Culturephile

Q&A: Mike Daisey on New Show, 'JOURNALISM'

Thu, 16 May 2013 13:28:00 -0700

Since 2008, the monologist Mike Daisey has transfixed Portland audiences at PICA’s Time-Based Arts festival, most recently with The Agony and the Ecstasy Of Steve Jobs in 2010 and his 24-hour performance, All the Hours in the Day, in 2011. Then in 2012, the popular public radio program This American Life ran a radio version of The Agony and the Ecstasy, and the rest of the nation was equally spellbound by the power of his storytelling, quickly catapulting him into one of the most visible critics of the working conditions in the Chinese factories that make our ubiquitous iPhones and iPads.

But it turned out that many of the most moving parts of his story were exaggerations or outright fabrications, and This American Life spent another episode interviewing Daisey and trying to set the record straight. Many, including myself, doubted we’d ever be able to listen to Daisey with the same rapture and faith again.

Which is why I was extraordinarily surprised and more than a little conflicted when PICA sent out word that Daisey would be appearing in Portland for one night only, May 21, to do a world premiere show about, of all things, JOURNALISM (in all caps).

The press release calls it a “love letter,” although given the scorn he’s been thrown by many journalists, one might consider it a so-far unrequited one. Yet to his credit, Daisey’s certainly not run from his scandal, leaving me at least willing to listen to what he has to say about his mistakes, the place of fact and truth in storytelling, and why he wants to tackle the topic of objectivity in journalism.

To talk with Daisey is to be reminded of how masterful he is with language. Rebecca Jacobson in Willamette Week called him “a weaselly talker who spins like an iPod wheel.” For the record, Daisey considers himself more like an otter.

What is Journalism about?
This will be the very first time that I’ve performed this monologue, so I can’t be entirely certain, but I believe that what I’m going to be talking about is how we construct stories and how stories construct authority. And it’s also going to be about the changing face of journalism now. And then the third strand will be related to the myth of objective journalism that really arose out of broadcast media where stations had one voice and an anchor speaking the news.

It’s not abundantly clear in the Willamette Week article, but funny is also something very important to remember. If there’s no humor in it, there’s no opportunity to create empathy. In that case one could just listen to a very fine talk from Poynter [a media institute], and we wouldn't have to have this conversation.

You say in the press release that the diving off point is your own scandal. I feel like a lot of people caught in such a situation would flee from it and pray to the gods of cultural amnesia that it was forgotten. Instead, you’re diving into it. Why?
Because I’m very obsessed with the subject. I’m a storyteller; I tell stories for a living. I didn’t run away at all. I remained completely present and accountable throughout. I’m not leaving.

One of the most interesting moments in the This American Life episode is you pausing and saying that you don’t know if you should be saying any of this on the air. Why did you? Have you regretted that decision?
People regret things all the time at moments when you get tired and exhausted. But I haven’t regretted the fundamental choice. One of the things that journalism does that’s interesting: because you don’t see the frame, you assume the frame does not exist. For instance, Ira does not have subpoena powers. I chose to willingly go in and answer those questions on tape, and I chose to give him the editing rights to edit them however he saw fit.

It’s been very hard, but I don’t think I would’ve had it another way. I don't think there's another path for me personally that I would've been able to live with.

How did it change your life as an artist and performer?
It created a charged environment in which people questioned what I said and wondered about the veracity of the things I said in a pointed manner. Which is to say, it made people listen to me in the way they should be listing to their news.

Fundamentally, it's actually better and more interesting to be a monologist where people have woken up to the idea that everyone telling you a story has an agenda. It's much more interesting to use that voice than to co-op the voice of nonfiction—the pale voice that I’m telling the truth and you should trust me because here are the cultural signifiers that you must. It's more interesting to not have that armor.

But of course just because it's more interesting doesn't mean it's not harder. It's been a challenging year in many ways, but I'm a much better artist now than I was before.

Have you changed your performance style to be more transparent about where your information comes from?
It’s changed a little. Honestly it didn't change very much at all. One of the things that came out of everything is I decided to create a colophon, which I run in every program for the shows I do. A colophon technically is the name for the page in the book that tells you what font the book was laid out in, the origins of the font.

My colophons tell you the general idea of where the ingredients that went into the monologue came from. The tone of the colophon gives you the provenance of what’s been built, but they do not give you a recipe.

At the end of the day, I’m not a journalist. I’m an artist in the American theater, and so my job is very similar to being a magician. It's an interesting balancing act because it's part of my job that I'm creating illusions, and they’re illusions intended to tell the truth—to tell the truth of human situations, to create empathy between us and other people.

If my work could work the way that traditional journalism does, I would footnote everything, but that wouldn’t function in the same way because it would actually dissolve the underpinnings of how the theater is constructed in the room. So what I'm trying to do is to find a path where the colophon serves to give sign and sigil of the intent and the framing without undermining the pieces.

You tell Ira in that episode that truth is different for theater and journalism. Which he didn't buy at all, particularly in the case of something like the hexane (a part of the story where Daisey inserts a chemical poisoning that happened in another city into his story). Have your thoughts changed on this matter?
I want to be clear about something here. I’m not sure what’s in that episode. While I've read the transcript, I'm not infinitely aware of what's in the episode because I think it’s important to remember that that’s a 14 minute edit of a three to four hour conversation that was edited by someone else. I know we talked about a great number of things. I find that the things that remain were the things that I found the most tired and beaten down. I don't remember seeing sections where I was fiery or making points strongly. So I'm not sure which point we talked about that you're referencing in the tape that he chose to use.

Seriously, you haven’t listened to it?
No.

That's interesting, particularly given you’re doing a show about journalism.
I’ve read the transcript many times.

So you know what it's talking about then.
I have my memories of the entire four-hour conversation, and then there are the parts that he's chosen to excerpt. So I'm trying to remember which they are.

So back to the hexane point then, where you say this is something that happened to you, when it was actually something you'd read about. And you felt like that was something that was true for the theater but the mistake was to put it in the journalism context.
This sounds like something that I said in the edit. Within a week of everything happening, I made a full apology publicly.

What I'm asking is: when you move forward with journalism and storytelling, would you still pull something like that into a story? Or how has that experience change the way you're going to craft your stories moving forward?
It's definitely affected it deeply because I have to think about how people will view them. Fundamentally, I also have the job of surprising and delighting people. I need to be mindful of people's expectations and to not make them feel robbed or cheated, but at the same time it’s antithetical to my job to announce a code and then swear only to tell stories in a certain manner.

I made the decision to create a framing device in the program for people who are most concerned in the provenance of what they see, but what I’m intensely not interested in is straight jacketing myself by making a declaration about what kind of stories I’m going to make.

That was a lot of what my fight with Ira was about. It’s not very clear from what’s left in the exchange. But a lot of it was his determination that I should declare infinitively that all my work is always fiction, which is what he wanted more than anything.

So like in your current show American Utopias, the colophon says: “The management also wishes to remind you that this is a true story, and like every story being told in every medium, all stories are fiction.”
"All stories are stories” is what it really should say. But that wouldn’t mean anything in our age today. People who tell non-fiction stories are very interested in the power of those words remaining sacrosanct, and the words “non-fiction,” meaning not fake, for that to remain true. So it's very important that anyone telling any other stories—fiction—be as fake as possible, so the not fake stories become more true. So it's very important that your cultural authority is built that way. I assume that's why he was so insistent and that was the main point of our many-hour conversation.

When you declare something fiction, it often drains it of power. It's very doubtful that Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle, were it published today and acknowledged as fiction, it's very doubtful that that book would've gotten any traction or lead to any changes. Because as soon as it's fiction, it is fake.

This American life has undoubtedly published a great deal of memoir, like David Sedaris, that's laced with fiction. Is it the fact that your stories have the intention of inspiring political change?
Let's call a spade a spade. Yes. It has a lot to do with the specificity of it. If it was not about Apple, there wouldn't have been a problem in the least.

It isn't a journalism conceit. The brutal conditions are across the Special Economic Zone. Other places' violations are even more terrible than the ones that Apple has been caught with. The stories that come out of Samsung are even worse.

But my objective isn't journalism, so I wasn’t there to gather the very worst stories. Nor was my objective to be there as a reporter or a witness, in which case I would've been very careful to only report things I saw myself. My job was to be a monologist and to create a poetic synthesis of the things that I have read over 10 years, combined with my own experience of being on the ground and knowing what it feels like to be in that environment, and to synthesize those things together. That’s my job.

Where I fell short was not navigating well the transition point between the inside the theater and what the story does to people in the theater in terms of moving hearts and minds, and what happens when I allow my work to be used by other mediums, which I'm totally complicit in, and that's why I apologized.

And yet you didn't raise any of these points about this being a synthesis while working with This American Life on the fact checking.
I was clear with Ira that my interpreter was a composite and talked about this in the Georgetown speech I gave days afterward.

You did a show about James Frey, right? And we’ve had a slew of scandals involving fabricating truths since him, the most recent being Jonah Lehrer. Are there more people bending and embellishing the truth now, or is it just a matter that more are getting caught?
I don’t particularly care very much. I think these people who violate the rules and then everyone gets upset about it is great coverage for built in systemic systems that we don't examine.

I love that we can spill gallons and gallons of ink about the terrible fact that James Frey’s memoir was not as real as everyone wishes it was. But the fact that we have no labor reporting in this country—there was a great Pew poll from 2008 to 2011 that the percentage of broadcast journalism covering labor was .3 percent. There are whole channels dedicated to business, you could call them management programs, and then the amount of journalism is one-third of one percent covering labor. The idea that this is an objective playing field is laughable. It’s not. It never was. To me, those things are more important and more interesting.

It’s much easier to attach blame or indignation or wrath to the individual, also heroism and bravery, because we have a human bias towards the human. We like to give qualities to humans, but we live in a corporate age. The greatest violations of human spirit come from things that are not even human, so we don't blame them proportionately for the things that happened. We’ve accepted it as the way of the world. To me that's more interesting and always has been.

Mike Daisey's JOURNALISM
Tiffany Center Emerald Ballroom
Tuesday, May 21What do you feel about your experience puts you into a position to be talking about this topic? Why do you feel like people should care after they been filled with so much doubt about your veracity?
Although very nicely put, this is another version of “what are your credentials?” I don’t have any. I’m an unregulated monologist. I never get this question from anyone but journalists.

I've never claimed to have any credentials other than being an incredibly good storyteller. If people are like, "I don’t want to hear him talking about journalism," there is a fantastic system they can use to exercise that, and that would be not to come. On the other hand, if they want to see a very interesting, provocative evening that I hope will give them something to chew on and really grapple with, then they know where to find me.

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Top Things to Do This Weekend: May 17–19

Thu, 16 May 2013 11:25:00 -0700

Image: Michael Caswell/Scene in the Dark

Man or Astroman? prepare for lift-off.

concerts

Man or Astroman?
Fri at 9; Doug Fir Lounge
Really, all you need to know about this well-traveled outfit from Alabama (though they claim extra-terrestrial origins) is that its live show consists of full-throttle surf and hot-rod instrumental rock with outer-space panache. Welcome space brothers!

classical music

Oregon Symphony: Brahms' First Symphony
Sat–Sun at 7:30, Mon at 8; Schnitzer Concert Hall
Romantic composer Johannes Brahms' first symphony is generally regarded as his best, beginning with a grand, majestic first movement, battling through rapid shifts of tone and mood, and ending with a triumphant flourish—despite the presence of tumult and despair.

THEATER

Gathering Blue
Fri–Sat at 8, Sun at 2; Newmark Theatre!
For the third time, Oregon Children's Theatre tackles the weighty fiction of famed YA author Lois Lowry (The Giver, the Anastasia books) in an adaptation by writer Eric Coble and directed by Stan Foote. Here, a disabled girl with a gift for weaving must create a garment for a member of the mysterious ruling class in a dystopian future.

Crooked
Fri–Sat at 7:30, Sun at 2; CoHo Theatre
CoHo Productions brings the story of a pair of misfit teen girls, one an imaginative writer, the other an idealistic Christian, thrown together in rural Mississippi. The New York Times says, "Catherine Trieschmann’s Crooked may be a small-scale play … but it is the work of a big, accomplished writer’s voice."

Rough Crossing
Fri–Sat at 8, Sun at 2; Venetian Theatre
For daring Hillsboro theater comany Bag&Baggage's final show of the season, director Scott Palmer turns to Tom Stoppard, the English playwright responsible for wordy and witty works like Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead. In Rough Crossing, a cadre of writers and actors vainly try to mount a play during an ocean crossing with hilarious results. The familiar plot serves as a showcase for Stoppard's trademark verbal acrobatics combined with a bit of slapstick.

FILM

QDoc: Queer Documentary Festival
Thu–Sun; McMenamin's Kennedy School Theater
The seventh year of Portland’s queer documentary festival kicks off with I Am Divine, a portrait of the legendary drag queen Divine, the star of John Waters’s early movies—Pink Flamingos, Female Troubles, etc.—and one of the most fabulously transgressive performers to ever almost achieve mainstream acclaim. Director Jeffrey Schwarz will attend along with another cult star and Divine’s onstage nemesis, Mink Stole (read our Q&A with Stole). Other highlights include the James Franco–codirected Interior. Leather Bar (Friday at 9:15 p.m.), which split critics with its oh-so-postmodern narrative claiming to re-create the 40 minutes cut to please censors from 1980’s controversial Cruising, which starred Al Pacino; Big Joy: The Adventure of James Broughton (Sat at 7 p.m.), about the Washington filmmaker, poet, and mischief-maker, co-directed by Portland filmmaker Eric Slade; and Mr. Angel, about the transgender porn star Buck Angel, who will be in attendance.

Return of the rats!

NW Animation Festival
Fri at 7; Sat–Sun at 1 & 7; Hollywood Theatre
From austere and meditative to chaotic explosions of light and color, it's three days of cartoon creativity submitted by independent animators from all over the world. Included among the entrants is a new "Rat Gang" segment (as featured on Portlandia) from locals Bent Image Lab.

dance

The How and the Why Of It
Fri–Sat at 8; Zoomtopia
With her challenging solo performances, Katherine Longstreth, a dance transplant from New York, has definitely earned the right to be called an artist to keep an eye on. In The How and the Why Of It she teams up with City College dance teacher Christy Funsch for a series of new abstract works. Filmmaker and dancer Kelly Bartnik's screening of the dance film Reins is also part of the program.

BodyVox: Fifteen
Thu–Sat at 7:30, Sat at 2; BodyVox Dance Center
If you're looking to dip an exploratory toe into the waters of local dance, this retrospective of 15 years worth of works from the acclaimed troupe led by Ashley Roland and Jamey Hampton is the perfect primer. In addition to repertoire highlights "Smoke Soup" and "Cutting Room," Roland and Hampton will stage new dances set to the music of gypsy-jazz guitarist Gonzalo Bergara.

ART

Shine A Light
Fri at 6; Portland Art Museum
Once a year, in collaboration with The MFA in Art and Social Practice progam at PSU, Shine A Light challenges guests to rethink and reimagine what a trip to the museum is all about, with several provocative installations and performances. This year, visitors may encounter a handful of dogs in the galleries, a simulation of a Grateful Dead show from 46 years in the past, and even a trip to the dentist. You may feel a little pressure.

BOOKS & TALKS

Joe Hill
Fri at 7:30; Powell's City of Books
The son of the most successful horror writer in history (that would be Stephen King) follows in his pappy's creepy footsteps in NOS4A2, a chiller about a killer obsessed with Christmas who battles a determined woman on a magic bicycle. You may want to ask Hill to keep the light on while he reads.

Win Tickets to Thomas Lauderdale and Meow Meow with the Oregon Symphony

Wed, 15 May 2013 16:05:00 -0700

Image: Karl Giant

In the interest of full disclosure, many years ago I produced a show starring Meow Meow and Pink Martini bandleader Thomas Lauderdale in the crushed-velvet, cigarette-smudged glamour of the drag club Darcelle’s. In typical manic grandeur, Meow climbed across the small cocktail tables, pulled audience members onstage for an improv dance routine starring a drag queen and some ruby slippers, crowd surfed with a martini, and practically crammed her face into the spotlight/camera, which projected her mug across all the room’s televisions in extreme close up. Which is to say, it was just another night in the life of the international kamikaze cabaret star of indeterminate origins, Meow Meow.

She and Lauderdale have a long history of collaborating dating back to a 2005 show at PICA’s Time-Based Art Festival. They’ve since performed together at venues ranging from the stripper’s stage of Mary’s Club to the architectural beauty of the Sydney Opera House, not to mention recorded an album that will come out one of these days. In addition, of course, to playing the world’s most prestigious venues on their own. But they’ll reach new heights on September 14 at the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall in performance with the full Oregon Symphony for TBA:13.

Tickets went on sale on Friday. While it’s a long cry from the (then) smoky stage of Darcelle’s, it might just be the first time you see someone crowd surf at a symphony show. I just hope she gets a couple of the classical musicians to go with her.

Enter to win tickets to Meow Meow and Thomas Lauderdale with the Oregon Symphony on Sept 14.

Review: Hand2Mouth and Portland Playhouse Tackle ‘Left Hand of Darkness’

Wed, 15 May 2013 14:01:00 -0700

Image: Christina Riccetti

Allison Tigard as Estraven and Damian Thompson as Genly in their tent on the Gorbin ice glacier.

In our preview of The Left Hand of Darkness, director Jonathan Walters said that he was originally drawn to the science fiction classic because it was impossible to stage. Ursula K. Le Guin's 1969 story involves an extraterrestrial world of gender-morphous aliens and a dangerous trek across an 800-mile ice glacier. Yet Hand2Mouth Theatre and Portland Playhouse struggle valiantly in their collaborative world premiere to cross that grand barrier of theatrical impossibility. With a bare-bones set and an equally bare-bones budget (although it was the first time both got NEA funding), they manage to create something that almost transports us to that faraway world—a narrative space ship of extension chords and imagination—but ultimately it sputters out, running out of fuel and technology before touching down.

The plot involves a frozen planet inhabited by white, genderless humanoids, who can take on either sex during their fertile period, split into two nations that are skirmishing over borders. Into this combustible icebox steps a black, Earth-born envoy, Genly (played by Damian Thompson with a trepidation—and hoodie and messenger bag—that feels rather contemporary and nonchalant for an intergalactic dignitary), who’s come to invite the planet to join a grand interplanetary coalition, only to be met with fear and distrust. After being thrown into a prison camp by one nation, he is rescued by the exiled prime minister of the other, Estraven (a regal Allison Tigard), who guides him over an 800-mile glacier to safety.

It’s little surprise that Le Guin’s masterpiece (and most sci-fi) has received little theatrical love (it was staged once in Chicago 17 years ago). How does a company, particularly one with a small budget, bring such an otherworldly setting to life? Although Walters said some original ideas involved hundreds of pounds of rock salt or dry ice, ultimately set designer Peter Ksander goes the route of minimalism, building a stage covered in blue AstroTurf and surrounded by a frame of wood and steel bars. The effect is that of looking into a diorama, where our imagination is left to do the heavy lifting, spurred on by the crystalline lighting design of Chris Kuhl and the cinematic, adrenalizing soundscape of Casi Pacilio.

The Left Hand of Darkness
Portland Playhouse
May 2–June 9

The rich themes of the play—which uses literal aliens to explore issues of race, gender, sexuality, nationalism, and, primarily, the delineation of the other—translate to the stage. Patriotism, at one point, is defined by Estraven not as love of one’s country, but “fear of the other.” And ultimately the story is strongest in the second act when it’s just Genly and Estraven together, spanning their differences as they struggle to cross the glacier together.

Yet the storyline itself doesn’t find nearly as smooth a landing. There is so much ground to cover that the script, adapted by University of Oregon professor John Schmor and relying on bulky expository narration, sinks deeper and deeper into the snow with every scene. The two and a half–hour production struggles to maintain momentum as Genly meets one group after another, none of whom grow into characters of much depth beyond Estraven and the crazy king (who is played with delicious if slightly over-the-top insanity by Lorraine Bahr).

Walter’s and H2M’s experimental, collaborative style of theater involves ensemble sequences of stylized movement and song (and, if the first rehearsal was any indication, ensemble directorial decisions) that further weigh things down, particularly in an extended fortune telling ritual and the long transport to the prison camp. While the almost Greek chorus nature of the gender-neutralized ensemble, which is made up of both H2M and Playhouse regulars, helped to evoke our foreign world, I yearned for a more ruthless, autocratic direction to speed us through.

Perhaps I lack in imagination, but I have a hard time envisioning how even a Portland Center Stage–size budget could create the physical suspense and danger that would bring the glacier crossing to frigid life, to say nothing of the full multi-setting scope of the epic journey plot. But if the allure was the impossibility of the voyage, then the ambition and the courage to attempt it should be lauded. And given that H2M usually has a multi-year incubation phase, perhaps in time this voyage, should they continue it, will also touch down.

Typhoon to Release New Album on August 20

Tue, 14 May 2013 17:01:00 -0700

We’ve been waiting for months to find out when the new Typhoon album, White Lighter, is due out. A date has finally arrived via the Wall Street Journal’s blog: August 20. WSJ is also offering a downloadable track of catchy horns and piano, “Dreams of Cannibalism.”

Also of bittersweet note, the band has transferred from Portland-label Tender Loving Empire, which released the band's other albums and was originally set to release this one, to Los Angeles–based Roll Call Records, which seems to cater in cutely named bands: Eyes Lips Eyes, On An On, Army Navy, and Wintersleep.

Have a listen, and stay tuned for more.

Review: 'Bob’s Burgers Live!'

Mon, 13 May 2013 13:38:00 -0700

Image: Richard Foreman/FOX

The cast of 'Bob's Burgers': (from left) Dan Mintz (Tina Belcher), Eugene Mirman (Gene Belcher), John Roberts (Linda Belcher), H. Jon Benjamin (Bob Belcher), and Kristen Schaal (Louise Belcher). Standing: creator Loren Bouchard. (This image is not from the Crystal show.)

If you ever want to see the good and bad side of Portland's young and hip population in all its (vain)glory, pack a few hundred of them into uncomfortable plastic chairs in a hot, muggy venue, keep the beer and liquor flowing, and then put the stars of a beloved TV show in front of them.

So it was that the cast of Bob's Burgers, the animated show that is managing to outwit and outshine the rest of the Sunday night lineup on FOX, appeared onstage at the Crystal Ballroom this past Friday for a live event that allowed them to drink in both the love and the weirdness of their Rose City fan base.

The show featured all of the main cast members of the show—H. Jon Benjamin (he voices Bob—read our Q&A with him), Eugene Mirman (Gene), Kristin Schaal (Louise), Dan Mintz (Tina), and John Roberts (Linda)—as well as Larry Murphy, who plays one of the supporting characters. (Noticeably absent was Bob's Burgers creator Loren Bouchard who had to return to L.A. to help finish up the show's 4th season.) Each one of the principles were given a few minutes alone on stage to do standup, then the whole cast did a table read of their upcoming Thanksgiving episode. And all of it was wrapped up with a Q&A, and that's when things got especially freakish. But we'll get to that in a moment.

The set up of Bob's Burgers: Live was a pretty brilliant one, as it allowed fans to see exactly why Bouchard tapped the comedians that he did for their parts on the TV show. The personality and attitude of their characters is directly reflected from their standup acts.

Mintz's one-liners ("Breasts are a lot like batteries...if they're AA, they're smaller...if they're D, they're bigger, and if they're square, you don't want to put your tongue on them.") are delivered with the same dry, solemn tone as he gives Tina. Schaal and her character share a hyperactive energy cut with a dark side. And you could absolutely envision the weird and wonderful Gene growing up to be Mirman shouting to his girlfriend at the other end of grocery store aisle, "You know what? I am getting toilet paper. I don't think it's a waste!"

As warmly as all of these sets were received, the energy started to get a little rowdier once everyone sat down for the table read. When Roberts turned on his Linda voice or Mintz did his signature Tina moan, the crowd exploded with gleeful shouts and applause. But many of the best jokes in this pretty hilarious episode that centered on the mystery of how the Thanksgiving turkey ended up in the toilet were lost thanks to the unforgiving acoustics of the room and a steady stream of hollering and murmurs from the audience.

So it was that, by the time members of the crowd were given a microphone to engage with the cast of the show, things turned weird. The first gent didn't want to ask a question but instead to get Roberts to sing a song from the show with him. Another younger member of the audience wanted to know the cast's favorite colors. The seemingly well-meaning question about how to break into voice acting turned into a painfully bad tryout for the show. And let's not forget the nervous woman trying to promote her Bob's Burgers–related blog.

It was an interminable exercise meant to engage with the fans, but not surprisingly, a good chunk of the crowd vacated the Crystal Ballroom as it wore on. Kudos to the actors for gamely answering the strangest of questions or wittily batting them aside—"The best way to become a voice actor? Probably...doing standup for about 10 years.”—but they really deserved better.

‘Fast Company’ Names Portland’s Creative Laureate to Its 100 Most Creative People List

Mon, 13 May 2013 11:58:00 -0700

Image: Brett Beyer

Fast Company just released its list of the 100 Most Creative People in Business. No surprise, it’s very tech and media heavy. What it’s not heavy on is Portlanders. A cursory glance reveals but one at No. 57: photographer and Portland Creative Laureate Julie Keefe. [Ed. Note: A deeper reading revealed that Portland code guru Michelle Rowley is at No. 84. Are we missing any others?]

Keefe was invited to a dinner in the small, crowd source–designed, New York apartment of Graham Hill, a socially conscious real estate entrepreneur, along with eight other big thinkers (including Blue Bottle coffee founder, James Freeman), to talk about the future of cities—and how the constraints and friction of cities are the future of the human race. Their dinner party conversation ranged from small space design, to the growing mobile-bound network of grocery delivery and TaskRabbit cleanup, to the role of city government, to how to get more folks bicycling (and the main friction of the night: bike helmets), but Keefe hit the idea that tied everything together:

"You said we were all thinking about cities," says Julie Keefe, looking at me and addressing the evening's premise. "But what we're all thinking about is community." She was appointed Portland, Oregon's creative laureate last year for Hello Neighbor, a public art project created to address the anxieties around gentrification in her North Portland neighborhood. And she's zeroing in on the primary potential of cities. "Community" in the suburbs generally means knowing your neighbors and having enough property for a garden party. In contrast, communities in cities are dynamic: City dwellers never know all their neighbors, which forces them to constantly form new, at times fleeting, bonds. Yes, this can make urban life lonely, even scary, but it's never dull. It can lead to new ideas and even dramatic changes to the physical landscape.

Funny thing is, Keefe told me after the fact that most of the other thinkers’ cutting edge ideas were old hat in Portland. Even the focus of the article, designing for small spaces, has a rich history in Portland. (See our recent feature.) That said, we’re still drooling over the amazing expandable dinner table (although we’re less sold on the soundproofed bathroom stall/meditation room).

You can read Fast Company's story here.

Also check out the audio slideshow Keefe did for PoMo documenting the Jefferson Dancers’ recent trip to China.

The Wild Delves into Portland Tech and Culture

Mon, 13 May 2013 10:09:00 -0700

The vibrant worlds of art, technology and culture are all part of Portland's genetic code. But they’ll be especially held up to the light this month for The Wild, a showcase that celebrates our ingenuity and our crafty inclinations. Here’s a rundown of some of the more exciting events.

Monday, May 13–Thursday, May 16

Open Season
Four nights of guerilla fashion shows will display the new styles of Portland’s designers. The line-up includes Holly Stalder, Lisa Rietz, Emily Ryan, Reif, Brady Lange, and Pendleton’s Portland Collection. The organizers even mention a secret collaboration under the name “Immaculate Martin,” although anyone who's been following Portland fashion will quickly recognize these two veterans. $20 for all four shows. 6–8 p.m. Monday at White Owl Social Club, Tuesday at Produce Row, Wednesday at Rontoms, Thursday at Dig a Pony.

Tuesday, May 14

Build: A Day at ADX
Work alongside Portland's premier wood and metal fabricators to design and build your dream project. A CNC router, laser engraver, and 3D printer will all be at your disposal. Keep your goggles on! $190.10:00-4:30pm. ADX, 417 SE 11th Ave

Wednesday, May 15

Font Detective Extra Bold
Font consultant (yes...) Thomas Phinney is the Sam Spade of typeface, and the inventor of the super cool Hypatia Sans which looks almost as sexy as its name. Here, he recounts some of his more memorable cases, including a forged will, a seemingly fake rabbi, and President Bush’s forged National Guard Service memos. $10–15. 6:30–9 p.m. The Cleaners at Ace Hotel

Friday, May 17

Creative Mornings
This mini-conference and lecture series hosts an interactive art project fueled by the biological clock of artist Mira Kaddoura, intended to attack this taboo subject. They even have an app for your personal clock. Seriously. Free. 8:30–10 a.m. Ziba Auditorium

Keep Portland Wired! A Tour of Portland’s Tech Community
Get on the bus and check out Portland’s wired side—from internationally recognized tech companies to emerging start ups. The tour includes the Portland Incubator Experiment, Tektronix, Second Story, Nike+Accelerator, and Free Geek. The resulting static electricity is best gotten rid of with a wire hanger run over your clothes, unless you want to keep it to remember the good tech-times. $20–25. 11 a.m.–6 p.m. Bus leaves from Ziba Design

Object Focus:The Bowl, Engage+Use and Soundforge
The bowl is a pervasive object in our lives and deserving of some long overdue love. This interactive show allows audiences to handle the many diverse elements of this timeless form.

Soundforge is a multi-media installation and the product of metalsmith Gabriel Craig and composer Michael Remson. The art of metalsmithing is translated into video, audio, and sculptural forms. Free with museum admission. 11:00a.m.-12p.m. Museum of Contemporary Craft, 724 NW Davis St

NW Animation Fest
With over 150 international submissions, the 3-day fest is now the biggest animation showcase in the country. $50. Friday–Sunday. Hollywood Theater

Saturday, May 18

24 Hour Comics
A crowded collaborative effort between illustrators, artists, and writers, all given 24 hours to create a full-blown comic, including coloring and proofreading the whole shebang. Free. Saturday 10 a.m. to Sunday 10 a.m. Things From Another World

Sunday, May 19

Hackathon for Social Good
Web and mobile experts focus their programming energy to assist non-profits organizations by inventing and tweaking brand new applications. Free. 9–6 p.m. OpenSourcery

Tuesday, May 21

The Future for Indie Lit, Comics, and Graphic Storytelling
A conversation between local authors and zinesters about digital publishing, moderated by Justin Hocking, executive director of the Independent Publishing Resource Center. Free. 7–8:30 p.m. Independent Publishing Resource Center

Wednesday, May 22–Friday, May 24

WebVisions
This is the TEDx for all things focused on the future of the web, mobile design, digital media, and technology. Speakers include Jason Kunesh (UX Director, Obama for America), Carolyn Chandler (Manifest Digital), and Ethan Nicolle (co-creator of Axe Cop!) $400–525 for three-day pass. 9 a.m.–5:30 p.m. Oregon Convention Center.

Top Things to Do This Weekend: May 10–12

Thu, 09 May 2013 12:36:00 -0700

Return to Noir Ville
Fri–Sun various times; Cinema 21
Nosy detectives, dangerous dames, ill-gotten loot and a whole lot of trenchcoats will be on parade during the 13-day run of Cinema 21's film noir fest, featuring post-war thrillers like Gun Crazy (pictured), The Big Heat, and Night and the City, along with more recent attempts at the genre, such as the Coen Brothers' dastardly Blood Simple.

classical music

Falstaff
Fri at 7:30, Sun at 2; Keller Auditorium
If the Twitter response from the media preview earlier in the week is any indication, Portland Opera has a high-larious hit on its hands with this wink-wink, nudge-nudge take on Shakespeare's favorite buffoon, set to Verdi's magnificent music.

COMEDY

Russell Peters
Fri at 8; Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall
Apparently being picked on by a diverse assortment of bullies is character-building! Indian comedian Peters grew up in a black neighborhood in Toronto so he got pushed around by both blacks and whites, which helped to form the foundation of a very, very lucrative comedy career. This is why he's at the Schnitzer instead of Harvey's.

SPECIAL EVENTS

Black Swan "Unplucked"
Sat at 6:30; Hollywood Theatre
Dancers from the Oregon Ballet Theatre will be on hand for this screening of Darren Aronofsky's controversial ballet/horror film that stars Natalie Portman and Mila Kunis. The evening includes the dancers performing their own excerpts from Swan Lake, as well as a discussion and Q&A with OBT interim artistic director Anne Mueller. It's a benefit show and proceeds will be divided between the ballet theatre and the movie theater.

Live Wire!
Sat at 7:30; Alberta Rose Theater
Comedian, podcaster, and sit-com star Marc Maron is among the guests for the latest installment of Live Wire. Portland author Monica Drake will talk about The Stud Book, and local psychedelic sensations Genders will summon some "feel good" music. Read our interview with Marc Maron from last year.

THEATER

My Children! My Africa!
Fri–Sat at 8, Sun at 2; Theater! Theatre!
Profile Theatre's salute to South African playwright Athol Fugard enters the home stretch with the final show of the season. My Children! My Africa! brings the question of revolution—nonviolent or bloody—to a high-school debate in Johannesberg.

Aloha Say the Pretty Girls
Fri–Sat at 8; Theater! Theatre!
Several sets of restless Gen-Xers travel, occasionally overlap, and search for fulfillment—or at least temporary adventure—in Naomi Iizuka’s comedy from 1999. There’s not much dramatic structure to hang your hat on here; instead, enjoy the zesty language and surprising turns that befall the cast of offbeat characters.

Concerts

Richmond Fontaine
Fri–Sun at 7; Al's Den
An opportunity to see international alt-country heroes Richmond Fontaine in an unplugged environment should not be missed. The band, fronted by writer, singer, and chronicler of lost souls Willy Vlautin, is wrapping up a weeklong residency at Al's Den, and will welcome friends and drinking buddies to the stage to swap tunes and tales.

Kurt Vile
Fri at 9; Doug Fir Lounge
Like the smell of patchouli or clove cigarettes, the music of Kurt Vile is subtly capable of whisking you away to another time and a cooler place. A tuneful troubadour with a tight band in tow, Vile can be a captivating acoustic strummer reminiscent of a sweet summer day in the early 70s, or fuzzy and wild like a guided tour of 60s garage sales.

Of Montreal
Sat at 8; Wonder Ballroom
This versatile Athens, Georgia combo is the musical equivalent of a brilliant pu-pu platter; they bring variety to the table, but it's not a jarringly inconsistent, as the band's pop smarts shine through no matter how the songs are plated. Live shows often involve multi-media pageantry and artsy flourish.

Red Dress Party Slide Show

Wed, 08 May 2013 15:55:00 -0700

Portland’s Red Dress party has become such a local institution that come May every year, it’s practically impossible to find a frock in any shade of red for sale anywhere in the city. Evening gowns, cheerleader outfits, power suits, Victorian nighties, they’re all bought up by the hordes who slink, strut, and shimmy, for one night only, into a sea of shimmering red as far as the eye can see.

Started in 2001 by 75 friends in a basement, the event has grown into a blowout night of rouged-up debauchery in the name of good, attracting as many as 1,950 revelers, raising as much as $35,000 for an assortment of nonprofits, and seducing the likes of Chelsea Clinton (2008) and Bruce Vilanch (this year).

This year’s red-dition returned to AudioCinema under the Hawthorne Bridge with the theme Red Handed and the beneficiaries Morrison Child & Family Services and Quest Center for Integrative Health. Thanks to the photography of Wayne Bund, here are some of our favorite looks.

This slideshow is safe for work, unless you show up in one of the photos, and you don’t want your workplace to know how sexy your legs are...