tba diary: the last hurrah

[September 19th, 2007] TUESDAY, SEPT. 11

5:30 pm, PICA: Melia Donovan ’s mural, The Clandestine Periphery , isn’t immediately apparent; it took a helpful guide to point it out. “It’s over here,” she said, gesturing toward a solid white wall. “You have to get really close.” Sure enough—stand five inches away and you begin to see tiny pinpricks in that wall which, if you zoom in and out by stepping forward and back, begin to form a landscape of people, rocks and animals...like a snapshot of a family vacation in Yosemite. It’s modified Braille as art, and it was created by a patient and determined lunatic. For that, we should be grateful. HEATHER WISNER.

6:30 pm, Winningstad Theatre : Seattle Weekly calls PDX performance group tEEth “incomprehensible.” The paper should hire younger critics. When a performer shoves her hands down her throat and wails agitatedly as she hops from one foot to the other, the tension is broken by the infectious giggle of a small child in an aisle seat. Somebody, at least, understands that this show was funny without stopping to wonder why. HW.

10 pm, the Works: The Portland Cello Project is doing some pop covers and classical music, including Samuel Barber’s affecting Adagio for Strings . You might know the Adagio as the background music to depressing scenes in the movie Platoon . And listeners of BBC Radio voted it the “saddest classical music ever written.” Party on! STEPHEN MARC BEAUDOIN.

WEDNESDAY, SEPT. 12

6:30 pm, Art Institute of Portland: No Dice , the new piece from TBA ’06 darlings Nature Theater of Oklahoma , is an odd duck—an “amateur dinner theater” patched together from 70 hours of phone conversations recorded by Artistic Director Pavol Liska. They deliver the lines as they hear them, in faux-foreign accents. It’s bizarre. It’s trying. Eventually, it’s beautiful, if you make four hours of sitting without cramping up. Some moments: 7:57 pm—weird beatboxing! 9:44 pm—one hour. One hour. One hour. 9:57 pm—they enter the audience, start talking directly to us, ditching the wigs. The melodrama is gone. 10:20 pm—dance-off! And we’re free. That was amazing. BEN WATERHOUSE.

8:30 pm, Armory Studio Theater: A lesbian in silver stretch pants accosts me in line, demanding to know if I’ve heard of a band leader named John Carpenter. It turns out Carpenter plays a role in the ghostly rock show by NYC-based artist Claude Wampler . Later, two girls in the front row (remember Silver Pants? She’s one of them) leap to their feet and wiggle their asses. A woman in the wheelchair joins the fray. A stuffed polar-bear head is tossed onstage. I find out later that the audience plants are recruits from PDX choreographer Linda Austin . SMB.

SUNDAY, SEPT. 16

4 pm, Imago Theater: It’s true, Elevator Repair Service ’s Gatz is totally worth the six-hour slog through every last word of Fitzgerald’s Great Gatsby . Time flies as the audience is pulled into the story, and an excellent cast transforms from office workers to ’20s socialites. Best moment: Klipspringer (Mike Iveson) plays “The Love Nest,” with brilliant flair, on the back of the office sofa. MARIANNA HANE WILES.

8:30 pm, Lincoln Hall, PSU: Zoe Scofield ’s work is what fest head Mark Russell calls “the beauty moment” of TBA ’07. It’s beauty of a fashionable sort: Chiseled dancers contort classical carriage and carve great swaths of airspace with slowly unspooling air tours and crisp développés. The piece looks hip, but it feels bloodless. It concludes with a Category 4 glitter storm, plastering the sweaty dancers in shiny bits. Stone-faced, they bow to a standing ovation. And that’s it—the festival, which began under summery skies, has ended with just a sliver of autumn moon lighting the drizzly ride home. HW.