NOW HEAR THIS SEASON FINALE

Portland Center Stage’s

NOW HEAR THIS

invites you to a concert reading of

Why Love Doesn’t Recognize Its Name

a new play by Lisa Leaverton

*

Saturday, June 28, 2008

Noon to approximately 1:30 pm

@ Portland Center Stage

128 NW Eleventh Avenue (between Couch & Davis)

in the Rehearsal Room

*

Our outstanding cast includes:

Lava Alapai, Mario Calcagno, Drew Danhorn,

Heather Nelson Robertson, Cecily Overman & Amy Palomino

*

Admission is free, but space is limited

Email Megan Ward at meganw@pcs.org

to reserve your seat

-----------------------------

At a loss for words? Then come down to Lee’s Expressive! He’s the best! Lee and his team of mechanics help clients whose speech patterns are clogged with words that are too ornate, or have the wrong shade of meaning, or just plain don’t communicate. But only Deep Mystery (that’s you, our audience) can unlock the most problematic phrases.

Please join us for our final reading of the season, which promises to be unlike any other reading we’ve had this year: it’s semi-staged; the audience can affect the play’s plot; AND the playwright herself will be here, all the way from Brooklyn, to celebrate the first fun season of

NOW HEAR THIS.

Lisa Leaverton, Playwright (Brooklyn, NY) runs a collective (inquire within) with Director John Kaufmann, devoted to audience dependent, ephemeral theatre. Her One Act, “PERHAPS,” (2008) was read in Outward Bound Series, at CSPS, Cedar Rapids. WHY LOVE DOESN’T RECOGNIZE ITS NAME, for which she received a Richard Maibaum Scholarship was featured at Iowa New Play Festival, 2008. Theatre of The Body (2001), a series of lecture demonstrations created in collaboration with choreographer Katharine Livingston has been performed numerous times since it sold out at Philadelphia Fringe. A Blue We All Know (2008), will be featured in a Gallery production at University of Iowa, Oct. 2008. Other plays include Who Are These They, (2007) read in Primary Stages Playwrights Workshop, The LONG Night, (2008), and The Countess of Misery (2005), full-length play in verse. Since graduating from Peabody Music Conservatory, Lisa has costumed Theatre and Dance companies, including Headlong Dance and Pig Iron Theatre Co. Lisa participated in Goat Island Performance workshops, and KCCTF, 2007. Recipient of a Felton award, Lisa is completing her MFA in playwriting at University of Iowa.

Nancy Keystone

While I was in Pasedena, I met up with the marvelous Nancy Keystone. She graciously picked me up from my hotel and took me to lunch and then on to her art show in Highland Park. Nancy has directed for Portland Center Stage, you might recall her ANTIGONE or WHO'S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOLF. Next season she will be directing all three parts of APOLLO, a multi-media collaborative exploration of the Apollo Space Program. She will be directing the World Premiere of all three parts at PCS with her ensemble The Critical Mass Performance Group, of which she is the founder and artistic director. If you don't know, APOLLO is a must see next season. I won't even talk to you if you don't go see it. Nancy is an incredible artist and you would be doing yourself a huge disservice if you did not witness this.

So naturally, being the young theater artist I am, I solicited Nancy on advice on how to survive in this crazy profession. Basically, I was just looking for light at the end of the tunnel. She gave me hope for better days, told me debt and graduate school are unavoidable and that you have to hustle. Alright, I'm still in.

After the yummy lunch and my spirit renewed, we headed on to Highland Park, which I thought was a green grassy place with trees. No wrong. Highland Park is an area in Pasadena, which Nancy explained, is becoming more gentrified. A local curator commissioned a group of artist to pick a shop on York Blvd. and create a work of art which would later be displayed in the shop. I believe it had to somehow incorporate the store and/or the neighborhood. Louisa Van Leer made a flag which represented the area and was hoping to have them adopt it as their own. Mary Beth Heffernan made a crazy armchair/log sculpture for the local upholstery shop. It was beautiful and frighting at the same time. Steven L. Anderson created a site-specific audio instillation outside of the weaving shop which sampled from Ghandi speeches and sounds from the shop. From the website: "Center for the Arts, Eagle Rock and Outpost for Contemporary Art are collaborating to organize Intersection 2008, which is a multi-sited public installation project that brings artistic interventions into businesses. This project features 17 temporary art installations by artists who live and/or work in North East Los Angeles." Nancy made a sculpture out of stuff she bought at Junior Discount Party Supply. I wish I had the picture of all the stuff she bought sitting on her table at home before she got to work. Her whole table was covered with very colorful goodies. She created two very beautiful chandelier type sculptures, which reminded me of the chandelier that we have at Portland Center Stage, which Nancy designed.

It was a wonderful way to spend my Saturday. I am so pleased that Nancy was able to take time out of her busy life and visit with me!

Why I will never live in Los Angeles

I moved from L.A. when I was 8 years old. We still have family and friends here and every time we are here we do the whirlwind tour of visiting people and coordinating schedules. The priority in most conversations is about the status of the freeway and the traffic. They talk about it the way Oregonian's talk about the rain. It is something that effects their daily lives and they have to factor sometimes up to an hour or more into their travel time. Easy tasks become difficult because of the traffic. Whatever with that. It may still be cold and rainy in Oregon right now and we may not be able to count on sun until after the Forth of July, but at least the traffic does not hinder us from living our lives. For anyone reading this who does not live in Oregon, don't worry about moving here. We're full and don't need to be like Seattle, a rainy L.A.

NEW WORK IS WHERE IT’S AT!

JAW: A Playwrights Festival turns 10! And to celebrate we are pulling out all the stops. For two crazy weeks in July, from July 8-20, JAW: A Playwrights Festival takes over the Armory – and its environs. We will begin on the 8^th with readings of hot-off-the press new scripts by Oregon’s own:

Cloud Bangers

by Matthew B. Zrebski

July 8

All the clouds are cumulonimbus in this heady mix of meteorology, migraines and steamy romance. Only an air-clearing storm will reveal who’s zoomin’ whom.

Starvation Heights

by Ginny Foster

July 9

On a lake near Seattle a century ago, lady doctor Linda Hazzard opens a sanitarium with some “advanced” ideas about treatment. When her clients start leaving her care feet first, a mysterious figure known only as Nanny arrives, determined to save two particular patients.

Willow Jade

by Hunt Holman

July 10

Nowheresville, Washington state. Four aging chums attempt to stave off incipient middle age by reviving their high school rock band. That is, if they can keep from killing each other during a disastrous game of D&D – in costume.

And of course there’s more. Our You Are There (site-specific) presentations will spill into the streets. The popular Theater Fair will take on a fresh twist. Promising Playwrights will offer new works created by local high school students especially for the Festival. Three new Community Artists Labs allow you some one on one time with featured guest artists to pick their brains and practice your craft. And our anniversary kick-off event will draw on playwrights from the full span of JAW’s ten fabulous years to create a Commission!Commission! event open to all for the first time. So stop by on July 11 to see familiar faces and help us kick off the public weekend.

PLUS IT’S ALL FREE!

We are proud to announce we’ve expanded the Festival’s centerpiece readings on the main stage of the Gerding Theater this year another workshop -- a one woman musical by Portland’s very own Storm Large. JAW received a record number of submissions this year, and although this was not our intention, the festival will have all female playwrights. As a young female artist working in the theater community it is inspiring to see so many accomplished women.

Paradise Street
by Constance Congdon
Jane arrives at her new university post ready to set academic feminism on its head. But when her mind goes wandering, everyone has to improvise, which brings her doddering mother out of semi-senility and inspires an uneducated drifter to impersonate Jane on the lecture circuit. Along the way they all discover that contrary to popular belief, parallel lines do sometimes meet.

Enchantment
by Carson Kreizer

Meet Temple Grandin, engineer and high-functioning autistic, and Bruno Bettelheim, whose book The Uses of Enchantment is notorious for its penetrating analyses of fairy tales. They lived and live on, but this is no mere documentary; as their lives interweave to create a startling, disturbing and effecting dramatic narrative, you may never think of life and its consequences quite the same way again.

Crazy Enough

by Storm Large

Drawn from Storm’s life and music, this musical one-woman show is bracingly frank and revealing in a way that only our take-no-prisoners chanteuse can deliver. Her story promises to be as rock and roll as the diva herself.

Pony
by Sally Oswald
You’ve seen these people on the streets and wondered who they were. Now meet them face to face, before they shape-shift. Gender lines merge, twist and double back in this tale of six souls in search of identify that starts where Woyzeck left off.

A Brief Narrative of an Extraordinary Birth of Rabbits
by Colin Denby Swanson
Coming up with names is a problem for Mare when she starts giving birth to an endless stream of bunnies. But that’s only the start of her problems, as a whole family of guilty consciences comes to the fore. Who can she turn to? Enter The Stork: raconteur, impresario and OB-GYN, all rolled into one.

JAW is truly my favorite time of year and the 2008 outing is really a must-see, as the art and creation will be exploding out the building. I hope to see you all there!

My New Love

I have been obsessing...and I mean REALLY obsessing about getting a dog for a couple months now. I decided I wanted to adopt a dog instead of buying a puppy because I felt that there were enough dogs that needed a good home. My day would begin and end with me searching the internet for the perfect companion. I would start by checking the Oregon Humane Society, Craigslist, Multnomah Animal Control, the Oregonian and The Willamette Week classified ads.

One day I was so stressed out that I took the bus to the humane society and fell in love with this Brittany Spaniel/mix at the Humane society. She was a year and a half and house broken. She was brought in because the family had a baby and the dog was not getting along. What appealed to me the most about her is that she looked like a big dog but was only 30lbs. I lost her. I didn't have an apartment or anywhere to keep her.

I love big dogs and have no interest in small dogs. I was raised with two labs, Maggie (a yellow lab) and her son Pierre (a black lab). We got Maggie as an incentive to move to Oregon.

My parents promised that we could get a dog when we moved from L.A. to Portland, Oregon (where it snowed...something else we were very excited about. ) We picked up Maggie from a breeder in Bend and she traveled the whole way home asleep on my lap. She was my sister. A few years later we decided to breed her and she produced a litter of 5, one of which was Pierre, who we kept.

Her son Pierre was beautiful and perfect from the beginning. He was the blocky headed black lab who was my brother's since Maggie was mine, but in reality both dogs were really my father's. Last year, Maggie was put down and Pierre passed away right behind her. It broke my heart because he was so sudden. All of this colored my decision not to get a lab; it would be too hard.

Next I decided Cavalier King Charles were the dog for me because they had the personality of a retriever but were small dogs, breed to be lap dogs. I had to get over my snobbery of small dogs because apartments and my lifestyle required them to be no bigger than 30lbs. I loved that they were not hard-wired to hunt or heard or anything like that. These dogs are expensive and have a long list of health problems. All breeds are prone to certain health problems, but this one takes the cake. So then I decided, I would just leave it up to fate. I wouldn't focus on a certain breed or hybrid I would just wait for a dog to say, I'm yours.

Well, it happened. And it happened a little sooner than I expected. I was looking at craigslist and I saw this ad for a cocker spaniel. I hadn't thought much about cocker spaniels and everything anyone had told me was bad, so I was hesitant. But I took one look at this picture and new I had to get this dog. So I contacted the family to ask them why they would give away such a beautiful dog. The mother said that she didn't realize how much her husband didn't like dogs and was sad that the dog had to spend it's life outside. They didn't feel that it was fair and that he would be much better suited to be an indoor dog. Perfect. I would love an indoor dog and he has already been socialized by a family. Things were looking up.

But then things were looking down...because I didn't have an apartment and he was too young to bring to work right away. So I dropped the idea. But I kept dreaming about him and about our life together. These dreams were so vivid that I thought he was actually mine. A day later at work, a friend convinced me to go out to see the dog. Then another co-work joined the conversation and told me I had to at least meet him. I had to know what he was really like. Well we all know how this story ends. I fall in love. He loves me, I love him...it's happily ever after.

But not quite...cause I still didn't have an apartment and my parents weren't being supportive. I stuck with it and finally found a solution: We would live with my parents at their house (they totally came around) and then move into my apartment June 1st. Victory! I picked him up on Tuesday.

I was nervous and scared to be a dog mommy, but we bonded so well and he is such a little gentleman. He continues to surprise me with how lovely he is. He is just happy to be with me. And he's pretty smart too! He is going to be such a mamma's boy...It surprises me how much I love this dog and that makes me pretty happy.

F.U.B.A.R.

Portland Center Stage’s

NOW HEAR THIS

invites you to a concert reading of

FUBAR

a new play by Karl Gajdusek

*

May 17, 2008

Noon to approximately 2 pm

@ Portland Center Stage

128 NW Eleventh Avenue (between Couch & Davis)

in the Rehearsal Room

Admission is free, but space is limited

Please email Megan Ward at meganw@pcs.org

to reserve your seat

-----------------------------

Mary lives amid the boxes her abused mother left behind. Her husband David tries desperately hard to stay young and hip. Meanwhile, best-bud Richard is on the road not taken and Sylvia’s along for the ride. But when Mary is the victim of an unprovoked act of violence, it leads them each down different paths of addiction and realization. Four people trying to recognize the people they have become in a time that’s totally F.U.B.A.R.

Karl Gajdusek was born in San Francisco and now lives in San Diego with his wife and son. He writes plays, screenplays and television. He has taught Playwriting at San Francisco’s School of the Arts, UCSD, ISOMATA and The Playwrights’ Center. He has a BA in Literature from Yale University and an MFA in Playwriting from the University of California at San Diego. Karl’s other plays include Fair Game, Silverlake, Minneapolis, Dr.S F.S in the Terminal Ward, Big Sun Setting Fast, The Gilded Garden of Patcheww, Malibu, and Waco, Texas, Mon Amour. Screenplays include Higher, 9 Days Wonder, Widow’s Walk, Reunion, Woderman, The Next Best Thing (not the one with Madonna), and the independent film 58, which he wrote and directed. Story Editor for the Showtime show Dead Like Me. He founded the script publication service Big Sun Publication. He is the recipient of the 1991 Jacob K. Javits fellowship, 1996-97 & 1998-99 Jerome Fellowships, the 1997 McKnight Screenwriting Fellowship, and the 2000 MAG fellowship. When not writing for the theater, Karl spends his time surfing So Cal breaks, writing movies for pro wrestlers, and lovingly changing diapers.

Our outstanding cast includes:

Brittany Burch, Mario Calcagno, Paul Glazier,

Natalie Knapp and Tom Walton.

Stage Directions by Teddy Roisum

Bang, Bang

Portland Center Stage's

NOW HEAR THIS

invites you to a concert reading of

The Bullet Round

by Steven Drukman

Featuring the talents of
Paul Glazier, Tom Moorman, Chris Murray,
Nasir Najieb, Amy Newman & Michael Fisher Welsh

*

April 19, 2008
Noon to approximately 2 pm
@ Portland Center Stage
128 NW Eleventh Avenue (between Couch & Davis)
on the Main Stage

Admission is free, but space is limited
Please email Megan Ward at meganw@pcs.org
to reserve your seat

-----------------------------

"If you put a gun onstage in Act I, it must go off by Act III."

-- Anton Chekhov

Karma's a bitch, as the hapless inhabitants of this knockabout comedy
are about to find out. In the course of an a La Ronde chain reaction,
an aspiring white rapper gains and loses a gun that continues to
change hands, scene by scene, on its way to fulfilling an
unanticipated destiny.

Steven Drukman's play IN THIS CORNER (about legendary boxer Joe
Louis) opened in January at San Diego's Old Globe Theatre. Other
produced plays include GOING NATIVE (Long Wharf Theatre), FLATTERY
WILL GET YOU (Connecticut Rep), COLLATERAL DAMAGE (Illusion Theatre,
Minneapolis), THE SNOWMAIDEN (Bob Hope Theatre, Dallas) and ANOTHER
FINE MESS (Portland Center Stage), which was nominated for the
Pulitzer Prize. He has been developed and/or commissioned by the Mark
Taper Forum, the Intiman Theatre, South Coast Rep, New York Theatre
Workshop, Playwrights Horizons, Sundance Theatre Lab and the
Williamstown Theatre Festival. Awards: Paul Green Award, Alfred P.
Sloan Award, Heinemann finalist, others. He wrote for many years for
The New York Times, was an Associate Editor of American Theatre
Magazine, and he just released his book of the edited screenplays of
Craig Lucas. He teaches playwriting at NYU.

*

Now Hear This and Portland Center Stage gratefully acknowledge the
support of the Oregon Cultural Trust.