Guest Post from PAC Board Member Jeff Gorham

Conservatory Confessions is pleased to start bringing in guest posts from people around the Conservatory. Our last guest post was from Rich Rubin, a member of our playreading group, on his impressions after attending "Crimes of the Heart" at Sandy Actors Theatre. This one is from our newest board member, Jeff Gorham, who you might remember as Mr. Kirby from this season's production of "You Can't Take it With You." He's decided to share his experience of being in the audience for the Second Year auditions.

I had the fine pleasure and honor to be asked to be on the panel of judges for Portland Actors Conservatory's First Year students auditioning to get into the second year of the program. Having auditioned myself for an MFA program, I felt the immediate energy in the room as these First Year students waited backstage while the instructions for evaluating these fine students were given to us. You never quite know what to expect when you are given a task like this, and I have to tell you that I was simply out of my mind, blown away by what these First Year students brought to the stage with their auditions that day. I had the pleasure of sitting next to a couple of the acting faculty and I kept asking them if they were as blown away as I was. The answer was an emphatic yes.

You would have had to be there to feel it, but these students invested everything they had been taught over the past year into this one day of - without sounding to dramatic - destiny.

This was not a day where you sat down and watched a group of actors do a monologue of contrasting differences. This was a day where the students started at 10:00am and finished at 4:15pm. All disciplines of acting were covered and the students did not fail.

What Portland Actors Conservatory is doing here in Portland should be celebrated by the entire city. The craft of acting is far more than taking a role on stage and developing a character and bringing it to life. Acting prepares individuals for something larger than the stage, and that is life. Nothing is more compelling in life than when you have an individual who has the ability to listen, to be empathetic and engaging, and have the ability to present in an impactful manner.

On May 21st, I had joy in my soul watching these students put it all out there on the stage. Every one of these First Year students should stand up proudly whether they made it to Second Year or not. Everyone says this, but in this case it is truer than ever. I celebrate Portland Actors Conservatory and the fine group of First Year students who took the risk.

"You Can't Take It With You" images courtesy Jeff Forbes.

Guest Post from the PAC Playreading Group!

You might not know that Portland Actors Conservatory, besides being the premier institution for professional acting training in the Pacific Northwest, has an intrepid band of literary explorers we call our Playreading Group. Basically it's a loose cadre of like minds who read PAC's season of plays in written form and get together to discuss them, before attending the shows. Members report getting a lot more out of the experience of seeing the play when they've had time to investigate the scripts beforehand. How do you join this group? Email our friendly board member Elaine Harper at emjjames [at] comcast [dot] net and tell her you're interested in joining.

Below are some impressions from another Playreading Group member, Rich Rubin, on a play he recently saw in the Portland area. He wanted to share his experience and we knew it was perfect for the blog.

I saw a matinee performance of "Crimes of the Heart" at the Sandy Actors Theatre this afternoon, and I wanted to pass along our very strong recommendation. The play itself is a Pulitzer Prize winner, and combines over-the-top family strife and quirky comedy to produce a very entertaining mix. The production is also first-rate in every respect, with seamless direction and uniformly high-quality performances featuring great comic timing. One of the actors, Erin Hickman, is an alum of the Portland Actors Conservatory and another, Patrick Roth, is a current student, so there's a very gratifying PAC connection here as well. I'd be surprised if they didn't all enjoy "Crimes of the Heart" as much as we did.

Unrelenting Truth-Sense of our Entrails! by Natasha Terranova

A desire for immediacy attracts me to the theater. I long to experience the indefinable breadth of our human experience, culminating in a single moment, or series of moments. I find it in the theatrical, before my eyes, penetrating my ears, surrounding me as the great globe itself. A string of words, a string of moments, are as contemporary as our need to experience them; written two thousand years or two thousand seconds ago, we know contemporary language when we hear it because it speaks to something so far beyond our comprehension that we are forced to rely on the unrelenting truth-sense of our entrails.


Why, then, am I so often estranged on paper from the words of writers with whom I do, literally, share space and time? Why do they seem so overly clever, so intellectual, and so dry, like an almond? And then how do I characterize the transformation that occurs once their words resonate in the chest and resound in the theater? Possibly the inherent theatricality and sophistication emerging on stage is born in the conflation of an almost-too-cleverness on paper with the living, full-bodied, bare-naked, moment to moment, energetic truth of theater.

Reading Sarah Ruhl’s “Melancholy Play” did not generate a sense of longing. Instead, I was removed from the visceral by an awareness of what I thought the writer was trying to get me to feel. The beauty of the piece only began to emerge once I experienced the impact of two characters, standing two inches apart, both closer and further from one another as any two people have ever been—breathing together, building a rhythm together and breaking it down together, experiencing a parallel weighted legato giving way to a parallel light and airy staccato. Sarah Ruhl does not break the fourth wall, she simply dispels the illusion that there ever was one.

Contemporary language contains the capacity to hit and engage an audience via a self-awareness that refuses to limit the size of the theater. In a successful artistic execution there is no room for commentary; There is no exit provided by which to get outside of the artifice. Today we are exposed at a rate of ten thousand flashbulbs per microcosm, but it has always been the challenge of a contemporary playwright to betray unrelenting scenic life, to imagine, endow, and record the seemingly disparate array of images in which we are eternally steeped. The scripted material remaining may not be a traditional narrative, but slowly reveals itself as a story.

Contemporary Theatre Playwriting in the 21st Century by Philip Cuomo

Over the past year and a half I have been in conversation with Natasha Terranova, who is now a second year student in our Two Year training program. Natasha is a published poet and has a deep understanding of the written word. As a Conservatory student, she has been required and encouraged to see plays. We have been talking about what is new and exciting in the Portland theatre scene. She is particularly excited about the plays she has seen from some of the country's newest playwrights. Adam Rapp, Peter Sinn Nachtieb, Jenny Shwartz and Sarah Ruhl. In fact, she is acting as stage manager on a production at the Conservatory of Sarah Ruhl's Melancholy Play. In our conversations we have begun to categorize the commonality in these playwrights and their plays. 

I think these plays are aware of their own inherent theatricality, a self-awareness that draws the audience forward and into the world of the play. They have an understanding of the energetic contact between performance and audience in the immediate time and space. They are sophisticated and clever in use of language and stagecraft, and could only be product of the theatre, not of any other artistic medium.

My perception has been influenced by the TBA Festival and the works of the avant-garde or fringe theatre (Richard Foreman, Marie Irene Fornes, Bill Irwin), and a performance movement to experiment with time and space to create immediacy. In talking about the Contemporary plays produced in this season in Portland, and those workshopped at the JAW Festival by writeres like Will Eno, Jordan Harrison, Adam Bock, Kimberly Rosenstock, and others, I have recognized similar experimentation in more traditional playwriting.

The best of the avant-garde and the best of contemporary theatre may break the traditional narrative conventions of time and space, may break the fourth wall, but they keep the story at the center, using it to communicate big ideas and bring the audience on an emotional journey. I define Contemporary Theatre as smart, theatrical plays exposing the soft vulnerable human center to an audience in the immediate time and space of performance.

Chicago in Feburary and PAC at the U/RTAs

I recently returned from a trip to Chicago in February. It was not nearly as cold as I feared. High temperature did only reach 25 degrees and there was little sun but (even the day it snowed) it was dry. So it did not feel as cold as 40 degrees sometimes feels in Portland. Oh, and there was very little wind.

I think I was lucky.

I was lucky to be the Conservatory’s representative in Chicago at the National Unified Auditions for the University Regional Theatre Association (U/RTA). As an accredited institution, Portland Actors Conservatory was able to participate in the new, open call portion of the traditionally graduate school-only auditions. I saw 121 students perform one minute monologues over two sessions. I scheduled 18 interviews and met some very talented people.

The open call is a brilliant idea started by U/RTA to provide students greater access to more performance training programs. Before the implementation of the open call, many students would attend the U/RTAs and never be seen by any schools. Competition for placement into programs is fierce, and U/RTA schools only have enough time to see a portion of those students interested in more training. So they hold screening auditions limiting the number of people seen by the U/RTA schools, which means hundreds of potential actors are screened out and are not seen. The open call gives these students the opportunity to be seen and heard by other training programs. This year they were seen by a representative of Portland Actors Conservatory.

I saw a cruise line employee do a grounded, simple and provacative Maggie the Cat. I saw a PhD candidate in toxicology with an easy charm who, miraculously, talked openly to the auditors in front of her. The Neil LaBute piece that followed was sharp, intent and transformative. I met a young man who wore his passion on his sleeve and a young woman with a winning, bright smile. I met a university student in New Orleans, the receipient of his school’s Denzel Washington Scholarship for actors. His sensitivity, self-awareness and intelligence were delightful.

I was lucky to be in Chicago in Febraury.

25 Reasons to Give ‘Em a Studio Class

This month in our series of 25th Anniversary Top 25 lists, we're devoted to heart’s desires – those secret, low-register rumblings that lead one to what artistic director Beth Harper calls the living arts. Whether you’re buying for someone else or giving yourself the gift only you know you want, here’s the top 25 WANTs a studio class can answer.

Give me attention – Sometimes you just need an audience. Don’t inflict this need on your friends and family.

Give me space – An empty room is a place where anything can happen.

Give me voice – Finding your voice in the world can start in your belly.

Give me expression – So much to say, but where to start? How about with the script.

Give me presence – The study of performance puts us smack dab in the here and now.

Give me drive – Don’t let aimlessness set in after the holidays! Your studio class will set a short term purpose.

Give me humor – Theater reminds us not just to laugh at one another, but at ourselves. Studio classes beget belly laughs.

Give me a schedule – Wanting to act doesn’t always make it so. With a studio class, you’ll have one night a week, guaranteed.

Give me community –Start with a roomful of strangers, and watch yourself congeal into a group of people with unique shared experiences. The connections we make in an acting class can be surprising, illuminating and profound.

Give me a jolt – Need a jump start? Give yourself a place where you’ll be taken to task.

Give me sensitivity – Acting demands we stop and take each other in. Rediscover your Spiderman senses in a Studio Class, and learn to use them for good.

Give me listening and memory techniques – The study of acting requires an agile noggin. In a Studio Class you’ll focus on focusing, as well as retaining, before you go spouting.

Give me discovery –If necessity is the mother of invention, invention is the mother of amazement. You’ll wow yourself with what you find in your Studio Class explorations.

Give me a chance – Want to act, but not quite ready for auditions? Nobody can take a Studio Class away from you. Turn your rejection into resilience.

Give me time – Earmarking a specific time and place for your passion ensures there is room for it in your life. Studio Classes happen once a week.

Give me something to call my own – Acting study reminds us that we really are snowflakes: no one will ever have the same insights, discoveries, and experiences as you in a Studio Class.

Give me something lasting – Benefits of Studio Classes long outlive the 12 weeks of showing up. You’ll have takeaway skills that will stick in your mind for years to come.

Give me growth – Start in one place, end in another. That’s measurable.

Give me mentorship – Getting guidance lights the way.

Give me play – Remember making sand castles as a kid? Studio classes are like that, but without the sand.

Give me appreciation – You’ll never watch a play or performance the same way again.

Give me a refresher – Weather its been a few months or several years since you last hit the boards, everyone can do with a brushup from time to time.

Give me regretlessness – You didn’t run away to join the circus? It’s not too late. Studio Classes allow you to keep your day job – and no cleaning up after elephants!

Give me imagination – What’s in there? When was the last time you looked?

Give me joy – Nothing like performing. Nothing like performing. Nothing like performing.

And BONUS number 26?
Give me a BREAK! - Just say "blog" when you're registering and pay in full before January 15, and you'll receive a 20% discount on a Studio Class! More info on Studio Classes here.

25 Reasons to See “Stay for the Cake”

By Scott Rogers, guest blogger and writer/director/actor, "Stay for the Cake," an evening of one-acts about the creative life. Hosted by Portland Actors Conservatory, "Stay for the Cake" is the debut production of The Montgomery Street Players, a new all-PAC-alum performance group featuring Sarah Farrell, Maria Aparo, Elizabeth Calhoun, Robby Lundergan, Tom Mounsey, Scott Rogers, Vinnie Duyck, and Phoebe Smallwood. The show runs Friday through Sunday, Oct. 30-Nov. 15, at 7:30 p.m. Tickets, only $10, can be purchased here.

(in no particular order)

1. Bakery Bar is supplying the cakes for all shows.

2. Tickets are only $10 because we think Hamilton is the sexiest president on US currency.

3. Nearly a baker’s dozen of PAC alums are on the stage, in the director’s chair and managing the production.

4. Review 2500 years of theater history.

5. Get the scoop on what the Brothers Grimm actually did in their spare time.

6. Philip Cuomo curated the plays by working with PAC alums who were in the director’s chair.

7. The title is more than an invitation; it’s a command!

8. There’s cross-dressing.

9. There’s a sword fight.

10. Paul Graham doesn’t know (yet) that he’s being portrayed on the stage.

11. Collectable programs. Collect all three.

12. See what happens when a cease and desist order is served mid-show.

13. Axes, saws and at least one bloody apron.

14. There are many open seats after opening weekend.

15. We’re listed in the Oregonian, Willamette Week and The Portland Mercury – reputable and respected publications.

16. It’s the first show produced as part of PAC’s Alumni Performance Program.

17. Learn how to argue more effectively with people.

18. Get inside, and escape the rain.

19. You're very close to a 405 entrance ramp in case you need to flee the area quickly.

20. The show is in an old firehouse. You will be safe. Well, you’ll be safer than if the show was performed in an active, 19th Century lumber mill.

21. We swept the floors and cleaned the toilets.

22. Come see what makes us laugh, even after working on it for weeks.

23. Help PAC celebrate its 25th year.

24. More than likely, you’ll get to eat cake (diet restrictions and personal beliefs about cake aside).

25. It would absolutely delight us to do the show for you.