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THEATER
................▼................
Performing
wellness
A collaborative approach
makes Living with H IV
powerful theater
by
Thirtieth • i 9 7 1 - 2 O O Í
•
A nniversary
D o w n t o w n Po rtland
Portland A irp o rt
5 0 3.284.9929
9 0 1 SW Y a m h i l l
W ashington Square
5 0 3 .223 .9 5 10
5 0 3.620.22 43
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G ary M orris
abor grins and calls it an “internal cir
cus.” Michael asks himself, “How do I
theatricalize the work?” Kate says, “G et
out of your head— stop thinking!”
Tahor is Portland metal artist Tahor Porter,
and the “circus” is the prcx:ess of telling his life
story as a long-term A ID S survivor. That story is
interpreted and performed hy gay actor Michael
Teufel as part of Living unth HIV: Performing Well
ness III, sponsored hy Interstate Firehouse Cul
tural Center in cooperation with Project Quest.
Kate Hawkes is director and mentor of the
show as well as a kind of mother hen, guiding
the pair through a complex process of empathy
and self-understanding. Sh e’s also working with
four other couples for the production.
This event is the third in a series that began
two years ago as a collaboration between Hawkes,
then director of Artists Repertory Theatre’s com
munity outreach program, and Susan Hedlund, an
oncology social worker at Oregon Health Sciences
University. Inspired in part by Margaret Edson’s
Pulitzer Prize-winning play Wit, about a professor
fighting ovarian cancer, the two created a theatri
cal form to help terminally ill people express them
selves and come to terms with their diseases.
They set up workshops for a small group of
matched writers and actors who would spend sev
eral months getting to know each other and
together create a kind of dual autobiography. The
stories are then performed as theatrical vignettes,
making up the “Performing Wellness” series.
Hawkes encourages the participants to he as
ambitious as possible, incorporating poetry, dance,
dialogue, storytelling, jokes— anything to capture
a life under duress in less than half an hour.
whining, leechlike creature in a gunny sack,
hanging onto its victim.
Hawkes and Hedlund started the Well Arts
Institute, a nonprofit dedicated to exploring
and publicizing the connection between cre
ativity and good health. T he organization bases
its work both on sound science that shows the
traasformative power of art and on their proven
ability to create a strong theatrical experience.
Interest in these events has been high.
Actors now approach Hawkes, rather than vice
versa. T h e plays are performed in high school
and medical school classrooms as well as the
aters. T he quality of the writing hasn’t gone
unnoticed, either; two o f the pieces were short
listed for the Oregon Book Award.
Hawkes says the series has concrete benefits
for both participants and audiences. “Every
human being is an artist," she asserts, “and
when an individual is given an opportunity to
access that...w ellness is facilitated— emotional,
spiritual and psychological.”
A crucial component of this is trust, she
notes. Writer and director must go with their
instincts and move out of the analytical into the
more daunting hut, in this case, more rewarding
realm of feeling. You must “stop thinking,” she
contends, “and trust that artist-child inside.”
awkes endeavors to find actors with both
technical skill and a “deep emotional well.”
i
I
To
avoid them overtaking the story, she
he success of the first two shows indicated this
stresses the power and, indeed, sanctity of the
was a sound approach. Audiences expecting a
words. “Everything you choose to do,” she tells
maudlin sohfest instead found pathos and hu
the actors, “has to support and not overwhelm
mor in such stories as “Traveling with Mr. C ,”
the story.”
which presented cancer as an oily Lothario in a tux
This means no improvisation, although
who laments the “had press” he gets and chillingly
Teufel slyly admits, “If the joke works, you
reminds the woman he’s “involved with” that “I’ll
work the joke.” A familiar face from Portland
always love you, no matter how you lcxik.”
plays such as The Most Fabulous Story Ever Told,
Another segment, “Picking Up the Pieces,”
Things You Shouldn’t Say After Midnight and,
paired a leukemia patient with her “emotional
most recently, After the Zipper, he says one of
baggage,” arrestingly
the
attractions of this work is “the universality
visualized as a
of the stories. W hat the writers talk about is lit
erally life and death.”
The 30-year-old actor is a veteran of the series,
having performed the story of a cancer survivor
named Laura in one of the previous shows. (In
a startling and apparently quite effective
conceit, he played her as a man.)
\
Inevitably, the participants bond in
these circumstances— Laura and Teufel so
; much so that when she passed away, he
read her eulogy. He still gets emotional
_ ¡P * when he talks about her, perhaps in part
because of another personal connection: His
mother, too, died of breast cancer at 50.
Teufel says he’s well matched person-
^ ally with Porter, 48. It doesn’t hurt that
I P the subject’s roller-coaster life, from
Michael Teufel
| which he managed to step off before crash-
(left) and Tabor
I ing, is an actor’s dream.
Porter during
Growing up in the ’60s and 70s, Porter
| sampled all those decades had to offer.