Brandon Oliver Jones’ play When Mom Died on Saturn opens at the Las Vegas Little Theatre on April 29^th as the winner of LVLT’s 3^rd Annual New Works Competition. According to the theatre’s website, the play’s main character “lives in a world full of magic caves, enchanted backpacks, and visitors from other planets.” Hmm. Certainly sounds like Las Vegas. In fact, Jones’ play emerged from a group of three finalists that, for the first time in the competition’s young history, were all written by Las Vegas writers. Jones is also the first Las Vegas-based writer to win. These benchmarks are just the latest examples of the recent emergence of a distinct and prolific “fringe” theatre scene in Las Vegas.

Las Vegas, of course, is a show town. Be it Cirque du Soleil, Wayne Newton, or long-running productions of Broadway hits, the shows that strike gold here are famous for their sparkle. And even though Sin City’s independent, non-commercial theatre is likewise nothing new, playwright and actor Dave Surratt says that the boom of the past few years is “unprecedented in terms of breadth of the scene, companies involved and ambition of productions.”

David McKee, the theatre critic for Las Vegas CityLife, cites Insurgo Theater Movement’s “The Little Prince” and Las Vegas Little Theatre’s “Hellcab” as emblematic of what he calls the “vagabond but upbeat” energy of Las Vegas fringe theatre. “I lived in the Twin Cities for nearly 20 years—where Equity theater* was much healthier—and you just didn’t see this kind of ferment at the community and semi-pro level.” According to McKee, while not-for-profit Equity theatres have not faired well in Vegas, many performers daylight working in commercial fare on the Strip. They then seek out the fringe scene in order to feed their hunger for more satisfying material. Surratt says that, often, the clowns, dancers, magicians, acrobats, and other artists working on the Strip will journey off-Strip to perform and train others. The same goes for the designers and technical experts. The size of the theatre community, he says, is “still pretty small…Once people understand how ultimately interdependent the theatre scene’s constituent parts are, it’s hard for a community not to develop.” (This daylighting dynamic exists in other artist communities—Segment C of SOTRU’s Las Vegas episode is about a band made up of musicians who have day jobs on the Strip.)

“There’s art going on in your city, no one seems to believe it, but psychotic hipsters paint themselves for P.B.R.’s like they do in Williamsburg. Check out a First Friday.”

Insurgo Theater Movement’s Ernie Curcio is one such multi-venue artist. He makes a living through acting in “Tony ‘n Tina’s Wedding,” but off-Strip he is one of the most visible and respected writers and actors in Las Vegas. Visitors to SOTRU’s Las Vegas webpage can read his “Dear Las Vegas” letter, in which he says, “There’s art going on in your city, no one seems to believe it, but psychotic hipsters paint themselves for P.B.R.’s like they do in Williamsburg. Check out a First Friday.” I asked him whether the commercial theatre part of Las Vegas informed his work or Insurgo’s, but he said that, “It doesn’t inform my work a bit, neither personally nor with Insurgo.”

But for Surratt, the Strip does exert influence, mainly as something to work against. When he first left theatre criticism for playwriting and acting, he felt “very David-and-Goliath, very ‘screw the Strip, we got soul.’” He has since become convinced of the need to accept Las Vegas for what it is, and simply do his best to create. He says, “French stage theorist Antonin Artaud, at the end of his preface to Theater and Its Double, said something about the need for actors to stop screwing around and be ‘like victims burnt at the stake, signaling through the flames.’ Substitute ‘neon’ for ‘flames,’ and that’s Vegas.”

Another explanation for this surge of creativity is the nation’s economic downturn, a crisis that has hit Las Vegas particularly hard. “Recessions prove fertile for the arts,” says Curcio. McKee agrees: “I’d say it’s the adversity of the Great Recession itself that has really seen the theatre community put its shoulder to the wheel. Amidst so much hardship, an incredible degree of ingenuity has arisen, as though in a gesture of defiance.” Surratt is less convinced. He credits “a few particularly driven individuals and companies” with starting the wave.

Whether or not the recession inspired indy theatre artists, it has certainly forced them to be resourceful. Student discounts, senior discounts, social networking, and even seats sold for five cans of canned food have all been used to attract audiences looking for low-cost entertainment. Add to this the prohibitive cost of performance rights for well-known recent plays and a large and talented pool of college theatre grads and you get an explosion of new work performed in all types of spaces.

One question now is whether Las Vegas indy theatre, having gained attention and respect from audiences and local publications, will be considered by the Las Vegas establishment as it plans the city’s development. Curcio’s “Dear Las Vegas“ letter tells his city that, “It feels like you’ve have forgotten about us.” But in a later interview, he moderated his stance. “I feel a little guilty about that line, actually,” he said. Curcio mentioned that one of the heads of the Smith Center recently attended one of his performances, and that they spoke a little after the show. “For him to come out meant a lot to me because he didn’t have to. He’s one of the cats running the Smith Center; he doesn’t need to come out, but he did, and if more powerful people like that [supported] us then they wouldn’t have to look too far for productions to house, and that’s what I meant by that line.” Curcio acknowledged as well that artists nationwide need this kind of support, not only those in Las Vegas.

But the Smith Center, still under construction and slated to open in the spring of 2012, will not necessarily be a partner for independent theatre in Las Vegas. “Unless the [Smith Center] were to designate a ‘resident’ company or two,” McKee says, “and let them use the space(s) rent-free, I’m not sure there’s a big future for spoken-word theater at the Smith Center.” That assessment was somewhat confirmed by Myron Martin, the Smith Center’s President and CEO. He says that the Center will be a large-scale presenting house akin to the New Jersey Performing Arts Center or Fort Worth, Texas’ Bass Hall. Its resident companies are the Nevada Ballet Theatre and the Las Vegas Philharmonic, and it has already booked the tour of “Wicked” for its inaugural season.

Still, Martin says that his dream is “to use the top floor of our education and outreach building to house local arts agencies in a sort of executive suites configuration. A place where they can pick up their mail, have an office, and a shared receptionist, copier, fax and conference room…a place for arts professionals from both large and small companies [to] meet at the water cooler, share ideas, and find new ways to collaborate.” According to its website, the Center is being built with a financial commitment of $170 million from the City of Las Vegas and a promised $150 million in grant money from the Donald W. Reynolds Foundation. Private donations from individuals, companies, and organizations have been given as well.

For the moment, though, the Las Vegas indy theatre scene continues to create new work (remember When Mom Died on Saturn, now through May 15^th) and dramatically re-imagine the classics (Curcio adapted and directed Insurgo’s Ubu Roi playing now through May 7^th). Las Vegas visitors take note: if you venture off-Strip to view the work of a growing and boundary-pushing community of artists, you might more accurately remember Las Vegas for its rich theatrical mosaic. And neon.

* “Equity theatre” indicates productions in which the actors and stage managers work under a contract negotiated by their union, Actors’ Equity Association.

—-

Photo caption: Insurgo Theater Movement presents “Ubu Roi” now through May 7^th.

I remember the moment as if it were yesterday. It was 1989 and I was at Candlestick Park in San Francisco, a friend having wrangled tickets to game three of the “Bay Bridge” series. The Oakland A’s great Bob Welch was about to take the mound. I say “great” because he was a Cy Young Award winner who had managed to win 27 games in one season.

But he also had the reputation of being something of a “nervous” pitcher, subject to the odd mood-induced erratic outing. So my first reaction upon feeling the concrete heave beneath my feet was: uh oh, earthquake, that can’t be good for Bob Welch’s nerves. Funny how myopic we can be at times.

Here I was worried about a pitcher’s mood after the worst Bay Area earthquake in decades.

Of course, the game was called, and when it was played 11 days later, Oakland fans rode the ferry from Jack London Square to San Francisco, because the unthinkable had happened—a chunk had fallen out of the Bay Bridge, making that section of U.S. Highway 80 impassable.

I remember during those following weeks and months a laudable increase in earthquake preparedness activity. People were organizing phone trees, block groups, neighborhood preparedness plans, storing food and water in their laundry rooms and garages. But a year passed, then two, and people began to slack again.

Planning and preparing for a major, terrible, horrible disaster that may be far in the future really isn’t in our DNA, but every now and again, nature has to give us a little nudge to goad us into thinking about the unthinkable.

For Seaside, Oregon, the reminder came in 2004, when an earthquake/tsunami devastated Southeast Asia. Seaside is near an area of the Pacific where one tectonic plate is sliding under another one, a geological twin to those coastal areas of Indonesia and Thailand.

With its low-lying level topography, Seaside would be one of the most vulnerable communities in Coastal Oregon in the event of a tsunami. Four of the city’s five schools are located in the inundation zone of a possible tsunami, so these days the schools conduct twice yearly evacuation drills.

In 2005, the city hired graduate student Darcy Conner to design and implement an outreach program to educate locals about the danger posed by tsunamis. The grad student set up a voluntary citizens group to help implement the program once her contract with the city expired, and the city hired a part-time coordinator.

TAG, the Tsunami Advisory Group consists of Ham Radio operators, a local geologist, a nurse, a firefighter and an engineer. During the past three years TAG has, among other things:

• Conducted three “emergency expos”
• Created a PowerPoint presentation to educate residents
• Amassed 100 barrels of survival gear and rations placed in households outside the flood zone
• Developed evacuation maps and emergency kits to be distributed throughout the community

The city’s part-time tsunami preparedness coordinator has been hired by the state to spread the word around the state, and the Seaside program has become a model for communities up and down the coast of Oregon. Seaside’s precautions were further vindicated in March with the tsunami in Japan.

Tsunami preparedness is one of three community projects listed in Seaside’s bid to be an All-America City in 2011. It may seem like a prosaic matter, developing emergency plans and educational materials for a potential disaster, but it requires civic leaders and ordinary citizens to do a lot of clear thinking about events that are both rare and unthinkable.

Mike McGrath is senior editor and chief information officer for the National Civic League. A former newspaper reporter and magazine writer, he is editor of the quarterly National Civic Review, which will be beginning its centennial year of publishing this spring.

Mike’s posts will appear every Thursday on the State of the Re:Union website.

Marietta Synodis started as an intern for SOTRU and is now our Senior Researcher. She has a knack for finding great stories and in the course of researching for our Los Angeles episode, found an incredibly helpful, community building social media effort called Hidden Los Angeles. Check out Marietta’s post about Hidden Los Angeles and be sure to let us know how you feel about it and about what may be similar efforts in your hometown below.

Having grown up in San Diego, I definitely have engaged in anti-LA sentiment more times than I should probably admit. You know, it’s so polluted, cement everywhere, wallets (and bodies) full of plastic, Los Angel-less, and lest I not forget the unbearable traffic, traffic, TRAFFIC!  We all know the stereotypes.  But in doing research for our LA episode, I came across the website Hidden Los Angeles: “embracing the depth beneath the shallow.” OK, interest piqued. And, as is often the case with the internet, I found myself an hour later still looking through all the vintage photos, event listings, and intriguing collateral posted throughout the site. (more…)

Please allow me a moment to geek out all the way back to 1983. Standing in line to see Return of the Jedi on opening night when I was five years old was, well, rather formative. It was the first cultural phenomenon that I was aware of and I knew even at that young age that I was a part of it. I also knew how enthralling the story and characters were . . . and definitely experienced my first crush . . . oh Princess Leia, let me count the ways.

Photo by CS Muncy from Flickr

An article that I read in Gothamist about Nathan Stodola, a fellow that sports a Boba Fett mask while playing accordion around New York City, got me thinking about those certain pieces of popular culture that have seemingly shown the capability to transcend time and permeate countless pockets of culture. And not to gloss over what Nathan is doing. He has two masters degrees in Engineering and is in the process of looking for a job. But instead of making a full-time gig out of job hunting, this creative Big Apple resident is bounty hunting, using an accordion and affinity for “nerd anthems” instead of an EE-3 carbine rifle (oh yeah!). While this facet is intriguing and could constitute an entire post in itself, we’re moving on.

Like I was saying before, there are really popular movies, songs, images, etc., and then there are those few that have lodged themselves into our collective brains. Star Wars is easily one of the most enduring themes in American culture. So not everyone is at that convention attending, dawning your favorite character’s get-up or thinking you just may be wielding some “Force” levels of adoration, but a wide majority of people can associate the imagery, stories and characters from the films. There have even been college courses featuring the ethos and modern myths of Star Wars at the heart of their curriculum. It’s just one of those things that so many can relate with each other about. It’s found in countless corners of our culture.

I could go on and on, but I don’t want to miss the underlying message. Not just because it’s my job, but also because I’m a bit of a nerd myself and am constantly thinking about wider implications of seemingly trivial things, I find that things like Star Wars help to build and foster community. It’s a point of reference, a shared devotion and even can be something as simple as an ice breaker. There are many cult classics and works of art through various mediums that have dedicated, niche followings, but I’m thinking more in terms of those things that have a presence on everyone’s radar, that have intertwined themselves in the threads of our cultural identity. This may lead you to ridicule-filled giggling, but that’s fine. In the words of the great Han Solo, “Laugh it up fuzzball!”

We Want to Know:

• Do you feel that cultural phenomenons like Star Wars create community? If so, how?
• What other transcendent cultural phenomenons can you think of?
• Have you ever related to someone through a shared love of a cultural phenomenon? Tell us about it!

Go ahead you Jedi, use the comment field and start the discussion!

So it seems that we missed this year’s Obscura Day, “A day of expeditions, back-room tours and hidden treasures in your hometown,” introduced to us last year by former SOTRU Radio Producer Zak Rosen. The day is celebrated in cities and towns throughout the world, with the highest concentration taking place in the United States. It’s a fantastic window into the types of people and places that give a community its uniqueness. Be sure to visit the official Obscura Day website to learn more and check out Zak’s post from last year about it.

My friends at the Craig Fahle Show just made me aware of Obscura Day, coming up on Saturday.  It’s “an international celebration of wondrous, curious, and esoteric places,” with local events being held all over the country.  It’s all being organized by the zany folks at Atlas Obscura, “a collaborative project with the goal of cataloging all of the singular, eccentric, bizarre, fantastical, and strange out-of-the-way places that get left out of traditional travel guidebooks and are ignored by the average tourist.”

The idea behind Obscura Day made me think about a project that I previously worked on. A few years ago, I produced an audio portrait of Jenenne Whitfield for Studio 360.

Jenenne is the Executive Director of the Heidelberg Project on Detroit’s eastside.  Not only is the Heidelberg wondrous and exotic, but it’s also a community hub, a creative statement, and one neighborhood’s unexpected salvation.

Is there a place like this in your hometown?  If so, tell me about it by commenting below.  Maybe SOTRU will head your way for a future episode.

Happy Obscura Day!

Foreclosure. The word, so ominous and uncomfortable, has wound its way into near-daily vernacular. We’ve been hearing about the bursting of the housing bubble for years now, but for many Americans it’s about more than just hearing; it’s seeing, feeling and experiencing. Long after it grows to be tiresome news for some, the effects of homeowners struggling with mortgage payments and foreclosures continues to impact people and communities all over the country. Borrowers feeling duped by banks and scandals involving robo-signers that made mistakes with dire consequences, has created an atmosphere of mistrust in the system, leading many to question when and how we are going to get back on track.

With over a million homes repossessed by banks last year, foreclosures are at an all-time high. The ripples of this are felt not only by the people losing their homes, but in the health of communities as a whole. Vacant houses are often not well maintained or monitored, causing property values of surrounding homes to drop, the possibility of criminality to rise and a general sense of destabilization to pervade.

Hearing stories of evictions due to foreclosure is always heartbreaking and one can’t help but wonder if it is time for a new economic model that will help people stay in their homes. Distressing as the news often is these days, there will always be those that seek to change the current tides. Organizations like Take Back the Land started by Max Rameau in Miami are trying to find ways to keep people in their homes, despite foreclosures, by staging protests during evictions, changing the locks of the doors of foreclosed houses and even filling vacant residences with homeless people. With its credo “Elevate housing to the level of a human right,” Take Back the Land seeks creative solutions to the problems facing our society as we experience the paradox of having too many people without homes even as numerous houses stand empty. These efforts, however, are not legally sanctioned, and members of the organization have been arrested for charges such as trespassing and disorderly conduct.

Our country’s current economic situation is not a comfortable one and times like these illustrate how interwoven our lives really are; how a community is healthy only when its members are thriving. This lesson is one that is learned through challenging times, but it can lead to a renewed sense of connection to humanity and a vision that in helping others, we help society and ourselves.

We Want to Know:

• Have you or someone you know been impacted by a foreclosure?
• How has it affected you or your community?
• What can residents do to pull together to help with neighbors who are facing foreclosure?

Get the conversation started below!

*Home page featured image by Nick Anfinsen.