Image provided by: University of Oregon Libraries; Eugene, OR
About Just out. (Portland, OR) 1983-2013 | View Entire Issue (Feb. 3, 1984)
5 E N T E R T A IN M E N T about no time in particular. It is many periods. A tlantis opens on February 10 at the newly refurbished Echo Theatre at SE Hawthorne and 37th. Atlantis will be a double premiere, the first production of the play and the first production in the new theatre space. The Atlantis by Jay Brown “A tlantis?' she says, laughing. “Why, I’ve been working on it all my life. I’ve only been writing it for a year and a half, though. And I am writing the music, too.” Melinda Pittman has written the story of Atlantis as the saga of twin daughters. The twins are Songrile, an oracle and Eschan, a mute. “The twins search for a way to live, a way of being a part of the world. They have a magical language, a twin secret com m uni cation." The play, Melinda says, is a metaphor for the conflict between authority and freedom. “ The Atlantis legend is inherent in our culture. Everyone is acquainted with the legend. So, in a subconscious sense, the Atlantis legend is an ideal setting for a realistic story of love and power. The costumes for Pittman’s treatment are designs by Arthur deBow. The play is set about 10,000 years ago, but Pittman says it is Silkwood portrays reality by Ja n e Howard It's not exactly the burning question that everyone is asking: “Hey, have you seen 51 Ik w ood?" Not exactly, because it’s not like we once asked, almost demanded (under our breaths), “Have you seen it? Personal Best? or “Have you seen The Killing of Sister G eorge?' We were dying to see ourselves in the movies. This tim e it is different. T h is tim e w e a r e n ’t 10 Nyla McCarthy an d Barbara Bosakowski as the m ute an d visionary twins in Atlantis photo by Rick Adams theatre-bound, driven by the old cult fervor, delighted that there is a movie about us (how ever vapid or inaccurate), marching off in party spirit to see ourselves humiliated on the silver screen. We re not doing that for Silk- wood, even though a main character is a lesbian. That is because Silkwood is a different kind of movie, miles from those “real-life les bian" flicks that have come and (fortunately) gone, far from those statements that seemed to somehow vilify and glamorize us, all in the same breathless breath. This movie is light years from those curious peeks at our lives which always seemed to come across as more of an insulting invasion than a valida tion, no matter how gently it was done. And there is one very good reason that Silkw ood is different in the way it comments on our lifestyle. W here those old cult films made a specta cle of us, cut us from the mainstream as if we had no right to be there, and made us so bizarre that we hardly recognized ourselves, Silkw ood plops us down right in the middle of blue-collar-CISA, right where we belong. Right were we really are (along with all the other places that we really are, which is every where). No lesbian hype. Just the real stuff: paychecks, kids, plutonium, station wagons, small cafes, friends, troubles, goofy lovers... reality. But let’s set all that aside for the moment, because there are plenty of reasons to see Silkwood. First there is Meryl Streep (which is enough for m e). She made Karen Silkwood real, like any one of us, someone you might know . . . for a while. Then there is the important point of the movie itself. This movie is about the fear that all enlightened women harbor in our hearts: fear of knowing too much about the Good O ld Boys’ Network, fear of being the victim (again) of their paranoia, fear of getting in the way of their money. We need to know those things. But we don’t want to. Not really. So we m ust Silkw ood shows us again how easily it can happen, lest we fail to remember, even for one careless, deadly m om ent But there is that other reason for people in general and lesbians in particular to see Silk wood, and that reason is Cher. She plays a lesbian, Karen Silkwood’s friend Dolly. Dolly’s girlfriend is a little odd (whose isn’t?), but Dolly is solid. And it doesn’t matter whether or not she stayed true to the story of Dolly, or even if there was a Dolly in Karen Silkwood’s real life. W hat matters is that Cher played it right without the drooling psycho pathology of Sister George or the giggling idiocy and insipid, insulting banalities of Personal Best, or even the depressive isola tion of Lianna (the best "real life" peek yet but s till...) . So why did Cher’s Silkwood role work when the other films fell so flat? Well, as ironical as it is, Cher’s role works because Silkw ood isn t about lesbians. Silk Echo Theatre was originally, way back when, a silent movie theatre. It closed in 1926. Robin Lane, the artistic director of Do Jum p! Dance Theatre, now permanently at hom e at the Echo Theatre, is the choreo grapher of Atlantis. Lane is well known for her work with Storefront Theatre. The cast of Atlantis includes Nyla McCarthy and Barbara Bosakowski as the twins, Colleen Conroy as the Bulldancer, Jim Caputo as Mydarc, the prince of Atlantis. Vic toria Parker, the New Rose Theatre’s Hedda Gabler last fall, is playing Basileah, the queen of Atlantis; Clifford Smith, a popular Portland musician, is playing Daethros, the king of Atlantis. The parents of the twins are played by Dalana Lynand Stan Foote. The Voices of Atlantis; Sally Irwin, Brian Haliski, Deborah Beere and Shannon Chaffin, with Kate Ketcham, musical arranger and flautist Atlantis premieres February 10 and plays for five weekends only, Friday-Sunday at 8 pm, through March 11. The Echo Theatre, 1515 SE 37th and Hawthorne, 231-1212. w ood is about people and real life. Whole life. The panoramic view, cross-section, heart land America. So in its real-lifeness, in Silk- w ood's terrifying believabilty, there is this les bian who is so unobtrusive and matter-of-fact that it would be easy to overlook the state m ent she makes. But we mustn’t overlook her statem ent By simply fitting in so easily, one character in a vignette of believable real life, Cher says something critical about us. She says how real, how normal, how everyday, we are. And we mustn’t overlook th at Cher in Silk w ood was special. Not bizarre, but special. She did not reflect a character that was isolated-insipid-depressive-psychopathic. She reflected a sub-culture that 1 could feel good about W e’ve been screaming bloody murder for decades about the way that cinema exploits women, exploits our sexuality, and when gi ven the chance, exploits lesbians. Based on Silkw ood, we might be lulled into believing, hoping that the film industry is finally begin ning to work out their stuff about lesbians. Maybe Silkw ood is evidence of th at I hope so, but I think not 1 think that Silk w ood is special and unique. I doubt that we’ve escaped yet that we’ve been exploited and vilified for the last time. But Cher does provide evidence of one thing. She shows us what we must keep de manding and expecting of those cinema- graphic visions as they are splashed on the screen. If moviemakers are going to talk about us and pretend to know something about us, then we must demand that they tell the truth, that they do it like Cher did it in Silkwood. They must say that we are human, that we have sensitivities, loyalties, intelli gence, that we are no more bizarre than the rest of this bizarre world, and less bizare than a whole lot of it That we are just one role in the slice of human life. Because we are. I went to see Silkwood because I admired the courage of one woman against The System. I cam e away respecting the movie for that and more. Just Out February 3-February 17