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About Street roots. (Portland, OR) 1998-current | View Entire Issue (Jan. 20, 2017)
Page 10 News Street Roots • Jan. 20-26, 2017 New musical invites audience to ‘see homeless people as people’ BY SUZANNE ZALOKAR S TA F F W R IT E R e are thick in this city with a wonderful glut of talented, passionate artists. Alan Alexander III is one of them, Alexander is a multi-instrumentalist, singer, composer, producer and playwright who grew up in S t Louis and has called Portland home since 1984. In 1988, he ■ A lan Alexander I I I will debut his new production, ‘H omeless (the musical), ’ z a t Portland’s Fertile yo, j . r Ground restival |||feZmbJX iX IK w integrated musical performance sextet who toured with UB40; performed With Ziggy Marley, Third World, Jimmy Cliff, Judy Mowatt, Burning Spear, Toots and the Maytals, and David Lindley; and headlined their own tour of Japan as part of the World’s Fair Expo ’90. In tandem with the success of the band, —,— ,----------- —---- company created to publish and produce^he band’s original music - Dub Squad Music. Today, over 25 years since its inception, Dub Squad Music publishes and produces original music for recording artists, film companies, video producers and performance artists. Alexander has composed source music and original scores for several film and television productions, including “Hear No Evil” (20th Century Fox), “Alien Invaders” (National Endowment for the Arts) and “Stuff’ by director Larry Johnson. Alan recently completed the script and score for “Alan’s Confectionery (the musical),” which debuted before a sold-out audience at the 2015 Fertile Ground Festival. Last month, Alexander was awarded a grant from the Regional Arts & Culture Council to fund a public performance of his latest production, “Homeless (the musical).” A lan Alexander IH, a founding member o f the band Dub Squad, is the creator o f -Homeless ( t t f f ^ a i ) . RACC awarded $733,608 in grants to 92 area artists and 52 nonprofit organizations for artistic projects that will take place in popular because music is associated with Twitter. We got about 170 responses. The 2017. emotion. If you are sad and you break into basic questions was, “If you see a homeless “Homeless (the musical)” will be song, you are really sad. If you’re angry and person on the street, what are you most performed at this year’s Fertile Ground you break into song, you’re really angry. likely to do?” And the four choices were: Festival. Performances will be held at 7 p.m. Feeling joyous? You guessed i t That’s the give them money, give them food, refer Jan. 27, 28 and 29 at the Clinton Street function of music in musical theater: It them to services and the last one was ignore Theater, 2522 S'E Clinton S t accentuates and amplifies the emotional them. The Portland Area Theatre Alliance content Half of about 170 respondents said they launched Fertile Ground in 2009 so Portland would ignore them. S.Z.: Where did the idea, or motivation for theater companies could showcase their new this musical come from? What is the content S.Z.: Wow. work. The festival runs 11 days - Jan. 19-29 that you hope to amplify with this musical? - with more than 45 producers putting on A A .: That was on Twitter, a blind Twitter A.A.i There are a lot of people involved - shows at 44 Portland-area venues. survey. I did that back in June. It was my cast and crew. We hope that when people Suzanne Zalokar: A musical about way of finding out what the general feeling leave the theater, they will have more of a was. , , homelessness - how do music and personal connection to the next homeless homelessness complement each other S.Z.: I wonder what the response would be i f person that they see. A bit more empathy conceptually? we did that survey now, in light o f the cold and see homeless people as people. Alan Alexander III: Musicals are When we started this, I did a survey on See ALEXANDER, page 11
