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| image by Craig Updegrove |
Four spaces
“Under :30” represents a time limit, an opportunity, a shot at front and center.
The program works like this: Folks submit proposals around March, and Out North selects four to develop from page to stage in just under a year. The creator does the heavy lifting to transform idea to manuscript, and Out North provides technical and production resources to transform the manuscript into performance.
Some of this town’s most refreshing monologues, travelogues, comedy routines and real life stories have emerged from this program, many by people who are not performers.
This year’s cast includes UAA professor and poet Olga Livshin ushering the audience through her Russian immigrant experience; artist and docent Linda Lucky sharing her journey as the caretaker of a friend experiencing Alzheimer’s; consultant and wilderness guide Ellen Maling exploring life and job transitions and decisions; and public health consultant and comedian Duff Pfanner wondering if being vertically challenged is an inferior trait.
Out North’s executive and artistic director Scott Schofield selected this year’s four pieces. “I didn't so much choose these works as react to how clearly they fit together,” he says. “Each explores ‘space’ in its own way: the split space of an immigrant's memory and present; negotiating the spaces of life and work; taking up space with physical size; and then the space of a long journey through memory and eventually death, which took place in the day room of an Alzheimer's facility.”
He considers the program as remarkable as any in the nation in terms of longevity (this is the 17th annual performance) and appeal. Year after year, Alaskans use autobiographical material to create poignant, mind-blowing, silly, absurd, titillating, eye-opening, you-name-it performances about everything from cycling and family roots to conspiracy theories and the secret lives of art instructors.
This year’s show will be performed four times instead of eight to save on production costs. Over the last few years, the first and last shows have sold out while the other six shows didn’t, says Schofield, a major funding cut earlier this year just doesn’t allow Out North to absorb the overhead costs.
“So we hope that Anchorage will pack out the four shows to make a stellar experience for the artists and help Out North get back on our feet financially,” says Schofield.
Cutting down the number of performances also precludes me from doing a review before the show ends, but I can give you a run-down on a few pieces, including Maling’s light-hearted look at tough decisions.
“It’s basically about me trying to figure out what I’m going to do with the next stage of my life,” she says, “and about reconciling different forces in life.”
Her one-woman show includes a song, monologue and interplay with the audience, and pits her drive for working in developing countries against the reality of managing her diabetes. The piece touches on the economic downturn, and the struggles and debates concerning medical insurance, but it mostly centers on the decision-making process.
How do we weigh our dreams and passions against physical and financial health? What obligations tie us to our communities? When should we risk what we know to find what we’ve yet to imagine?
And what do these considerations mean to a wanderer who used work as a river guide, who has maturity but no ties, who has felt the sting of loss and now feels the pull of freedom despite her dependence on medical systems?
Call it nonfiction-theater, if you will, or good old-fashioned storytelling with some slides for good measure, but this and the other three pieces all touch on extremely personal experiences.
“For audiences, it’s ‘reality TV, minus the TV,’” says Schofield. “That is to say, honest, thoughtful, inviting—scandalizing sometimes, too.”
No, these performers won’t do inane, stupid, outrageous things just for the laughs and hype, but they will reveal parts of themselves. Pfanner’s piece about being vertically challenged doesn’t wallow in short jokes as much as unearth a human story and relationship.
After seeing about ten “Under :30” performance over the years, Pfanner finally decided to submit a proposal because “I felt like I had discovered a personal truth about myself as it relates to growing up short and being short, “ he says, “and I felt like I had some life experiences to share about how being short had impacted my life in particular as related to my daughter.”
Though he has done stand-up comedy before, Pfanner has never prepared for or performed a more theatrical piece.
“There’s so much more than you realize,” he says. “When you see a stage production, you know the actors and actresses have spent a lot of time with their lines, but doing this has given me a better sense of the backstage effort—the artistic direction, the lighting, the nuances of voice and connotation, the different ways of looking at the same word.”
Schofield has proved invaluable to the process for Pfanner and others; though he has mastered things like nuance and enunciation, Schofield feels awe each time he sees an “Under :30” performance unfold.
“’Under :30’” is the place to see what too much theater has forgotten,” he says. “That humans make stories and that they are delightful and fascinating and moving in their rawest form.”
AN OUT NORTH FUNDING UPDATE
A national funder pulled $80,000 from Out North because of the theater’s programming, which included films with lesbian characters and a production of “Reefer Madness.” Out North set two goals after the funding cut. They topped the first one—$40,000 by New Year’s Day—with $46,000 by the end of 2010. They hope to raise another $36,000 by Valentine’s Day.
Schofield says, “What's amazing is that a huge proportion of the donations are in increments of less than $250, and the majority of those are coming in at less than $75. Those who can are giving big, and it seems everyone is giving what they can. We are humbled and empowered by this incredible support.”
Under :30 will be performed at 8 p.m. Thursday, Friday and Saturday, Jan. 13 through 15, and 3 p.m. Sunday, January 16, at Out North. Tickets cost $20 at the door, $16.75 on CenterTix.net, and $13 for seniors, students and military members with ID.
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