Image provided by: Clackamas Community College; Oregon City, OR
About The Clackamas print. (Oregon City, Oregon) 1989-2019 | View Entire Issue (March 5, 2008)
Clackamas Print Arts§?ulture 5 Wednesday, March 5, 2008 ■he road to becoming Jayne ily Walters ÿ Culture Editor gine juggling two jobs, one ch often makes you cry, and it. kily, when Jayne Stevens emotion at work, she is sim- /ens is the college’s artist idence for the 2007-2008 year. Every fall, Clackamas ory Theatre (CRT) Director i Smith-English awards ■le-yearl position of artist in ce to a current or former Clackamas student who has taken his acting courses and performed in several of the school’s productions. As artist in residence, Stevens assists students in the acting classes and helps with the student-directed one-act plays each term. She is also in Clackamas’ main-stage shows, which gives students the opportu nity to know her as an actress as well as a teacher. In addition, she is a member of the CRT. “The opportunity that David (Smith-English) has provided is just amazing; he has given me pro fessional credits for my work with STEVENS 'jxes of an actress ickamas Community College: ily: "The Importance of Being Earnest" Crimes of the Heart" e; "Lend Me a Tenor" 3: "A Lie of the Mind" enajfUncle Vanya" hel: "Reckless" rgaret: "Quilters" ■ rtlaitid State University: ma: "fox'd" ira: "Blithe Spirit" lia: "Big Love" ackamas Repertory Theatre: .*en: "Moon Over Buffalo" di: "Fuddy Meers" te: "The Fantasticks" tist Repertory Theatre: ture Kirf: "Owen Meany's Christmas Pageant" “As a little kid, I loved to play imagination games,” she said. “I did community theatre as a child. My first play was ‘The Wizard of Oz,’ when I was five. I was a Munchkin. I just sort of have always done it.” Stevens continued to do community theatre and was involved with school productions in high school before coming to Clackamas. She enjoyed partici pat ing CRT,” she said. Stevens balances her theatre duties while working as a visu al merchandiser in Portland, Jayne which involves designing Stevens and coordinating dis- plays the plays at West Elm, charac- a furniture store ter Rachel in that currently “Reckless,” which has stores in the theatre depart- 15 states ment put on earlier through- out the coun try. It is not so star tling that she has become a talented actress; she started perform ing and fell in love with theatre at a very young age. in sports when she was young, in addition to theatre, but had to decide between the two later on. “When I was in eighth grade, I had to choose, and I chose theatre,” she said. One of Stevens’ favorite roles while she was a student at the col lege was Meg in “Crimes of the Heart.” “It is a show about three sis ters,” she said. Another memorable produc tion for her was “A Lie of the Mind,” in which she played an older woman. “I wore a fat-suit, and that was fun,” she said. “It is fun playing ugly people; it is like you can just let out all the ugliness that you keep inside most of the time.” “A Lie of the Mind” is also by her favor ite playwright, Sam Shepard, whom she admires like a celeb rity. Stevens will graduate this spring with a Bachelor of Science degree in theatre arts from Portland State University, where she trans- ferred after attending Clackamas. Contributed by Jennifer Schwartzman raps piece together well but do not appeal to the student masses Continued from QUILTERS, Page 1 : play is set in the prairies, during ca’s expansion west. Life stories ired and passed on through quilts, te of the main social events among i is tQ.create these remembrances, pie are given quilts when they are bom, and they live and die with quilts. The musical describes how the art form came to be in the west and the pioneers’ many uses for it. Quilts became memen toes, passed on by families who stayed east instead of moving west. They were also used as burial shrouds, the final rest ing places for those who died along the journey across the prairie. The characters, through an all-female cast, make quilts from scraps of fabric. Putting the scraps together could be a means of describing how the play is orga nized. “Quilters” is a compilation of scenes, each represented by a specific quilting Mistymarie Wilks-Salguero Clackamas Print f the characters of “Quilters,” the mother, Sara (left), and one of her daughters, Margaret (middle), ?dly show off a large quilt square pieced together from scraps of fabric. block pattern. Every pattern introduces a new series of memories. The show does not have one overall tone; instead, the patchwork way in which the play is arranged allows for the scenes to go from heart-wrenchingly depress ing to overly exuberant in a matter of seconds. This adds a lot of variation to the plot, but at the same time, it makes it difficult to really care about any of the characters. In one scene, a woman gives birth in the dark and screams at the top of her lungs while the band plays a cacophonic sound. Shortly after, all the lights on stage turn on and a gathering of whimsical school girls prance around holding a set of corncob dolls. “Quilters” obviously caters to women, from the overall theme of bonding via quilting to jokes about who of the charac ters has gotten her period. The cast was well-selected, and the music is a definite strong point for the show, but these factors cannot hide the simple truth that the production lacks something important, something with which everyone can connect. I was surprised that the college chose to put on this particular musical. I found it hard to relate to the story, and the focus doesn’t seem appropriate for the college audience, let alone a college male like me. This is made evident by the fact that the majority of the audience members were over 50 and female. Most of the young men who attended were with a woman. Although “Quilters” has a lot of upsides, including its sometimes-very- dark sense of humor, the subject matter is its downside. I realize that, primarily, it is a tale for women, and in light of that, I brought along a female fnend of mine, who I figured would be able to offer a woman’s perspective. What she said to me about a quarter of the way through the play solidi fied my opinion that this is not a musical for college students, and that was “I hate you for this.”
