CULTUREPHILE: PORTLAND ARTS

phile under: theater

Review: The Little Prince

Shaking The Tree presents The Little Prince, a delicate allegory that’s never been just for kids.

Posted by: Anne Adams on Oct 25, 2010 at 12:00PM 2 Comments

The popular 1942 illustrated French book The Little Prince must be familiar to many Portlanders—heck, it must have inspired a dozen local tattoos. But though much beloved, it’s not a narrative that seeks to satisfy. Instead, it’s the kind of tale that strikes a tuning fork in the hollows of the heart, letting its echoes explore the empty space. Ah, l’ennui. The most prized French export beside champagne.

Philosophy

From the Little Prince, we learn:

The king’s perspective is pointless; he deludes himself about his dominion. The businessman’s perspective is pointless; he numbers among his assets things that he can neither use, nor caretake. The workman has become an unquestioning slave to ever-hastening external demands, and can never rest.

The main item of good news is that these are all “grown up” problems, and becoming a grownup, the text asserts, is preventable. One needs to carefully maintain a child’s mind, to see beyond the BS. “What is essential,” we’re told, “is invisible to the eye.”

To oversimplify this content for children’s theater, is probably a big temptation—but would also ultimately be a shame. Thank goodness Shaking The Tree has made the effort to get it right.

Cast

As the Little Prince, Annabel Cantor strikes several nice balances. Her stage presence is completely gender-neutral, and her body language easily slips between playful and proud, as befits a little prince. Her excellent delivery of the material itself, and her undeniable cuteness in a curly wig, prove she’s primed for her next role as Annie at Northwest Children’s Theater. Unable to be fazed, she even corrected a dialogue slip-up by costar Erich England on Sunday, without missing a beat.

As the Aviator, England serves as narrator, and worldly straight-man to the Little Prince’s otherworldly mystique. But you don’t get the sense (as you might from the script alone) that he’s fighting very hard to be a rational adult, “concerned with matters of importance.” While trying to decide whether the word “amateur” would ring too harsh for England, I scoped his bio. Looks like this is his second production, and his main avocation is rock climbing—so, “amateur” is apt. He coasts through the role in a dreamlike languor, but he’s a believable dreamer, and brings warmth and sensitivity to the role.

Phillip Cuomo, in contrast, is a veteran, (Artists Rep, Third Rail Rep, Imago and more) and the production heaps demands upon him accordingly. Cuomo plays all the characters the prince meets on his interstellar journey, and then resurfaces as the fox the prince tames on earth. While the former four roles seem like they could be making a philosophical point (“all grownups are the same”), seeing him emerge yet again as a fox strains the suspension of even a small child’s disbelief. Fortunately, he effects each role with a different voice and with a slightly clownish, child-favoring flair, giving little ones something to enjoy, whether or not they’re catching the philosophical point.

Megan Sky Hale (Imago/Theater Vertigo alum) plays two roles, rose and snake, with grace, but she brings the most convincing carriage to the latter. She wears menacing and hypnotic, better than coquettish. (And from this reviewer, that is a compliment.)

Tech

This play comes with major staging challenges, most notably: how do you show space travel? The single stationary set with varied lighting actually does a pretty admirable job of showing both a planetary, and a terrestrial desert landscape. And costumes which ingeniously come with their own “planets” attached, help sell the story.

Costumer Rachelle Waldie (of AEQUANIMITAS) wisely chose to bring Exupery’s illustrations to life, outfitting the Little Prince in bright colors and crisp dandy details like brass buttons, broad collars, and fitted darts. Fans of the drawings will be delighted by the faithful reproduction. Other characters are dressed suitably for their various roles; some looks are cartoonish, and others workaday. An additional bugaboo, talking flowers and plants, has been deftly dispatched with unique designs, such as the snake costume, which frees the actress’s arms to serve as graceful, slithering snake-puppets, even as her whole body is also attired as a hooded cobra.

Shaking The Tree doesn’t mind trusting tikes with big tasks, as evidenced by the production’s lighting tech, eleven-year-old Jasper Jenkins. As far as Culturephile could tell, he was riding the sliders for the whole show, and he delivered the best kind of lighting performance: the kind you can take for granted.

In a couple spots, Culturephile wished for more. A pair of ears, or a snout, or both, would’ve been a welcome addition to the fox character, to disguise a face we’d seen already. Some sort of lines on the page of the aviator’s sketchpad, would have sold the illusion better than total blanks. And while quieter sound is generally preferred for an all-ages crowd, a tad more volume for ostensibly noisy elements (like the airplane) and some sort of whooshing sound effect for the Prince’s simulated space flight, would have sounded more convincing.

Lasting Impressions

This story wins the day because it makes the heaviest and most complex emotions feel playful and accessible. It says profound and humbling things about the nature of intimacy (“If you tame me, we shall need each other” [said the fox] “To me, you will be unique in all the world…. First you must sit down at a little distance from me…but you will sit a little closer to me every day.”) It echoes ancient beliefs about death and afterlife (“I cannot carry this body with me…it will be like an old abandoned shell…there’s nothing sad about old shells.”) And, in a surprise twist that jerks the most parental tears, it offers a stunning insight: the little prince has tamed the big aviator, and not the other way ’round.

For a more comprehensive list of upcoming events, visit the Arts & Entertainment Calendar anytime!

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Tags: Art, children, comics, book, book, Review, Theater, Literature, Portland Art, outer space

phile under: TBA 2010

TBA 2010: Five Questions
with Ronnie Bass

It’s not too late to catch The Astronomer.

Posted by: Anne Adams on Oct 11, 2010 at 12:00AM 0 Comments

Almost a month ago, Rufus Wainwright strode onto the Schnitz stage, kicking off the TBA in a candy-striped velvet coat he’d borrowed from Gus Van Sant. Two weeks later, Blackfish let strains of slide guitar lapse into the Imago silence, to close the festival’s final live performance. But if you thought TBA 2010 was over —au contraire.

Several gallery exhibits at The Works have been open ever since, and will remain through next Sunday, October 17. This means there’s still time to take in The People’s Biennial, and maybe even get answers for the questions it raises in Kristan Kennedy’s special Sunday presentation and walk-through with Harrell Fletcher, David Rosenak and other contributors. You can still behold the bold sapphic futurism of Yemenwed, stroll through Storm Tharp’s High House —or enclose yourself, as I did twice, in the quiet dark confines of Ronnie Bass’s inner-space odysseys The Astronomer and 2012.

As minimal music tensely ticks along at less than one beat per second, Bass holds a conversation with a blanketed form, drills holes in moon-rock, and stargazes at the vast universe from a closet-sized room with a cot in the corner. After enjoying these video visions and his live performance at Drum Machine, I bumped into Bass by The Works’ beer-garden honeybucket. “It’s kind of peaceful in there,” he observed. “I don’t think anyone’s used it.”

Your songs contain a dialogue between a hesitant voice and a reassuring one—but both voices are your own. Do you think of these as a father and son? Or as one person, parenting an inner child? Any general thoughts on parenting or self-parenting?

I think of the dialogues as being between people, or the ones that I have created. It may be father and son, astronomer and nervous friend or any other variation. The dynamic is always similar: one person has a special knowledge and is ­consoling someone in need of guidance.

I’m currently working on a project with Tommy Hartung. We’ve been talking about using a disembodied voice via a shortwave radio. One issue that we’ve had is in how to keep the read of the voice as predominantly human without limiting other possibilities.

I didn’t originally think of the dialogue as as a self-parenting situation, but that read makes sense because of how minimally my characters are developed and how one-tracked/minded they may seem. They are almost the simplified representations of internal phases, but that’s also similar to the way that I make my stories, my sets and my scores. I always prefer the essential idea of something over its complex form.

The numbers you cite in your work, fall somewhere around your age—late 20’s to early 40’s. At one point you say, “I’m almost 35 now,” and at another you say, “The moon now hangs at 42. If we leave now, we might break through.” I’m reminded of Pink Floyd’s “No one told you when to run; you’ve missed the starting gun.” Am I right in guessing that your work depicts progress in relation to age?

I have never thought of it in relation to my work, but there absolutely is a thematic connection. You often hear a similar theme in hip-hop, and in social utopian philosophy, especially in that of Charles Fourier. As different as these forms may be, they all discuss a very similar thing: an escape from our current existence of oppression into a new world. Within hip-hop, it’s a world of lawlessness and extravagance. Fourier sees a refined way of labor and life. Waters and Gilmour don’t really depict a result, only the idea of leaving.

I did try to keep the numbers near the 30s to imply planetary alignment; a sign for the right time to act, but it is a coincidence that it corresponded to my age or ages. Beyond my age of 35, which will happen in the year 2012, the rest of the numbers were chosen because they rhymed with the words that I was using: 29 with time, 42 with through…
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It seems like the title Leaving The Shed could indicate agoraphobia, shyness, alienation, and/or creative Insecurity. Do you personally struggle with any or all of these?

I have been accused of agoraphobia because I like to work in small spaces. For me, a small space holds the most potential for work and privacy. I think of the time that I’m making art as a hiding-out or as a retreat. My characters have a similar cocooning phase before their great idea or action. Also, within film, a small space (for me) alludes to the optimistic potential of a vast external space elsewhere.

I do have issues with alienation and creative insecurity. It’s part of being an artist.

Do you think you would enjoy actual space travel? Are you fascinated with the real thing, or just the metaphor?

I would not at all want to space travel. I have to make artwork. I am interested in science and technological advancements and space travel fits into that. In The Astronomer, I never thought of their destination as outer space, it is only that a cosmological sign prompted their journey. For me, their destination was an area that they could carve out within a space that has already been scripted with its own order. The optimistic aspect is that they would be able to live independently from, and simultaneously within, this scripted order.

Do you think the world is going to end in 2012?

Two big events are supposed to happen around that time: a giant solar flare and the flipping of the Earth’s magnetic poles. Scientists say that it could be devastating; but my answer is no, I do not think that the world is going to end. The sense of foreboding in my work is coming from my own observations of our current economic and social conditions. Within this nation, I predict a future of class division that will be several times more severe than what is currently occurring. It’s the nature of late capitalism emmeshed with corporatism. I’m not here to fight it or to change it. As an artist, I can only present it and propose questions. Any answers are fantastic renditions.

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Tags: Art, outer space, modern, The Works, TBA 2010, TBA, five questions, 5 questions, Film, music, Ronnie Bass

phile under: space exploration

Mary Roach Visits Portland!

The author of Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void, fittingly appears the same evening as the Perseid Meteor Shower.

Posted by: Anne Adams on Aug 12, 2010 at 06:00AM 0 Comments

Astronauts, it seems, are misunderstood. While lionized and romanticized for their heroic turns of space-flight, the men and women who do the job are actually beset on all sides by petty annoyance and mind-numbing minutiae. Before and between the fleeting moments of floating and waving, astronauts are basically lab animals, poked and prodded, goaded and guiled by scientists. “What can we feed them?” “How might we strap them down?” “How many weeks can they endure the same underclothes?” are just a few of the myriad questions that can only be answered through a battery of NASA trials—and comically cringe-worthy errors.

Insatiably curious and hilarious nonfiction writer Mary Roach, already known for such titles as Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife and Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex, pokes her nose into the most mundane aspects of space-travel prep in her latest offering, Packing For Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void. Fresh from shilling on The Daily Show, she hits Bagdad Theater (37th & SE Hawthorne) tonight at 7pm. This, incidentally, is mere hours before optimal Perseid Meteor Shower viewing, which should kick off at twilight. After catching Ms. Roach, you might rush over to one of OMSI’s Star Parties (at Rooster Rock or Stub Stewart State Parks, 9pm)—or just wander out of the Bagdad and up nearby Mount Tabor for a great sky-view, and most likely an informal neighborhood soirree. Either way, tonight offers plenty of opportunity for space exploration.

For a more comprehensive list of upcoming events, visit the Arts & Entertainment Calendar!

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Tags: Literature, book, author, writer, outer space