Out North Season 27 Opening Party

There's Magic Happening at Out North - Season Kickoff

[Looking this over, I realize it gets a bit gushy.  But I'm convinced it's accurate.  There really is something special happening at Out North now.]

The very first time I saw Scott Turner Schofield at Out North I knew this guy was special.  That feeling's been reinforced every time I've seen him in action.  Last night the years of work that Gene Dugan and Jay Browse put into clearing the land, planting the seeds, watering, fertilizing, keeping  the wild animals from trampling it all, are now turning into the magical arts incubator and stage they cultivated.

That's not to say a lot of special performances haven't already happened over the years.  But Scott seems to have sprinkled his own magic dust on Out North.

The season preview attracted a full house to bid on silent auction items, eat and drink, and then to watch Scott emcee the preview show spotlighting Out North Art House residents he's gathered to Primrose and Bragaw.

It's an amazing collection of talent - from Hmong youth musicians, Hispanic Hip Hop, a therapy theater group from Akeela House, youth rappers, a writers' group, 20 something actors troupe, a non-profit that works with disabled students, a dance group, local arts magazine, to an FM radio license - from such a variety of local communities and media.



I have no doubt that the kind of talent we sampled  last night exists in every community.  The difference is that here everything has come together just right to provide the nurturing and mentoring to hone one's craft and confidence, the space and time to  practice and perform, and an administrative infrastructure to get the bills paid and the audience to attend.  That infrastructure includes a lot of volunteers and a charismatic performer/organizer who contributes a special energy and excitement. 

I haven't had time to edit all the video I took of last night's event, but here's part one.

See the original posts here, here, and here.

Visual Art: Community Fundraising Show

Grannie's living room? You can buy it...

REDUX: an Installation of Re-Emerging Art

Friday,September 10th at 6pm-9pm

Free Admission

Part Mad Men, part Design Star, part your best memory of your grandma’s living room, Out North’s “Redux” installation brings back art, furniture, and the experience of an era just passed.Showcasing art re-emerging from the Anchorage community, this affordable art fundraiser turns full-spectrum installation--complete with fondue--on Friday, September 10^th from 6-9pm. Sport your finest retro flairen costume to become a part of the installation. Bring your checkbook: everything is for sale. Except the feeling, this, as “Redux” demonstrates, is yours to keep forever. We neither confirm nor deny the existence of martinis... Come dressed to impress and create a Happening...

Visual Art: Tom Olin

Wheels of Justice: The Photography of Tom Olin
July 16 - August 16 Opening Reception on Friday, July 16th 5-7pm
In celebration of the 20th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act, VSA Alaska at Out North has partnered withAccess Alaska to bring the stunning photography of Tom Olin to Anchorage.
Tom Olin, Director of the Disability Rights Center, is a socio-documentarian. He is currently working on the Disability Rights photo archive project, central to which are his photographs. 
Photos in mainstream media depict the "plight" of the disabled; they are images of pity, heroics, and medical advancements, reinforcing the public perception that disability is negative, pitiful, abnormal, a fate worse than death. By contrast, Olin’s photographs provide a pictorial history of the struggle for civil rights for people with disabilities, in images of power, strength, determination, and passion. 
The exhibition at Out North is mounted at wheelchair height, to honor the vision and perspective of the activists portrayed in the photos. Wheelchairs will be provided for people who do not use them.
If you're confused about why Out North has this "VSA Alaska" term in our title, use this anniversary to check out just how we're working to include all people, no exceptions, as a member of VSA: The International Organization on Arts and Disability.

Music: Wu Man and CrossSound

Out North's 25 year history has brought art on the cutting edge of all genres, from all corners of the earth to Anchorage. Juneau's CrossSound Festival 2010, featuring WU Man, pushes our boundaries even further.

"WU Man is one of the most amazing performers alive. Yo Yo Ma, the Kronos Quartet and Philip Glass, among many others, have worked with her. Besides being the Jimi Hendrix of the pipa, she has revitalized worldwide and popular interest in this Chinese cross between a lute and a mandolin." - Progressive Alaska Blog

In partnership with United States Artists and KNBA, Out North offers you Eastern, Western, and traditional Alaska Native instrument sounds that collide in a star-studded musical supernova. Music lovers looking for a new kind of excellence in sound,
do not miss this concert.

The Oort Cloud featuring Wu Man | Weds., June 30 | 7:15pm | Tickets $20-15 |

Buy Tickets Now

Sponsored by United States Artists, Rasmuson Foundation, Pacific Rim Institute, and the Alaska State Council on the Arts

Debutante Balls Review

Southern skin

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Southern skin

Posted: Wednesday, January 13, 2010 12:00 am

By Dawnell Smith

The one-man show “Debutante Balls” at Out North this weekend uses the tradition of young debutants coming out in Southern society as a narrative that parallels the artist’s own coming out as a lesbian, radical feminist, transgender man and even middle class performance artist.

Scott Turner Schofield’s clever, funny performance examines the variations of wearing and living in one’s own skin. He ultimately wants everyone to enjoy a gala ball celebrating their coming out as whoever they are, but he has a good time unearthing the hilarity, dogma and even beauty of the conventional debutante ball of the South in the meantime.

After all, he grew up as a girl expected to help out with all her girlfriend’s debutante balls, and that freedom allowed him to explore his own skins and coming out.

Schofield grew up in Charlotte, North Carolina, and now describes himself as “a lesbian turned straight guy who is usually taken for a gay teenager.” It’s easy to see why. He’s capable of wearing all these skins, yet is poignantly only comfortable in one of them.

In his last show at Out North in 2008, he focused on the legal, medical and social elements of changing gender in “Becoming a Man in 127 Easy Steps.”

He mines this material in “Debutante,” but also outside live theater. This month he vied for the top spot in an ABC reality show called “Conveyor Belt of Love,” (see Flashlight, page 6) in which 30 guys on a conveyor belt were given 60 seconds to woo five beauties with ample cleavage. Schofield made it to the final four – and, in a sense, the show’s set-up plays into his ongoing study of tradition and assumption, identity and acceptance, and the simplicity and complexity of human beings.

As for “Debutante,” well touches on many of these ideas through a delirious story of his coming out as a lesbian teenager and later as a transgender man. In a way, you could say that “coming out” is a performance artist’s mission, and Schofield does it admirably. His personable, accessible performance makes his many coming out stories real and moving, and though he sometimes points the spotlight at his audience, he never betrays them or puts them in artificially uncomfortable situations.

Theatrically, he leans on several props to link his many ideas. The set consists of a platform with a gown poised on a simple framework. He uses the gown in many ways: he hides behind it, uses it as a character, climbs under and through it, and even slides his arms into its sleeves until, finally, he dismantles its framework altogether. Representing everything from concealment to truth, the gown provides a visual conduit to his life experience. Its simplicity belies its depth.

On a more abstract level, he brings in sweet tea as the presumed beverage of the South, just as “whiteness” and “heterosexuality” make up the backdrop of life where he grew up.

Eventually, he points out, those with life experiences outside these presumptions need to decide whether to “spit or swallow.”

This notion of either being swallowed whole or having to spit oneself out returns again and again alongside the tea, the gown and the pragmatic truth that the invisibility of queer life can sometimes be an asset. To understand how and why, you’ll need to see the show yourself.

As it happens, Schofield’s Out North performances culminate his six-week stint as Out North’s guest artistic director. He has taken the show all over the country for years, and his timing and pacing show it.

“Debutante” never lulls, yet offers the audience plenty of time for contemplation, and though the material may seem outside of “normal” to some folks, it really just centers on an age-old message told in parables, folk tales, poems, films, songs and books: Just be yourself.

Soon, Schofield will do just that in New York City, where he will study and write.

Debutante Balls will show tonight through Saturday at 7:30 p.m. and Sunday at 4 p.m. Tickets cost $20 atwww.outnorth.org, 279-8099 or at the door. Find out more about Schofield’s work atwww.undergroundtransit.com.

Southern skin - Anchorage Press: Arts:

'via Blog this'

The Conveyor Belt of Love

Trans man Schofield pops up on dating show

By Mike Fleming | Jan 8, 2010 | 9:12 PM

1

Color us floored yet not completely surprised that writer, performance artist, trans man and Atlanta homeboy Scott Turner Schofield rolled past on ABC’s “Conveyor Belt of Love” reality dating show on Monday, Jan. 4.

One the one hand, we were floored because you don’t expect to see someone you know while surfing through ABC’s mindless Marry Me Monday lineup that also includes the new hottie on “The Bachelor.”

On the other, we weren’t really surprised because we’ve come to expect anything from Schofield (photo), whose introspective, articulate works include successful touring productions and repeated Atlanta runs of “Underground TRANSit” and “How to Become a Man in 127 Easy Steps.”

Schofield was also a 2009 Lambda Literary Award nominee and a 2008 Atlanta Pride Grand Marshal.

For a taste of this incredibly intelligent man’s viewpoint and sense of humor, his website describes him as “a man who was a woman, a lesbian turned straight guy who is usually taken for a gay teenager. A former debutante and homecoming queen coming out in the Deep South…”

ABC describes “Conveyor Belt”: “Five women take a shot at finding love when 30 men are given the chance to impress them as they pass by on a moving conveyor belt.”

We’ll just say it. The show sucks, but we were tickled pink that Schofield’s gender status was never mentioned to the contestants, and that he rocked the fast-paced interview portion. Four of the women declined to put him on their “maybe” list, but one was intrigued. She later chose another guy—presumably born male, but who knows?—from the bunch for a date.

Better luck next time, Scott.

While we were picking our jaws up off the floor, PopEater.com was the first to catch Schofield’s identity and cite it as a victory for LGBTs everywhere in a Wednesday post. They also had this to say:

‘Conveyor Belt’ never disclosed the full story on Schofield, but ABC has a decent track record of representing the LGBTQ community, even casting transgender actor Candis Cayne on the brilliant but canceled ‘Dirty Sexy Money.’ Looks like this only adds to the network’s growing portfolio.

Well, PopEater almost gets that right. They seem to have forgotten November’s hubbub over Adam Lambert oddly being banned/not-banned from the network after his American Music Awards performance, and the allegations of homophobia and gender bias in the matter.

We forgive PopEater completely, though. “LGBTQ” just ain’t their everyday beat, and besides, who can fault a media outlet for total support like that? Extra credit for even knowing about the “Q.”

Schofield did tweet during the show’s airing that he “never thought this would air.” Apparently, he can’t talk about it in detail due to contractual obligations.

PopEater reached out to Schofield who declined an interview due to contractual obligations. “I have nothing to hide about myself, hence my decision to participate in a prime time reality TV show,” he wrote in an e-mail.

That’s OK. We’ll snag him the next time his shows roll him through Atlanta, and in the meantime, you simply must watch this video of his appearance on “Conveyor Belt of Love”:

Trans man Schofield pops up on dating show — Project Q Atlanta:

'via Blog this'

Under :30 Sweet 16 2010

We made it on time to Out North last night for Under 30. (Under 30 refers to the time (minutes) of the performance, not the age of the performers. It seems they now spell it Under :30 which I thought was a typo, but now see it's trying to clarify the meaning.) Last week we got to Santaland Diaries a few minutes late and it had already begun and was full, so we weren't allowed in, although we had purchased tickets in advance online. We were able to transfer our payment to this show. So we got there early enough this time to check ou the retrospective exhibit of the Under 30: Sweet Sixteen Archive Exhibit.



The exhibit has a wall length time line of the Under 30 programs from the beginning. And then there were these various props from different shows over the years. We've been to a fair number of them and they are always interesting, and usually there's at least one performer we know.










The last page of the program has a recruitment ad for next year's Under 30.

Many of the performances over the years have been done by people who don't normally do theatrical work.  It seems like as good a way as possible to work on and present something important to the world.  A lot of the work is still in the development stage.  This is the first public showing and gets important feedback for the next stage, if the person wants to go further with it.  Some manage to work well even at this stage. 

There's a more complete proposal description on their website.

The performances were introduced by Scott Turner Schofield who is a visiting performer who will be putting on Debutante Balls Jan. 14 -17. He seemed totally comfortable onstage and I'm sorry we're going to miss his show, but we leave for Juneau on the 11th.










Given that taking pictures in the middle of the show is often forbidden I'm filling in with these pictures from the exhibit.

All four performances last night kept my attention, though for me the third one - Jonathan Lang's "Radio" - worked most fully. It was a retrospective of radio in Alaska, starting from when Jonathan's family arrived in Alaska through his days on radio in Anchorage. The juxtaposition of taped 'radio' in the background, some props on stage, and probably the relatively uncomplicated content, made it the most complete and unified piece for me.



Van Le's "Letters to Ho Chi Minh" represented, perhaps, the most ambitious work, as she tried to articulate her family's experiences as refugees who survived smugglers, pirates, refugee camp in Malaysia on the way to the United States and the cross generational conflicts of children who want to know what happened and parents who want to forget. Some of the obstacles she still has to work out in the piece are technical ones - jumping back and forth between different time periods. Others are probably more emotional - I think more reenactment rather than telling of the stories would be more powerful. I got to meet Van Le when she was volunteering for the Anchorage International Film Festival and so it was particularly fun to be able to see how she put this together. The photo was taken after her performance, but before they moved things off the stage for the next performance.

Don Decker's piece  integrated video into the performance.  I liked a lot of the parts - particularly the extreme closeups of the lines in the videos.  And he had some audience members laughing almost non-stop.  I just didn't follow how all the pieces came together as one coherent statement.  But maybe that wasn't intended.

Mark Muro's monologue started shakey, then got into gear, and then seemed to veer into different directions.  Mark's done the Under 30 thing four times before according to the program and he could talk off the top of his head and it could be interesting and provocative.  And I've heard him do that more effectively than his piece last night - but then last night he had to carry it off for thirty minutes.  But Mark took the challenge and stood up and did his thing.

That's one reason people should go to the performance this afternoon at 3 or next weekend.  The challenge is out there for next year's Under 30.  This is something anyone could actually do.  The only thing different from those on stage and you and me is that they put in their proposals.  So, being in the audience is also a personal challenge.  What do you have to say and how could you say it so it would keep an audience's attention for 30 minutes? 

This post originates at: What Do I Know?: Under 30 at Out North