Arts & Events: June 2009 Archives

Tacoma native and former Seattle theater stalwart Louis Hobson scored his first Broadway role this year, and it's a great one. Not just a great role, with turns comedic and dramatic, but one that's in a terrific and affecting show. Hobson plays Dr. Madden in the musical Next to Normal, which concerns a woman's struggle with mental illness. (We know, sounds odd, but it's amazing, trust us. Or trust Ben Brantley. Or Peter Travers.) We first interviewed Louis two years ago over e-mail, when he was starring in the 5th Avenue's production of West Side Story. This time we met him in the lobby of New York's Booth Theater, about 90 minutes before he was to take the stage.

    

Michael Darling, the Seattle Art Museum's curator of modern and contemporary art, has assembled a surprisingly cool show with , which opened last weekend at SAM and runs through Sept. 7. The post-WWII period saw the apex of high Modernism in painting with the abstract expressionists, led by the likes of Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning. They took the Modernists' radical approach to painting to the utmost extreme, by actually separating the brush from the canvas and completely rejecting representational art. At the same time, though, a new group of painters were laying the groundwork of Postmodernism, and were searching for new ways to break free of the canvas.

"These Boots Were Made For Walking" by Russell, from our Flickr pool

Orange Flower Water (at ACT Theatre through July 20; tix $25) is the second play by hot local theatre group New Century Theatre Company (the first was last December's much-lauded The Adding Machine). With two shows under their belts, a pattern is emerging: For the second time, the company has worked wonders with an inherently weak script, on the strength of innovative design and powerhouse performances. There is a glaring difference, though. Whereas Elmer Rice's 1929 play aimed for the moon by tackling a host of complex issues, Craig Wright's Orange Flower Water aims far lower and still comes up wanting, and, in fact, manages to be offensive in the process. We can wholeheartedly recommend this production for showcasing four extremely talented actors, but the choice of play is extremely disappointing.

HOME ALONE: Poor little Korean kids. In So Yong Kim's Treeless Mountain, two sisters (Jin, 6, and Bin, 4) must take care of each other after their mother leaves them to search for their estranged father. Parents of the Year all up in this piece! In this semi-autobiographical tale (whuuuuuuut?), things move slowly and tenderly while the children are left to their own devices and struggle to adapt to the new status quo. Treeless Mountain plays twice a night at the NWFF through Thursday. 7 p.m., 9 p.m. // Northwest Film Forum // 1515 12th Ave. // $9

Hey, we need more PRIDE in our Seattlest Flickr Pool! (Use "pride 2009" as a tag.)

"Oh Hey!!!" taken at Artopia this weekend and lovingly placed in the Flickr Pool by +Russ. +Thank you very much +Russ!

"Untitled" by shirtnpants , from our Flickr pool

Polling of grant funders revealed that they'd lost about twenty-two percent of their assets in 2008 and forecast losing another ten percent in 2009. Because they base their funding on rolling three-year intervals, artists and arts organizations can look forward to seeing the impact of these losses in 2011 and 2012 (in addition to an immediate ten-to-twenty five percent decrease in individual giving this year). God help you if you're a new organization, or are looking for funds from new sources, because the prevailing wisdom was that funders weren't looking for new opportunities.

OPENING Orange Flower Water @ ACT. Last December, New Century Theatre launched with a bang, with a lauded, controversial production of The Adding Machine. Their second show, opening this weekend, promises to go in radical new directions. A four-person bedroom drama, Orange Flower Water is every bit as intimate as The Adding Machine was epic. It's also dirty--18 and over, please. (700 Union St. Fri. & Sat. 8, Sun. 7. Tix $25.)

"smithy" by flickrd1 , from our Flickr pool

It has been quite a year for Deer Tick. In addition to being named the "#1 Breaking Band" at SXSW 2009 by Rolling Stone, the band found itself in an unusual but fortuitous situation by attracting the eyes and ears of one of TV’s biggest names. As it turns out, newsman and self-described avid music enthusiast Brian Williams can be counted among the growing masses of Deer Tick's devoted fans. Williams hand-selected Deer Tick as the first band to be featured on his new web-only music interview series, BriTunes.

PAUL CONSTANT LIKES IT: We'd express an opinion ourselves, but we haven't read it yet, though our interest has been sufficiently piqued. Oh, what are we talking about? It's this "existential mystery novel" called Oh! A Mystery of Mono No Aware by Todd Shimada. We're not even sure exactly what "mono no aware" means, because it's, like, one of those super deep Japanese concepts you can only understand after studying the meaning of a circle for several years. Or maybe the author can explain at his reading tonight. 6 p.m. // Kobo at Higo // 602 S. Jackson St. // free!

"Moore Quote - Instax Windows" by Slightlynorth, from the Seattlest Flickr Pool

Before seeing Goran Bregović and his Wedding and Funeral Orchestra at the Moore last night, we had been operating under the assumption that he was a musician: singer, composer, arranger, famous lead guitarist, and songwriter from the influential 1970s Yugoslav rock outfit Bijelo dugme, internationally renowned for his work on Emir Kosturica's films. But we were wrong. Really, he's a performance artist.

Husband and wife theater team Mike Daisey (the monologist) and Jean-Michele Gregory (the director) met and began collaborating together in Seattle before moving to New York eight years ago. We spent an afternoon in their ground floor Brooklyn apartment, talking about the move, about how starting out in Seattle helped their careers, and what they miss about our town.

Earlier this morning, this year's version of the Decibel Festival site went live, cementing that 2009's edition is indeed a go after some early concerns over finances. To go along with the site release, they've also announced the first portion of the festival lineup, and it's already looking like another promising year.

BYRNE BABY BYRNE: David Byrne is back in town for a visit to the Paramount. Famous in his heyday for biting the heads off bats in his over-the-top metalhead shows...wait that doesn't seem...where's that bio again? Ah. Yes, the former Talking Heads front man is on a summer tour, playing songs by himself and Brian Eno. You'll hear stuff from Everything that Happens will Happen Today, and some back-catalogue Heads music than Eno had a hand in. Something old, something new, what's not to like?

"Untitled" by Aaron Morris, from our Flickr pool

Goran Bregović is one of the biggest pop stars in the former Yugoslavia. Which doesn't sound like much, right? We might as well be talking about top-10 radio in Azerbaijan. Well, you actually probably know Bregović's music; if you like good international cinema, he's scored most of Emir Kosturica's films, including Time of the Gypsies and Arizona Dream. And if Kosturica isn't for you, well, Bregović's music was used in Borat. Bregović is in his first major attempt to break into the U.S. market, with Alkohol, a new album showcasing how he mixes a distinct pop sensibility while reinterpreting Balkan traditional music.

Though this is Chandler Burr's first novel, he is also the author of three other non-fiction books: The Perfect Scent, The Emperor of Scent, and A Separate Creation. And if you're smelling sensing a particular theme, you're on the right track--Burr has been the The New York Times scent critic since August '06.

PSYCHEDELIC CULT CLASSIC: Bob Dylan-esque Rodriguez is finally coming to Seattle, and KEXP is surely happy. We say this because anytime we've turned it on lately, he seems to be there, soulfully singing all the songs we love, which makes us happy as well. In the past couple years with Light in the Attic's re-releases of albums such as Cold Fact and Coming From Reality, he has gained a wide array of new fans, which makes it hard to believe that up until the late '90s he was just hanging out in Detroit doing menial labor, with no idea that his music career would ever make a comeback. (He found out only after Cold Fact had gone multi-platinum across the world in South Africa.) 5:30 p.m. doors, 7:30 p.m. show // The Triple Door, 216 Union Street // Tickets: $20/$23, 21+

Maktub's fifth album, Five, is out today and as a thank you to fans, they're offering free downloads of the whole damn thing. In particular, it's a thank you to the 200 fans who funded their last album Start It Over. Hugs all around!

"Cinerama (1999-2009)" by pouryourheartintoit, from our Flickr pool

Over 50 Seattle restaurants, including almost every Italian joint in town, will donate a substantial portion of their proceeds Wednesday ("Big Night for Abruzzo") to a rebuilding effort in the region of central Italy devastated by a major earthquake in April. Some 300 people died, over 60,000 were left homeless; countless medieval buildings were destroyed or severely damaged.

Are you ready to rawk? Right on the heels of last Friday's Air Sex competition, El Corazon is set to host Seattle's regional finals in the US Air Guitar Championship.

    

Saturday night the historic Moore Theatre was taken over by Free Sheep Foundation's assembly of visual, musical, theatrical, and performance artists. For more photographic evidence, try Flickr's mooreinsideout tag.

SILENT SCREEN: Trader Joe's Silent Movie Mondays at the Paramount is back and focusing on the speechless girls of black-and-white. Words fail you when discussing Cecil B. DeMille's The Godless Girl anyway--Judith and Bob are young atheists who naturally end up in a reform school run by sadists. This is an ur-Girls Gone Wild visual text and will count for credit if you are a student of this kind of counter-history. The important thing is, Judith and Bob learn that those fires of hell are real and they burn, thus making Christianity something more than an academic choice.

First rain in 30 days by aphid00, from the Seattlest Flickr Pool

Saturday and Sunday it's almost 200 beers [pdf list], all ages, and runs from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. Advance tickets are $15 and they're $20 at the door. That nets you six tasting tokens. Parking is gonna be a hassle, so try to take the bus.

OPENING the break/s @ ACT. Marc Bamuthi Joseph is a poet, theatre artist, and educator who's produced a hip hop influenced solo performance piece that's generating buzz all over town. (700 Union St. Fri. & Sat. 8 p.m., matinees Sat. & Sun. 2 p.m. Tix $40-$55.)

"Sustainable is a crappy vision," announced Peter Senge (pronounced "senn-gay"), author of The Fifth Discipline, which has nothing to do with the film Milla Jovovich was in. He was just off the plane from China, making a stop for a leadership keynote address this morning to the Americans for the Arts meet-up at Seattle's Convention Center, before continuing on home to Massachusetts.

"I think the Decemberists are a great band, and I think there are some similarities: we are both folkish and use more varied instrumentation than most rock bands. I think that if you actually sit and listen to both bands, you'd see that they both are coming from very different places. The era of songs that drive and influence the majority of the Builders' material is early Depression-era blues, folk, and gospel, and weirder stuff like Tom Waits."

"document" by Craig ( edgardiazrocks ), from the Seattlest Flickr pool

Although the bohemian residents of Avenue A proclaim they're not going to pay "Rent," we would happily pay to hear them sing it again after Tuesday's solid opening night. Anthony Rapp and Adam Pascal are reprising their original 1996 Broadway roles as Mark and Roger in the famed rock opera by the late Jonathan Larson in RENT: The Broadway Tour.

FIVE YEARS OLD: Yup, that's Neumos, turning the big five tonight with a party. Helio Sequence, Grand Hallway, and Palmer Electric Co. take the stage tonight. Entry is free when you buy a drink at Moe Bar, which also means it's 21 and over. 8 p.m. // Neumo's // 925 E. Pike St. // free!, 21+

"Succexy" by Crickontour, from the Seattlest Flickr Pool

We'll preface this review by saying that we absolutely loved Ali Sethi's debut novel The Wish Maker. The fact that he is only 24 years old and could produce such a well-written, excellent debut novel is just outstanding.

Joe Dallesandro—former bodyguard at Andy Warhol’s fabled Factory, star of several key Warhol-sponsored cult films in the sixties and seventies, and accidental avatar of the Sexual Revolution—stands outside the W Hotel in downtown Seattle, his back to me. He cuts an almost dangerous-looking figure.

NOT A CELL PHONE PROVIDER: Fast on the heels of Maximus Minimus, Marination Mobile makes its debut today in Fremont. The Hawaiian-Korean taco truck serves a menu of "tacos and sliders, featuring ingredients such as kalbi beef, spicy pork, miso-ginger chicken, kalua pork, and tofu...marinated in signature sauces. There is also a kimchi fried rice bowl, kimchi quesadilla, and SPAM musubi. Items run from $2-$5." Marination plans to eventually operate seven days a week, open for lunch and dinner till 2 a.m. The weekly schedule is currently as follows, but be sure to watch for updates at their website and on teh Twitter: Monday: SODO, Seattle Design Guild (1701 First Ave); Wednesday: Fremont, Soundspeed Scooters (132 N. Canal St); Thursday: Capitol Hill, Broadway Shell (1500 Broadway @ Pike); Friday: Capitol Hill, Broadway Shell; Saturday: Capitol Hill, Broadway Shell; Sunday: Ballard, Cheka-Looka Surf Shop (6300 Seaview Ave. NW). 12 p.m.-2 p.m. // Soundspeed Scooters // 132 N. Canal St // $2-5

the creatively named "IMG_8915" by Espressobuzz, from our Flickr pool

Every dog has its day. You may remember Jack, a black lab/Dalmatian mix who ate a marijuana stash in Seward Park a month ago, and became super-famous, with his story featured in on the local news, as well as in the Huffington Post, the New York Times, CNN, and the Chicago Tribune.

Phillip Margolin will be reading from his most recent suspense-filled legal thriller, Fugitive, at 7 p.m., on Wednesday, June 17, at Third Place Books in Lake Forest Park. Margolin was nice enough to share some insight with us on his latest novel, and his life in general.

Audible, 605 Collective. Hell yeah! After an hour of interpretive dance pieces heavy on long, languid, movements, 605 Collective emerged like an antidote, kicking it up more than a few notches. The five dancers that comprise 605 are electrifying, delivering an athletic, fast-paced, personality-driven snippet from a 60-minute work to debut at the Dancing on the Edge Festival in July. If you live in Vancouver, B.C., don't miss these people. Influenced by everything from hiphop to ballet, they delivered in a stunning way.

There's one reason you can't miss Seattle Shakespeare's generally fine production of The Tempest, and her name is Hana Lass. Following a turn as one of the three cast members of the Intiman's lauded production of Crime and Punishment, Lass takes a fine turn as the "airy spirit" Ariel in Shakespeare's final masterpiece. Lass switches up Ariel from a dour male character to a sexy sprite in a black veil. The character doesn't have a lot of line, but Lass still owns the stage when she's speaking, and employed as a plot device to carry along an episodic work, she's just stunning.

FASHION HIGHLIGHTS: Seattle Central Community College's Apparel Design program will be featuring their final line and portfolio show, The Shape of Things, throughout the day at the SCCC campus. The show will also include work by students Becky Sullivan and Maria E. Canada, both of whom had recent big wins in the Seattle fashion world. Canada took second place at the 2009 Project Red Dress fashion show, and Sullivan took home first place for both the Seattle Fashion Week Design Competition and the Seamless in Seattle Best Everyday Collection. We definitely recommend checking out Sullivan's collection, as there are some excellent pieces--we have no doubt that we'll be hearing more about her in the future. 9 a.m.-6 p.m. // 1701 Broadway Room BE 1110, SCCC campus // FREE

We still haven't finished our review copy of Craig Johnson's The Dark Horse—but only for the best of reasons: We wanted to start with the first book, which inspired us to plow through. We finished the fourth book, Another Man's Moccasins, last night.

"Seattle at Night from Rizal Bridge" by David Hogan (Cap'n Surly), from our Flickr pool

It took five songs for Eddie Argos & co. to beat the Seattle chill. As they began their set around midnight Saturday, the audience was depressingly reminiscent of the last time we saw Art Brut play, when Argos (possibly probably drunk) began expressing his disgust with the audience's lack of enthusiasm. Aside from a small core of 15 to 20 enthusiastic under-21s (God bless 'em) crowded in front of the stage, the rest of the audience was painfully staid--indie rock kids who couldn't deign to do more than slightly bop their heads, scenesters trying to carry on conversations during the show.

Sunday Service, Sara Edwards, Becky Poole, Erin Jorgensen, Paige Weinheimer. This show was odd--in fact, we'd be tempted to say it didn't work if not for the fact that something very real, emotionally, was happening onstage.

Our predilection for local county/folk songsmiths aside, our interest was piqued when we heard that a Brooklyn band that has received praise for playing melodies in roughly the same vein would be hitting Chop Suey tonight in support of Ben Kweller. In advance of their first trip to Seattle, we were able to catch up with mandolinist and singer Danny Erker of Jones Street Station to talk about exploring “the great American genres,” and reconciling playing traditionally rural music in urban settings, among other topics.

JUST LIKE A DREAM: In a Dream chronicles the life of artist Isaiah Zegar and his wife Julia, both his mosaic art and their family life. The documentary is directed by their son Jeremiah, and he pulls no punches in showing how his father's obsessive, creative mind took its toll on his family. The intimate, emotional film has won awards from festivals as diverse as SXSW, the Philadelphia Film Festival, and the San Francisco Documentary Festival. In a Dream screens at the NWFF through Thursday. 7 p.m., 9 p.m. // Northwest Film Forum // 1515 12th Ave. // $9

An interesting take on the Hammering Man from Espressobuzz in the Flickr Pool.

Special to Seattlest: Tony Kay.

"Baby with hard hat, 1959" by Seattle Municipal Archives, from the Seattlest Flickr Pool.

The end is in sight. 22 days down, and just 3 remain for SIFF this year, so it's time to take look at films showing this final festival weekend. For all film screenings, the general/member ticket prices are $11/$9 (and matinees $8/$7), except for gala screenings and other special events, which of course cost more. Seattlest applies our well-honed knowledge of all things cinema to the SIFF catalogue in order to point out some notable films playing this weekend:

RECOMMENDED NW New Works Fest @ On the Boards. Week two of OtB's annual revue of the best experimental theatre, performance, and dance from around the Northwest. Last weekend was a blast, and this weekend there's eight completely different performers hitting two stages. The Studio Showcase plays tonight at 8 and Sat. and Sun. at 5, and the Mainstage performances are Sat. and Sun. at 8. (100 W. Roy St. Tix $14.)

Here's a glimpse of last weekend's mainstage works below; the festival closes this weekend at On the Boards with another round of entirely new works. Tickets and info here.

It just wants a cuddle. Just like us, dear Reader, just like us... Come a little closer and drop something into the pool, won't you please?

We have come late to the Nadeau appreciation society--after 17 years, that bandwagon has left the station and steamed from the harbor--but it struck us that there was something extraordinary in a 45-year-old ballerina pulling Forsythe's Urlicht out of the hat for a retirement program.

Norman Ollestad will be reading from his book, Crazy for the Storm: A Memoir of Survival, at Elliott Bay Book Company on June 15, at 7:30 p.m. Crazy for the Storm: A Memoir of Survival, is both a chilling account of survival and a heartwarming coming-of-age story based around Norman Ollestad and his relationship with his father, the late Norman Ollestad.

While Seattle's Garfield High School Jazz Band did score a stirring victory in the national Essentially Ellington jazz competition earlier this month they were not so lucky on the basketball court. But they do have a pretty cool story to impress next fall's dormmates with: They played basketball against Wynton Marsalis.

CAMPY: Nina Persson was a teenage crush of ours, back when she was producing brilliantly guileless pop with her band the Cardigans. So it's nice to see she's back on the road with a new band, A Camp, which began as a collaboration between her and soundtrack artist/husband Nathan Larson (damn you!) and Niclas Frisk. Now they're touring with a veritable who's who of American rock, including Kevin Marsh of Guided by Voices and James Iha of the Smashing Pumpkins and A Perfect Circle, all in support of a brilliant new album called Colonia (their second) that's somewhat akin to what would happen if Abba bred with the Carpenters.

"happy spencerdawg is happy" by poopoorama, from the Seattlest Flickr Pool

Two reasons: Kultur Shock on Friday (with X-Ray Press and Orange Tulip Conspiracy, $10, 21+), Art Brut on Saturday (with Miike Snow and Black Nite Crash, $13, all ages). Local gypsy art punks Kultur Shock are releasing their fourth studio album this year, and are about to jet off on tour in Russia. They don't play Seattle all that often anymore, and they're an insanely wild live band, mixing Sabbath-style guitar riffs with Balkan trad, shredded violin solos competing with lead-singer Gino Yevdjevic's melismatic vocals. As for Art Brut, they were indie rock darlings a couple years ago after an amazing debut record, , recorded in beautiful Salem, Ore. and produced by the legendary Frank Black. Also, like Kultur Shock, Art Brut is a fantastic live band that gives it their all and is best seen in a club.

IN FULL GIAMATTIVISION: Cold Souls is the too-grimly titled existential comedy starring Paul Giamatti as Paul Giamatti. While rehearsing Uncle Vanya, Giamatti begins to lose himself in his character's depression, and looking for a temporary fix, stumbles across the new process of "soul extraction," as detailed in the New Yorker. While the movie is deadpan, Giamatti is not. His off-kilter spiral into soullessness is by turns hilarious and touching.

"The City," by Jeremy Center (The Good Reverend Ogalthorpe), from our Flickr pool

Seattle-born and Mercer Island-bred, Burnett’s the kind of guy you want making movies—He’s genuinely in the business for the love of it, but he still possesses enough savvy to endure amidst the industry rat race. And when you ask him about screening his horror movie The Hills Run Red at the Seattle International Film Festival, he’s pretty much over the moon.

FIND OUT ABOUT FOUND: We've been big fans of the magazine FOUND for a couple years now, so when we heard that main Found(ers) Davy and Peter Rothbart were coming back again this year on tour, we were pretty damn excited. Touring to help celebrate the release of their brand new book, Requiem for a Paper Bag, the Rothbart brothers will be featuring the latest found stories that have made their way into the FOUND headquarters mailbox, along with found stories from celeb contributors to the book such as Seth Rogen, Chuck D., Sarah Vowell, and David Simon--who we're extra curious to see if his found business is anything Wire-like or not. Peter will also be on-hand to sing "breathtaking" (their words not ours) songs from the latest FOUND notes, and they hint at possible surprise guests. 8 p.m. // The Crocodile, 2200 2nd Avenue // Tickets: $5 at the door, 21+

"i got your summer right here" by Kevin Rosinbum, plucked from our Flickr pool

SIFF's final week is underway--it all wraps up Sunday--so here's a glimpse at some of the films coming up this Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. For all film screenings, the general/member ticket prices are $11/$9 (and matinees $8/$7), except for gala screenings and other special events, which of course cost more. Here's what we've highlighted from the SIFF catalogue: