Archives for May 2009

I’ll be traveling from 24 – 31. Look for my next post on June 1.

These days, when gloom and doom is all about and arts organizations are coping with shrinking budgets, layoffs and reduced seasons, it’s always heartening to hear news of growth. A few months ago, Berkeley’s Aurora Theatre started to build a new space adjacent to its current auditorium. Now, San Francisco’s Fringe performance bastion, The EXIT Theatreplex, is about to add a 49-seat theatre and a classroom/rehearsal studio to its current assets which include the 80-seat EXIT Theatre mainstage, the 49-seat EXIT Stage Left, and the EXIT Café which serves food and beverages and doubles as a 35-seat theatre. The theatre also runs the 66-seat EXIT on Taylor, around the corner at 277 Taylor Street, where Cutting Ball Theater is currently in residence.

A couple of months ago, when I was at the EXIT to see a show, one of the venue’s leaders gave my friends and I a sneak peak of the new space. Once home to a youth center, the 1,700 square foot area already looked in pretty good shape back then. I recall high ceilings and an airy feel.

Quite a bit of work needs to be done of course to prepare the new facility for use by theatre artists. EXIT Theatre has signed a 20-year lease with a 10-year option on the new space with their nonprofit landlord, the Chinatown Community Development Center. In order to complete the build-out of the newly acquired space, the EXIT has launched a $125,000 capital campaign over the next 18 months.

Ventriloquist Ron Coulter and his partner, Sid Star (pictured) will be hosting the first in a series of fundraising events for the theatre — two performances of Soliloquy for Two on June 12 and 13. Tickets cost $15-20-25 and are available at (415) 673-3847 or www.theexit.org.

Composers are always being commissioned to write pieces for particular orchestras, opera companies or soloists. Why doesn’t someone commission a composer to write a work especially for a particular conductor?

I’m not talking about works that feature the conductor as a “soloist” in any overt sort of way, as in John Oswald’s Concerto for Conductor and Orchestra or Dieter Schnebel’s theatrical piece for solo conductor, Nostalgie (Modelle No. 1.) I mean, a composer writing a work for full symphony orchestra with the particular personality and style of the person on the podium as the force that underpins and shapes the work.

There are so many charismatic conductors working today with strong, individual styles that would doubtless inspire great or at least interesting compositions. How about a festival dedicated to commissioning and premiering a few such works, in which one orchestra performs pieces written specifically for the likes of Gustavo Dudamel, Alan Gilbert or Marin Alsop?

It might seem odd for a theatre critic to say this, but I believe it to be true: Every artist has a right to fail.

The system, of course, doesn’t support failure. Producers don’t want to back flops; audiences don’t want to sit through them; and critics snap their pencils in disgust when a work of art doesn’t meet their expectations.

But failure is important. Without it, artists can’t grow and our feeling for the culture around us remains stagnant and quickly becomes predictable.

So I have a lot of admiration for producers who invest in artists rather than individual works of art, and take a big picture view of the art-making process. This quality is especially rare in these tough economic times. It is my view that if — and this is a big “if” — a producer’s gut instincts about an artist are correct, then, more often than not, the successes will far outweigh the failures in the long run.

The diversity of the Bay Area can be witnessed in many different ways, from the variety of the cuisine offered in its restaurants to the multitudinous kinds of topography. One less obvious way to explore the radical differences that coexist in this part of the world is to look at the local symphony orchestra scene.

To many people, San Francisco Symphony is the only orchestra of note in the Bay Area. But while this organization might be considered world class, it’s by no means the only group worth paying attention to, as my concert-going experiences last weekend suggest.

Over the weekend, I experienced concerts at both the SF Symphony and the Oakland East Bay Symphony (OEBS). Both groups offer wildly contrasting experiences and have very strong identities. SF Symphony might have the far greater reputation, but while the program I heard at Davies Symphony Hall on Saturday will probably fade from my memory in the not too distant future, I don’t think I’ll forget Friday night with OEBS for a long, long time. 

At Davies Symphony Hall on Saturday evening, a small chamber orchestra was joined by the Symphony Chorus under the baton of the Canadian conductor Bernard Labadie for an all-Handel program. The Symphony isn’t a period music specialist group and the first half of the program consisted of workman-like executions of the Three Coronation Anthems and the G minor Organ Concerto (soloist Richard Pare). The space felt dead even though the house was mostly full, and by intermission, I wondered how much more Handel I could sanely handle in one evening. In the second half, though, when Labadie was joined on stage by three excellent vocal soloists for the Dettingen Te Deum, Davies Symphony Hall came alive. Light yet warm interjections from countertenor Matthew White and tenor Frederic Antoun offset heartfelt, vibrant solos from baritone Joshua Hopkins and the choir followed suit with an energy that had been decidedly lacking from the first half of the evening. All in all, an uplifting, but on the whole unremarkable musical soiree at Davies.

The situation in Oakland couldn’t have been more different. I can’t think of a better place to hear the music of the great early 20th century American composer Jerome Kern than the gorgeous Paramount Theatre in downtown Oakland — one of the finest examples of Art Deco design in the United States I’ve ever set foot in. Conceived by San Francisco architect Timothy L. Pflueger and completed in late 1931, it was one of the first Depression-era buildings to incorporate and integrate the work of numerous creative artists into its architecture. The building began life as a glorious movie palace before going into decline for several decades and then being rescued by the Oakland Symphony, the City of Oakland and numerous private donors. The building was purchased by the Board of Directors of the Oakland Symphony Orchestra Association in 1972. A restoration project was completed in 1973 and on May 5, 1977, the Paramount was declared a National Historic Landmark.

Utterly gobsmacked by the architecture, I was also amazed to find the huge theatre which seats 3040 people absolutely packed out for the concert. I’m trying to find out whether the audience consisted mostly of people from Oakland itself or whether OEBC attracts crowds from other parts of the Bay. I’d be surprised if many people from San Francisco ventured across the Bay to see the show, though. I’m extremely ashamed to say that I personally never made it out to hear an OEBS concert in the entire seven years that I lived in San Francisco. More the fool me. 

People responded warmly to the first half of the program which consisted of famous musical numbers from the Jerome Kern songbook including the lusty lyric baritone Robert Sims’ rendition of “Pick Yourself Up” and debutante soprano Julie Adams’ take on “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes.” The orchestra did an eloquent job with the Kern’s hyperbolically lush orchestrations and the OEBS Chorus seemed more connected to the music than SF Symphony’s Handel chorus. However, I wasn’t taken with many of OEBS’ soloists. Part of the problem was the use of radio mikes to amplify the soloists’ voices which made them sound tinny. Part was simply to do with the quality of the singers. They all did OK. But with the exception of Sims, they delivered so-so performances which lacked real individuality and vocal strength (despite the mikes).

Even Sims came a-cropper in OEBS’ concert staging of Show Boat. He struggled to reach the low notes in “Ol’ Man River.” Still, Show Boat on the whole was a terrific crowd-pleaser with compelling narration by Eric Wenburg and sparkling playing from the orchestra. I felt transported to another time and place with the whole experience.

This kind of programming so eloquently suits OEBS. The sense of community and hum of excitement was palpable at the Paramount on Friday night. I can’t say I felt these things at Davies the following evening. Then again, SF Symphony is a completely different animal. If there’s any grain of useful information to be extracted from this blog post it’s the following: The San Francisco Symphony isn’t the only show in town. Orchestral music lovers should think about striking out at least for Oakland, Berkeley and San Jose every once in a while.

The Alexander Valley in Sonoma, California is home to one of the most extraordinary performance venues I have ever encountered in my life. I visited the Ann Hamilton Tower at Oliver Ranch near the small winery-obsessed town of Geyserville yesterday afternoon for a site-specific performance by the Joe Goode Performance Group and the San Francisco Girls Chorus which, though in some ways under-developed, I will never forget.

The performance took place in a ten-storey concrete tower purpose-built for performance by the visual artist Ann Hamilton. In a 2002 interview for Sculpture Magazine, ranch owner and arts patron Steven Oliver provides a good description of the background behind the construction of the Tower and its design:

[Ann Hamilton] became interested in towers and began to bring me picture books and a lot of books about a particular tower in Italy. Her project here evolved from that tower.

We own a home near Orvieto, the site of the so-called Well of St. Patrick (1527-40), which was built by Clement VII to provide the city with a water supply in case of attack. The site has a traditional connection to St. Patrick. The well descends more that 60 meters: in order to get enough water to the surface the architect designed a double helix staircase. This means that the mule goes down one staircase, loads up with water, and comes back up the other staircase. The two staircases never touch; they are interlaced with each other so that the mule never has to turn around and never meets another mule. It’s the same form as DNA. Ann proposed a double helix staircase inside the stonework, descending to a water source: into the ground and up out of the ground. It looks rather agricultural in form, like a silo, and she wants to put it down by the barn. It will be a performance space, and she will curate poetry readings and concerts of a single voice or a single instrument.

We hired acoustic engineers to do some studies and then realized we didn’t really care. Clearly there are going to be reverberations and echoes. The artists will adapt to the space. The nice thing is that the audience and the performers will never be more than a staircase apart, because the audience can all be on the up staircase and the performers on the down staircase. But they’re going to be interlaced with each other. It’s going to be quite an amazing space.

Indeed, the Tower is an amazing space. Joe Goode and the Girls’ Chorus didn’t go quite as far as they could in terms of exploring its possibilities. This was perhaps partly due to the fact that the production’s creators didn’t have a whole lot of time to work in the space itself — I heard from one of Goode’s collaborators that he and his dancers only spent a couple of days on site and spent the rest of the time developing the piece elsewhere. This makes no sense: For creating work for a venue as unique in design and acoustic as the Tower, the artists should have been able to gain direct access to it for weeks beforehand. Nevertheless, their performance piece, Fall Within, still made for a magical experience.

The eclectic selection of songs performed by the Girls’ Chorus made the entire Tower ring like a bell throughout the performance. Music included a French Canadian folksong (“O-Yo-Yo” arranged by Stephen Hatfield), Ross Whitney’s “Pentatonic Alleluia”, a traditional Mi’kmaq Honour song by Lydia Adams, Erik Bergman’s Dreams, Op 85, Henry Purcell’s “Music for a While” and “The Road Home” from Southern Harmony adapted by Stephen Paulus. Although the styles of the musical works were all very different, they blended with the space and spirit of Goode’s piece gorgeously.

The high voices and fact that the singers were positioned right at the top of the Tower above the audience’s heads through most of the show created a mood of uplift. We found our ears tuned towards the sky. The movement, by contrast, was pitched more downwards towards the red-dye-tinted pool of water at the bottom of the Tower. The dancers slid on their stomachs down the Tower’s brass banisters, held each other back from throwing themselves off the stairways by creating incredible cantilevered human sculptures, and interacted with the Girls Chorus through lower-pitched singing and spoken text on the theme of falling.

The effect of all of this was to pull the audience in two different directions — upwards and downwards. This feeling mirrored the shape of the Tower itself. It was beautiful.

I only wished that artists had explored the possibilities of the well at the bottom of the Tower more fully and choreographed the sudden fall of the blue tarp, which covered the ceiling of the Tower until it was released towards the end of the performance, in a more theatrical manner. Also, the choir and the dancers didn’t seem to have a whole lot to do with each other during the piece from a physical perspective. The way in which their voices intermingled was divine. But I would have liked to have seen a more carefully-thought-out relationship in terms of choreography between the two groups. The girls just stood there and eventually paraded down the staircase of the Tower at the end followed up by the choirmaster. It all felt a bit half-hearted and abrupt.

Meredith Monk created the inaugural piece for the Tower when it opened last year. I sadly missed it. I am looking forward to seeing how other artists explore the potential of this extraordinary space.

Theatre departments work to attract students by claiming that they will be more easily able to launch professional careers in the theatre if they do an undergraduate or masters degree in theatre at their schools. But it’s been my observation that the schools don’t generally equip students for the professional world in a very inspiring way. There exists a huge chasm between BA and MA theatre programs and the business of putting on theatrical productions in the real world. Most of the people who studied acting at Harvard’s Institute for Advanced Theatre Training the year I attended the program as a dramaturgy student have either given up acting completely or work primarily in commercials / treat theatre as a minor hobby. Very few actually still put the making of plays at the center of their lives.

One school based in the region where I live, San Francisco State, seems to be bucking this trend. The sheer number of alumni from the school who not only continue to make theatre but also continue to do so in the Bay Area often in collaboration with other SF State graduates is formidably high. And much of the work being produced both in the program itself and out in the professional theatre world is of a high quality or at the very least conceptually interesting.

The upcoming production of Faust, Part I at Shotgun Players in Berkeley is a case in point. The Goethe adaptation was written by and SF State grad, Mark Jackson (pictured above, left). Nearly half of the cast and crew are either SF State Theatre Arts students, faculty or alumni. Professor Joan Arhelger is the production’s lighting designer, and alum Nina Ball is the set designer. Current students involved in “Faust, Part I” are Dara Yazdani (actor, as Student/Valentin), Matt Stines (sound designer), Michelle Smith (stage manager), Ashley Costa (sound board operator/assistant stage manager) and Krista Smith (lighting assistant).

Several professional theatre groups past and present have come out the university. These include Jackson’s own company Art Street Theatre, Misery Loves Company and Wit’s End.

So what is it about SF State’s program that makes it bridge the pedagogical-professional divide so well — a feat that seems particularly remarkable in a city that’s not particularly artist-friendly because of the extremely high cost of living? Professor Yukihiro (Yuki) Goto, Chair and Professor
of the Department of Theatre Arts (pictured above right) has this to say on the matter:

“Building a bridge between our program’s theatre education and professional theatre community (particularly the Bay Area’s professional theatre community) is one of the department’s missions and is therefore an integral part of our curriculum. For instance, we offer several independent study courses, through which our acting, directing, managing, and technical theatre students can earn university credits while working or interning in their respective professional companies. Many of our teachers are also professionally active. They make conscious efforts to provide students with professional opportunities, going beyond what our department can offer. To name a few — Larry Eilenberg (Magic Theatre), Joan Arhelger (Lighting, SF Opera), John Wilson (Scenic, San Jose Rep), Todd Roehrman (Costume, SF Shakespeare), Barbara Damashek (Acting, Magic Theatre), Yuki Goto (Acting, Theatre of Yugen), Roy Conboy (Playwriting, Esperanza Theatre), Bill Peters (Directing, Santa Cruz Shakespeare).”

Jackson’s own experiences at SF State, where he graduated more than a decade ago, also point to a high degree of practical immersion in the professional world, though more through the act of self-sufficiency than anything else:

“At SF State you had to make your own opportunities,” Jackson recently told me. “It’s no coincidence that many small theatre companies come out of State. As a director, I also did tech and design for my shows. There were afternoon showcases and I did several of those. There was also a brown bag theatre company class. Faculty supervisors selected a handful of directors to create their own companies and stage two shows in the school’s 50-seat black box theatre. I had to do everything myself.”

One thing I admire about many small performing arts companies in San Francisco is their adventurousness. Whether performing contemporary dance pieces on moving trams stuffed with tourists or doing one-man versions of Hamlet, the best and brightest theatrical up-and-comers often eschew performing the usual plays in the usual settings.

After weeks of seeing big splashy shows in gilded theatres, I was happy to find myself picking my way through some back streets downtown to find a park which I’d never been to before and watch Boxcar Theatre‘s free outdoor version of Euripides’ Ion.

The crowd was modest, but not bad for an al fresco take on an ancient Greek play performed in the middle of a hot Saturday by three young actors (Peter Matthews, Stephanie Maysonave and Sarah Savage) dressed in sweat pants with nothing but a bed sheet for a stage and a few random props.

Though the production came across as hammy in terms of performance and was dramaturgically underdone — I didn’t feel that the performers pushed the physical side of what they were doing far enough and the jokes (such as they were) mostly fell flat — I appreciated the central conceit of Boxcar’s approach: The way in which the actors shared all the roles between the three of them, sometimes taking over from each other in the middle of a scene or even a sentence. This idea was used perhaps too much, but it made things lively and created a great sense of ensemble. Not sure how the multiple-personality idea fed into Euripides’ play about a warped family reunion, though.

I admire Boxcar for putting it out there. The endeavor not only requires quite a bit of chutzpah, but also a great deal of energy. Last Saturday, the actors performed the show three times in three different locations in San Francisco. For the next two weekends, they’ll be repeating this exhausting schedule in the following locations:

May 16th – Northern San Francisco

1:00pm – West Bluff Amphitheatre at the Western end of Crissy Field near Fort Point
2:30pm – Fort Mason Park near the Rose Garden
4:00pm – Aquatic Park near the Maritime Museum on Beach Street

May 23rd – Central San Francisco

1:00pm – Golden Gate Park in front of the Conservatory of Flowers
2:30pm – Civic Center Park on the east side of City Hall
4:00pm – Dolores Park at the shrine (near 19th Street and Church)

If the weather’s good, Boxcar’s Ion isn’t a bad way spend a picnicking-play-watching hour in the city.

Looking back over close to three years of blogging, I’ve been struck by what kinds of blog posts attract the most comments from readers.

The posts that seem to compel by far the highest number of responses are the ones where I take an unpopular viewpoint on some element of popular culture. The barrage of feedback (some of it unpublishable!) I’ve received over the past few days following an entry I wrote about Britain’s Got Talent chanteuse Susan Boyle is a case in point. When I wrote in a similarly skeptical vein about the movie Mama Mia! last summer, I received an even greater volume of outburst from readers — and still receive occasional emails on the subject to this day.

Obviously, the high number of responses I have received to these posts can be attributed to a degree to the fact that both Boyle and Mama Mia! are part of pop culture and consumed by people all over the world.

I’m fascinated by the passion with which people have defended both subjects of my posts and I’m extremely happy to hear from all these avid music fans. I only wish that readers would engage as enthusiastically on other topics.

While I realize that live theatre and music performances are experienced by far smaller audiences than blockbuster summer movies and YouTube clips of prime time TV shows, it’d be great to receive similarly ardent messages from readers, telling me that they agreed or disagreed with what I wrote on a recent blog post about, say, countertenor David Daniels’ most recent appearance at the Herbst Theatre or Mark Jackson’s new play at Shotgun Players.

This doesn’t happen very often. Sad.

The anti-globalization movement has made inroads into making many of us change the way we shop and feed ourselves. People — at least those that can afford it — are trying to buy groceries that are locally grown or even growing the food they eat themselves and eschewing big chain stores for small, neighborhood businesses. Restaurants pride themselves on letting customers know that their beef came from the ranch 20 miles away and their asparagus was brought in fresh this morning from the farmer’s market across the street.

Theatre has always been an intensely local medium. It’s perhaps the most indigenous of all art forms, happening as it does in real-time and space and demanding that people actually get off their butts to experience the work.

In most cases, shoe string budgets necessitate the casting of local actors and production team members. Local casting isn’t just about keeping budgets down though. Because of the close, collaborative nature of theatre, productions and companies spring up as a result of intimate relationships that grow organically between groups of people who share their world views and creative ideas frequently over pints in the pub down the road. They’re not only cut from the same cloth but they also physically occupy the same civic space.

The two biggest companies in the Bay Area — American Conservatory Theater and Berkeley Repertory Theatre — usually buck this trend by casting at least a few of the actors in most of their shows from out of town. This policy (and I think the word “policy” is appropriate here even if it’s an unofficial strategy on the part of these companies’ leaders) doesn’t make much sense to me, even if it does look good on a press release and promotes “diversity.”

Even in hard fiscal times such as the ones we’re in now, Berkeley Rep and ACT regularly look to New York and other big cities for talent. This can’t be a good idea financially. But money isn’t the biggest issue.

The crux of the matter as far as I’m concerned is this: If there are great actors in town — and the Bay Area is stuffed with great actors — why bother looking further afield?

In shows I’ve experienced at ACT and Berkeley Rep over the years, the locals frequently outshine the imports. Take Berkeley Rep’s current fantastic production of The Lieutenant of Inishmore, for instance. The cast is good all-round, but the most memorable performance of the evening goes to Bay Area actor James Carpenter’s turn as the decrepit old drunkard Donny (pictured above with fellow cast member Adam Farabee). Surely local actors could have been found to play all of the roles?

There’s certainly a case to be made for exposing Bay Area audiences to new faces. But with so many wonderful performers living and working right under our noses, we should make the most of our region’s talent both on stage and as part of the production team.

Traditionally, beyond the realm of pop music broadcasts on commercial radio stations, radio networks in the US have shied away from airing classical vocal music. Very occasionally, classical radio DJs will mix one choral work or operatic aria into a set of instrumental symphonic or chamber music. If a show is devoted entirely to vocal music, it’s invariably sacred choral fare played to put The Devout in the mood for church on a Sunday morning.

But because sung lyrics demand attention from the listener, and the general sensibility among radio networks seems to be one of making “musical wallpaper” of classical music — in other words, something pretty that’s played in the background rather than really listened to — vocal music is largely relegated to the sidelines.

Which brings me to spreading advance word about VoiceBox, my new vocal music radio show which unapologetically puts singing front and center.

Launching on Friday May 29 from 10-11pm under the auspices of Bay Area NPR affiliate KALW 91.7 FM San Francisco, VoiceBox will celebrate the art of song through highlighting the work of singers, composers, conductors and other amazing vocal music aficionados past and present. The show will present an eclectic exploration of the best of the vocal music scene from the Bay Area and beyond, covering terrain as diverse as Fado, Folk, Opera, Oratorio, Plainchant and Post-Punk.

I’ll be joined in the studio by a special guest for each program who’ll talk about the art of singing in a wide variety of contexts. Confirmed VoiceBox interviewees include the all-male vocal ensemble Chanticleer‘s superlative bassman, Eric Alatorre (May 29) and one of the Bay Area’s foremost sea shanty singers, Walter Askew (June 5).

I’ll be posting information about VoiceBox on my website as it evolves. The series is in its pilot phase: I’ll be producing five weekly episodes between May 29 and June 26, and then will be regrouping and hopefully launching the series proper in the Fall. In this trial period, I’d especially love to hear from anyone who’s a singer, involved in vocal music in some way, or simply loves to hear great voices. If you have any suggestions or thoughts you’d like to share with me about content for the show or overall scope, please get in touch. I’d love to hear your ideas.

And please listen in on your radio on via the Web!

When one of the country’s top Baroque music orchestras puts on a concert of Handel blockbusters in the most imposing church in town with a live laser display and drum corps outfitted in Georgian military regalia, what’s the outcome? Spectacular bordering on tacky, I imagined, when I first read the press release for American Bach Soloists‘ Fireworks Celebration at San Francisco’s Grace Cathedral.

The actual event, which I witnessed yesterday evening, was contrastingly a weirdly subdued affair, even though the Cathedral was packed out. I’m in two minds about how much I enjoyed it.

The first half of the concert, in which the Grace Cathedral Choir of Men and Boys performed the coronation anthem Zadok, the Priest and Laudate, pueri, Dominus (with soprano Abigail Haynes Lennox as soloist), felt like it was coming at us through a thick woolly sock. The sound quality was bizarre. I’ve never experienced the like in Grace Cathedral. I was sitting near the front of the church and could barely hear the orchestra, choir and soloist. It sounded like mush. I can’t imagine what the acoustic must have been like at the back of the room.

The second half of the concert fared considerably better, sonically-speaking. Someone must have flicked a switch somewhere. ABS’ performance of Water Music Suites No 2 in D Major and No 3 in G Major was crisp and lilting. The Country Dance movements were particularly rambunctious with the bass strings giving the music an rugged, earthy foundation. Elsewhere, it was such a pleasure to hear the recorder trilling high above the strings. Debra Nagy’s playing sweetened the texture considerably.

The laser- and drum-loaded grand finale performance of Music for the Royal Fireworks was a lot of fun, but somehow less spectacular than I was expecting it to be. The laser show created by Lighting Systems Design was sensitive to the changing mood of the music. In the loud, rambunctious movements, explosions of color played across the big, star-like screen at the front of the church above the orchestra. In the more lyrical places, the lights whizzed quietly across the screen like shooting stars. But after a while, the light show became a bit predictable and underwhelming. Only in the last movement, when the lighting designers made use of four thong-shaped side screens suspended to the left and right of the orchestra, did I feel like I was being enshrouded in light and sound. As for the drummers, they did a fine job. But, again, the sound levels weren’t quite right: the noise from the drums sometimes drowned out the rest of the orchestra. And the church was so dark that we weren’t able to see the drummers’ lovely Georgian costumes with their tri-cornered hats and shiny brass buttons.

Still, I love the idea of mixing Handel with lasers — it’s interesting to see old and new worlds collide and cooperate in this kind of way. With a bit of tweaking, perhaps ABS should try the experiment again some day.