October/November 2013 Volume 10, No. 2 Paul Heppner Publisher Susan Peterson Design & Production Director Ana Alvira, Deb Choat, Robin Kessler, Kim Love, Jana Rekosh Design and Production Artists Mike Hathaway Advertising Sales Director Marty Griswold, Seattle Sales Director Gwendolyn Fairbanks, Jan Finn, Ann Manning, Lenore Waldron Seattle Area Account Executives Staci Hyatt, Marilyn Kallins, Terri Reed San Francisco/Bay Area Account Executives Denise Wong Sales Assistant Jonathan Shipley Ad Services Coordinator www.encoreartsprograms.com Paul Heppner Publisher Leah Baltus Editor-in-Chief Marty Griswold Sales Director Joey Chapman Account Executive Dan Paulus GJ 080813 sapphire 1_3s.pdf Art Director Jonathan Zwickel Senior Editor Gemma Wilson Associate Editor www.cityartsonline.com Paul Heppner President Mike Hathaway Vice President Deborah Greer Executive Assistant Erin Johnston Communications Manager April Morgan Accounting Jana Rekosh Project Manager/Graphic Design Corporate Office 425 North 85th Street Seattle, WA 98103 p 206.443.0445 f 206.443.1246 [email protected] 800.308.2898 x105 www.encoremediagroup.com Encore Arts Programs is published monthly by Encore Media Group to serve musical and theatrical events in Western Washington and the San Francisco Bay Area. All rights reserved. ©2013 Encore Media Group. Reproduction without written permission is prohibited. 2 ENCORE STAGES ENCORE ARTS NEWS FROM CITY ARTS MAGAZINE CKFM 091013 listener 1_6v.pdf Stop and Stair Handcrafting artisan confections in Seattle “There was a cooler of food and a cooler of water, 20 or 30 throw pillows, an iPod hooked to a tape player, and a box of written instruc- for over 30 years tions. The space itself was dirty and unforgiving; we all walked away with scrapes and bruises. The element of danger is one thing we found exciting. We were drawn to this location because movement and direction are already implied in a staircase. They’re there to get you up or take you down—we got to spend six hours exploring what else and how else.” —Markeith Wiley, artistic director/choreographer of The New Animals on “What Goes Up,” the group’s six-hour movement performance/ritual at the NEPO 5k, on the stairwell of 18th Ave. S. and S. Walker St. The piece featured nine performers, including Ale Madera (right) and company manager Calie Swedberg. encoreartsprograms.com 3 FC 081213 artisan 1_6v.pdf Untitled-1 1 9/10/13 11:43 AM CONTENTS Sugar Daddies A1 A-1 Title Page A-2 Welcome to ACT A-3 Coming Soon to ACT A-4 Director’s Letter A-6 Dramaturgy A-8 Who’s Who A-9 ACT Partners A-15 ACT Board & Staff ENCORE ARTS NEWS FROM CITY ARTS MAGAZINE Chicken and Waffles and Outrage BY BRETT HAMIL I RECEIVED MY Political Correctness What followed, along with a series of brutal the unreconstructed bigots who rally behind Enforcement badge last July. I didn’t want it facepalms, was a correspondence in which it—and I’d be damned if I was going to have and never applied for it, and furthermore, I I attempted to explain how the Confederate anything to do with it now. consider political correctness an outmoded flag is the most divisive symbol in American “You’re just upset because you saw T. get pejorative used mostly by angry conservative history and wholly inappropriate for a upset,” the producer said, because T. is black uncles after several glasses of wine over an comedy-show flyer. The producer countered and I am white. uncomfortable Thanksgiving dinner. But with a) “Some people understand irony” I pulled myself off the show. sometimes these titles are thrust upon you. and b) Controversy marketing! She said she Depending on who you listen to, comics I was sitting in the sun nursing a hangover couldn’t afford to print different posters and are unspeakably crass stereotype-and-rape- with two other comedians, killing time she was on her way to distribute handbills joke-peddlers re-traumatizing victims and before Saturday’s early show, talking s**t and at the Sub Pop Silver Jubilee. In other words, minorities in dank basements, or they’re scrolling through Facebook on our iPhones, she was gonna distribute Confederate flags to courageous First Amendment absolutists when T. did a double-take: “Hey Brett, did Shabazz Palaces fans. making a principled stand for unfettered you see the poster for that show we’re on next T. quipped, “If someone left that flyer on public discourse. Assert the absolute right week?” my car, I wouldn’t just throw it away, I’d find of comics to say whatever they want and T. and I were raised in the South and the person who left it there.” you empower hordes of angry misogynists booked on a Southerner-themed show for And by the way: All of this occurred the and crypto-racists whose most clever joke the following Wednesday. The poster for that day of the George Zimmerman verdict. hinges on the use of a roofie or the notion that show, we now discovered, bore a Confederate Over a series of increasingly contentious everyone working in the kitchen is Mexican. flag overlaid with a cartoon chicken dancing messages, I described my position. I grew up Lobby for greater sensitivity in language and on a stack of waffles. in Central Florida, in the swampy NASCAR approach, and you’ll wind up volunteering to I immediately Facebook messaged the lowlands 15 miles from where Trayvon Martin teach remedial history and entry-level gender show’s producer: “Yo! You gotta get rid of that was murdered. My high school narrowly politics to people who already think you’re a Confederate flag. SRSLY.” avoided race riots on several occasions, grandstanding humorless feminist. Her response came an hour later: “I gave each sparked by a schoolyard display of the “If I’m not offended, I don’t see why you it a lot of thought. People aren’t that stupid Rebel Flag by some vocal elements of the should be,” the producer told me. in Seattle…Maybe I should put some black Future Farmers of America. Really. I moved It’s been a rough year for unexamined people on it so everyone knows it’s not racist.” 3,000 miles to get away from that flag and privilege. The reelection of the first black 4 ENCORE STAGES ENCORE ARTS NEWS president failed to usher in that oft- 8000 25th Avenue NE • Seattle announced Post-Racial Era, and the Census www.universityprep.org UP 073113 cam093 1_6h.pdf Bureau announced a demographic shift Have you discovered your potential? that will put whites in the minority by University Prep is an independent school 2042. The pain of Trayvon’s parents, Paula serving grades six through twelve. Our program takes students on a collaborative Deen’s plantation nostalgia, even the sly journey of learning in a diverse and inclusive commentary on race and oppression in community. Our alumni span the globe, Orange Is the New Black: Our national psyche fulfilling their dreams in professions that range from chef, to professor, engineer, is awash in images of Otherness. physicist, and musician... A recent Fox News story trumpeted a Come visit University Prep and memo from the City of Seattle’s Office of Civil Discover the Puma in You! Rights discouraging use of the term “brown For information, call 206.523.6407 bag lunch” from public documents, because the phrase “brown bag” recalls an odious test once used to gauge lightness of skin tone among African Americans. (Having skin darker than a brown bag could’ve meant exclusion from institutions, civic groups and jobs.) That memo directed City employees to avoid inadvertently referencing a shameful historical practice. The story went viral: I saw comic after comic reposting this article on Facebook and decrying the death of Free Speech. I rolled my eyes so hard I thought they might fly out of my head. How could so many self-styled freethinkers and nonconformists dictate what people are allowed to find offensive? How is that not its own insidious form of censorship? Our problem isn’t Free Speech. Just about everyone I know is a microblogger and a multi-platform media curator with billions of THEATER/PERFORMANCE PRODUCTION bytes at their disposal. The First Amendment AJAX IN IRAQ By Ellen McLaughlin is doing just fine, thankyouverymuch. Directed by Marya Sea Kaminski What we’re short on these days is October 17 – 22 empathy. We’re swamped with effortless digital communication but lacking in the Raisbeck Performance Hall analog component that creates real human CORNISH DANCE THEATER connection and compassion. Today’s glut of free speech has sparked an inflationary YOUR EYES HAVE FACETS spiral on empathy, as if empathy were a Site-Specific Performances, Choreographed by Salthorse dwindling national resource that must be November 3 & 9, 1 & 3 pm conserved and used only for unanimously Seattle Center Skatepark, Fisher Pavilion Roof agreed-upon injustice. “Don’t these nitwits & International Fountain in City Hall have anything better to do with Sponsored by Seattle Center their time?” is really just another way of saying, “If I’m not offended, I don’t see why THEATER/PERFORMANCE PRODUCTION you should be.” Until I saw that flag on the flyer, I NEVERWHERE considered myself generally impervious Adapted for the stage by Rob Kauzlaric to offense. As a comic who refuses to take from the novel by Neil Gaiman. things seriously and a white male who’s Directed by Roger Benington never personally experienced racism or Nov. 6-10 systemic oppression, I often asked myself, Cornish Playhouse at Seattle Center Who actually gets offended by comedy? Sponsored by Seattle Center But if I could be so revolted by the sight of a symbol from my past that I’d pass up a chance CORNISH MUSIC SERIES to practice my craft, I’m ready to acknowledge that far greater pain might be conjured up by SCRAPE a brown bag.