Times Changed And Venue Confirmed For MADE IN OREGON Readings

Technological mysteries mix with existential epiphany and a fair amount of anthropomorphic activity at the 2009 edition of Portland Center Stage’s JAW: A Playwright’s Festival. Featured plays in progress include Marc Acito’s dust up about gay penguin dads, Birds of a Feather; Pulitzer-prize nominee Will Eno’s Middletown; JorDan Harrison’s typography obsessed mystery Futura; 36 Views author Naomi Iizuka’s Berkley-Rep-bound ????? (Translation: Concerning Strange Devices from the Distant West); Yale student Kim Rosenstock’s Michelangelo inspired romance of the bizarre, 99 Ways to F**k a Swan; and Seattle-based playwright Stephanie Timm’s On the Nature of Dust.

The Festival will open with the Made in Oregon series, featuring pieces from Brian Kettler, Sue Mach, Andrea Stolowitz and Nick Zagone, with performances at 6:00 pm July 13th through the 16th on the Main Stage, Gerding Theater at the Armory.

Workshop Readings of the core JAW selections will be held Friday, July 24th through Sunday, July 26th on the Portland Center Stage Main Stage at 4:00 pm and 8:00 pm each day. All JAW performances are free and open to the public.

Made in Oregon

(July 13- 16, Main Stage)

The Made in Oregon Series features Oregon playwrights for one night only readings of works in progress.

In School Suspension by Brian Kettler

Monday, July 13th at  6:00 pm

At an unnamed private high school, the stage is set for a school shooting simulation.  It’s just like a fire drill, except the students might not make it out alive.  An actor has been hired to play the shooter and the school’s most dangerous students, Danny and Angela, are locked away in an abandoned Spanish classroom.  A passionate English Teacher wants to make sure his students experience authentic feelings of fear and terror.  What could possibly go wrong?

The Lost Boy by Sue Mach

Tuesday, July 14th at 6:00 pm

Loosely based on true events that took place in Germantown in 1874, The Lost Boy centers on the abduction of a four-year-old boy from a wealthy suburb. Faced with a $20,000 ransom demand —an exorbitant sum at the time— the boy’s father, Christian Ross, refuses to pay.  Ross is only allowed to respond to the kidnappers through brief messages in the personal sections of various newspapers, leading to a bizarre series of public communications that result in the boy’s abduction becoming a media event and negotiations rapidly disintegrate, leaving a father (and a community) poised helpless on The Edge of disaster.

The Missing Pieces by Nick Zagone                        

Wednesday, July 15th at 6:00 pm

Hunter S. Thompson once said, “When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.” Take a trip back to Portland in May 1980 when another “era of change” and major recession was also completely covered in Mt. St. Helen’s volcanic ash. In this selective memory play a young boy comes of age when “Keep Portland Weird” didn’t need to be uttered; it was everyday life.

The Bad Family by Andrea Stolowitz                 

Thursday, July 16th at 6:00 pm

Alexandra is an angry 15 year old hell-bent on breaking up her mother’s already strained marriage to her step-father. When Alexandra discovers the contact information for her real father, she decides to steal her mother’s car and pay him a visit, accompanied by her neighbor, Wael. With her mother and step-father in bickering hot pursuit Alexandra and Wael arrive at her father’s desert trailer only to learn that he has taken off, leaving his very pregnant “partner”, Heather, alone. In this comic tale of families gone wrong, the six characters are forced to work through their differences and eventually accept that all families may be “Bad Families,” but they are also essential to who we are.

JAW Festival Weekend

(July 24 – 26, Main Stage)

The JAW Festival Weekend is the culmination of a full week of dramaturgy, rehearsals and rewrites for 6 plays-in-progress selected from 100s of submissions received from around the country. An important next step in the development of new work, these free to the public workshop readings allow the playwrights to collaborate with professional actors and dramaturges and expose an early draft of their work to audience feedback.

Birds of a Feather by Marc Acito                          

Friday, July 24th at 4:00 pm

Two gay penguins trying to hatch a rock in the Central Park Zoo, a pair of hawks tossing gristle off a Fifth Avenue co-op and the bird-brained humans who try to stop them collide in this hilarious true story from the writer USA Today said delivered "high-stakes pranks a la Moliere."

Middletown by Will Eno                              

Friday, June 24th at 8:00 pm

Regular people in a regular town reckon with the mystery of being, the mystery of non-being, and with all the mysteries in between, while trying to stay calm and neighborly. Tons of fine dust rains down from outer space. The population will remain stable. Loneliness is dealt with, here and there, and the Librarian reads out loud.

Futura by JorDan Harrison                   

Saturday, July 25th at 4:00 pm

Why do letters look the way they do? What is the difference between writing a word and typing it? How can a font change the future? On her first day back at the University, a rogue Professor is out to avenge her missing husband – and the lost art of ink on paper.

????? (Translation: Concerning Strange Devices from the Distant West ) by Naomi Iizuka                       

Saturday, July 25th at 8:00 pm

A wealthy American woman arrives in Yokohama in 1885 looking for the “real” Japan.  She befriends an American photographer living in Yokohama who makes his living taking pictures of rickshaw drivers, geishas, and monks for the consumption of a Western audience hungry for images of Old Japan. A century later, an American tourist with secrets of his own comes to Japan to purchase a handful rare, Meiji era photographs.  In between, we explore how photography captures the anxieties and hopes of lovers and strangers, and in a larger sense, how photography preserves, obscures, and reveals truths about a culture very different from our own. This play is slated for world premiere in Berkeley Rep’s 2009-2010 season.

On The Nature of Dust by Stephanie Timm                   

Sunday, July 26th at 4:00 pm

Clara Bliss was a typical teenager until she turned into an ape. When Clara begins to devolve into more and more primitive species, her mother, Shirley, sets out on a crusade to keep Clara from changing that instead forces her to do some changing of her own.

99 Ways to Fuck a Swan by Kimberly Rosenstock           

Sunday, July 26th at 8:00 pm

A long, long time ago, Leda makes love to a swan.  3,000 years later, Michelangelo paints a picture.  350 years later, Rudolph impulsively buys it. 128 years later, Dave and Fiona stand in a museum, gazing at what is left. Set in a world of bizarre romantic obsessions and everyday ineptitude, 99 Ways to Fuck a Swan explores the dark corners of desire, and the eternal mysteries of love.

Also returning to JAW 2009 will be the Theater Fair, Promising Playwrights, site-specific performances, and Community Artists Labs that have been entertaining and informative hallmarks of previous years’ festivals.

For 11 years JAW has created a space for playwrights to grow as writers and as professionals. Of the 40 plus plays that have received workshops at the festival, more than 50% have received world premiere productions at a regional theaters ranging from the NY Theater Workshop to Yale Repertory Theater to Portland’s own Third Rail Rep. Nine JAW plays have later received fully staged productions at Portland Center Stage, giving Portland a strong national reputation for not only incubating new work, but helping to see that work to successful fruition.

JAW: A Playwright’s Festival is made possible in part by funding from The Oregon Cultural Trust, The James F. and Marion L. Miller Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, RACC/Work for Art, the Maybelle Clark McDonald Foundation, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Kinsman Foundation and the Oregon Arts Commission.

Portland Center Stage inspires our community by bringing stories to life in unexpected ways.  Established in 1988 as an off shoot of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, PCS became an independent theater in 1994 and has been under the leadership of Artistic Director Chris Coleman since May 2000.  The company presents a blend of classic, contemporary and original productions in a conscious effort to appeal to the eclectic palate of theatergoers in Portland.  PCS also offers a variety of education and outreach programs for curious minds from six to 106, including the PCS GreenHouse, a school of theater.

The Gerding Theater at the Armory houses a 599-seat Main Stage and a 200-seat black box Studio.  It was the first building on the National Register of Historic Places, and the first performing arts venue, to achieve a LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) Platinum certification. The Gerding Theater at the Armory opened to the public on Oct. 1, 2006.  The capital campaign to fund the renovation of this hub for community artistic activity continues.

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