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About Just out. (Portland, OR) 1983-2013 | View Entire Issue (Jan. 6, 2006)
JANUARY 6, 2006 justout 27 Queer illustrator Nicole J. Georges' Owls and Other Animals fly into Reading Frenzy this month. Queer musician Tara Jane O'Neil contributed to the drawings on display this month at Powell's. Garland, Francesca Sanders' play about a Texas housewife whose drab life is turned around by a Danish visitor. (7 pm. 525 SE Stark St.) Gather around the Portland Polyamory Circle for informal discussions of open relationships and commitment. (7 pm. Laury 503-285-4848.) Just Out presents its first Gay Skate Night! Grease your wheels every third Monday at Oaks Park. (7-9 pm. 1 SE Spokane St. $5 plus canned food items for Esther's Pantry.) TUE • JAN 17 Oregon Tradeswomen present an information session about paid on-the-job training and high-wage career oppor tunities in carpentry, electrical and other construction- related fields at Portland Community College's Workforce Training Center. (2-4 pm. 5600 NE 42nd Ave. Register at 503-335-8200, ext. 21.) Learn to use healing and nurturing touch and movement to open your heart and unlock emotional energy in your body during Men Touching with Heart presented by Q-LAND and LoveTribe. (7-10 pm. $10-$20 donation. RSVP to www. lovetribe, org/menspirit.) WED •JAN 18 Gay-owned Crush introduces house wicca witch Wanda Weegee Wednesdays. Sit back and enjoy a little fortunetelling from a specialist in Tarot readings, casting spells, chanting, making personal charms and celebrity gossip! (7-10 pm. 1400 SE Morrison St.) ErosTouch hosts Men Massaging Men every first and third Wednesday. One-on-one full-body massage in a safe and nurturing environment. No experience necessary. (7-10 pm. $20 donation. Register at 503-493-9421 oreros- touch@earthlink.net.) What a way to make a living. Portland's radical drag troupe presents Sissyboy 9 to 5 with DJs Stormy and Jimme Jamma at Holocene. (11 pm. 1001 SE Morrison St. $5.) THU ♦ JAN 19 Backline, a comprehensive pregnancy options counseling hot line, and Medical Students for Choice present the Oregon premiere of the nationally acclaimed documentary Speak Out: I Had an Abortion followed by a panel of choice experts at Clinton Street Theater. (7 pm 2522 SE Clinton St. $10.) Stephen Elliott, Adam Johnson and Peter Rock read from Stumbling and Raging: More Politically Inspired Fiction at Powell's Books. The anthology of short stories, poems and essays features the illustrated story "Morning Martyrs” by gay contributor Eric Orner. (7:30 pm. 1005 W Burnside St.) The Most Famous Lesbian' Lights the Lights at Defunkt “Whatever expectations you have about what you’re going to see—is not what you’re going to see,” riffs director Kristan Seemel. “This will not be like normal theater.” FRI • JAN 20 Which is why Seemel s take on literary lesbian Humble Divas Elizabeth Lavenue and Mark Steering present Civil Disunion, a musical comedy exploring the challenges and humor of our fractured political climate, through Jan. 21 at Rose City Park Presbyterian Church. Come laugh with them as they forge the foibles of same- sex marriage and parenting, bulldoze the blatant blunders of Bush and dance the dichotomy of our desires! (8 pm. 1907 NE 45th Ave. $5-$20 sliding scale from 503-234-1140 or periwinkle@pcez.com.) Gertrude Stein’s lyrical play Doctor Faustus Lights the Lights is a natch for Defunkt Theatre, Portland’s own powerhouse of imagination. Here, Stein’s avant- garde approach to the well-worn legend actually begins where the story ends, but in a modern, human ist world—without God, but still dealing with a devil. “We get to see the reality of what that means, the In celebrating all things piggy, Queer Fetish moves to Porky's Pub! Splendora and the Gender Fluids return for greasy action, Spittles the Clown hog-slaps butts for the "Loudest Squealer Contest," and guest DJ Vadim joins ChaotiQueer and Storm behind the turntables. Dress code will be enforced. (11 pm. 835 N Lombard St. $3 greasy, $5 fat- free. www. queerfetish-r. us.) fact that you sell your soul for ultimate power in a world where there’s no sin. The word god’ is never mentioned in the play. So, is it any different?” asks Seemel, who last season directed Defunkt’s produc tion of Mac Wellman’s A Murder of Crows. Stein’s playwriting (“Rose is a rose is a rose is a rose”) is fascinated with repetition, sound and musi cality of words, almost surpassing their content, a style Gay Director Embraces Outcast Culture “No matter how much we try often compared with cubism in visual art. “There’s a If there seems to be a humorous touch of Spanish tele not to think of gay culture as an portion of it that’s laid out very much like a play, and novela melodrama in Miracle Theatre’s premiere of Portland outcast culture, it—like the gyp then she says, All right then’—and the whole thing dramatist Dariel Malan’s new play, it serves only to under sies—is a sect within society that is swivels and turns and shatters,” explains Seemel, who score serious propositions. both revered and admired for its describes Stein’s work as “a landscape of a moment— In Mi Vida Git ana, Liliana is a young gypsy girl living culture, but then hated for its a very human moment, very emotional, physical, spa on the streets of Pamplona. She befriends Charlie, an lifestyle,” says Ruiz, who is gay. Mi tial—but she presents that moment from every angle American boy expelled from military school whose father Vida Gitana is about understand in order to truly investigate and capture a human died in Iraq. Liliana and Charlie fall in love, but their elders’ ing and accepting a culture that’s experience. So much art moves forward along a sin prejudices about gypsy culture jeopardize the couple’s long been admonished. It’s always gle line, so much narrative art works in that pattern, future. nice—no matter how that’s trans and she’s the complete opposite instinct of that, which lated—to see that happen, to see a is what makes her unique as a playwright.” “There’s a certain freedom, but also a bit of danger that Seemel’s production will be distinctive, too, re culture embraced.” comes with the gypsy life,” remarks director Dan Ruiz. “It’s Ruiz’s bilingual production configuring Back Door Theatre into a tiny, in-the- also embraces music and dance, round performance area. Faustus himself will literal traditional ly light the lights, physically controlling onstage and company hope to make the story bigger than life, flamenco choreography as well as instruments. And original music will pay homage to allowing a close-up examination of how love can bridge an original score that features the show’s one-time incarnation as an opera libretto, even despised differences. In the play, Charlie and his over- “hip-hop beatbox”—percussive though (this not being normal theater and all) Seemel protective mother come to appreciate a heritage once Western European street music won’t say what’s now sung and what’s spoken. one of those outcast, shunned cultures, but it’s outcast because it’s not understood.” incorporating In tapping the heightened realism of soap opera, Ruiz secreted away even as Liliana and her keeper, the lord of the gypsies, try to figure out what cultural traditions they A young Spanish gypsy girt and an American boy clash cultures in Mi Vida Gitana. are willing to give up and those they won’t sacrifice. The story illustrates a contemporary struggle between fidelities to tradition and the inevitable realities of integration. And the situation is not without parallels to the sexual minorities community. both originating from traditional hand Doctor Faustus plays 8 p.m. Thursdays through clapped rhythms of flamenco Saturdays from Jan. 13 to Feb. 18 at 4319 S.E. [Mimas. Hawthorne Mi Vida Gitana plays Thursdays through Sundays from Jan. 13 to 21 at Blvd. Tickets are $10-$ 15 from 503-481-2960; Thursdays are “pay what you will,” and opening weekend is free. 525 S.E. Stark St. Tickets are $ 10-$ 18 from 503-236-7253. —Timothy Krause —Timothy Krause
