Closing it Out

2011 is fast coming to a close. For some it's the last day of school; for me it's my last h2m rehearsal of the year and the prospect of a few extra nights and weekend days to stretch out, refresh, and recharge before the new year rears its head.

There is a funny place between the balance of rehearsing and creating and the balance of living life. These short days and long nights are good ones for the recharging, the research, and the dreaming required to make theatre.

I'll be spending some time thinking big thoughts for our newest project, Something's Got Ahold of My Heart. We'll be showing a first blush of what we've made in January for the Fertile Ground Festival and then, a long-time dream of mine come true, we'll be installed at Disjecta for Portland2012: A Biennial of Contemporary Art. Unlike most of the work in the space, ours will be (a) in-progress and alive and (b) performance (not painting or sculpture or video). I toured the space last week with Prudence Roberts, the exhibit curator, and Jonathan and Maesie from h2m. My mind was spinning with the possibilities of opening our process to the public in ways that aren't just about sitting in chairs and watching. What are we wanting to show, to share? How do we want to shift our line of inquiry over the weeks? What will opening our process up in this way tell us?

Many questions and many thoughts to keep the darkness at bay. Looking forward to sharing more questions than answers soon.

Something New

We're deep in the early stages of building a new show, a time that always gets me thinking about process. Over the years Hand2Mouth has worked to build performances in a variety of ways, but in the last 6 we're honed in on our own mish mash of building techniques. I like to think of us as the weirdest architecture firm: we know we want to make a building but aren't sure what it will hold or what we want it to look like until we spend a lot of time with our pens, paper, CAD programs, and even some glass, steel and wood.

It is a long unwieldy experience, and I love the fact that I will spend a week reading obsessively about neuroscience and the next listening to Smokey Robinson non-stop. From here someone else will pull out the common thread and make a dance about it, someone else will find some text to sing, and our designers will make it look beautiful, and in nine months someone will sit in a dark theater and watch it happen live.

If you'd like to see what our minds are looking to now, check out the project blog for this new beast. Who knows, you might see it next on stage.

September Showings

Fall is here and we're ready to do a little showing of our work alongside one of our favorite events of the year: PICA's TBA Festival! 10 days of excellent performance (dance! theatre! music! more!) to help us make it through the rest of the year.

Here's what h2m will be sharing;
Sunday, Sept 11
My Mind Is Like An Open Meadow
2pm, Conduit Dance
918 SW Yamhill St #4

Undine
4:30pm, Fall.ART.Live at Director Park
815 SW Park Ave

Saturday, Sept 17
Uncanny Valley + Seth Nehil's Children's Games
2pm, Portland Actors Conservatory
1436 SW Montgomery

All showings are free. Hope to see you there!

Summer Screen #1

Clouds are predicted for this Friday evening, so come inside and join us for the first of our three part Summer Screen series at the mOuth (810 SE Belmont). We'll be showing Dark Matters, Kidd Pivot Frankfurt RM Crystal Pite's 2009 performance as filmed by On the Boards TV. Doors open at 7pm, film is at 7:30. Tickets are just $5 at the door and we'll have bar with cheap beer, wine and free popcorn.

About Dark Matters from Pite's website:

“Dark matter” is the terra incognita of our day. Comprising roughly 96 percent of the observable universe, dark matter affects the speed, structure and evolution of galaxies, yet its nature remains a mystery. This potent, affecting darkness is paralleled in Crystal Pite’s creation, Dark Matters. Emerging out of Pite’s curiosity and fascination with the unseen forces at work on mind and body, Dark Matters, features six extraordinary dancers, and a stunning original score from long-time collaborator Owen Belton.

Dark Matters is structured into two distinct acts: Act One portrays the tension between creation and destruction through a decidedly theatrical fable; the players are manipulated by anonymous puppeteers who drive the narrative yet subvert its artifice. Act Two is pure dance, with choreography that aspires to the impossible purity and grace of a marionette, while grappling with the essential question of free will, and the conflict inherent in manipulation. The revelations of Act One inform the way we view the dancing in Act Two.

With dark matter beautifully embodied in the shadowy puppeteer, Dark Matters is a haunting portrait of the unknown, a performance that pulls itself apart in an attempt to discover what it’s made of.

Come see the filmed version now and in March 2012 see it live as presented by White Bird Dance. More on Summer Screen #2 (Orgy of Tolerance, Troubleyn Jan Fabre) and #3 (B.C., Janvier 1545, Fontainebleau. Christian Rizzo l'Association Fragile) coming soon!

Coming Up! July - Forever

If you missed the run of Erin Leddy's beautiful (and 5-time Drammy Award winning performance) My Mind Is Like An Open Meadow back in January, please do not fear.

If you're in Portland, you have two chances to see the show on July 15 & 16 at the first (and hopefully annual!) 1 Festival. This brand new festival, co-created by Portland favorite Mizu Desierto and housed by The Headwaters, is a celebration of solo performance across dance and theatre. The festival kicked off yesterday evening with a night of dance and continues through Sunday, July 17. If you are in Seattle, keep your eyes peeled for forthcoming details on performances in October. And for those way up north in Vancouver B.C, keep the evening of Feb 1, 2012 free for My Mind Is Like An Open Meadow's Canadian premiere at The PuSH Festival.

More performances in Oregon and around the west (and the world...) to be announced soon.

Also, save the dates for Summer Screen: new performance on film. Fridays August 5, 19 and September 2 join h2m at the mOuth (810 SE Belmont Street) for beer, wine, and the best contemporary performance on the big screen.

Risk/Reward Profile #7: Portland Experimental Theatre Lab

Wait, there is one more group! This year Portland Experimental Theatre Lab takes you out of the theatre for a little bit.

You can try and catch Wittgenstein's Mistress tonight, but if last night was any indication all three showings will sell out very quickly. 27 lucky people (9 per show) get to take this 15-minute audio tour from one of Portland's newest performance groups.

This work is a bi-coastal collaboration between recent New York transplant, Rebecca Lingafelter, NYC Performance Lab 115's resident sound designer Mark Valadez and their NY Director Meiyin Wang. Meiyin already flew back east, but you can read more about her here.

Each audience member gets outfitted with an ipod and heads into a world that blends sound, movement and imagery while following a woman who claims to be the last person on earth.

We love when new performance groups move to Portland!

Risk/Reward Artist Profile #6: PEOPLE PERSON

Triple threat writer/actor/solo performers Joe von Appen and Angela Fair combine forces as PEOPLE PERSON, using the buddy system to see if they can monologue their way out of humanity’s long dark night of the soul.

Angela was a member of performance art barn burners House of Cunt and has created a name for herself with a distinct brand of psycho-sexual social satire, called “creepy” and “uncanny” by area critics. Joe has shared the stage with Reggie Watts and The Larry Sanders Show guest Tim Miller, and has toured his work along both coasts, opening for indie-rock darlings Starfucker and Why? To date, PEOPLE PERSON has performed exclusively underground shows including a friend’s benefit and an installation series at Disjecta.

We're psyched to see these two perform together and provide them with a larger platform for their work. We've loved them as solo artists for years, and they're both Risk/Reward alums - Joe in 2009 and Angela in 2009 and 2010. We're not saying we had anything to do with nudging them toward a collaboration, but we're glad it happened nonetheless.

Risk/Reward Artist Profile #5: Jessica Jobaris & General Magic

My first experience of the general magic of Jessica Jobaris was squeezed into a private karaoke room a year ago with her and 30 other people at the famed Seattle's Best. I believe she was wearing a form fitting plaid leisure suit and rocking out on air guitar, but my memories are foggy -- either way she made an impression.

I was also lucky enough to see this performance up at Northwest New Works two weeks ago! I don't want to give anything away, but Jessica describes it as "part comical dance music mayhem, part dramatic performance art" and the Seattle Times described their show at NWNW as "an unleashing of total anarchy that found crazed humor in whiplash incongruities of action and tone."

All I can say is it features falling down stairs, men in suits playing tug of war, various degrees of nudity (gratuitous or not: you decide) and a half-inflated globe bouncing into the audience. I also wasn't sure how much of the performance was improvised, which is always (to me) an exciting line to walk and to witness.

Jessica Jobaris returned to Seattle in 2009 after spending a year working in Berlin, and she has been part of the dance scene in Seattle for over ten years, performing with Lingo dance theater, Scott/Powell Performance, Maureen Whiting Company, Bryon Carr Performance and SaltHorse.


This time around she's working with some sweet collaborators, some of whom have graced the Risk/Reward stage in the past (hello, Mike Pham!) 

We can't wait to see Jessica Jobaris and General Magic take the stage at Risk/Reward!

Risk/Reward Artist Profile #4: Zac Nelson & Stephanie Simek

Zac and Stephanie are the faces of our festival this year! The fridge, or rather the contents of the fridge, will be their jumping point for the work you'll see at Risk/Reward. They "will be preparing a meal in front of a live audience while simultaneously looping and manipulating the sounds of cooking to create a performance that can be absorbed on several sensory levels- sight, taste, and sound." Mmm, sounds delicious!

Stephanie Simek's work is described as coming from a "world where science and logic connect with the surreal and the sweet." In addition to her performances and installations, Stephanie designs a line of wearable accessories using unusual materials and forms. Her unique collection can be found in publications, exhibitions, and shops worldwide. Visit her and her wares here.

The second half of the duo, Zac Nelson, has released over 13 albums of music on numerous labels in genres such as experimental, ambient, pop and avant progressive rock. He has shown his art consisting of large-scale abstract paintings and sculptures made with kombucha cultures, pig intestines, bull kelp,metal and moss in galleries along the west coast. Visit him here.

You could spice up your summer wardrobe from these two!

We are very excited to welcome Zac and Staphanie to the Risk/Reward stage.

Preview Preview Preview

While we are excited to profile Risk/Reward Festival artists ourselves, it is also exciting to read the words of others. Read Robert Tyree's take on ultra HERE and Willamette Week's take HERE.

Risk/Reward Artist Profile #3: Part and Parcel

Another artist fresh off a successful appearance at Northwest New Works is Part & Parcel (choreographer Allie Hankins, performing with Mary Margaret Moore). Her piece By Guess & By God was warmly received in Seattle, and now Risk/Reward audiences will have an opportunity to see this new work described by Seattlest as, “profoundly effective piece… emotionally deep without either irony or indulgence.”

Hankins takes nautical images as her jumping off point for this piece that, “investigates the way the body internalizes, becomes undone by, and transmits the heartache of loss, and the subsequent disorientation of longing for someone who is gone forever.”

Playing with movement that evokes a vessel tethered between the past and the present and buffeted by desire, this work is highly influenced by Hankin’s experience choreographing for Seattle performance-makers, Implied Violence. Working with the company, Hankins developed, “a clarified movement aesthetic and enriched understanding of dramaturgy.”

The exchange of influences between performing artists of different stripes through collaboration and mutual support is one of the things we love about making work in Portland and one of the intentions behind the Risk/Reward Festival itself. Help us welcome Allie and the rest of this year’s artists at our Meet the Artmakers event on Sunday, June 26 afternoon from 3 – 5pm in the Artists Rep lobby. Mingle with performers, designers, directors, producers and enjoy snacks and coffee. Who knows, maybe you’ll meet your next collaborator!

Risk/Reward Artist Profile #2: Kyle Loven

Jonathan, Jerry and I drove up to Seattle this weekend to see the first weekend of the Northwest New Works Festival. Amidst the dance, theatre and music offerings on display was When You Point at the Moon, a creepy fable acted out via puppets, projections and recorded sound.

The creator of this stark and surreal world is the nimble Kyle Loven, who calls the piece a cautionary tale for adults. Kyle was inspired by an eastern moon myth that warns children to "never point at the moon, or your ears will be cut off."

The Stranger calls Kyle Loven "a burgeoning genius," and the Seattle Times said Kyle's piece this weekend was "another dark horse coming into the light." We are thrilled to bring his work to Portland and to see how it plays out in the context of the Risk/Reward Festival.

You can listen to Kyle and Portland's own Kate Sanderson Holly (who also rocked it up at NWNW!) interview each other about their respective works here.

And you can watch an excerpt of his earlier work, my dear Lewis, here.

And you can learn more about Kyle and his projects at his website: www.kyleloven.com

Risk/Reward Artist Profile # 1: Bobbevy

Palace of Crystal is the first piece created under Suniti Dernovsek and David Stein’s new moniker Bobbevy (formerly Hot Little Hands). New name, sure, but they are still the same inspiring, rockstar duo of dancer and painter. Watch these little short movies for a bit of insight into how their talents really play out.

David is the Painter Suniti is the Dancer, part 1

David is the Painter Suniti is the Dancer, part 2
 

We are thrilled to be able to showcase Bobbevy’s Palace of Crystal at Risk/Reward. It will be the first showing of this work set to premiere in the fall. It will take audiences “through the metamorphosis from melancholia to bliss” as they explore the human desire for happiness and the strange journeys one might take to get there. This piece will look at the ‘happiness industry’ this ever-evolving cornucopia of self exploration and practice, both abstract and concrete that strives to create the positive ideal. 

 

No doubt we can expect to see Suniti’s dancers embody her unique, precise and haunting choreography with beautiful design elements, including hanging diamonds, from David. The piece also features video from artist John Bacone (who made the films seen above) and music from Hand2Mouth favorite and recent collaborator, Ash Black Bufflo.

For more on David and Suniti and their own quest for happiness follow 
these links:

Bobbevy on the web: www.bobbevy.com

David Stein: www.davidstein.com

Listen Up

We're honored to be a featured guest on Dmae Roberts special Pushing Boundaries series this week. Dmae visits H2M during rehearsal for Uncanny Valley and chats with Director Jonathan Walters, Dramaturg Alex Huebsch and Performer Faith Helma.

Listen to the show live on KBOO on Tuesday, May 10 at 11am or download it later on in the day. You may even win tickets for Uncanny Valley.

Study Hall with Hand2Mouth

For Uncanny Valley, Hand2Mouth is excited to offer our first study guide: a compilation of articles, interviews, source material, design sketches and resources for educators, students and armchair intellectuals. The guide features in-depth information on the development of Uncanny Valley, devised theatre, and the study of memory. It will be available online and at the show.

Below is an excerpt from an interview that will appear in the guide between Uncanny Valley dramaturg Kate Bredeson and director Jonathan Walters.

Kate: What is Uncanny Valley about?

Jonathan: This piece sets up a pretty simple premise. What if each member of a team of highly skilled performers in front of a live audience, are guided into one of their own individual memories? Not that each person will retell the memory, but each person will actually relive the memory in real time for all to witness. The show sets up this idea, makes it happen, and looks at the impact of this special channeling, this living through the past, while a hundred strangers watch.

After this goes on for a while, these very personal memories begin to float and pass around the room and slip easily (or sometimes painfully) from one performer to another and then over into the audience. I hope eventually in this altered world the performance slowly becomes a special setting for the audience members to start to relive and encounter their own memories privately, but in a crowded group setting.

K: What is the goal of working on one production over such a long development period? Why not develop several different shows during this time instead?

J: We do work on several shows at once, and did tour and rework older shows while creating this newest work. In the last year or so we've toured our show Everyone Who Looks Like You to New York, California, Oregon and Washington and created a brand new solo show, My Mind is Like An Open Meadow.

The long development process, punctuated with breaks to work on other pieces or return to more “finished” work, allows us to have long periods of time where our unconscious minds are searching (and providing) answers and insight for the next round of work. These breaks also allow us to become less emotionally tied to the work so we can be cleaner and more objective about artistic decisions towards cutting the material in the shows.

K: What has been the most difficult thing about trying to stage the subject of memory?

J: To not make it seem like a replayed story. We've all heard stories, retellings of events in someone's (real or fictional) life. This show is an attempt to be IN a memory and be surprised and amazed by what you find when you enter in and can stay and visit and spend time there. We had to keep veering away from STORY techniques and find a whole new language for living in a memory in a public space, with voyeurs present. It wasn't (and still isn't) easy to do convincingly.

K: How does Uncanny Valley relate to other works by Hand2Mouth over the past decade?

J: It is right there in the canon. We will be able to look back on the last five years and have a few key full-ensemble shows that feel are very contemporary and strongly in our aesthetic: Repeat After Me, Everyone Who Looks Like You, City of Gold and this one. All those shows combine a use of amplified sound, direct address to the audience, hyper-theatricality, sense of live event, emotional fierceness and a rich fully designed performance setting.

Where I think this stands out is in its harkening back to our earlier, more mystical work, combined with these newer elements, which makes for a full embrace of the unknown, the uncanny, the strange and odd, the mysterious, the unsettling, the illogical... those elements are always in our work, but it has been a long time since they are given equal weight and power.

K: What is next for H2M?

J: We tour our show about family, Everyone Who Looks Like You, to San Francisco in June, and then we will host our annual Risk/Reward Festival of New Performance in Portland a week later, bringing in new contemporary short works from performers from across the Northwest.

After that we begin work on a brand new ensemble piece we are calling (for now) Love. Songs. that will look at long term romantic commitment, and use a heap of songs (some written by us, some pre-existing pop/jazz/country) and high intensity dance and voice to try and tackle that beautiful, complex idea.

And then we'll start touring this show, Uncanny Valley, hopefully all over the West Coast, the U.S., the world and then on to other, alternate planets.

Nearing the Valley

It's hard to believe that we are less than two weeks away from opening the beast still known as Uncanny Valley. We've come a long way since August 2009 when we were dreaming up what this new, then, untitled show would be. Here are a few notes from the archives:

Wilder, bigger
Performance in a public pool
Sexing the Cherry
Space Opera / sci-fi material inspired / science dark matter
- a big cheesy over the top thing
Stephen Hawking writes our show
- using a real scientist
The structure of Sci-Fi
- archetypal series of actions mashed up
- six texts become the one text
Conjunction of Opera & Sci-Fi
Extant text sources
Horror aspect of scary thing
Anxiety
Pregnancy
Back to the land movement
Escapism / Celebrity obsession
Michael Jackson / Sci Fi / Pregos
Impersonators
Rags to Riches

Ensemble created show that mashes up several text sources: fantastical scientific to create a bracing mythical story that has surprise guests appearing on-stage.

...this show mashes the realities and nightmares of earth including science including outerspace, michael jackson and pregrancy and anxiety.

...anxiety of darkness, of the darkness of space.

Show about duality of escapism through seeking a return to earth and a return to the stars.

H2M show explores the emerging and historical enxiety about satisfaction, excess and escaping engaging a promient scientist and fantasy writer to collaborate on a script and will also be site specific

Multi media extravaganza explores the anxieties of the modern age through travels into the outer unexplored regions of space and travels inward to the body as we try to give birth to a new way of thinking that will really just be the same thing over and over again.

I am still interested in the version of Uncanny Valley that features 50 Michael Jackson impersonators in a public pool, but until then, this one is pretty exciting. See you May 12 - 22.

Risk/Reward applications now available!

http://www.hand2mouththeatre.org/riskreward.html

The deadline to submit is April 15.

Questions? Contact jerry@hand2mouththeatre.org

where the fearless dreamers reside

Notes from our retreat last weekend -- where we talked about everything from new new projects to ideal touring locales to what we'll be doing in September 2013. 

At some point we were discussing what initially drew everyone to working with Hand2Mouth, and why they kept on -- and here is what people said:

• creating new work with a personal style and voice
• people first, artists second
• the thought that all original imagistic work can hit on a deeper than intellectual level
• felt like the only game in town that was making work with rigor
• the people, challenged artistically
• Jonathan and Faith, now all the people involved
• chance to put myself, stories, and ideas on-stage
• long-lastingness of the people and the work
• City of Gold, keep on because I love everyone and believe in work with own voice
• because the fearless dreamers reside in h2m
• the energy, the now, the you
• important work was being done, not bullshit
• chance to try new things and be involved

Wooster inspiration

Via Culturebot -- an interview with Ari Fliakos about the making of Vieux Carre:

The performers, sound, video people, we’re all there in the beginning, and we’re all material until Liz has a chance to edit it down. It’s kind of a muddy soup. It’s a slow accumulation once you start rehearsing of things that stick to the wall. You keep throwing things against the wall, again and again and again, and then things start to stick. Sometimes you tear it all down, and then you come back to it and you know where it fits. We tend to work in four- or six-week chunks, which is a tremendous luxury. If we’ve been working on a show for 2-3 years, it’s really much less than that. To be able to leave something and come back to it isn’t something people usually have the opportunity to do in the theater.

H2M on retreat

We all went on retreat last weekend so we could check in with each other, talk about the next three years, play board games, stage crazy dance offs and take turns imitating Erin in My Mind Is Like An Open Meadow.

One of my favorite things about Hand2Mouth is how, when the party is right, we tend to turn it into an unofficial rehearsal / long form improv / dance off (except a bit wilder & more drunken).

Unfortunately, I don't have any photos of our dance offs... but I do have shots from our more sober & reasoned discussions:

 

Collaborating

To toot our own horn for a moment, congrats to H2M and our amazing Uncanny Valley Dramaturg Kate Bredeson on receiving the 2011 Literary Managers and Dramaturgs of the Americas Residency Grant. Kate will use the support to continue and deepen her relationship with Hand2Mouth and Uncanny Valley.

From the LMDA blog:

The Literary Managers and Dramaturgs of the Americas (LMDA) is pleased to announce the recipients of the 2011 Residency Grant: Portland, Oregon, theatre company Hand2Mouth and dramaturg Kate Bredeson. LMDA offers a $2,000 stipend for a dramaturgical residency within a theater project, program and/or community that seeks an on-site dramaturgical presence but is unable to fund a dramaturg at this time. This round of grants saw fifteen applications, and the selection process was overseen by the Chair of LMDA’s Committee on Programs, Stephen Collela, along with committee members Joanna Falck and Diane Brewer. LMDA’s Residency program is designed to foster partnerships between dramaturgs and theater communities that will grow into strong, well-defined, ongoing dramaturgical relationships and positions within the world of theater at large.

More on us and Kate here.

Solo shows

Interesting post on 2AMt about what people think about when they hear the word solo show: "the implication, without further context, can be that the purpose of the show is ego on display, a virtuoso display of craft, or a virtuoso display of confession." 

This has been on my mind since I think Erin's show (which is playing in Portland through Sunday!), and my show too, fall outside of what most people think of as a "solo show". But what, then, do we call these shows? Do we just not mention at all that they're solo? If my memory serves, that's what Odin Teatret does -- they make no distinction between shows with one performer or shows with five.

What do you think? Those of you who have seen My Mind Is Like An Open Meadow or Undine: what would you call these shows? Or do you think it's 100% accurate to call these solo shows?

National Gathering for New/Devised Theatre Makers

Just read this amazing convening coming up in late January at the Arena Theatre in Washington D.C., with 100 makers/shakers of new work gathering to talk about the ABUNDANCE (the convening is called 'From Scarcity to Abundance', referring to the new blush of focus on new work in the theatre/performance world) of new work in the US now.

Read about it here on the New Play Institute's blog

Read about the convening, and who is coming, here.

Mind Meadow in the news!

My Mind Is Like An Open Meadow opens in one week, y'all!

This is incredibly exciting. And we're not the only ones who think so.

Check out Erin Leddy and Fertile Ground in the January issue of American Theatre!

Also, Culturebot:

A glance at the line-up suggests that Fertile Grounds is almost like a Portland fringe fest, but there’s at least one show I know is a stand-out: Erin Leddy’s My Mind Is Like an Open Meadow.  

And you can listen to Erin, Camille Cettina and Susan Mach chat with Dmae Roberts on KBOO's Stage & Studio.

Meanwhile, other events in Fertile Ground are getting ready too. Among the many fine shows on display, we recommend checking out Theatre Vertigo, Portland Playhouse, Action/Adventure and of course the mighty Mary Oslund at White Bird. 

If you want to buy a Fertile Ground pass to see all these fine shows, you can buy one here. Or if you just want a ticket to Erin's show, why, buy one here!

Yay! One way or another it looks like we're going to be seeing a lot of each other this month.

what we could learn from the music industry right now

The dude from Ok Go (who did that awesome crazy rube goldberg video) has a really interesting piece in the Wall Street Journal -- a lot of what he says coincides with what we here at H2M industries talk about a lot, though the field we're in is different from the music industry in that it never had a version of the big recording studios -- unless you count film. That's a whole different topic though.

Some choice quotes:

"Music is getting harder to define again. It's becoming more of an experience and less of an object. Without records as clearly delineated receptacles of value, last century's rules—both industrial and creative—are out the window."

"The unsigned and unmanaged Los Angeles band Killola toured last summer and offered deluxe USB packages that included full albums, live recordings and access to two future private online concerts for $40 per piece.... What Killola is learning is that making a living in music isn't just about selling studio recordings anymore. It's about selling the whole package: themselves."

And then at the bottom of the article they talk about some other bands:

"A clever music-video concept can be a band's best marketing tool, and savvy acts apply their creativity to their videos as well as their albums. For its song "We Used to Wait," the indie-rock band Arcade Fire collaborated with Google Web developers to create an online video that incorporated customized maps of the viewer's hometown into a dreamscape that spilled across multiple browser windows."

Including JONATHAN'S FAVORITE: the band from those annoying hyundai commercials!

"Pomplamoose, a San Francisco guy-girl duo, has a repertoire of its own endearingly warm pop songs and videos, but it was their homespun versions of hits by Beyoncé, Lady Gaga and Michael Jackson that raked in millions of views on YouTube. Then the group broke into the mainstream with another set of covers: performing holiday tunes such as "Deck the Halls" in TV ads for Hyundai"

Workshops Galore

We've just annouced the line-up of teaching artists and workshop descriptions for our New Work Workshop Series happening Jan 22 - 30. The group looks excellent and we're excited to offer a chance for people to work with a variety of Portland performance makers. The series is happening concurrently with the Fertile Ground Festival so you can see new work locally and then work with local artists to make your own.

Saturday, Jan 22: Tools for Generating New Work with Jonathan Walters (Hand2Mouth)
Sunday, Jan 23: Ensemble-based Text Generation with Rachel Fachner (Collective Dance NY)
Saturday, Jan 29: Creating with the Nomadic Theater Co! with Heather Pearl (Nomadic Theater Co.)
Sunday, Jan 30: Devised Theater: Discovering Creative Process with Kate Sanderson Holly (Fever Theater)

For full workhop descriptions and teaching artist bios, visit hand2mouththeatre.org/nww.html
Workshops are $20 each, $15 each with Fertile Ground Festival Pass, $15 each for two or more.
Register HERE. Space is limited.