these shows over the years.  I was inspired to write at length about memories inspired by one performance of the baseball show at Ferndale Rep.  I mention that the shows are worth seeing more than once since new things jump out of you.  And that did happen when I saw this show again at the Arcata Theatre.  But there's also the pleasure of hearing again a story you really liked the first time.

Plus, as Jeff will tell you, every show is a little different.  Maybe he'll try something new, the musicians involved change things, but often it's the audience, and the interchange with them that makes a difference.  Most often (when I've been there) that's been a big positive, and Jeff has told me of other shows that were even better.  Sometimes it's mixed, as in this case which I wrote about briefly, and Jeff added a comment.

Of a 2008 appearance I wrote:  On a recent Saturday night, Jeff DeMark brought his particular brand of storytelling to an overflow crowd at the Muddy Cup in Arcata. He told some new stories along with selections from his fully-formed shows, accompanied by the UKExperience ukulele band. The combination was often magical.

DeMark’s stories are funny and sometimes poignant, and they seem to touch a chord with the local audience as shared experience and nostalgia. But they also penetrate with a poetic humanity, and this versatile ensemble of two ukes, electric bass and drums added to all these effects, but particularly the warmth. Some of the stories were a little rough in presentation but the final one perfectly summed up the potential of this combination.

 DeMark’s story about giving his mother her first marijuana high (at her request) was hilarious, backed at one point by the marching chords of Jefferson Airplane’s “White Rabbit.” Then the images of his mother the day after, relaxed and liberated into a youthful freedom, dancing to her favorite recording of Patsy Cline, got just the right accent from the band playing "I Fall To Pieces" as DeMark remarked that he never saw her happier than on that day. 

Somewhere I wrote about a re-telling of his first show: By turns broadly comedic and then quite serious, Writing My Way Out of Adolescence tells stories of growing up in Racine, Wisconsin, including surreal encounters with a one-eyed nun, stealing a car and sneaking into a nudist camp, and a long psychedelic journey that is filled with humor and some real danger. 

 “When I wrote this show it was like a band making their first album---I packed in every thing I could, all these wild, funny and disturbing events from adolescence and interlaced them with as much passion and humor as I could summon, “ DeMark said. “At the end I realized I was so lucky to grow up in a close family. I might not have survived without that love and I mean that quite literally.” 

At another point I noted: There's really nobody like Jeff anywhere, every show is a new experience, even for his devoted fans who never miss him. There's no doubt however that Jeff is a popular and maybe even legendary figure on the North Coast, and doubtless back on his home grounds of Wisconsin as well.  It's a truism in writing that the more specific you are, the more universal the effect. Unlike a lot of truisms, this is often true.  It's true in Jeff's case.  It's fun to be in an audience that laughs at the humor but also smiles when an experience Jeff describes reminds them of something, perhaps long forgotten, in their own lives. (The music cues help, too.)

Jeff premiered one of his formal solo shows on my reviewing watch, in 2006, before I started writing on this blog.  What follows is a preview and interview, followed by the review afterwards.  It's still hard to describe in a label what his "funny art" is, but one key to the differences might be that his performances evolved not from comedy clubs or open stages but from poetry readings.

It's A Funny Art   Oct. 30, 2006

It’s a funny art, Jeff Demark says. It doesn’t even have a name—is it comedy? Monologue? Storytelling? It’s usually just called a one-person show, although in his upcoming performance, there will be a band (tiny tim) performing live music and sound effects on stage with him.

 But even when he’s the only one up there, other characters appear. By the second half of his first show, Writing My Way Through Adolescence, which he recently performed at the Muddy Cup, audiences can all but see the stage crowded with a dozen people.

 DeMark’s new show, They Ate Everything But Their Boots will debut at a KHSU fundraiser on November 11 at the Bayside Grange. When we talked last week, he was frantically putting together the entire event (his day job is as KHSU Underwriting Coordinator), which meant lining up the food and drink, dealing with the logistics of his show and the appearance of the Delta Nationals to cap the evening, among other things. As well as writing his show.

 Two weeks before its scheduled premiere, the show was about three-quarters written. “To a Dell’Arte person, that’s plenty of time,” Jeff quipped. “To anybody else it’s, are you out of your mind?”

 “I have to write it all down, to get the details I need, the finer images, the sharper colors,” he explained. “I write way too much, and then I have to boil it down to the essentials.”

This new show is about the process of buying a house in Humboldt County and remodeling it. “But it goes beyond that—what is home? What is home to you? I did a lot of drifting before I ended up here.”

 Apart from a lot of jobs in a lot of places (including a stint in the original In-Sink-erator factory in his hometown of Racine, Wisconsin), DeMark’s journey to this show began with poetry readings in Madison in 1974. His poems tended towards the narrative, and the more he told stories, the more comfortable he felt.

 “Telling stories was a natural part of life where I grew up,” he recalled. “Maybe it was the long winters, but people would drink beer and play cards and tell stories. My father was a great storyteller.”

 But it wasn’t until somebody from Dell’Arte heard him at a Jambalaya poetry reading that he got the opportunity to write a whole show. It wasn’t so rushed that time—he had six weeks to write the second half—but when he performed that first show at the 1993 Mad River Festival to a sellout crowd, he knew he found something.

“I’d been kicking around for 19 years—I just wanted to finish something—I wanted to make something I could stand behind and say, this is a completed work. So then I had one. Now, do I have two? Maybe I could do another one.”

 But besides creating, there was performing—and that was another home he had to find. Fortunately, he got some very good advice. “A friend of mine was in the music business—Danny Kahn, he manages Roseanne Cash now. He said, ‘you’ve got to go out there like a band and play. Do everything you can until you’re comfortable, so when someone asks you what you do, you can say, ’I do these shows.’ You don’t say, ‘Well, I’m trying to do them’ or ‘I’m hoping to do them.’ Not that you’re going to be famous or make money, but when you can just say you do them, then you’re there.’”

So he performed in bars, folk clubs, coffee shops and a combination theatre and bowling alley in Minnesota. “I played places no other theatre artist does, because if I waited for a theatre to book me, I would never get enough experience. I had to do 25 shows a year rather than four.”

 Since 1993, DeMark has created and performed five shows to general acclaim in Humboldt, but this will be his first new one since 2002. Like the others, it’s autobiographically-based, which is a tricky form, because it has to have room for invention and craft but it has to be true, at least emotionally.

 Though DeMark has changed some facts and included stories that happened to other people, he knows there’s a line he can’t cross. “If the audience thinks you’re lying up there, you’re done for. If they think you’re just making this up to be cute, then you’re in trouble.”

As for finishing this show, “Fortunately I have a lot of people helping me.” As seems typical for DeMark, that includes a dramatics teacher, Cathy Butler, and his old friend Larry in Madison. Then on show day, another friend told him, “all you have to do is prepare your heart for great joy.” So will Jeff DeMark pull together his show in time? Come out to the Bayside Grange on November 11 and find out, and I’ll meet you back here after.

"Did I Finish It?" November 2006

Orion's Belt seemed bolted atop the dark trees along Jacoby Creek Road on Saturday's clear, crisp night, as an exhausted Jeff DeMark asked me, "Did I finish it?"

That was essentially the question this column ended with last time, as DeMark  was working on his latest one-person show, They Ate Everything But Their Boots, for its first-ever performance at the Bayside Grange Saturday evening.

What helped get it done, he said after the performance, was rehearsing with what he referred to as "the band," which was mostly two guys with ukuleles (Tom Chan and Matt Knight) who nevertheless pulled off a credible version of the Jimi Hendrix psychedelic guitar classic, "The Wind Cried Mary." They also doubled as sound effects technicians.

 Music punctuated the show at the break and at the end (when DeMark joined in on guitar for a bit of Dylan's "The Ballad of Frankie Lee and Judas Priest") and provided an extra dimension to his tale of working construction on Fred Flintstone's house in an Arizona theme park, with a parody of a tune his building crew rewrote from its incessant radio play (America's "A Horse With No Name.")

Afterwards DeMark mentioned the struggle to get the details right, and this -- the song on the radio, the kind of candy bar -- is a key to bringing the stories to life.

 One of DeMark's goals for this show was to tell favorite stories he hadn't told before, and the capacity crowd at the Bayside Grange was with him for every word, not only laughing but shrieking and sighing.

 It helped that his main subject, the process of buying and remodeling a house in Humboldt, was an experience much of the audience seemed to have in common. But by now it's also a personal relationship -- the audience knows him, and was willing to follow him almost anywhere.

Partly that seems to be because, in one way or another, he speaks for them: His stories are variations of their stories. They responded not only to the ruefully comic but to the emotional and even mystical meaning of home.

DeMark moved around and used the stage well (with hanging doors and windows on a set created by artist Michelle McCall-Wallace), though transitions were rough -- clearly this was a first presentation. With its responses, the audience on Saturday suggested areas where it wanted to go, which should help DeMark as he hones this show. Some of the stories he told may not remain in it, so the Grange audience heard what other audiences may not. Which also means that as the show changes even people who were there will be eager to see it again.

Afterword: In fact this show did change. After several more performances, he went back to it in 2010 and told me, “I’ve edited parts of it, I wrote a new ending and generally just tried to find the truth and humor in it. I’ve realized it’s really about things other than the search for a house, though that is certainly in it, and the whole process and madness of rehabilitating a 100-year-old Victorian. It’s about the journey of trying to find a place to fit in, to feel home, and with that comes a lot of feeling of destiny, luck or lack of luck. There are thoughts about synchronicity and how little logic has to do with our lives as compared to chance and fortune.”

The Big Mad (and This North Coast Weekend)

Korbel V begins this year's Mad River Fest

For more than a generation it’s been Mad in Blue Lake in June, ever since Dell’Arte created the Mad River Festival of stage performances. The festival got pretty hefty for awhile in the 90s and in more recent years it’s been smaller. But this year it’s bigger than ever, absorbing seven weeks of the summer with much more than the usual number and variety of events. It starts June 19 and ends in August.

 There’s more music: in additional to the traditional Folk Life Festival (July 14-19) there’s also a Blue Lake Blues Festival (August 2) and the Eureka Symphony performing Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf on July 25. (Last summer’s Dell’Arte Life Achievement Award winner and Dell’Arte founder Jane Hill was recently named Eureka Symphony’s first-ever executive director.)

 A major catalyst for the festival’s expansion is a big ArtPlace America grant, which accounts for several Blue Lake-centered events, many of them free, including Trash Mash-Up community workshops July 10-13 and the “Blue Lake: The Center of the Universe Party” on June 29.

 There are additional Blue Lake venues, such as Perigot Park and the banks of the Mad River, where Laura Munoz will lead “One Multitude,” a “movement choir” of 50 participants of all ages performed at sunset on June 25.

 There’s a new performance venue as well. In addition to the Rooney Amphitheatre and Carlo Theatre, several shows appear in the new Pierson Building Center Big Hammer Tent, adding a circus big-top topography to the summer Madness. That’s particularly apt since this summer’s Prize of Hope (given by Dell’Arte in conjunction with the Danish Institute of Popular Theatre) goes to Clowns Without Borders International. The award dinner is on June 28.

 On June 29, former lead clown for Cirque de Soleil Mooky Cornish leads a benefit performance for Clowns Without Borders before entertaining at the Center of the Universe party in the big tent. Cornish also performs a solo show, The Glories of Gloria Revue, July 10 through July 13 in the Carlo.

 In addition to the annual Red Light in Blue Lake adult cabaret (July 5) and the acrobatic performance (this year called Taken Away, performed five times between June 21 and 27), there are several other stage events. Mad Lab (July 2) is an evening of works-in-progress by Dell’Arte School grads Meghan Frank, Janessa Johnrude, Emily Newton and Darci Fulcher.

 July 23-27 is the official world premiere of Elisabeth’s Book, created by performers Joan Schirle, Laura Munoz and Ruxandra Cantir and director Alain Schons, with original music by Schirle, Gina Leishman and Tim Gray.

 On July 31, Jeff DeMark brings his band The Gila Monsters (Rick Levin, Ron Sharp, Jean Browning and Paul DeMark) for an evening of music and stories about summer called Acting On A Dream (and of course, there’s a story about the title.)
Besides Jeff, storytellers include Marvin Samuels, Lizzy Moonbeam and Charlie Gilbert.

 It all starts with the big show in the amphitheatre beginning June 19 and continuing for three weekends. Korbel V: The Secret is the latest in Dell’Arte’s outrageously epic working class soap opera that has seen death, a wedding, a birth and a fateful accident amidst much local color and family angst.

 This summer’s story finds the surly and unemployed Tommy Dugan living in a ramshackle trailer, eventually confronting the Korbel Timber Company as it evicts workers’ families from company housing. It’s written and directed by Lauren Wilson, who wrote the memorable 2010 summer show, Blue Lake: The Opera.

 Returning to Korbel are Michael Fields as Tommy and Joan Schirle as his mother Dorothy, who despite having died in the first play has appeared in all the sequels. Music is provided by Marla Joy, Tim Randles and Mike LaBolle. In a TV commercial for the festival, Fields as Tommy Dugan describes the show: “They say it’s a comedy but my life ain’t so funny to me.” That nails the mood of this series. It’s been satirical, melodramatic, over the top, but with heart and eyes open to the Humboldt of the moment.

 “It is pure ‘theatre of place’, Dell’Arte style,” Fields said (off-camera). “I don’t know of another theatre that follows characters over decades with keen attention to the times, looking at it all through the lens of place.”

 Dell’Arte is offering a festival pass to any four shows plus some extra benefits. (707) 668-5663, www.dellarte.com.

 Coming Up: Thursday (June 12) at Ferndale Repertory Theatre is an Actors Benefit performance of the ongoing production, The Dixie Swim Club by Jessie Jones, Nicholas Hope and Mamie Wooten. All proceeds on this night go to cast and crew. Otherwise the production continues Fridays and Saturdays at 8 and Sundays at 2 through June 22. This comedy portrays four North Carolina reunions of five women who met as members of their college swim team and got together one weekend a year for 33 years. Directed by Leira V. Satlof, it features Marilyn McCormick, Marilyn Foote, Rae Robison, Dana Zurasky and Natasha White. Scenic design is by Ray Gutierrez, with costumes by Lynnie Horrigan. 786-5483, www.ferndalerep.org.

This North Coast Weekend

Joan Schirle, Michael Fields, David Powell, Lynnie Horrigan, Donald Forrest, Tim Randles and special guests headline a weekend of Musical Cabaret, Friday through Sunday (February 24,25,26) at 8pm in the Carlo Theate at Dell'Arte in Blue Lake. Albert McFee is the MC, and performs new original songs.

Saturday, by the way, is International Commedia dell'arte Day, so, I don't know, take a clown to lunch!

Also on Saturday, Jeff DeMark is back at the Sewell Gallery with La Patinas doing his work-in-progress, currently titled The Thong Remains the Same.

The Language Archive continues at Redwood Curtain.   My review is in the Journal this week.  To get the in-joke about "fully baked" and the advice to have fresh bread on hand after the show, well, you have to go to the show.

This is the final weekend for Look Back in Anger at Ferndale Rep.   A drama (this one) and a comedy (at Redwood Curtain), both with superior acting.  Pretty good for any theatre town.

I should also mention a music event with a stage tie-in.  On Sunday afternoon at 2 p.m., Elisabeth Harrington and six North Coast friends (Craig Benson, Ana Cruz, Robert Keiber, Steve Nobles, Jenny Quigley and Kevin Sharkey) sing a love song to ice cream by Kurt Weil, among other delicious operatic selections.  The friends became friends as a result of working together on various stages, including Humboldt Light Opera and especially Sweeney Todd at Ferndale Rep.  It's in Fulkerson Hall at HSU, and proceeds to HSU Music scholarship fund. Tickets at 826-3928 or more easily at the door. http://HSUMusic.blogspot.com.

This North Coast Weekend

Redwood Curtain opens its new season with The Language Archive by Julia Cho. Directed by James Floss, it features Lynne and Bob Wells, Terry Desch, Christina Jioras, Pamela Lyall, Jerry Nusbaum and Craig Benson. Previews are Thursday and Friday, February 16 and 17, with opening night on Saturday, all beginning at 8 p.m.

Jeff DeMark reprises his Went to Lunch, Never Returned at Missing Link Records on Friday, Feb. 17 at 8 p.m.

Dell'Arte School second years present The Crocodile, adapted from an unfinished short story by Dostoyevsky. It depicts the "grotesque and darkly comic predicament" of a Russian bureaucrat whose life is changed forever by being suddenly swallowed alive...maybe.  It's onstage at the Carlo Theatre Saturday and Sunday only at 8 p.m.  Pay-what-you-will, reservations:707-668-5663 ext 5 for box office and ext 20 for the reservation line.

I review Ferndale Rep's ongoing production of Look Back In Anger in the Journal.  It's one of those productions you'll remember seeing, especially for the ensemble acting.  In a few days I hope to post an expanded and illustrated version of the review here.

This is the final weekend for Laughter on the 23rd Floor at North Coast Rep. Audiences have reportedly really been enjoying it, so this is your last chance.

Year Not In Reviews 2011: Communities in Hard Times

The Mousetrap at NCRT

 Bad economic times are more than a theme in at least four recent North Coast stage productions. They are a fact of life that local theatres face. From anecdotal evidence, it appears that the economy is injuring some theatrical organizations more than others.

 But in hard times particularly, all these theatres depend on the strength of community. Each of them has its own distinct community that often includes participants as well as audience members. That participation may be as actors and other artists, fundraisers, suppliers or simply volunteer ushers and ticket-takers.

 These communities can be drawn from natural constituencies: the associated school, the hometown. But basically these communities are self-selected, and they can be very loyal. For example, the Redwood Curtain community kept the faith through years of exile until a new venue was found. But there is also support from the larger community that is not regularly involved in productions, even as audience.

 During the past year I’ve made a point of seeing performances that weren’t on opening night (which is typically when that theatre’s own community gathers), with a variety of audiences in attendance. So I’ve seen Sunday matinees at Ferndale Rep with seniors bussed in from senior centers in Eureka and Redway, and an evening performance at the Arcata Playhouse with members of Soroptimist International of Arcata (an organization of “professional women dedicated to helping women and children in our community.”)

 This latter event was an example of a non-profit organization essentially renting a performance and selling tickets at a price of its choosing, often as a fundraising event. North Coast Repertory Theatre executive director Michael Thomas calls them “benefits,” and NCRT typically does two for each play, usually on opening weekend.

 “We like to do benefits because it helps other local non-profits raise money and it is a good way to get word of mouth advertising going after opening weekend,” he said. “Full houses on opening weekend are good for everybody. In any season, local non-profits raise a total of twenty to twenty-four thousand dollars by sponsoring benefits.”

 I saw NCRT’s most recent production (Agatha Christie’s The Mousetrap) at an especially interesting benefit for Reading Service of the Redwoods, which performs services centered around reading daily newspapers for broadcast to the blind. (As it happens, I was a volunteer reader some years ago.)

 That audience included not only supporters and participants but clients. So for blind audience members attending, the set was described in detail (the location of the doors and the furniture) before the show started, and the actors came out to introduce their characters, including what they were wearing and where they would first enter.

 Afterwards, Michael Thomas asked a group of blind audience members if even that cursory information had helped. You don’t know how much, is essentially what they told him.

 This is an obvious example of extending a theatre’s community, but these benefits seem to do so more generally. At several it was clear that some attendees had never been there before. Such events strengthen community ties, and together with other efforts to build loyalty (like creating very good shows), they can help theatrical organizations weather hard times.  These non-opening nights also remind me that in almost any audience, for even the most performed plays, there are those who are seeing it for the first time.

 As for a trend in presentations of the past several months, the most obvious was the march of musicals: six of them from June to November. If that’s a record, it may be broken in the next six months. After a February production of Shakespeare’s comedy, The Taming of the Shrew, Ferndale Rep presents three musicals in a row: Evita in April, followed by Cabaret and Woody Guthrie’s American Song.

 After its own Shakespeare comedy (Much Ado About Nothing) in March, North Coast Rep performs Avenue Q. In April, Humboldt Light Opera presents Damn Yankees. And rumor has it that a sequel to Mary Jane: The Musical  is in the works at Dell’Arte for the Mad River Festival in June.

 Musicals are popular with local audiences, so they may be a recession hedge, but they are also popular with North Coast performers. The flip side of that is a concern expressed by some directors that local actors (even students) are reluctant to perform in shows they don’t know. This can contribute to a theatrical tedium, and lack of adventurousness that is detrimental to actors and audiences.

 Still, the new year will bring plays by contemporary playwrights Suzan Lori-Parks (at HSU) and Julia Cho, Eric Cable and Paul Weitz (at Redwood Curtain) as well as a locally rare Noel Coward classic at HSU.

Coming Up:

 Northcoast Prep presents a musical adaptation of The Odyssey, Wednesday December 7 through Saturday, December 10 at 7:30 p.m. (plus a Saturday matinee at 1:30) in the Studio Theatre at HSU. Adapted and directed by Gretha Omey Stenger. Reservations at brownpapertickets.com or 445-2355.

The Dell’Arte School’s second years present their Character Projects (one act plays) December 8-11 in the Carlo.

Some Assembly Required at HSU

It's the final weekend for A Playhouse Recessionary Christmas at the Arcata Playhouse.  Also the final weekend for Some Assembly Required at HSU, which I do not review in the Journal, but which is a funny show and a worthy play, a kind of askew sequel to A Christmas Story, at Ferndale Rep through Dec. 18.

The Dell'Arte Christmas show, The Nutcaper  is at the Eureka Theater on Dec. 10, and the Van Duzer at HSU on Dec. 13 before returning for paid shows at the Carlo Dec. 15-18.

The Ladies of the Flies, a new play based on William Golding’s classic novel Lord of the Flies, is a work-in-progress created by an ensemble including Dell’Arte Company member Zuzka Sabata, Synapsis Arts Collective co-founder Leslie Howabauten and Dell’Arte grads Cara McClendon and Elana Levitan. Friday, Dec. 9, at 8 p.m. at the Synapsis Warehouse (47 Third St. in Eureka) and on Sunday, Dec 11, also at 8 p.m. at the Arcata Playhouse.

Beyond this weekend:

On Thursday December 15 at 7:30 p.m., Jeff DeMark and the LaPatina band perform That Train Has Sailed, his new show that’s evolving from recent live performances, at a new performance venue: the Sewell Gallery of Fine Art at 423 F Street in Eureka. The LaPatina's are Paul DeMark, Jim Hatchimonji, Andrew Goff, Neil McLaughlin and Deric Mendes.

For one night only, North Coast Rep presents a mostly musical and entirely family-oriented evening, Christmas at NCRT, with the Redwood Dixie Gators Jazz Band and the Bare-Stage Singers. It’s Saturday December 17, at 7 p.m. 442-6278, www.ncrt.net.

Happy holidays to all and to all a good night.

Muse June Preview and This North Coast Weekend

[Muse was a short-lived monthly insert in the North Coast Journal previewing the next month's arts and entertainment events.  I did stage, and this particular column hints at what else a theatre column could be, were it something more like a full time, full-salary job.]

Jeffrey Hatcher looks eminently professorial in photos these days, and when I met him some years ago he already exhibited an impressive theatrical intelligence. But he also seemed a Noel Coward kind of guy, meant to greet you with a cocktail in hand.

 So it’s not surprising that his version of The Government Inspector, Gogol’s comedy involving greed, corruption and mistaken identity, is noted for its wit. According to an interview in the St. Paul Pioneer Press, Hatcher had his eyes on this play since he acted in it in college. He thought: “Good construction. Could be funnier.”

 His approach was to keep the situation in historical period but update the dialogue. “A hundred and forty years ago in Russia, saying ‘That fish has three eyes, my friend’ was hysterical. And now it’s like, ‘What the hell?’”

 Hatcher’s adaptation of The Government Inspector opens at North Coast Repertory Theatre in Eureka on Thursday June 2, and plays weekends through June 25 at 8 p.m., with Sunday matinees at 2 p.m. on June 12 and 19. Reservations: 442-NCRT.

 Tinamarie Ivey (seen lunching last week at Chipalas in Old Town with L.A. playwright Ken Gray) is back in town from Oregon with The Logger Project: Bringing to Life Logger Stories of the Pacific Northwest. A combined effort involving Ivey and hubbie Dan Stone’s Sanctuary Stage, the Ink People and Arcata’s Four on the Floor (among others), it’s an Ivey script based on interviews with local loggers and their families as well as historical research, that focuses on the lives and hardships of early loggers and subsequent generations.

 It’s the northern California edition of a planned three-part project, eventually encompassing Oregon and Washington. “This project is not meant to be a platform for political bantering about ethical logging nor the effects of logging on our northern forests,” the press release sternly warns. “It is meant to capture a glimpse of the history, day-to-day lives and experiences of the men and women who call themselves loggers.”

 Following up on the successful collaboration with L.A.’s Cornerstone Theatre in 2009, this production will be outdoors at the Blue Ox Millworks and Historic Park in Eureka, Friday through Sunday, June 3-5. Friday and Saturday shows begin at 8 p.m., Sunday at 7 p.m. Admission is $10 or pay-what-you-can. More information at www.sanctuarystage.com.

 The Sugar Bean Sisters by contemporary American playwright Nathan Sanders is described as “an off-beat Southern Gothic comedy of romance, murder and alien abduction.” With a story that starts when Willie Mae loses her prized Eva Gabor wig on Space Mountain at Disney World, it’s down-home Southern humor with pop culture weirdness. This is Sanders first play, a prize-winner that gets produced a lot in regional and community theatres.

 Judging from reviews, it’s a play that you either love or hate. But enough have loved it that Sanders wrote a sequel, called Sugar Witch, which ran last year in San Francisco. The Ferndale Repertory production of The Sugar Bean Sisters opens on Friday, June 10 at 8 p.m. It runs Fridays and Saturday evenings, and Sunday afternoons at 2 p.m. through June 26. Box office: (707) 786-5483 or 1-800-836-3006.

 The Mad River Festival in Blue Lake commences on June 23 with the opening of Dell’Arte’s Mary Jane: The Musical. A certain selfish editor has kept all that information to himself, but apparently it’s available somewhere in this issue.

 Dell’Arte also will confer its 2011 Lifetime Achievement Award on June 25 to the North Coast Lunts, Bob and Lynne Wells (seen dining at the Abruzzi in Arcata, stopping at another table to chat with Dell’Arte’s Michael Fields) for “their exceptional work in theatre for more than four decades.” So say we all.


Meanwhile, This North Coast Weekend:

 The Dell'Arte School graduating class of 2011 presents The Finals--their ultimate small ensemble work, beginning Thursday, May 26 through Saturday at 8 p.m. in the Carlo. Admission is pay what you can. The audience will get the chance to give their own grades for what they see, on a Report Card tucked in the program. But I don't think it goes on anybody's Permanent Record.

 Jeff DeMark is performing his annual reprise of his first show, "Writing My Way Out of Adolescence," at Redwood Yogurt (16th & G) in Arcata on Friday (May 27) at 8 p.m. There is no admission charge, but the room is small so come early. Jeff is working with a band he put together that he really likes, so the music is part of the attraction.

 I might also mention the appearance of North Coast pianist and HSU alum Ryan MacEvoy McCullough at HSU's Fulkerson Recital Hall on Friday at 8 p.m. Among the pieces Ryan will play is a piano sonata by his friend and fellow HSU alum Dante De Silva, subtitled "Arcata." More (of my) info at HSU Music. Proceeds go towards bringing other guest pianists to Humboldt.

This North Coast Weekend

Jeff DeMark performs his original They Ate Everything But Their Boots at Dell’Arte’s Carlo Theatre Friday through Sunday (Nov. 12-14) at 8 p.m. There will be more music than in earlier incarnations, DeMark says, this time provided by Tim Randles as well as Matt Knight. “I’ve edited parts of it, I wrote a new ending and generally just tried to find the truth and humor in it. I’ve realized it’s really about things other than the search for a house, though that is certainly in it, and the whole process and madness of rehabilitating a 100-year-old Victorian. It’s about the journey of trying to find a place to fit in, to feel home, and with that comes a lot of feeling of destiny, luck or lack of luck. There are thoughts about synchronicity and how little logic has to do with our lives as compared to chance and fortune.”

The set is by Michelle McCall Wallace, her spouse Jerry Lee Wallace appears in a cameo. DeMark has dedicated the first night as a benefit for Arcata House, which provides transitional housing to local families.

This North Coast Weekend

If it’s major league baseball playoff time, it’s time for Jeff DeMark’s baseball show, Hard as Diamond, Soft as the Dirt. It was at the Arcata Theatre Lounge last year but this time DeMark is accompanied by The Delta Nationals several blocks away at the Arcata Playhouse in the Old Creamery building, on Saturday September 25 at 7:30 p.m. And this year you can also take the show home: a DVD of the performance of three years ago will have its official release at this same event. More information: http://www.jeffdemark.com/.

David Powell, singing star of the summer's hit Blue Lake: The Opera, performs the music of his Boston Conservatory teacher, composer Mohammed Fairouz, at the Arkley Center on Sunday at 5 pm.

Continuing: Company at North Coast Rep and Moonlight and Magnolias, final weekend at Redwood Curtain. Both are reviewed in posts below.

This North Coast Weekend

Motion Collage, the annual dance concert from HSU Theatre, Film & Dance is performed for one weekend only, Thursday (April 15) through Saturday at 7:30 pm and Sunday at 2 in the Van Duzer. Dances range from social commentary to comedy (a water ballet on dry land) and traditional dances from the Yucatan. Though the local press (except for the Arcata Eye) apparently doesn't care, this is the only dance event of its kind in Humboldt County for the entire year. It's really too bad the Eureka papers didn't bother to note it, since these authentic dances from the Yucatan might appeal to some of the growing Mexican American population. More information and photos at HSU Stage.

Iphigenia Must Die, based on a play by Euripides, is the Dell’Arte School annual presentation on tragedy by second year students. “Tragedy was born in a time when the gods were believed to have some control over our destinies," said director Joan Schirle. “What the students are hoping to do is create a tragic vision that works for today-- that admits a inextricable link between free will, Fate, and human choice.” Performances are Thursday through Sunday at 8 pm in the Carlo, on the now standard pay-what-you-will basis. 668-5663.

Jeff DeMark performs his Writing My Way Out of Adolescence, the show that started it all, at 7:30 pm on Saturday (April 17) at Redwood Yogurt in Arcata. He’s joined by singer songwriter Josephine Johnson and guitarist Andrew Goff, playing before the show and in it as well.

Ferndale Rep continues Man of La Mancha, which I reviewed in this week's NC Journal, and Beti Trauth reviews in Tri-City. This is North Coast Rep's final weekend for its production of Doubt: A Parable.

Auditions

Ferndale Rep is bringing in guest artist, Director/Choreographer, Millicent Johnnie, to direct its production of Rent. Preliminary auditions will be held on Saturday April 17th and Saturday April 24th at the St. Alban’s Episcopal Church, 1675 Chester Avenue Arcata, CA 95521-6827. From 11am – 3pm. By Appointment Only. To make an appointment email FRT Executive Director Ginger Gene at ggene@ferndale-rep.org or call 707.786.5483.There are both male and female singing lead parts, in addition to many chorus roles for men and women. A cast of fifteen, between the ages of 18 and 30is required for the play. Audition Requirements: The first round of auditions will be video taped and consist of singing only. We are asking each auditioner to prepare one of four available selections from the show.Sheet music is available in Ferndale at FRT, 447 Main St. Ferndale CA 95536.Sheet music is available in Eureka from Musical Director Nan Voss, nanettevoss@gmail.com.

North Coast Repertory Theatre announces open auditions for Over The River And Through The Woods, a comedy by Joe DiPietro, directed by Rae Robison. There are roles for two men and two women aged 55 or older; one man aged 20’s to 30’s; and one woman aged 20’s to 30’s. Please be prepared to do cold readings from the script. Prepared monologues are optional but always appreciated. Auditions will take place Saturday, May 1 at 4pm and Sunday, May 2 at 6pm at NCRT, 300 Fifth Street in Eureka. Production dates are July 22 through August 14, 2010. Please call 268-0175 if you have any questions.

A Quixotic Triumph: Man of La Mancha

If ever a role and a North Coast performer seemed made for each other, it’s Don Quixote in the musical Man of La Mancha, and Brad Curtis. In the current Ferndale Repertory Theatre production, that dream is not impossible—it’s fulfilled.

 The frequent star of Humboldt Light Opera, North Coast Rep and Ferndale Rep productions, Curtis has the looks, voice and bearing of a leading man. But he can also act, and he commits to shaping a character. So at a given moment, his Quixote is somewhere between addled and innocent, deluded and shrewd, confused and committed.

 Curtis also plays the author Cervantes in the framing story (telling of Quixote’s adventures while in prison), with a little earthier mixture of practical bravado and ironic humility (“I did not have the courage to believe in nothing.”)

 The emotional high point of the play—not surprisingly—is Quixote singing “The Impossible Dream” to start the second act, and Curtis nails it. As Aldonza (the serving wench Quixote decides is his ideal lady, Dulcinea), Andrea Zvaleko again astonishes with her powerful acting and singing, providing the other emotionally resonant moments.

 In the mostly comedic first act, John Ludington shines as a vaudeville Sancho Panza, while Kyle Ryan stands out in his brief but bracing scene as the cowardly barber. In one of those sneakily crucial roles, Steve Sterback is steady and believable as the innkeeper, and Danielle Cichon’s sinuous dance enlivens the second act.

 The cast as a whole performs admirably, with most excelling in their group and choreographed scenes, and their individual moments. Ginger Gene directs with both a command of the whole and attention to detail. In the musical comedy genre, this production is an artistic and technical triumph for all, including Dianne Zuleger as musical director and conductor of the live band, Daniel Nyiri as scenic designer, Michael Foster’s lighting, Lori Knowles and Ginger Gene’s costumes, Jasper Anderton’s fight choreography.  A special shout-out for the clarity and support of both the speaking and singing by sound designers Ian Schatz and Dillon Savage, and sound board operator John Riddenour.

 The Ferndale production provides solid musical theatre entertainment, especially if you aren’t bothered by a certain dramatic sketchiness in the play. Admirers of Cervantes might also point out that in this script Quixote has not been adapted so much as kidnapped. Despite lifted lines, including some from Cervantes deathbed note, this play turns Cervantes’ satire of heroic romance into heroic romance. Still, it’s more ambitious than usually credited, and the music, while mostly forgotten, was innovative. But it’s the energy, judgment and skill of this Ferndale production that stands out.

 Coming Up: Jeff DeMark performs his “Writing My Way Out of Adolescence,” the show that started it all, at 7:30 pm on Saturday (April 17) at Redwood Yogurt in Arcata. He’s joined by singer songwriter Josephine Johnson and guitarist Andrew Goff, playing before the show and in it as well.

 Iphigenia Must Die, based on a play by Euripides, is the Dell’Arte School annual presentation on tragedy by second year students. “What the students are hoping to do is create a tragic vision that works for today, that admits a inextricable link between free will, Fate, and human choice,” said director Joan Schirle. Performances are Thursday through Sunday at 8 pm in the Carlo, on the now standard pay-what-you-will basis. 668-5663.

 Motion Collage, the annual dance concert from HSU Theatre, Film & Dance is performed for one weekend only, Thursday (April 15) through Saturday at 7:30 pm and Sunday at 2 in the Van Duzer. Dances range from social commentary to comedy (a water ballet on dry land) and traditional dances from the Yucatan. HSUStage.blogspot.com.

 On longer-range radar: I stopped by Redwood Curtain’s new theatrical home at 220 First Street (between C and D) in Old Town, Eureka, as Clint Rebik and crew were busily applying paint and otherwise preparing for the opening show: the comedy Glorious! starring Lynne Wells as Florence Foster Jenkins, a singer so bad she was great. Co-directed by RC founders Rebik and Peggy Metzger, it features Bob Wells, Bonnie Halverson, Larry Pitts, Elisa Abelleira and Pamela Lyall. It opens April 29, and continues Thursdays through Saturdays until May 15. The theatre has fewer than 100 seats, so advance tickets are recommended. 443-7688, www.redwoodcurtain.com.

 Also opening on April 29 is the annual HSU Ten Minute Play Festival, for two weekends in Gist Hall Theatre.  By then the fate of HSU theatre may have been decided, as the university looks to cut programs to save money.

Stage Matters Special: Humboldt Staged Marathon

The Humboldt Tourism Bureau hosts a 24-hour marathon of theatre in its first annual Staged Humboldt extravaganza, beginning at midnight (right now!)Thursday at the Arcata Theatre.

Expanding the concept of David Ferney’s solo show, The Misunderstood Badger, Arcata Playhouse presents Roob, a new Ferney work about a hick professor in the Australian outback obsessed with kangaroos, performed entirely on a trampoline. Jackie Dandeneau adds an a cappella rendition of the Van Halen classic, “Jump.”

Dell’Arte contributes California Faust, a commedia version of Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus, starring Joan Schirle as Ahnold the Magician and Michael Fields as his tempter, Robus Arklius. The Tyler Olson-penned tunes include “If I Only Had a Soul.”

Former members of Shake the Bard and Shakespeare in the Park combine for two shows: a new version of Othello set in the 2001 Los Angeles Lakers locker room, called Shaqthello, and a time travel mash-up of authors too dead to sue in Antony and Cleopatra and Jane Austen, and Vampires, Dude.

The Bard is also represented in NCRT’s Macbeth, set among burl sculptors in Orick in the 1980s, with music by Devo, Cyndi Lauper and the Cars.

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.

Redwood Curtain presents the postmodern Small Cast Sex Melodrama by contemporary playwright Tabitha Overly-Werkshopt. Graduates of HSU’s dramatic writing program return to perform Sixteen Playwrights in Search of a Production.
The Very Precious Players of Northcoast Prep combine music from Threepenny Opera and Oklahoma in a socially conscious dinner theatre presentation, Oklahoodie. Director Jean Bazemore warns sensitive Arcatans not to be alarmed if they see Klingons in the parking lot—it’s all part of the show.

Ferndale Rep presents a stage version of Hitchcock’s Psycho. Director Jasper Anderton confirms that Kimberly Haile’s shower scene will be “realistic, taking place offstage in a real motel room shower, probably in Garberville.”

Humboldt Light Opera continues its tradition of adaptations from classic novels with lots of parts for women with the operatic version of The Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders, with Brad Curtis in the role of Troy Aiken. However, the College of the Redwoods rendition of Richard III, set on a contemporary community college campus in northern Ca---no, that's southern Oregon--has been suddenly cancelled.

And what would a Humboldt theatre marathon be without live radio drama? KHSU brings back its all-star cast in the first of a series of underwriter-specific radio dramas, The Wildberries Mysteries: The Case of the Mislabeled Organic Banana. One innovative feature announced by co-organizer Jeff DeMark: “Special glasses will be available for those in the audience who want to watch this radio show in 3-D.”

This column--minus a few web-only additions--appears in the current Arcata Eye.

Fatal Attraction: Romeo & Juliet

One of Shakespeare’s most popular plays, Romeo and Juliet is deceptively difficult to stage. One production I saw at Stratford, Ontario presented a sparkling surface. The most recent Oregon Shakespeare Festival version illuminated the story. The 1968 Zeffirelli film best portrayed the violent context, Baz Luhrmann’s 1996 movie used post-modern wit to focus the star-crossed stars, Claire Danes and Leonardo DiCaprio.

 In decades past, the lovers’ passionate speeches were often the principal emphasis, and their power can still be felt in scenes acted in the Slings and Arrows TV series, or in the film, Shakespeare in Love.

 The current production at North Coast Repertory Theatre presents an appealing stage set: a timeless Italian street scene angling away in perspective, with a set of marble columns on one side balanced by the famous balcony on the other. The rose hues of the street painting are matched by the warm lighting. (Both scenic and lighting design are by Calder Johnson.) Then the street disappears behind a simple black curtain for the indoor scenes.  Scene transitions are unobtrusive, covered by the recorded music of Gabriel Groom’s economical and almost filmic original score.

 The first act of this production emphasizes action, with Ethan Edmonds establishing a dangerous Tybalt and Victor Howard performing several tour de force scenes as Mercutio. The tinderbox of menace from these feuding families is suggested, though the emphasis on acting out every possible sexual innuendo detracts from the danger. The fight sequences here and later are well designed (by Jasper Anderton) and executed.

 The second act is more focused on story, as the previously colorful costumes (by Pat Hamilton and Jennifer Trustem) become somber. Juliet’s parents (Ken Klima, Delcie Moon) schedule her wedding to Paris (Neal Schoonmaker), setting in motion the final fatal happenings.

 Director David Hamilton continues to move the actors energetically, and works with the set design to solve problems inherent in this limited space. As for the words, at best the actors conveyed a meaning with a colloquial ease that matched the fluid physicality of their movements. Lonnie Blankenchip as Friar Laurence and Carol Escobar as the Nurse in particular projected and paced their words well.

 But there were also plenty of examples from the Mime-and-Mumble School of Shakespearian acting. This is not just a point-keeping quibble. While the momentum of a three hour play is important, when Juliet and especially Romeo are speaking too fast and too softly to be heard and understood, it has consequences.

 As the audience sees it, a play is a combination of the script (shaped by textual cuts), the interpretation by director and designers, and the relative strengths of performances. So the Romeo and Juliet I saw was about a monk and a nurse trying to deal with two confused and inarticulate teenagers.

 The principal focus is on Juliet—especially her emotional scenes played with full present-tense commitment by Megan Hughes-- and her fatal attraction to the cute, dashing but feckless Romeo, played by Michael Roscoe.

 Though other dramas before and after this one use its mythic story, this is the play that is considered a poetic masterpiece. Why is this a tragedy, as opposed to a soap opera series of unfortunate events? It’s in the language, as it enables the expression of a passion that pushes Romeo and Juliet beyond the bounds of their world.

 By the standards of local Shakepeare productions, this one is reasonably successful. Missing are some fascinating complications and meaningful themes in the text, but today’s fashion is to concentrate on making the story contemporary, either with modern contrivances, or—as I’m guessing is the intent in this production—by making the teenagers contemporary. That’s a valid and potentially entertaining strategy. The flaw for me was too much of the language swallowed in breathless cell-phone-speak. I suppose for some, however, this could be its appeal.

 Romeo and Juliet plays at NCRT Thursdays through Saturdays until Feb. 20, with Sunday matinees on Feb. 7 and Feb. 14—Valentine’s Day.

For about a year Jeff DeMark has been experimenting with adding more music to his story-telling evenings. Last Saturday at the Arcata Playhouse, the balance was about half-and-half music to talk, with musicians Paul DeMark (brother), Jesse DeMark (son), Damon Brooks, Ross Rowley, Jackie Dandeneau and Jim Silva. It all might be headed towards the North Coast Home Companion, but when the stories and the songs illuminate each other (from radio hits to songs his mother loved), we’re reminded how music adheres to memory, carrying the feeling into the present.

 Redwood Curtain officially announced that productions begin in April in its new home on First Street in Old Town, Eureka.

 Coming Up: Quake: A Closet Love Story, a musical by Tyler Olson has its world premiere at the Arcata Playhouse this weekend (Feb. 5-7)—check listings for times, or the Playhouse at 822-1575. HSU’s The Marriage of Bette and Boo presents two benefit productions in the Van Duzer Theatre on Tuesday (Feb. 9) and Thursday (Feb. 11) at 7:30, to help send this production to the regional Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival in Reno.

This North Coast Weekend

Starting tonight, North Coast Repertory Theatre presents Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. On Saturday night, Jeff DeMark performs with the musical ensemble La Patinas at the Arcata Playhouse. The performance features special guests, as well as Jeff's brother Paul and his son Jesse. I don't know if his web site is new, but it's new to me. More info is there.

Friday night the latest edition of Chicago's fabled Second City comedy improv group appears in the Van Duzer at HSU via CenterArts. Beginning Friday at Redbud Theatre (Camp Kimtu, Willow Creek) is a philosophical two-hander called The Harry and Sam Dialogues.

In local theatre news, Redwood Curtain announced they've finally found a new home, at 220 First Street in Old Town, Eureka. A season of four plays begins there in April. Congratulations to Clint and Peggy!

This North Coast Weekend

In its second weekend, the classic musical Guys and Dolls is at North Coast Rep in Eureka. My review is in the Journal this week. The dolls above are two of the standout performers: Andrea Zvalesko as Miss Adelaide and Melissa Smith as the Mission Lady, Sarah Brown.

On Saturday night only, Jeff DeMark performs his baseball show, Hard as Diamond, Soft as the Dirt with the Delta Nationals at 8 in the Arcata Theatre Lounge Theater, followed by the band playing several sets of dance music. Take note: this is the Arcata Theatre (the old moviehouse) on G, not the Arcata Playhouse at the Old Creamery. Besides, where else can you go to the theater in the theatre?

This North Coast Weekend

Humboldt Light Opera and College of the Redwoods presents the musical version of Louisa May Alcott's classic story, Little Women, Fridays and Saturdays through May 23, starting at 7:30, with a 2 p.m. matinee this Sunday (the 17th), in the CR Forum Theatre. My review in the NC Journal is here. Photo: Essie Bertain as Jo and Jessica Malone as Beth.

The Dell'Arte School students who created the Glasnost Family show last Christmas present original short plays as their individual thesis projects. The first set is this weekend, Thursday through Saturday and the second May 21-24, at 8 p.m. in the Carlo.

Jeff DeMark performs a selection of his stories together with music by UKExperience at the Westhaven Center for the Arts on Saturday night.

At the Arcata Playhouse, this is the final weekend for Third Base, a comic presentation by Nick Trotter and Jerry Lee Wallace Thursday May 14 through Sunday at 8.

This North Coast Weekend

Jeff DeMark does his 200th North Coast solo performance Friday night (May 8) at Muddy's Hot Cup in Arcata. He's presenting his Writing My Way Out of Adolescence for the first time in two years--and the Great Recession price is right: just $3.89.

The Humboldt Light Opera and College of the Redwoods opens the musical version of the classic Little Women on Friday (through May 23) at 8 in the CR Forum Theatre.

Third Base, the Jerry Lee Wallace and Nick Trotter clown show, is at the Arcata Playhouse Thursday through Sunday at 8, and again next weekend.

The HSU Ten Minute Play Festival concludes this weekend, Thursday through Saturday at 7:30 in the Gist Hall Theatre.

This North Coast Weekend

Rash Acts at the Arcata Playhouse: 6 actors, 42 puppets, five "live theatrical animations" (i.e. plays maybe)written and directed by Sebastopol theatre artists Conrad Bishop & Elizabeth Fuller, this Friday and Saturday (Feb. 20, 21) at 8 pm.

A limited run at North Coast Rep of Cubby's Dream, written by, directed by and starring: Dave Silverbrand! And his Not Bad Under the Circumstances Players! Sounds like fun and it's a benefit for Silverbrand's Cleats for Kids that sends baseball equipment to poor children in the Dominican Republic. It's on Friday and Saturday at 7pm and Sunday at 2pm.

As It Happened at Dell'Arte by its MFA students is three plays--loosely describable as adaptations of works in another medium-- by three groups, starting tonight (Feb. 19) and running through Sunday at 8pm.

Jeff DeMark and The UKEsperience Band are back at the Muddy Cup in Arcata on Saturday (Feb 21) beginning at 8:30 with a short Ukes set, then Jeff does some new material and reprises some stories, too. Then the Ukes are back for "their eclectic 'island boogie' songs in addition to sterling versions of Beatles tunes." There's really nobody like Jeff anywhere, every show is a new experience, even for his devoted fans who never miss him. This is the second collaboration with the Ukes; the first was a perfect blend. All this and music, too!

The Year Not in Reviews: Exploring the Ecology of North Coast Theatre

[An extended version of my Journal column last week, without the part I already cannibalized for the previous post...]

By way of a year-end summing up, this column is about what doesn’t normally get into reviews.

The plays we see may have several purposes. Many—including productions by Humboldt State, CR, Dell’Arte International School, local high schools and organizations like the Laurel Tree Learning Center—are part of the participants’ education. Community theatres like North Coast Rep and Ferndale Rep provide talented community members opportunities to participate in making as well as seeing theatre. Both provide opportunities that participants wouldn't otherwise have to strut their stuff, and since there are many more talented people than ever get to work in theatre as a career, audiences benefit as well.

I seldom mention this in reviews, because what these and other theatres have in common is that they charge audiences money to see them, and I review their shows from that standpoint. But I do take their other missions into account, and I expect audiences do, too.

Something else I don’t mention in reviews but which productions have in common is the achievement: of a group of people preparing and then presenting a play from beginning to end for two or three hours, and then doing it again, over and over. This is an accomplishment by any definition. It’s also one of the great benefits to participants: to commit their energies from the beginning of the process, weeks or months before opening, to the end of it. For some, simply sticking with it from first to last actually changes their lives. When audiences applaud, it seems to me it’s partly for the accomplishment, regardless of the outcome.

We don’t have professional theatre hereabouts in the same sense as in San Francisco or Ashland, but audiences here benefit from our particular theatrical ecosystem in ways they might not realize. For example, both educational and community theatres emphasize participation, which often means large casts. Elsewhere there is tremendous financial pressure on commercial theatres to do nothing but small cast shows.

But we have these community and school theatres doing large cast shows, together with the small cast or one-person shows produced or imported by the Arcata Playhouse, Sanctuary Stage and Redwood Curtain (for instance), as well as Jeff DeMark’s unique solo work. So we have a pretty rich variety.

Another way our North Coast theatrical ecology is unusual is the predominance of a theatrical style that is relatively obscure in most other places: commedia dell’arte. This is due mostly of course to the Dell’Arte theatre and school, and those associated with Dell’Arte who remain or return here to form other theatrical enterprises. Jacky Dandeneau and David Ferney, impresarios of the Arcata Playhouse, are good examples. But there’s also Dan Stone, co-founder of Sanctuary Stage, who has brought commedia from entirely different sources.

The commedia emphasis on improvisational satires, often on standard themes, with acrobatics and clowning, may be a pronounced local characteristic, but a healthy theatrical ecosystem requires other approaches, too.

So other theatres here (including the companies that wax and wane) bring the balance of classic and newer plays; musicals (including the sterling work of the Humboldt Light Opera), drama and other kinds of comedy. We have theatre for (and by) children, for (and by) adolescents, and for (and by) elders. We need them all, and as fortunate as we are to have this much theatre, there are gaps in the ecosystem, too. Other things being equal (which they never are), we could use more.

Because of my very part-time job doing press for HSU plays, I don’t write about those productions in my part-time piecework columns here. But I’m dismayed that HSU productions aren’t covered much elsewhere in the Journal either. There was more copy in one recent issue about Dell’Arte (including in my column) than there has been cumulatively concerning HSU theatre for the past couple of years, at least. So in this context let me speak up for the role of HSU theatre in the local ecosystem, particularly when the university is taking a hard look at its priorities, and from time to time there have been rumors of threats to HSU theatre’s existence.

Besides benefiting the university as a much-needed public interface with the community, HSU theatre brings particular strengths and important contributions in the kinds of plays it does and how it does them. Its recent commitment to doing new plays, often by North Coast playwrights, is pretty much unique here right now. In general, HSU provides training and people essential to North Coast stages, with participation both by students who enliven local theatre while here, and by faculty and former students who remain active in the community. Just how much theatre would survive here without HSU is a real question.

Lastly, this fall was unusual for offering three productions of Shakespeare. That this theatrical community was able to mount two large cast productions pretty much simultaneously (The Merry Wives of Windsor at NCRT and The Winter’s Tale at HSU), while overlapping with the large cast of Noises Off at Ferndale Rep, is astonishing. That's one indication that there's a lot of interest in theatre here, with lots of participants and audiences.

Dell'Arte Christmas Show: Glasnost Family Holiday

If you’ve ever been mooned by gypsies in the Les Halles shopping mall in Paris, as I was, you’d know how much fun they can be. In Dell’Arte’s Christmas show, the Glasnost family first appears pulling a gypsy cart, which contains, among other things, the set. As the family members decorate the bare stage, they introduce themselves and explain their purpose: they’re strangers in America, and they’d like to stay. So they’re putting on a show.

 That’s about as straightforward as The Glasnost Family Holiday gets. The rest is music, storytelling (both with Christmas themes) and comic family brawls. The Glasnosts appear to have learned how Americans like their entertainment from TV reruns of 1950s variety shows, Rose Bowl Parades and 1980s music videos. The younger family members also adopt rapper poses.

 The result is reminiscent of everything from musical Borat and those Two Wild and Crazy Guys from the old Saturday Night Live, to an eastern European Fellini movie about a demented Lawrence Welk Christmas special.

 This hour show was created by the ensemble with director Joan Schirle, plus choral director Tyler Olsen and music director G.A. Moore. The actors all create and maintain individually defined characters, and they are all musically accomplished. The comic fights are more sophisticated and acrobatic versions of the Three Stooges, suitable for children.

 In this style of holiday entertainment, any subtext may be mostly in the eye of the beholder, but I especially noted those moments in which the weirdness of American customs and customary entertainments are revealed by these earnest but off-kilter outsiders, “maximizing their minimum skills.”

 For example, the family is enthusiastic but perhaps not always clear on the appropriate effect, as when they push the rhythm of a particular Christmas song to make it sound more threatening than festive.

 The ethnic stereotypes are relatively gentle, although the accents are sometimes impenetrable. The onstage narrative is more a pastiche than a story, but it all adds up to a good time, particularly for children--though there didn’t seem to be many in the opening night audience at the Carlo, that’s very likely to be remedied when the show hits the road this week.


 On a recent Saturday night, Jeff DeMark brought his particular brand of storytelling to an overflow crowd at the Muddy Cup in Arcata. He told some new stories along with selections from his fully-formed shows, accompanied by the UKExperience ukulele band. The combination was often magical.

 DeMark’s stories are funny, and they seem to touch a chord with the local audience as shared experience and nostalgia. But they also penetrate with a poetic humanity, and this versatile ensemble of two ukes, electric bass and drums added to all these effects, but particularly the warmth. Some of the stories were a little rough in presentation but the final one perfectly summed up the potential of this combination.

 DeMark’s story about giving his mother her first marijuana high (at her request) was hilarious, backed at one point by the marching chords of Jefferson Airplane’s “White Rabbit.” Then the images of his mother the day after, relaxed and liberated into a youthful freedom, dancing to her favorite recording of Patsy Cline, got just the right accent from the band playing “I Fall To Pieces” as DeMark remarked that he never saw her happier than on that day.

This North Coast Weekend: Godspell and More

Three shows open this weekend (four if you count the Ooh La La revue at the Eagle House):

Sanctuary Stage officially opens the "Memories" show of their Shades of Grey series at the Eureka Theatre, Thursday-Saturday at 8 pm. I'll post my review later today.

Ferndale Rep opens Godspell Thursday through Saturday at 8 pm. A little more on that show below.

Humboldt Light Opera opens The Wizard of Oz Friday and Saturday at 7:30 in the Van Duzer, with a 2 pm matinee on Sunday. It's described as featuring music and lyrics from the feature film.

Jeff DeMark continues his Willow Creek series with Writing My Way Out of Adolescence at 8:30 pm Saturday at the Redbud Theatre. Lend Me A Tenor continues at North Coast Rep.

Now here's the short preview of Godspell from my Journal column, with one correction--my editor, evidently not a Charlotte Bronte fan, changed a line about the off-stage romance which in some ways was at the heart of this production, or at least of my story about it. See if you can spot what I mean...

Back in 1996, Marilyn McCormick began her tenure as Artistic Director of the Ferndale Repertory Theatre with a production of Godspell, a musical that had a family connection: her sister Gilmer, who followed her to study drama at Carnegie Tech in Pittsburgh (now Carnegie Mellon University), was in the original cast when her fellow Tech student John-Michael Tebelek created it.

When Godspell moved to New York in 1971 with a new score, Stephen Reinhardt was hired as its musical director. That’s how he met Gilmer McCormick, and Reader, she married him. So when Marilyn suggested that Godspell should also be her last show as Artistic Director, her sister and brother-in-law came up from Los Angeles to put it on. It starts this weekend.

Gilmer McCormick directs, Stephen Reinhardt choreographs, but there’s also lots of local talent involved, including the cast of Patrick Croft, Bob Beideman, Denim Ohmit, Anthony Hughes, Tina Beideman, Shannan Dailey, Laureen Savage, Monica Schallert, Erin Jones-Martin and Dion Davis.

“It’s an excellent example of ensemble theatre, “Reinhardt told me. “This group reminds me of the original—all these wonderful kids, everyone contributing their talent to the whole. It’s very high energy, very funny, with totally infectious music—even all these years later.”

But this musical based on aspects of the life of Christ as told in the Gospel of Matthew is also “a transformative experience,” he said. “It’s reverent in its own way, and very honest about the gospels.”