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.

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.

Stage Presence: the Official Stage Matters column

As the current theatre season winds down, announcements of next season’s offerings on North Coast stages are beginning. Before some of those are revealed later in this column, a few words on the wider context, and a reminder.

The reminder is this: all theatre is local. It’s true that the plays we see here are often done at many regional and community theatres around the country and even the world, for years and even centuries before we see them. It’s also true that some theatrical creations are more local than others—such as Dell’Arte International Theatre Company's Mary Jane: the Musical or The Loggers Project by Sanctuary Stage Theatre, and other “theatre of place” productions created out of local experiences.

But all productions are local in the sense that they are created on stage only by people of the here and now, and experienced by audiences exclusively here and now. That includes the experience of a play from elsewhere, its history and its meaning to us, here, now.

To suggest another meaning of “all theatre is local” consider a play that we won’t see this season or next, or probably ever: Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark. This current Broadway musical cost $75 million to produce (including $2 million for harnesses and flying rigs), enough to finance all of North Coast theatre possibly until the end of time. Most local theatres would be happy with an annual budget matching the $1.2 million it costs to stage this show each week.

Yet after more than 180 previews, a fired director and a rewrite, it opened to reviews that would likely get a North Coast critic a shove off Trinidad Head: “This singing comic book is no longer the ungodly, indecipherable mess it was in February. It’s just a bore,” wrote Ben Brantley in the New York Times.

Other critics wrote: “This effects-driven musical is still situated a wide canyon’s distance from good. “A sad, stilted event that crashes consistently and rarely flies.” “Deteriorated from mindblowingly misbegotten carnival-of-the-damned to merely embarrassing dud.” Entertainment Weekly noted that the common complaints were incoherent storytelling and mediocre songs.

Tickets to see it on Broadway range from $69 to $362 (with broker fee.) In an era when even regional theatre tickets can flirt with or exceed $100, most North Coast theatres tickets are under $20. Obviously a Broadway show or a regional theatre production will be different in many respects. Some will be better—occasionally even the more than the ten times better suggested by the difference in ticket price. But not always. Theatre is an uncertain thing everywhere, all the time.

Even apart from cost, shows will always have different virtues and weaknesses, rewards and disappointments. Because all theatre is local. For instance, one of the repeated rewards of North Coast productions is the person on stage who lifts you out of your seat. It may be a well-known local veteran in a particularly revelatory role. Or it may be a young talent passing through, from local high schools to distant universities, from local colleges to destiny elsewhere, maybe on a bigger stage.

Stage presence is perhaps the most mysterious and most indispensible quality. It express itself as dramatic talent, of power and timing, or a comedic talent, of movement and personality. It may be a speaking voice that commands attention and expresses unexpected emotion, or a singing voice that thrills and touches the heart. Or it can be moments, or an entire production that’s illuminating or moving. But you have to be there. Because all theatre is local.

As for what North Coast audiences can see on stage beginning this fall, here are the next season productions announced by three local theatres.

North Coast Repertory Theatre begins with the Sondheim musical Into the Woods, followed by Agatha Christie’s stage mystery The Mousetrap. Neil Simon has been good to NCRT, so next year features his Laughter on the 23rd Floor. The annual Shakespeare is the comedy Much Ado About Nothing. Next spring the 2003 musical Avenue Q is followed by the comedy The Red Velvet Cake War.

Ferndale Repertory Theatre's season begins in October with a farce in which four actors reenact the Hitchcock film, 39 Steps. A stage adaptation of the viral TV classic A Christmas Story is followed in February by the first Shakespeare at Ferndale in awhile: The Taming of the Shrew. Then three musical productions complete the season: Evita, Cabaret and Woody Guthrie American Song.

HSU Department of Theatre, Film and Dance has announced its most ambitious season in years: Neil Labute’s Fat Pig (directed by Michael Thomas) in September, the musical Brigadoon in October, followed by Eugene Stickland’s Christmas comedy, Some Assembly Required. Venus by Suzan Lori-Parks is in February, the Noel Coward comedy Blithe Spirit in March, before the spring dance show and 10 Minute Play Festival.

Coming Up: But there are more shows before this season is over. Opening at North Coast Repertory Theatre on July 28 is The Kitchen Witches, a comedy by Caroline Smith, directed by Carol Escobar and featuring Kathleen Marshall, Laura Rose, Daniel Kennedy and George Szabo.

This North Coast Weekend



Jeffrey Hatcher


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 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 a script by Jacqueline Dandeneau 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 (which includes music) will be 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 http://www.sanctuarystage.com/.

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.

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.

This North Coast Weekend

I comment in the post below on the HSU production of Pinter's The Homecoming at the HSU Studio Theatre, and my review of Kopit's Sing to Me Through Open Windows (photo above), a Sanctuary Stage production at the Arcata Playhouse, is in this week's Journal. This is the final weekend for both productions: the Kopit is Thurs-through-Sat at 8, and the Pinter is Thurs-through-Sat at 7:30, and Sunday at 2.

For this weekend only, North Coast Rep presents Hidden in This Picture, a one act comedy about theatre people making a movie by Aaron Sorkin (of The West Wing fame) on Friday and Saturday at 8, and Sunday at 2 p.m.

On Friday, Saturday and Sunday at 8, The Dell'Arte Company Cabaret features your favorite Dell'Artesans plus special guests and a sneak preview of their epic work-in-progress: Blue Lake: The Opera. Then on Monday, Dell'Arte hosts visiting Le Cabaret Noir's Sin on Heels, advertised as "a tawdry blend of burlesque and gender-bending performances."

This North Coast Weekend

Opening Thursday for two weekends, the HSU Theatre production of Harold Pinter's The Homecoming, directed by John Heckel. It's in the Studio Theatre, the smallest of the HSU venues, so advance tickets are advised. There's lots more information (most of which I wrote) at HSU Stage, or you can check stories in Tri-City Weekly, Humboldt Beacon, Humboldt State Now or the Arcata Eye print issue of this week. (Photo above.)

Also opening Thursday for two weekends, Sing to Me Through Open Windows, an absurdist play by Arthur Kopit, directed by Dan Stone. It's a Sanctuary Stage production, on stage at the Arcata Playhouse. Check either web site (linked over there to the right) for details. (Photo below.)

There's a Clowns Without Borders benefit on Friday and Saturday at the Redwood Raks World Dance Studio in Arcata. 845-5842. Meanwhile, Ferndale Rep's Wait Until Dark has its final weekend. Beti Trauth gives it a rave.

I seemed to have missed the theatre story of the year, involving an angry phone call and a Nazi uniform. Who would have thought that The Sound of Music could be controversial? It's a sidelight to what seems to have been a very successful run by the third and fourth years of North Coast Prep in their dinner theatre experiment at Arcata's Abruzzi restaurant. Kevin Hoover has the story in the Eye online.

From the Sanctuary Stage production of Arthur Kopit's Sing to Me Through Open Windows, opening this weekend at Arcata Playhouse.

Jason Coming to Eureka

Cornerstone Theater Company, the Los Angeles group famous for its collaborations with communities it visits, is preparing a production in Eureka which will be performed August 6-8.

The process began about eight months ago, with visits by the playwright, Peter Howard and others from the company, making contacts and gathering information. Howard worked out a story that combines the myth of Jason and the Argonauts with Eureka history and present day reality. Last week, the rest of the Cornerstone people involved in the production arrived, headquartered at St. Bernard's School, hosted by Sanctuary Stage.

The Cornerstone process involves participation by local people in most facets of the production, including on stage, so auditions are being held this week. The last scheduled audition is today, July 14, between 1:30 and 4:30 pm at St. Bernard's Elementary School. The first auditions were held at the Ink People.

"No experience is necessary to participate" their statements say, but professional actors from Cornerstone will be on hand to help everyone out. There are no age, gender or other restrictions for potential participants, as long as they can take direction. The final script will reflect who shows up and participates.

So if you're interested and can't make it to St. Bernard's this afternoon, call 1-800-385-7791 and you can probably arrange for a suitable time. Rehearsals will be at the Blue Ox Millworks, which is also where the production will be.

Saturday we met some of the people already working on the production at St. Bernard's. Everyone from Cornerstone was open and engaged, and they seem to have a well worked out process for combining professional theatre with community participation. An early script looks promising. Playwright Peter Howard seems sensitive to the possible pitfalls of outsiders coming in--he used the word "presumptuous" several times, as something they don't want to be. On the other hand, an outside point of view can see patterns and hear music that it's harder for people who live here to see and hear.

Choice Voice: Sing To Me Through Open Windows

According to renowned early 20th century Italian actor Tomasso Salvini, the three most potent elements of acting are: “Voice! Voice! Voice!” 

 You might expect that sentiment from an old-school actor like Salvini, or even actor and director John Gielgud, who suggested that while attention is often lavished on other aspects of performance, how the words are spoken “can have more effect than anything else.”

 But open almost any book on stage directing or acting, and they proclaim the importance of voice. The purported Stanislavski “Method” may have enshrined mumbling on American stages, but director Robert Lewis quotes Stanislavski writing at length about vocal acting: “Letters, syllables, words—these are the musical notes of speech, out of which to fashion measures, arias, whole symphonies.”

Harold Clurman (another Method-influenced director) writes about it—even Jerzy Grotowski devotes some 30 pages to vocal technique in Towards a Poor Theatre.

 A revelatory object lesson in vocal acting is available this weekend at the Arcata Playhouse, where Bob Wells performs in a short play by Arthur Kopit, directed by Dan Stone. First of all, every word Wells says can be heard, and every word can be understood. With these foundations in place, Wells goes on to act with his voice—his intonations, pronunciations, the words he stresses hard, the syllables he lets linger and float away.

 Beginning with his surprising “entrance,” Wells captivates, even when he does almost nothing except create this character with sound. He’s masterful: both poetic and clear. We know who this man is, and we attend to what he has to say.

 The play, called Sing to Me Through Open Windows, is more problematic. Arthur Kopit is a contemporary American playwright with a long career that began with revolutionary absurdist romps like Oh Dad, Poor Dad, Mama’s Hung You in the Closet and I’m Feelin’ So Sad, but more recently has included musicals, including Nine, which reached the silver screen this year with Kopit as an executive producer.

 Whether Kopit has copped out or America has caught up to his absurdism is an open question, but this early play is at best an exercise in poetic symbolism that for me remained fairly elusive in this production. There’s the old magician (Wells), the boy who visits him (played by newcomer Zachery Davis with appropriate vulnerability) and a clown whose relationship to the others is difficult to assess (played with appropriate physicality by Craig Klapman.)

This is the kind of challenging work that Dan Stone often chooses. Figuring out what was happening was more difficult because Bob Wells was the only one who was clearly audible all the time. Even so, a kind of ambiguity is inherent in this play. The stage imagery, including the music (all created by Dan Stone), worked well. The lighting was especially clarifying, but other choices (like the puppets) less so.

 The themes of life’s transitions and mythic cycles are there when you think about it, but the impact of aging was absolutely clear as an experience. That’s the work of Wells, playing a magician who is in the process of himself vanishing.

 “Fear is like regret,” he concludes, “only with fear, there’s not much time left.” Remarkable words to come from a 22 year-old playwright (as Kopit was when he wrote this), but very powerful when spoken by a veteran actor in conscious control of a superior vocal instrument. I particularly urge young actors to experience—and listen to--this performance.

 This Sanctuary Stage production plays Thursday through Saturday at 8 at the Arcata Playhouse.

 Speaking of voices, the Arcata Playhouse recently hosted a live original radio comedy, broadcast on KHSU. Both Ferndale Rep and Redwood Curtain have done these, and the full house at the Playhouse also attests to their popularity. What’s weird about watching a radio show is that it isn’t weird at all. The talent—too numerous to name—was great, the script (a detective story parody involving KHSU) was mostly funny, pocked with puns and other psychic detritus (you know, crazy people from Detroit.)

 Afterwards some participants recalled the great audio artists called Firesign Theatre, of “Temporarily Humboldt County” and “Nick Danger, Third Eye” fame. Get their CDs—still funny, and not insane.

 Coming Up: Still speaking of voices, completing its run this weekend at the HSU Studio Theatre is The Homecoming by Nobel Laureate Harold Pinter, known for his unique dialogue, and among the ensemble is another notable North Coast actor who excels at vocal acting, Jabari Morgan. Remaining performances are Thurs.-Sat. at 7:30 and Sunday at 2. Info at HSUStage.blogspot.com.

 On Friday, Saturday and Sunday at 8, the Dell’Arte Company Cabaret features your favorite Dell’Artesans plus special guests and a sneak preview of their epic work-in-progress: Blue Lake: The Opera. Then on Monday, Dell’Arte hosts visiting Le Cabaret Noir’s “Sin on Heels,” advertised as “a tawdry blend of burlesque and gender-bending performances.” For more on both cabarets, check dellarte.com.

 On Saturday March 13, Ferndale Rep holds its annual fundraiser, “RepFest: Comedy Tonight” at the Ferndale Community Center. Auction items and other information posted on ferndale-rep.org.

Puppets in Hell: Independent Eye's Rash Acts

The Independent Eye’s Mythic Kitchen troupe, based in Sebastopol, returned to the North Coast last weekend for two shows at the Arcata Playhouse. With this version of their Rash Acts, they were trying something new, more or less. They’ve used puppets before—co-founder Elizabeth Fuller, who brought her show Dream House to the Playhouse a couple of summers ago, said that people still remember their puppet version of Macbeth from 1979.

 But after 35 years of eclectic experimentation, Fuller and partner Conrad Bishop decided to focus on integrating puppets in their new work from now on. As a step in that direction, they combined actors and various kinds and sizes of puppets to revisit five stories they’ve done in the past as non-puppet theatre.

 Puppetry is an ancient and cross-cultural element in theatre, and was present at the creation of commedia dell’arte. The world-weary puppet introducing Rash Acts mentions the memory of familiar American puppets gone by, like Howdy Doody and Kermit the Frog. His bitter patter clues us in to the expectations we may be dealing with as the evening progresses. Because the un-cute and non-madcap message of the evening might be that it’s not easy being mortal. Hey, kids—what time is it? It’s Howdy Apocalypse time!

 The current economic tailspin plus the usual angst-producing suspects (war, Big Macs, strip malls, cancer) are front and center in the first piece, “Alice in Wonder.” It’s a riff on Lewis Carroll, with a sci-fi feel (Borg voices, Forbidden Planet sound effects)--- although the White Rabbit is an airport security scanner out of the Marx Brothers (or reality), the caterpillar has given up smoking, and the Queen is male (because being Queen is a man’s job.)

 Alice is a childhood doll rediscovered by her grown-up owner as she packs up to leave her foreclosed house, and is tossing out “crap I’ve had for years, like hope and expectations… This is not one of those mythic underworld journeys. This is just going to hell.”

 Alice is eventually consigned to the Goodwill. The woman’s one remaining hope is to plant some seeds (farming and growing stuff as the only good thing left seems common to several of the stories) but she can’t, she’s moving. Not a cheery story, but with a homemade feeling of a child playing dolls in her room.

 “Reach Out and Touch” concerns a recent widower bedeviled by telemarketers at mealtime, “Freeway” is a Firesign Theatre/Doctor Who fantasy of a couple that gets on the freeway and forty years later finally finds the Big Rest Stop. This one had some interesting, dance-like interactions between the two puppets and the human couple animating them.

 “Big Mama’s Baby” is an unsubtle but cleverly detailed allegory of white civilization as a spoiled child wrecking the planet, until the volcanic Big Mama Earth snuffs him. He wasn’t all bad, though—he left behind the Ode to Joy.

 “The Shadow Queen,” which features some very nice shadow theatre work, provided at least the choice of something hopeful: art as a kind of resurrection, offered as an alternative ending. But relentless mortality and screwed up people trashing the planet were common themes, as startling lines zinged by among those that sounded more conventionally cynical.

 The puppets and costumes are striking. Personally, I have trouble relating to puppets when the puppeteer is visible. I guess most people focus on the puppet anyway, but I keep looking at the person—I gravitate towards facial expression and where the voice is coming from. It’s like a movie with subtitles: I wind up reading more than watching.

 But when I could focus on the puppets, I still found that, except for a couple of moments, they tended to mute emotional connection rather than strengthen it. Maybe a certain alienation effect is intended, or inevitable. Even when they aren’t obviously grotesque, there’s always been a certain creepy quality about puppets. In any case, given the content, it was a disquieting evening. Ruefully funny, too, though not exactly Kermit and Howdy time.

 Coming Up: Next weekend is a busy one at the Arcata Playhouse, with physical comedy in The Cody Rivers Show on Thursday (Feb. 26), Cal Pritner from New York doing Mark Twain on Friday, and a cabaret fundraiser for Coastal Grove Charter School students on Saturday…Sanctuary Stage does The Vagina Monologues on Thursday and Friday at 7:30pm at Aunty Mo’s Lounge in Eureka, benefiting local organizations. It includes two monologues never performed in Humboldt before.

 Opening on Thursday and playing two weekends in the Gist Hall Theatre is the winner of the tri-annual New Plays Season national competition at HSU, Jagun Fly by John Oluwole ADEkoje, an HSU playwriting graduate who is establishing a promising career in Boston. It’s that Humboldt rarity: a play about Africa and America written by an African American, with an African American cast.

Whose Stereotyped Now? The Wild Guys

In The Wild Guys, currently at Ferndale Repertory Theatre, we’re asked to believe that: Andy (played by Mike Halton), an older executive and experienced men’s group leader, takes three men he barely knows on a retreat without telling them anything about what they’re doing.

 He invites Stewart (Joe Hiney), a produce manager in one of his grocery stores who he disdains, and entrusts him with guiding them through the woods to a cabin that only Stewart knows about, on what Stewart thinks is a fishing and drinking trip during which he can lobby for promotion.

 Then these grown men entrust all their food to Robin (Carl Hanson), who declaims, fantasizes and whines in incessant New Agelish, and has been to many men’s groups but somehow decides that this time he won’t bring the food so they can forage and hunt like wild men, even though if he’d ever tried this before, he would likely have starved already.

 Though we’ve seen these men talk on cell phones before they left, none of them brings one along into the woods, including Randall (Hal Bahr), an otherwise wired lawyer, who is only there because Andy is a client and it’s an excuse not to compete in a triathlon with his younger girlfriend.

 But for the fast-paced first act we go along for the ride, as they get lost in the woods. Though playwrights Andrew Wreggitt and Rebecca Shaw are Canadian, there are Humboldt references added, and some comic video that also provides character background. There’s funny dialogue and action, and director Marilyn Foote keeps things moving across Gary Franklin’s handsome set, comprised of platforms that stand in for landscape.

 The actors, while not entirely sure-footed on opening night, spoke clearly, interacted well, and performed their physical action with comic effect. They all bring something to their characters, especially Joe Hiney, who suggests the hayseed side of G.W. Bush. There’s a predicable sitcom feeling, but enough laughs to keep it lively.

 Then (after one of Ferndale’s long intermissions, nearly 25 minutes) it pretty much falls apart in the bloated and unconvincing second act. There are fewer laughs, and except for a few home truths (Robin complains that when he professes his feminist sympathies, women think he’s a wimp), the stabs at seriousness are half-hearted at best.

 When it was a staged cartoon, the lack of characterization beyond recognizable types and what the actors brought to them didn’t much matter. But the attempt to introduce meaningful interactions seemed tacked-on and artificial. Revelations were clumsy, unearned and largely unrelated to what came before. By then, that the premise never made much sense became clearer and more important.

 I think most of this play’s problems can be traced to its willful misunderstanding of what’s called the men’s movement, which the play identifies with workshops begun by the poet Robert Bly. The play parodies a cliché—the popular image of deluded men going into the woods to drum and act like children. By taking that easy course, the play has nowhere real to go.

 But it doesn’t stop there: in effect, it attacks not just the excesses of this men’s movement but its essence. So here’s a contrary pitch. There’s no one alive who has done more for American poetry than Robert Bly. Together with others, including James Hillman (the most important American psychological thinker since William James), his men’s workshops used myth and real poetry (collected in a great anthology titled Rag and Bone Shop of the Heart) to explore issues such as men’s relationships with their fathers, each other, women, family, the world, meaning, death and their own numbed and unarticulated feelings.

 In the face of lazy misunderstanding or worse, it took courage. For Bly, the “wild man” was about regaining spontaneity, partly through music and contact with nature. Rediscovering “the warrior” wasn’t about killing dinner, but focused perseverance. (It’s all there in Bill Moyer’s video, A Gathering of Men.)

 Excesses aside, demeaning the whole intent leaves us with little more than today’s standard image of masculinity defined by relentless commercials: slightly dim guys whose only real focus is lust for their favorite beer.

 To be fair, this play was a prize winner in some form (there’s apparently a one hour version). It’s a community theatre favorite and the basis for a Canadian feature film on the festival circuit, although the movie reportedly drops the men’s group theme and makes it a back-to-nature trip.

 The Wild Guys runs two more weekends.

 Coming Up: Improviso! is extreme Commedia, classic physical comedy with masks, performed by Dell’Arte School first year students at the Carlo February 5 through 7 at 8 p.m… Sanctuary Stage is producing the annual The Vagina Monologues, and is hosting a fundraiser to support the production on February 13 at Aunty Mo’s Lounge in Eureka from 6 to 9 p.m. Proceeds from the production will go to local organizations that work to stop violence against women and girls: North Coast Rape Crisis Center, the Emma Center, Women’s Shelter in Southern Humboldt and the Wiyot Tribe's "Vachurr Wimouthwilh." 786-9151.

Note originally posted 12/12/09:

Friday and Saturday are the final performances for The Wild Guys, a comedy at Ferndale Rep. I reviewed it last week, and in the current issue of the Journal are three letters with a contrary view--they all liked it a lot.

My response overall was mixed, though I took issue with the play and its point of view on "men's self-help encounters of the type made famous by drum-beating poet Robert Bly and the new-age, touchy-feely movement that supported it" (to quote the Ferndale Rep web page.) (There is just so much wrong with that sentence I don't know where to start.)

 People have asked me about these letters, and I'm completely comfortable with them. They express valid points of view (even if perhaps as part of an organized effort) and different experiences of the play. I am also completely comfortable with what I wrote, and the need to offer a contrary view on the attitudes represented in the play. But if you want to see for yourself what the fuss is about, you've got just two more chances. Pictured above are: Carl Hanson, Mike Halton, Joe Hiney and Hal Bahr.

One more interesting item about The Wild Guys: This production features actors from southern Humboldt, where the rehearsals were held. On opening night, Ferndale Rep exec director Ginger Gene asked the audience where they were from, and pretty much everybody was from southern Humboldt, supporting their actors on the night when proceeds go to those involved in the production. Ginger did ask if there was anyone there from another state. No one was. "I'm in an altered state," one voice added.

Opening Thursday for this weekend only at the Arcata Playhouse, Crawdaddy’s Odditorium, a new and reconceived production of the show seen here as an ongoing experiment last spring, co-produced by Four on the Floor Productions, CAOS and Dell'Arte. A big opening night Thursday at 8, and performances on Friday and Saturday. Reservations are recommended: 822-1575.

Dell'Arte is combining a fundraiser with Humboldt's own Inaugural Ball on Inauguration Night (next Tuesday). Food, drink, foolery and a reprise of President (yes!) Obama's Inaugural Address on big screen TV. For tickets and information call 668-5663 ext. 5.

Auditions for Ferndale Repertory Theatre’s production of The Secret Garden: Director, Ginger Gene, Music Director, Dianne Zuleger, Choreographer, Linda Maxwell. All auditions will be held at the Carson Block Building, 341 “F” Street, Eureka. Be prepared to sing a song that best represents your voice. Piano accompanist will be provided. Casting roles: Mary Lennox a 10-year old girl (casting 10-14, maybe?) Strong singer needed. Colin Craven - Archie’s 10-year-old son.(10-14) Thin and bedridden. Treble, high voice needed. Ensemble/Chorus roles, some with lines. Children (10 – 18 years of age) Audition Times:Jan 17th at 2:00pm – Open Auditions;Jan 18th at 2:00pm – Call Backs. For more information please visit http://www.ferndale-rep.org/.

The CR Drama Production Class will have auditions for the Spring 2009 presentation of Moliere’s classic comedy “The Misanthrope” from 7:00 to 9:00 p.m., Wednesday, January 21, and Thursday, January 22 in the CR Forum Theatre (FM 103). Now in its 6th season, the critically acclaimed Drama Production class offers 2 units of credit for all participants, but acting roles are offered only by audition. For further information, contact the Director, Kjeld Lyth at (707) 441-1592.

Sanctuary Stage announces that it will host a V-Day benefit production of the Vagina Monologues "to raise money and awareness for local organizations that work to stop violence against women and girls. We will be donating all profits from our event to our own local organizations - North Coast Rape Crisis Center, W.I.S.H., and the Wiyot Domestic Violence Program "Vachurr Wimouthwilh".

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.

This North Coast Weekend and Coming Attractions

Sanctuary Stage presents its second annual 10 Minute Play-in-a-Day event on Saturday at 7 pm at the Eureka Theater. Beginning Friday night, six playwrights, six directors and up to 18 actors will create a ten minute play from scratch, and these six resulting efforts will hit the stage Saturday.

I participated last year, and wrote about it here. Bob Doran writes about it in the Journal this week--including writing about me writing about it; and Beti Trauth previews the process at the T-S. I'm not involved in it this year--for all the reasons I hinted at at the end of my piece on last year's--but I wish everyone well who is doing it. I still recall it as a good experience, something to do once, although in my case one that hasn't seemed to lead anywhere.

I also note in the Journal a review of the San Francisco production of Tom Stoppard's Rock & Roll; review by Jay Herzog. Lucky he got to see it, is all I've got to say.

Otherwise, The Merry Wives of Windsor continues at North Coast Rep. In the wings: The Michael Frayn comedy Noises Off opens at Ferndale Rep next weekend, and the HSU production of Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale opens the following week.

"Memories" at Signature Stage

Melissa Lawson and Tinamarie Ivey in
"Memories," Volume 1 in the year-long project
called Shades of Grey, by Signature Stage. It
plays this weekend only at the Eureka Theater.

Don't Forget to Remember: Memories at Signature Stage

There are these paradoxes: theatre, like movies, TV and major-publisher literature, is increasingly created by the young, to the extent that a writer for the Dramatist Guild’s magazine felt compelled to bravely suggest that good new plays could actually be written by playwrights over the age of 30. Yet theatre audiences are consistently and increasingly older.

And while arts and entertainment coverage in the local press is increasingly skewed to a young demographic (which is statistically less likely to read newspapers), Humboldt County’s population trends older.

But there are some attempts on local stages to address aspects of later life. For the past few seasons Ferndale Rep has produced a senior show, and brought this year’s play—by Humboldt’s own Dave Silverbrand—to the Eureka Theatre, where, not entirely coincidentally, the resident company called Signature Stage is beginning a year-long project exploring issues of aging called “Shades of Grey.”

Dan Stone and Tinamarie Ivey, founders of Signature Stage, together with the multi-talented Melissa Lawson and the omni-talented Gretha Omey, created the first show in this series, entitled “Memories,” on stage at the Eureka Theatre this weekend.

“Memories” is a theatrical mash-up of three plays that deal in different ways with the subject: Samuel Beckett’s Krapp’s Last Tape and Lost by Mary Louise Wilson, bookended by slices of Beckett’s Come and Go. After interviews and interactions with seniors, the ensemble created this experimental work-in-progress, which uses masks, movement, light and music as well as speech to suggest the fluid logic of dreams and memories.

As Gretha Omey suggested in the talk-back after the first preview performance last weekend, experimental theatre is by its nature more open to individual impressions. So here are mine:

The basic staging of Omey on one side interpreting snippets of Krapp’s Last Tape, while Lawson and Ivey performed scenes from Lost on the other worked well to evoke two perspectives on the topic: On the one side, the tragic or at least melancholic outcome of a man’s dimly recalled recurrent illusions, obsessions, unfulfilled promise and other losses, are emphasized by Omey’s slowly eloquent gestures. On the other, the apparently farcical preparations of two high-spirited women (delightfully performed by Lawson and Ivey) getting ready for a night out, feature so many consecutive senior moments that it takes forever for them to get out the door. Yet there are absurdly comic aspects to Krapp (even more so in the full Beckett play), and poignancy in the ladies who are lost.

All three performers enliven the evocative masks created by Dan Stone, who also edited the texts and directed. In moments when the characters reverted to youth, the masks came off to reveal the person inside, who is always younger than proclaimed by the mask each is forced by age to wear. Lighting (by Dan Stone) and especially the music (composed by Dan Stone) were essential to the performance. The Eureka Theatre is a huge place, but all of these elements contributed to the success of this intimate experiment. Maybe it’s the product of a youth misspent in movie palaces, but I’m comfortable in that theatre.

Then afterwards, the night sky outside was clear and Jupiter, Saturn and Mars were brightly visible (none of them, as far as I know, by Dan Stone.) Memories is at the Eureka Theatre this Thursday, Friday and Saturday (August 7-9) at 8 pm.

As for such projects regarding elders, while I welcome attempts to explore the vagaries of aging, I don’t think theatre about the old or for older audiences needs to concentrate exclusively on what is lost or troublesome. It seems to me rather that what theatre and this society are losing is the irreplaceable perspective of those who have lived long enough to actually have perspective, and maybe even to have learned something.

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.”

This North Coast Weekend

Ferndale Rep and the Senior Repertory Company open Dave Silverbrand's comedy, Make Mine Metamucil, directed by Denise Ryles, at the Rep theatre in Ferndale, Friday and Saturday at 8, Sunday at 2p.m. But if you're in the Eureka/Arcata area and gas prices are stunting your social life, be advised, there will be two performances at the Eureka Theatre later in the month (July 26 at 8, July 27 at 2.)

The Mad River Festival moves on to its "Generation Next" portion with a piece called Curtains! by the southern Humboldt teen troupe, Recycled Youth. It is performed Friday and Saturday at 8, and Sunday at 7:30 in the Carlo. Sunday's performance is followed by the all-ages cabaret, Vaudeville Nouveau.

Sanctuary Stage has issued a CALL FOR ACTORS to perform a staged reading of a new play by Ken Gray--a Los Angeles playwright who has spent considerable time up here, and last year participated in the 24 hour 10 Minute Play event. Plus the play itself is Humboldt based. The rehearsal period begins August 11, and the performances are August 22 and 23. Contact Tinamarie for full details.