June 28, 2007
Just noticed this lengthy piece on the state of PCS.
Excerpt:
"Sharing stories creates community. A group of strangers wander into a dark theater on a given night, and over the course of a few hours (with the help of live actors and a good story) find themselves sharing the dreams, joys and sorrows of the room.
Portland Center Stage tells stories that resonate for our time. We create events with big imaginations – whether that means 20 actors dancing across a room, or one actor conjuring a cosmos. Whether we’re reimagining Shakespeare, blazing new trails with contemporary drama, dusting off a vintage musical or celebrating a world premiere, you never know what you’ll see. But you know it will be work that speaks to the moment we inhabit right now.
We want to gather an audience as varied as the faces you see walking down the streets of Portland, ask them to lean forward and bear witness. We want them to engage in making magic happen right here and right now. We celebrate the energy of intersections: actor and audience; past and present; romance and goofiness; Prada and Birkenstocks.
Populist? You bet. Provocative? Sometimes, sure, because we live in one of the most unpredictable, independent communities in the country. Our job is to keep people looking forward.
The dream of PCS’s new home in the Armory is to encourage the spirit of community that naturally blossoms inside the theater, to waft out into the lobby, onto the sidewalk, into imaginations far beyond the building itself.”
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12 comments:
PCS needs to learn to TRUST the material they produce and they need to RESPECT the material they produce.
they are so obsessed with being hip, they are far too often inert, falling far shy of the potential that exists on the page.
they need to produce good theatre and stop trying to produce good buzz.
take care of one and the other will follow.
example of a show where they tried to produce good buzz instead of good theatre?
"...thumbing your nose saying your art is better. "
no one said that.
to 8:55
an example would be that "all nude"
merchant of venice.
but there are countless others.
all nude merchant of venice? I didn't see it but I would have if they'd been all nude.
I guess one person's experiment is another person's pointless folly. Personally, I wish PCS would do more crazy stunts and fewer lifeless classics, but I understand they are bound to their subscriber base and they can't please everyone.
"example of a show where they tried to produce good buzz instead of good theatre?'
Coleman's first PCS production of "The Devils". Hyped to the max by PCS (and local media). Bad production, bad acting, horrible blocking, poor usage of the space.
"I didn't see it but I would have if they'd been all nude."
I think this proves the point rather keenly. Yikes.
Merchant was all nude, or hell, nude at all. There was no nudity, as far as I remember. The closest was when there was simulated sex, but they were still completely clothed.
Man, I know that show caused an adverse reaction in the subscriber base, but I loved it.
Anyway, i get that people didn't like it and didn't like the directors vision of it. That is cool. But it wasn't all nude. Or nude at all.
Tom
Antonio and Bassiano were nude, completely, in bed together. We saw mild full frontal from both, but as I recall, a lot from Antonio, who was pretty well-built and proportioned. It lasted all of 3 minutes total, maybe, but at the moment I thought it could have been longer, and I would not have minded.
Corrected. I do remember that.
Tom
I'm sorry, what point does "I didn't see it but I would have if they'd been all nude" prove? That their buzz worked? Apparently it didn't, since I did not see it. Or maybe you're saying that the nudity was a scheme to get people there. I think an idea can be both artistically exciting and marketing savvy, and in fact, in these modern times -- sad to say -- it often has to be both.
I don't have any great love for Chris Coleman but, gimmicky as Merchant may have been, it got people talking and is the only production from that season (of what I can recall offhand) that people are still talking about. Maybe he's too focused on buzz but doesn't he have to be? Don't we all, if we're honest?
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