This page currently under construction. Thanks for your patience!
Wait, Let Me Finish Putting On My Armor Review
Local quick-takes return, quirky and original as ever
‘UNDER 30′: Out North’s annual program of one-act plays is always engaging.
Published: January 15th, 2008 01:18 AM
Last Modified: January 15th, 2008 03:12 AM
Out North’s “Under 30″ opened Friday night and, while this year’s theme is “Changes,” one thing has stayed the same: The annual collection of performances is as quirky and original as “Under 30″ fans have come to expect.
This year’s installment includes four pieces by local writers and performers. Each, as the title suggests, is less than 30 minutes long.
The evening opens with “20th Century Man and Other Stories,” written and performed by “Under 30″ veteran B. Hutton. A series of “musings” on the nature of time, “20th Century Man” is extremely aural, with a rolling, poetic cadence. Hutton puts his sound technician through the wringer, makes his own vocal effects and draws on a pair of violinists to produce everything from horror movie music to traffic noise. There’s visual spectacle too; Hutton constructs a time machine onstage and makes good use of his own physical presence (including dance moves that would turn furniture salesman Ted Sadtler green with envy).
Hutton’s piece is followed by “Ground Zero,” Gabrielle Barnett’s take on post-9/11 values. Barnett is engaging as Miss American Pie, a well-intentioned but misguided symbol of the American spirit with a few thoughts on environmental sustainability, patriotism and American heritage. Barnett’s doe-eyed Lady Liberty comes across as innocuous, but like a teenage “mean girl,” her bubbly exterior is camouflage for a few well-aimed barbs. The piece is both ruthless and endearing, although it could have ended a few lines earlier; the end felt a little too pat.
The second act opens with Allison Warden’s “Ode to the Polar Bear,” by far the most polished performance on the program. Warden is a captivating storyteller in this piece that personalizes the problem of disappearing Arctic ice by emphasizing the connection between Alaska Natives and polar bears. During a question-and-answer session Friday night, Warden mentioned that she “wrote” her piece by videotaping herself talking rather than typing it. The result is a work that feels drawn from an oral tradition, not memorized off a page.
During intermission, audience members were given ice cubes to hold. While there is a reference to the ice early in the piece, it is never revisited. Hopefully, as Warden revises the script, she will incorporate the ice more fully. It has the potential to add a layer to the experience.
The final piece, “Finding My Voice,” is Wendy Withrow’s reminiscence about the coffeehouse she founded at her Southern Baptist women’s college in the 1960s. Withrow tells the story naturally — there is no pretense that this is a fictional character — and even coaxes the audience into a sing-along. The story is nice and Withrow is engaging, although the piece would be more effective if there were a stronger connection between the opening anecdotes about singing hymns as a little girl and the later material about the fulfillment Withrow got out of bringing music to her college campus.
All four pieces in “Under 30″ are strong, although they could stand to be reordered to split up the more high-concept pieces, both of which were presented before the intermission. Moving “Ode to the Polar Bear,” which feels like the anchor of the evening, to the final spot would close “Under 30″ on the highest of notes.
Maia Nolan lives, writes and chills in Anchorage.
UNDER 30 will be presented at 7 p.m. Friday and Saturday and 4 p.m. Sunday at Out North, 3800 DeBarr Road. Tickets cost $15.75 each online at www.outnorth.org or $18 at the door.
Mono a mono
Four solo performers explore issues in Out North forum
Published: January 6th, 2008 01:23 AM
Last Modified: January 6th, 2008 05:57 AM
Monologues often get a bad rap. Maybe it’s the dramatic spotlight. Or the excessive wearing of black turtlenecks.
But Out North’s annual “Under 30″ showcase supports local artists’ original work while stretching the audiences’ preconceived notions about monologues.
This year’s performers are incorporating live music, video projections and, in one case, audience participation. Some will tell autobiographic tales, while others will inhabit fictional characters to explore political and social issues.
“Under 30,” so named because each performance is less than 30 minutes long, opens Friday and runs through Jan. 20 at Out North. The following interviews offer a glimpse into the new works.
“20TH CENTURY MAN AND OTHER STORIES”
• By B. Hutton, an Anchorage writer and actor who works primarily in the spoken word/poetry slam genres
• The big idea: “The character is something of a mad scientist, but he has all my past.” As the inventor warms up his time machine for its maiden voyage, he muses about living in the 21st century but growing up in the 20th.
“It’s about why one might build a time machine. To go back? Or forward? … It gets at the idea of what we’ve taken into this century and what we’ve left behind for good or bad. It’s a kind of quirky, mostly comic, misadventure. Or a prelude to a misadventure.”
• Style: Hutton incorporates a live violin score, mime and movement. He also uses found sound via a time machine set-piece he built from archaic appliances: a typewriter, an Etch A Sketch, walkie-talkies “and other things with a charmingly clunky 20th century quality.”
• Inspiration: “I’m 54 years old. I’ve seen a lot of changes. I’ve seen a lot of amazing new possibilities, and I’ve seen things that are not so amazing but new, like the four-bladed razor. Or does it have five blades now? I think our technology is changing us, and some of that’s good and some of that’s not so good maybe. The jury is out still. And I think mostly I want to ask the questions, not provide the answers, in this piece.
• Sample dialogue: “At the first whiff of mortality we often think of time machines or other devices that take our minds off the clock.”
“FINDING MY VOICE”
• By Wendy Withrow, an Anchorage folk musician and writer
• The big idea: Withrow said hers is an entirely autobiographical tale about being young in the 1960s. After she grew up in California, her parents sent her to a small Baptist women’s college in Texas. “While all this social and political upheaval was occurring in this nation, it was passing me by because I was in this very conservative backwater.” It was here that she became a folk singer.
• Style: Withrow describes her piece as a humorous and ironic musical journey. She intersperses her dialogue with guitar music and singing, while images from the 1960s are projected in the background.
• Inspiration: “I was inspired to write this after going to last year’s Under 30 and seeing someone I know do her piece, investigating something in her own life, and I thought, ‘I can do this.’ ”
• Sample dialogue: “While students at UC Berkeley — fondly known then as Berzerkley — were occupying the administration building and kicking ROTC off campus, I was stuck at a college where the school newspaper headline ‘Students Participate in Demonstration’ topped an article about classmates learning how to properly apply makeup.”
Find Sarah Henning online at adn.com/contact/shenning or call 257-4323.
“ODE TO THE POLAR BEAR”
• By Allison Warden, an Anchorage performance artist who recently returned to Alaska after living in New York City
• The big idea: As an Inupiat Eskimo growing up in Kaktovik, she wanted to share an Inupiaq view of global warming. She said elders have long told stories that Alaska was once a tropical land and that the palm trees would return again. “We’ve always known this and accepted it.”
“But because of the affinity I’ve always had for the polar bear, I wanted to address the bear’s spirit and have a moment to say goodbye.”
• Style: Warden adopts several voices, including that of her grandmother, a hunter and a polar bear. Her storytelling is accompanied by projections of Arctic images in the background and audience participation.
• Inspiration: “I’ve been doing a lot of research about global warming, and it’s pretty definite that the polar bear is going away, moving east. I wanted to give us a moment to grieve the polar bear as he leaves Alaska … even though his spirit will live on in us.
• Sample dialogue: “My home is disappearing. There is not enough ice for me to hunt upon. It is melting. It is going away. I thrive on the seal, I hunt on the ice for the seal, for the walrus. The ice is getting farther out. But I cannot swim that far. I have been with you people for many years. Alongside of you. We’ve hunted the same animals, and sometimes I have hunted you. Yet it is time for me to go.”
“GROUND ZERO”
• By Gabrielle Barnett, a Girdwood dancer, writer and actress
• The big idea: “It’s partly about 9/11, but people use ground zero for a lot of things, so I’m also using it to talk about things like global warming. A person wanting me to give money to his environmental organization was referring to Alaska as ground zero for global warming. So here ground zero is 9/11, it’s America and it’s also planet Earth.”
• Style: “It’s a satirical stream of consciousness, waffling between opposites: hope and despair, positive and negative thinking, science and religion, progressive politics and reactionary politics.”
• Inspiration: Barnett awoke in the middle of the night and began writing this monologue, her process triggered by two headlines in the Seattle Times about recovery efforts at Mount St. Helens and the World Trade Center site.
• Sample dialogue: Unavailable at press time.
UNDER 30 opens Friday and runs through Jan. 20 with performances at 7 p.m. Friday and Saturday and 4 p.m. Sunday at Out North, 3800 DeBarr Road. Tickets cost $17 online, $18 at the door. There will be a $10 preview performance at 7 p.m. Thursday. (279-3800, www.outnorth.org)
