Archives for 2011

Experiencing acute nostalgia as I grab a cup of coffee at Arlequin, the cafe where I have spent almost every weekday morning for the past two years blogging about arts and culture.

I am decamping for Palo Alto this week to begin my year as a John S Knight Journalism Fellow at Stanford University. I’ll be around in San Francisco a bit at the weekends, but will be spending most of my time down in Silicon Valley for a while.

From a cultural perspective, I am particularly excited about the opportunity that living near the Stanford Campus will provide for immersing myself in the university’s rich cultural life as well as the South Bay’s many excellent arts offerings in general. I’ve not spent too much time in that part of the world during my time in the Bay Area because getting to Silicon Valley and back on public transport especially in the evening and on weekends is not easy. But now that I am going to have Stanford Lively Arts, the Cantor Center for Visual Arts, TheatreWorks, San Jose Rep, Music@Menlo and countless other interesting places to look for for cultural stimulation, I’m hopefully going to become a lot more immersed in the scene down south.

As far as blogging goes, I intend to continue my culture blog during my fellowship, though I may not on balance be experiencing as many shows and exhibitions as I’ve been lucky to experience in the past. I expect the subject matter will become more journalism-focused as I work on a project devoted to ethics in the media and collaborate with 19 other journalist fellows from all over the world on their media-oriented projects.

Life is on the move, in any case. It’s always been that way, but at certain times, the feeling is more acute.

P.S. KALW, the station which hosts my weekly public radio series all about singing here in the Bay Area, is turning 70 this week. The station, one of the oldest in the land, is almost as old as the BBC world service, I discovered this weekend from a friend whose visiting from the UK and works for the Beeb. KALW celebrated in style on Saturday with a concert of eclectic musical offerings at the Freight and Salvage Folk Club. The place was packed. I wasn’t extremely excited about some of the musical choices (e.g. the Indian fusion jazz combo, which almost put me to sleep.) But the bluegrass set made me want to dance. Happy birthday, KALW! Here’s to another successful and unusual 70 years.

In the world of journalism, the arts are considered a niche.

Until recently, I had always thought of niches as being at a bit of a disadvantage in terms of getting enough attention to make those in charge of the purse-strings continue to invest. That’s why arts journalists are always the first to lose their jobs when media organizations’ budgets come under threat.

But there are niches within niches, and I’m starting to see an interesting pattern in the sorts of blog posts I put out there that get the biggest outpouring of responses.

When I write meaty posts about relatively well-known subjects, the posts tends to get much less attention than the times when I set down thoughts on themes that are way more esoteric.

My recent post about card tricks received a deluge of responses over the last few days, with dozens of magicians and magic fans weighing in on their love and hate stories about repetitive illusions. A blog post I wrote a couple of years ago about picture frames — I though I was really scraping the bottom of the barrel that day — continues to garner comments from professional and hobbyist frame-makers every now and again.

This is kind of weird.

And then again, I guess it isn’t.

As “Long Tail” theory explains, the world is full of passions and it’s no surprise that the most off-beat ones often attract the most zealous followers.

The trick for trying to make it in the blogosphere, then, is probably to home in on some kind of sub-sub-niche and reach out to its buzzing, busy community.

One thing that I am appreciating as I delve deeper into the worlds of magic, vaudeville and circus, is how much of a difference the ingredients of theatre — most obviously, narrative and character — make to what would otherwise probably be no more than skillful parlor tricks.

If a magician (or a circus performer) can find ways to build stories around their illusions and feats of physical prowess, the effect is often much more compelling. This, of course, is not a revelation. Cirque du Soleil‘s success since the 1980s has been built on combining extreme technical prowess of one kind or another with lavish narrative, scenery and at least the outlines of character.

There are times, however, when the ingredients of theatre simply don’t work. I’ve sat through several Cirque shows in recent years (most notably, Ovo) and completely failed to connect with the art happening before my eyes despite all the ingredients mentioned above being in place.

On Thursday night at Teatro Zinzanni in San Francisco, I had a similar feeling. Efforts were made to put a theatrical spin on the various illusions, bits of clowning and circus performance, but the theatrical elements and circus/magic arts were ill-matched. The overall effect amounted to an incoherent jumble of mini narratives surrounding mostly mediocre technical artistry.

This was in stark contrast to the last Zinzanni show I saw, the Latino-infused Caliente. Directed by Culture Clash’s Ricardo Salinas, that production perfectly balanced engaging theatricality with awe-inspiring circus arts.

Alas, the two sides did not combine well in this latest Zinzanni show, Maestro’s Enchantment. It was as if the director, Norman Langill, was trying to force each trick into an ill-fitting theatrical shell.

At one point, the ascetic illusionist Yevgeniy Voronin and Sventlana, a contortionist, engaged in a fanciful and long-winded pantomime all about the animation of a mechanical doll. There was a disappearing act illusion involved, but the expansive theatricality seemed out of proportion compared to the slightness of the magic trick.

In the best part of the evening’s entertainment, Elena Gatilova performed a spell-binding ballet on a hoop hanging from the roof of the tent. Her performance was one of the most sensual acts of its kind I’ve ever seen owing to the serenity of the movements and the performer’s beautiful physical lines. I was so captivated that I forgot about the silly narrative frame that surrounded Gatilova’s hoop act — something about her performing for a random guy in the audience as a way to impress him and win his heart. But Gatilova didn’t need a theatrical frame to draw us under her spell.

It’s amusing to read about the ruckus surrounding the proposed revamp of Porgy and Bess at the American Repertory Theater in The New York Times and elsewhere. Many people, including Stephen Sondheim, think that putting a new spin on the Gershwins’ celebrated opera (as director Diane Paulus and writer Suzan Lori-Parks are doing with their reinterpretation of the work) is a bad idea.

I don’t object to the concept of artists creating new art out of an existing entity. Just because a work is famous, it doesn’t make it untouchable.

Yet what I find so odd about Paulus and Parks’ reconfiguration of Porgy and Bess is the decision to entitle it “The Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess.” This is asking for trouble. It draws attention to the original in a way that doesn’t help the creators of the reinterpretation. The piece is very likely going to be a radical departure from the Gershwins’ effort, so why not give it a completely new title rather than so self-consciously pay homage to the source material?

A new title, with no mention of the Gershwins at the very least, would make much more sense from an artistic perspective I would guess. It probably also provoke less of a backlash from upholders of artistic sacred cows.

The other day, a random person I met in a bar asked me if I knew the difference between conjuring and magic. I confessed that I thought they were the same thing.

Apparently they are not.

According to my acquaintance, conjuring is the invention of an illusion. Magic is the performance of that illusion.

I can’t find any evidence from a quick look at a few online dictionaries to back up this distinction, but it’s an interesting one at any rate.

Many magicians perform tricks that were invented hundreds of years ago by known and now-anonynous masters of illusion. The difference in the two terms — if indeed it’s accurate — explicitly acknowledges that illusions of all kinds often come from long traditions.

Unlike a rabbit popping up from a hat, these tricks don’t come from out of nowhere. Sometimes we forget that fact when we’re sitting in the theatre or nightclub, baffled by how the wizard standing before us managed to pull the stunt we just witnessed.

I’ve just been engaged in an interesting impromptu email exchange about reed players with one of the editors at the New York Times. I’ve been writing about Classical Revolution this week for Friday’s Bay Area edition of the paper and it so happens that the editor in New York who is responsible for running a fine tooth comb over my copy, Deirdre, is a Baroque musician (a harpsichordist, to be precise.)

Commenting on my story, Deirdre told me how much she loves playing with oboists, although she added a perplexed caveat on the subject of an oboist friend of hers: “It seemed as though she spent half her time fooling around with those reeds.”

Being an oboist myself, I sympathize with Deirdre’s bafflement. I must be one of those very rare double wind musicians who sits down in front of her stand and is ready to play within about 30 seconds. I don’t carry any paraphernalia besides a reed knife which I rarely use. I simply shove the reed in my mouth to moisten it for about 10 seconds, stick it in the top of my horn and — bingo — am ready to start playing.

So I’m equally confused by most of my colleagues who show up with their bags of stuff and seemingly spend forever futzing with their reeds and oboes not only before a rehearsal or performance begins but also very often during every few bars’ pause from playing.

I can’t explain why this should be. Am I just lucky never to have to mess about with my gear? Or is the endless commotion simply a reflection of the stereotypical nervy oboist personality type?

I’ve been wanting to visit the Oregon Shakespeare Festival (OSF) ever since I first heard about the massive, southern Oregon-based company’s fame upon arriving in the U.S. in 1998. I’m ashamed that it’s taken me so long to actually make the seven-hour road-trip to Ashland, the small town where the 76-year-old festival takes place. Not only is the festival very old, but it’s also very big: Each year OSF presents an eight-and-a-half-month season of eleven plays in three theatres — that’s more than 780 performances annually with attendance of around 400,000 people.

In my defense, getting to visit and write about OSF has not been easy. I’ve tried on a number of occasions to persuade editors to send me to Ashland, but to no avail. Amidst shrinking budgets, the media is cutting back, and Ashland, it seems, is not considered news anymore by many media organizations that should know better. The San Francisco Chronicle used to send its theatre critic there every year. This hasn’t happened for some time now. Covering OSF would be a sensible thing for The Chron to reinstate: Practically every person I spoke over the weekend hailed from the Bay Area and several lamented the lack of coverage. (I too found it hard to unearth reviews online of any of the shows.) The Chronicle should make an effort to put its critic, Robert Hurwitt, back on the OSF beat. Audiences are clearly craving decent coverage of the event.

Anyway, I had a few days of free time, so I ended up going under my own steam. I am very glad I made the effort, not just because of the variety of the work I saw, but also because of the the gorgeous sun-drenched valley setting surrounded by hiking and biking trails covered in wild flowers and dotted with vineyards (the excellent biodynamic Cow Horn winery in particular was well worth a visit).

The first thing that struck me about Ashland is that apart from Stratford-upon-Avon, I can’t think of another town so completely consumed by theatre. Go into any restaurant or bar and the wait staff will want to compare notes on shows they’ve seen with you and offer recommendations. Every book store is packed with theatre books. The local frozen yogurt dispensary gives you a 15% discount for saying you’re seeing plays at OSF. It’s a very special place.

The second thing that comes to mind upon visiting OSF is how vibrant the actual festival is. There are always three plays going on at once. There are fantastic pre-play concerts in the central courtyard. Pre-show presentations and backstage tours are a daily occurrence. There is so much buzz about the place.

I caught four plays in all three of the OSF’s spaces over a couple of days — two Shakespeares: Measure for Measure (directed by OSF artistic director Bill Rauch) and Julius Caesar (directed by Amanda Dehnert,) Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Pirates of Penzance (again directed by Rauch), and Ghost Light, a world premiere conceived and directed by Jonathan Moscone and written by Tony Taccone. The last of these productions was of particular interest because its creators are both Bay Area theatre luminaries. Taccone is the artistic director of the Berkeley Repertory Theatre and Moscone is the artistic director of the California Shakespeare Theatre. I gather that Ghost Light will get a Berkeley Rep production in the coming season.

Pirates was by far the highlight of my weekend. The operetta is all about the stifling limits of a person’s obsession with a sense of “duty,” and Rauch, with his fine cast and swashbuckling mise-en-scene created a universe that seemed to push at the boundaries of this ill-advised and overly proper sense of duty. Sudden, seamless segues into unrelated musical matters was the main feature of the production that conveyed this idea. The cast would be happily singing Sullivan’s buttoned-up British music and then for apparently no reason slide into a snippet from a disco hit or show tune or gospel hymn or rap track. Just as Frederic, the protagonist, is struggling under the weight of his misplaced sense of propriety, so the production threatened to spill beyond its confines. Clever stuff. The use of the Elizabethan Stage — a Renaissance theatre copycat which is usually employed for Shakespeare productions — was also used to great effect. It complemented the production’s main conceit of subverting sacred cows (just as it’s ok to mess around with Sullivan’s music, there’s no reason why you can’t present a musical in a space normally reserved for Shakespeare) and it was lovely siting under the stars watching seagull puppets careening through the night sky and the Skull and Crossbones flag flying in the breeze where the traditional Union Jack once flew.

Conversely two Shakespeare productions were inventive and enthusiastically performed but left me feeling slightly disappointed.

Rauch chose to situate his Measure for Measure in a blighted American city of the 1970s (perhaps Los Angeles?) with a strong Latino flavor. The reasons for doing so are still not clear to me. I loved the opening gambit in which a trio of cleaning ladies pulled instruments out of their cleaning cart and launches into song while cleaning up an office. The music in general was the highlight of the show, with the trio appearing at different intervals of the play to sing songs reflecting on the prevailing, often dark, mood. But in general, the conceits of the production seemed overbearing and a little gimmicky. I also struggled with Stepanie Beatriz’s Isabela. The actress performed the role in a one dimensional way — she was pouty and whiney throughout. Her nasal voice didn’t help matters. On the other hand, the cast did a great job of making the most of a challenging performance environment: The play was performed in the make-do tent that was erected in a rush following the sudden closure of the Angus Bowmer theatre owing to a beam that threatened to collapse. I am impressed with the OSF’s “the show must go on!” sense of urgency in finding a solution to its venue problem so efficiently. But the tent has poor acoustics so the actors had to be miked and the seating was very cramped for the audience. We all managed to get through it together though. I gather and am relieved to hear that the company will be restored to the proper venue in the coming days.

Dehnert’s Julius Caesar, played in the round in the flexible New Theatre, possessed a virile, savage energy. The focused ensemble cast was on stage, or sitting in close proximity to it, nearly all of the time. Once again, the use of a radical conceit — in this case, a woman in the role of the title character — threatened to upset the rhythm of the drama. Caroline Shaffer (the understudy for the role, stepping in for regular actress Vilma Silva) was bold and grave as Caesar. The problem was that the production did little to support the reasoning behind the casting decision. I’ve seen plenty of Shakespeare with actresses cast in male roles. If it’s simply a case of “gender blind” casting, then that’s one thing. The audience tends to get over the surprise quickly and say “OK, there’s a woman playing Caesar and now we’ll focus on the drama…” But Dehnert seemed to be making a statement about feminism in this production. Several traditionally men’s roles were played by women besides Caesar and the director went as far as to change the pronouns in the text to refer to Caesar as “she” and “her.” What I took away from all of this was something along the lines of “women are as capable of being dictators and doing dreadful things as men.” Yet I couldn’t help but think, “so what?”. The play does little in and of itself to substantiate this reading and the casting decision seemed to stick out like a sore thumb throughout.

Ghost Light, also at the New Theatre, (this time configured into a thrust rather than in-the-round arrangement) was a quirky and at times compelling drama. In a macro sense, the play presents a psychological riff on what it means to lose a parent, a compelling universal theme. More specifically, and perhaps less compellingly on the whole, it comes across as a sort of theatrical therapy session for the man who conceived and directed it, Jonathan Moscone. Moscone is the son of George Moscone, a former Mayor of San Francisco who was murdered by supervisor Dan White in 1978 along with Harvey Milk. In the intervening years, Milk has become a hero (as the film starring Sean Penn a few years ago attests) while Moscone is far less well remembered. The play seeks in part to restore Moscone’s legacy while delving into how his son has tried to come to terms with his past through the lens of a production he’s trying to direct of Hamlet. The parallels between Moscone junior, a Bay Area theatre director, and Shakespeare’s Great Dane seemed a little overblown and the play would have been stronger if it had been half an hour shorter in length. But the production was well-acted and Taccone has an eye for spunky dialogue. I look forward to seeing how the play develops from here as it moves to Berkeley Rep.