Here at Chez H we have embarked on a new set of reading adventures, having completed Sarah Bakewell’s hard act to follow of At The Existentialist Cafe.
On my own, I am reading Bakewell’s earlier (2010) How To Live, a piece of non-fiction on 16th century essayist Michel de Montaigne. And loving it.
But we have also been searching for a good read-aloud book (following our success in that mode with Joseph Mitchell’s Up In The Old Hotel). Now we think we have found it in Jane Gardam’s Old Filth, fiction about a postwar retired English barrister and judge who was once a British Empire civil servant in Hong Kong.
A melancholy sort of comedy, I’d say, Old Filth might be worth a movie or series of BBC or Masterpiece Theatre ilk. This thing is the first in a trilogy, which we will happily move on to if it continues at this rate. You can hear an audio excerpt on this page, btw.
Annual “Crazy Days” car show today. Biggest show I’ve seen here; a few hundred cars. Bright sun, hard light, harsh shadows. Couldn’t find that many items of interest, nor could I make photographs the way I wanted, but it was probably just because I got out of bed on the wrong side … Nevertheless, I clicked off a few in about an hour. Here are some examples.
1939 Buick
One of a Zillion 57s
Early Ford
The RR Winged Lady (aka Spirit of Ecstasy, Flying Lady, etc.)
Father’s Day. The idea today for our customary Sunday hike was to rediscover an area in the Valley that we had visited when the kids were quite young. But failing to find the location, we found ourselves near the greater metropolitan region of Union, so we explored it instead. Starting at the city park through which runs Catherine Creek, we went on to walk main and side streets, then returned to the park and Union Hotel before making our way back home. Charlie loved wading in Catherine Creek and “met” many other dogs as we zigzagged around the town. We went by some sculptures in a downtown window by the amazing Brenna Tyler (see a video on her work at the bottom of this post; she is the adopted sister of Kim’s yoga instructor), spotted a few uncharacteristic vehicles parked behind the Historic Union Hotel, and just plain wandered about. And passed by the home and fleet of vehicles of our good friend, jamesa.
Saturday night. A production of “Pericles” by William Shakespeare (or partially by him; it seems to be controversial), an unfamiliar play that required some pre-performance research on my part. Everything but the kitchen sink was in this one, but it was rousing and touching and highly entertaining. Low budgets seem to call for great creativity, and this one delivered. I especially liked the shipboard scenes. Some lines were sung, in a nice touch. The venue was the old historic Liberty Theatre, where a back room with a two- or three-story-high ceiling looks over a small floor-level stage surrounded by a row of seats on each of the four brickwall sides to accommodate an audience of about 24, max. Entry is through a nondescript back door on the alley, while the front of the theater is still undergoing restoration and renovation. Simple, static lighting.
The La Grande Shakespeare Company performed, delighting and frankly surprising us. Especially notable performances were put forth by its artistic Director, Grant Turner, playing several roles, including Pericles as the King in later years, and by Kevin Cahill (who brought the controversial Steve Martin — yes, that Steve Martin — play to town a few years ago, in a dominant role as the narrator and, like most of the rest of the cast, playing multiple roles.
Live Shakespeare-era music backed it all up (and Denise, whom we saw earlier in the day, was one of the musicians). We will be watching for future Shakespeare productions from this company, and are reminded why our local EOU has such a reputation for its theatre program. Some pre-performance pix; no cameras permitted during the event itself:
One of my favorite reads of the past several years has been punk rock goddess/poetess Patti Smith’s Just Kids, her 2012 National Book Award winner chronicling her 1960s-1970s affair with taboo-shattering photographer Robert Mapplethorpe and her leap from obscurity to celebrity.
Recently retrieving Smith’s 2015 M Train from the local library afforded another chance — following our last success with Joseph Mitchell‘s wonderful Up In The Old Hotel — to entertain ourselves with a book that I could read aloud at bedtime. But I was well into two or three chapters Thursday night before I realized that Kim had fallen asleep. The hour was sufficiently late that I forcibly put the book aside, waiting until the next morning to find out where Kim had taken leave of it, so she could catch up on her own — or I was even willing to reread the missed portion. But as it turned out, Kim signaled me to read on, as her intention is now to read the thing in her own time. After all, she had a couple of books in process on her own anyway, and the book was soon due back to the library. So yesterday, a fairly undemanding, quiet, rainy day — I read on. (Completing the book well before midnight, I was still not sleepy and had to take in a couple of episodes of Peaky Blinders on Netflix before retiring.)
Smith writes about coffee, travel, her cats, her parents, her now-adult kids, her deceased husband, TV crime dramas, dreams, writers and writing, conversations, time, memories and the realities and tragedy and humor and minutiae of her life as she is approaching seventy. The book is liberally sprinkled with her trademark photographs, taken with her ancient and rather idiosyncratic Polaroid instant film cameras, appearing as usual and at first glance as crude documents but always becoming arresting and moving for me, as I have watched this aspect of her work over the years. And for me the entire book became an utterly beautiful instance of prose that made its way to my brain as poetry. Patti Smith has always been beautifully human to me and even more so, now.
If you want to get a taste of the Patti Smith I first got to know back in the day, some forty years ago, try this, from her classic 1975 album, “Horses”:
Living in Venice for several years in the 70s afforded much opportunity to come in contact with many of the artists who gave the place some of its flavor. Among these would be the Mother Art collective (one of whose co-founders, Laura, went on to team up with my brother Dennis). Here are some miscellaneous photos of local artists and other scenes from 1977, previously unseen, that I blundered upon yesterday in my archives of unprocessed negatives. Following that, a trailer from Mother Art’s acclaimed video.
Pacific Ocean
Laura
Venice Beach (Laura, Valeen and Child in Background)
Velouria (I almost always hear in my head Ray Davies’ “Victoria” from the 1969 Kinks song; go ahead, sing along) was a must-do destination during last week’s Seattle junket.
We took the express bus from Bothell (more about that adventure later) and walked up and down the hills of downtown Seattle, eventually meeting up with ever-beautiful and always-gracious Chika and her most excellent store (the brick-and-mortar part of the operation).
Now, shopping for clothing and jewelry and “stuff” is not normally for me — inspecting the Lamborghini parked down the block was more like my thing — but Velouria is special. It is like an art installation … and it is. Everything makes you want to stop and look more closely. I was especially drawn to the photo-miniatures and the Airstream charm, but there were zillions of other objects that cried out to be gifted. We couldn’t resist coming home with some goodies.
Ivi drives us up a hilly street in the early semi-dark evening and drops us off at the venue, the “Undisclosed Seattle Warehouse” … “Undisclosed Seattle Warehouse” The first thing you notice is a rollup security door at the sidewalk, partially raised. The door is at the sidewalk toward one end of an unmarked single-story warehouse that shares the block only with an unimproved parking lot.
Walking through the roll-up door into a short dark passageway, with only doors announcing simply the name of the venue, we turn in a sharp left to a long dimly-lit, almost as though with candles, hallway past a barely-visible high counter and a receptionist who, almost before hearing our name, dispatches us down the long hallway and to a right turn.
Through a doorway we are suddenly presented with a large, about 65 by 80 feet, room in glistening white and brightly lit. About half a dozen columns extend from the floor to the 16 or 18 foot-high ceiling; gray-green theatrical masks hang from each. In the center of the vast room is a small two-tier stage, about eight by ten feet on its top layer. Against the walls of the space are chairs and settees and couches that suggest to me something from the Italian or European 18th century or thereabouts. Other attendees mill about, talking with each other or with a couple of dressed-in-black ladies staffing a small bar in the corner. (About 20 or 25 people seem to comprise the audience; the S.I.T. website specifies a maximum of about 40 per performance.) At the far wall opposite our entry point are a couple of doors for staff use and restrooms and to the right a wider opening to perhaps another hallway. For about 15 minutes we walked about the room, inspected the masks on display, ordered a drink of water, tried various seating and looked at an enormous coffee-table-sized photo book of the Queen of England.
Shortly after 8pm, a single bell stroke (gong? ding? clap?) sounded and a young man dressed in clerical garb (must be the Friar) dashed into the room and leaped onto the stage. He made the expected announcements about turning off phones and invited everyone to don a mask. Then he abruptly strode over to Kim, snatched her by the hand, pulled her toward the opening in the far corner, and commanded the rest of the audience to quickly follow.
Through the opening for a few steps and through another doorway brought us to a huge room — perhaps the town square of Verona — that was persistently dark, suggestive of a moonlight evening, but sparsely equipped with only gray concrete-like walls broken only by an occasional angle, with the suggestion of a tree in one corner and a slight mound of green. Toward one end was a two-foot-high circular structure wide enough to sit or stand upon, seeming to represent a well or fountain. The actors moved quickly throughout the broad space, often negotiating between and among audience members who stood around the outer walls or in small groups just inside the “town square”. No spotlights were in use; the actors emerged from the corners and the shadows and were in constant juxtaposition with the audience. As the scene came to a close, the last actor speaking suddenly grabbed the hand of the nearest audience member and scrambled through a curtained doorway, again entreating the audience to follow with alacrity.
Once through that doorway, we found ourselves in a large rectangular space, better lit this time, that turned out to be the bedroom of Juliet. At one end was her dressing table, and we met Nurse there as well. At the other was Juliet’s canopied bed where we would come to see her in various scenes, sleeping, hiding, jumping, and, of course, later abed with Romeo. Nurse grabbed me at the end of the first scene in that set and he made small talk as we led the audience to the next set.
The most ornate or decorated set was probably the church or chapel or was it the tomb where Juliet first conspired with the Friar to feign her death. It, too, was very dark but its black walls were covered with an overlay of cross symbols and a impressionistic pseudo-religious painting behind the altar or pulpit or whatever was up front. Two groups of pews faced that corner, separated by a central aisle. Again, at the conclusion of that scene, an actor sequestered a nearby audience member and herded us all into the next set. And so on throughout the night, returning as appropriate for scenes again at the town square or Juliet’s bedroom, etc. And the actors not only negotiated among the audience but often spoke their lines by directly addressing individual audience members.
Something of an intermission occurred (but the play never stopped) when we were rushed into the original white room where the people of Verona were in celebration and more plot between the feuding families of Juliet and Romeo was in play. Dancing, laughter, singing and acrobatics energized the scene. Actors mingled freely with audience at this point, and even offered up champagne and hors d’oeuvres and answered and asked questions on just about any topic, from explaining what was happening in the story, to their own roles and even personal lives, to current politics. The music was especially well-chosen, contemporary stuff mostly, hip-hop and beyond. High energy with a sense of foreboding.
The actors, all of them, were remarkable. Standouts for me were the players of Juliet, her mother — Lady Capulet (who performed in a briskly-moving wheelchair), Mercutio and certainly Tybalt/Melissa. And Romeo, in the scene where he/she procures poison from a local drug dealer, put forth a most memorable wail and howl upon learning of the alleged death of Juliet.
Everything was minimal and moody and I grieved for the absence of my camera, as I constantly saw in my mind’s eye incredible photograph after photograph. As luck would have it, I left the Nikon (and its ability to penetrate the darkness — Corbin knows what I am talking about here) behind, foregoing the opportunity to give play to my penchant for shadows and the noir.
Would I see this performance again? In a heartbeat.
Hopefully, the Seattle Immersive Theatre will publish some R + J scenes on YouTube or Vimeo. In the meantime, I did find trailers for a couple of the Theatre’s earlier productions, as follows:
BEST THEATRE EXPERIENCE, EVER. That was my take on the Seattle Immersive Theatre‘s production of “Romeo + Juliet”. Of course, I’m no expert on theatre (we’ve seen a few Shakespeare productions at Ashland and Boise, and both Shakespeare and contemporary stuff during my other lifetime in Los Angeles — and I did work in the 1970s in my art consulting period with Luis Valdez of El Teatro Campesino, Peter Coyote of the San Francisco Mime Troupe and then on the California Arts Council, and other local LA theatre groups. And Nik has a wonderful book of Shakespeare verbal insults!).
But this was absolutely extraordinary. We were able to get some last-minute tickets to the last performance of the week (and I thought at first that was forever, but you can still get tickets for shows into at least the first week of April — and you should; fly in from anywhere in the nation, in the world, to see this stuff. I mean it, really.) and so after driving all day from E-OR, we landed just in time to check in with Ivi and the Seattlite Cousins, and have dinner. Then Ivi (who has already seen the show) sped us off to the “undisclosed Seattle warehouse” in the Queen Anne District where we were to have at it.
While dropping by the Seattlites at Chika & Jared’s, we saw Melissa for a few seconds, then she had to disappear to prepare for her part in the proceedings. In case, you don’t know, Melissa plays the role of Tybalt (breaking a gender barrier), the member of Juliet’s Montague family who challenges Mercutio, a member of the rival Capulet family and Romeo’s pal, to a duel. When we first met Melissa a couple of years ago — before becoming wedded to Rohit and joining our extensive family — we were charmed by her sweet, gentle nature and learned that she had a degree in theatre but apparently was mostly working as a fitness trainer and doing some improv on the side, when she and Rohit converged. But to see her in action on the stage … wow. Leather and chains and tattoos, with an overlay of punk and hip-hop, and a voice that could knock you over … that was just the beginning. As the play progressed, Melissa/Tybalt was making comic utterances and curses on the periphery (we have been told that her improv skills kicked in for these elements). She proved able to unleash to a torrent of action and emotion.
By the third or fourth — I couldn’t keep track — scene, a fight breaks out in the open market square (more about that later) between Tybalt and Mercutio. Holy cow. Melissa engaged with a gymnastic/acrobatic/martial arts/dancing sort of explosion in her bout with the Mercutio character, himself gifted in such dynamics. Backflips, flying kicks, leaps across people and props, kungfu-like motion across a “moonlit” expanse of stage. Utterly amazing. While Mercutio bites it in the end, ultimately Tybalt does battle next, to her/his demise, with Romeo.
SIDEBAR: Perhaps we should be reminded at this juncture of one of the finest wedding photos (who was the photog?) ever, which documents Melissa in a spontaneous bridal gesture in celebration of the occasion. This is only a tiny inkling of what we experienced at that undisclosed Seattle warehouse venue that night.
Ivi had been telling us about it for some time, but never got around to sending along any visual documentation. Seems that billboards, banners and posters have been appearing around Seattle featuring uber-talented, ravishing beauty Melissa’s tattooed frontal aspect in promotion of the Theatre’s production. So, I entreated Ivi to later drive me in the daylight to the Undisclosed Seattle Warehouse where I could make my own photographs. Herewith …
There is so much more to be said about the Seattle Immersive Theatre and Romeo + Juliet that it may have to continue in a future installment. And of course more photos are to come of the Seattlites, perhaps even including one or two of Melissa as civilian.
On my own, I am reading Bakewell’s earlier (2010) How To Live, a piece of non-fiction on 16th century essayist Michel de Montaigne. And loving it.
A melancholy sort of comedy, I’d say, Old Filth might be worth a movie or series of BBC or Masterpiece Theatre ilk. This thing is the first in a trilogy, which we will happily move on to if it continues at this rate. You can hear an audio excerpt on this page, btw.
