Friday, April 28, 2006

Behind (and in) the scenes

Can an actor on an empty stage summon up a whole world? Certainly. The best piece of theater I ever saw had a man and a woman in a tiny blank canvas of a Berkeley venue, doing a scene that took place on a pyramid in Egypt at night. To this day, the stars and the roughness of the ancient stone are still vivid in my mind.

So think how much more real the world becomes when you've got an amazing set.

Recently, I got a sneak peek of the set at the
Palo Alto Players production of "Urinetown," which runs through May 14. Hammers and paintbrushes were still going, but I was impressed with the gritty intricacy of the set. It has huge dank pipes for the actors to scurry through and a richness of dark color that's perfect for the musical's gloomy world.

For the uninitiated, "Urinetown" is about a futuristic world in which there's a horrible drought and an evil corporation controls all the toilets. Pay to pee, or the cops will drag you off to the dreaded Urinetown.

Kuo-Hao Lo, Palo Alto Players' technical director and resident scenic designer, took a few moments in the midst of the sawdust to chat about how he dreamed up the "Urinetown" set. Ron Evans, a member of the cast, caught him on video. Check it out below.


(In the spirit of full disclosure, Monsieur Evans is my significant other. He also shoots a mean video, not that I'm biased.)

Got other ideas for audio and video files on the arts? Drop me an email at rwallace (at) paweekly.com.





Thursday, April 27, 2006

We should be so lucky

I thought my birthday celebration last week was pretty spiffy: my favorite people around me, and my favorite double-stuffed potato at Max's Opera Cafe in Palo Alto. (What, you were expecting Spago? Even a food editor can admit to a more mainstream palate.)

My day, though, couldn't hold a candle -- or a hundred -- to Marianne Crowder, who just celebrated reaching the century mark. A birthday tea was held in her honor last Saturday at the Burgess rec center in Menlo Park, which was appropriate considering she taught about 57,000 girls to dance there over the years (perhaps a slight exaggeration).

Marianne started teaching dance in Menlo Park in 1949. In 1961, the city built her a dance room at the rec center. She taught at Stanford and led her "Forever Fit" class in Menlo Park for more than 50 years, until her daughter, Sue Chiappone, took over a few years ago. When I interviewed her in 2004, she was elegant, good-humored and remarkably graceful.

I heard Marianne's birthday party was packed with her former students, students who continued with Sue, and relatives including grandchildren and great-grandchildren. That might even beat out a double-stuffed potato.

Congratulations. My hat's off to you, Marianne.

Pictured: Marianne Crowder (right) and her daughter, Sue Chiappone

Thursday, April 20, 2006

Austen on stage

My favorite quote from my recent interview with Los Angeles composer and writer Paul Gordon: "I didn't want to be the composer who always did the 19th-century novel with the woman's name in the title."

Hmm. Well, he did do the music for the 2000 Broadway musical version of "Jane Eyre" and is now taking on Jane Austen's "Emma." (Still kicking the kinks out, "Emma" gets its first staged reading soon in Mountain View, at TheatreWorks' Spring Festival of New Works.)

So why put on an "Emma" show? "It was too good a story to pass up," Gordon told me. "It's happy, it's positive, and it's got several love stories. It's just good musical theater fodder."

It's also less epic than "Jane Eyre," which affected how he worked. "With 'Jane Eyre' I made myself read the entire novel before I wrote a note," he said. "With 'Emma' I wrote it as I went along; I came up with my own way with each scene or each chapter."

"Emma" may be simpler, but when Gordon talked to me last week before going into rehearsals his creation had 22 songs. Yep, he was expecting to make a cut or two.

Gordon says his music is swayed both by Stephen Sondheim and by pop styles. "Period pieces tend to reflect the time, but I'm not married to the idiom," he says. You can hear threads of both in "Jane Eyre" -- give a listen to the samples on Amazon.

We'll see how many of the "Emma" songs escape the cutting-room floor, but they could include the ballad "Emma," which Mr. Knightley sings to his dear after she has swept into the ball. There's also an ensemble number while a group of aristocrats is out picking strawberries.

No, honey, I don't think it's called "Strawberry Fields Forever."

Thursday, April 13, 2006

What's my online?

Well, toss me a cassette tape and call me a Luddite. Seems I left out the Internet when I wrote my April 7 cover story about the ways fledgling artists break into the business these days.

True, they do walk the walk, pounding on gallery doors carrying slick portfolios and polka-dot business cards and glittery PR
grins. “Please, sir, just one solo exhibit?”

But reader Lile Elam gently reminded me (via a technology called "electronic mail") that there’s also this newfangled invention called the World Wide Web that many artists use to get their work into the fabled “out there.”


Elam may be a mite biased, as she runs a website called Art on the Net (Art.Net) where artists curate their own on-line galleries. Still, her point is well taken. Art.Net has been live from her Palo Alto home office since 1994 and includes painters, poets, sculptors, video artists, etc. Links include the Peninsula Sculptors' Guild, New Zealand Artists and the Room of Israeli Artists.

Elam says the artists get valuable exposure and learn from each other how to market themselves. Although the site isn't commercial, art collectors contact the artists directly to make purchases, without a gallery middleman. "The artists themselves are in control of their own works and spaces," she says.

That's happening all over the web today, of course. Do a search for "online galleries" and you'll be up for days. Brand-new artists are muscling in side-by-side with established longtimers.

So maybe the modern challenge isn't getting your work out there; it's getting someone, somehow to notice you in the growing crowd.

Pictured: "Snail," an oil painting by Lile Elam

Saturday, April 8, 2006

Wanted: Three Airline Seats

“Teeth Needed” is the best email subject line ever. Maybe it’s a personal ad from someone with low standards. Or a very short list of job requirements (apparently there is an opening for a vampire somewhere). Snicker.

Actually, it’s from an email I got last year from the
Bay Area Theatre Bums mailing list. Like many of my theater cohorts, I signed up to hear about auditions and ticket offers. I didn’t expect to be so entertained by the emails from folks seeking props and furniture for their shows.

The aforementioned email was from a San Mateo theater group that was putting on a play called “Tainted Justice” and needed a set of
dentures for an exhibit in a trial scene. I wonder if they found them (and if they washed them before they gave them back).

Some of my other favorite subject lines: “Desperately Seeking Suit of Armor,” “SFFCT seeks a realistic bear costume and a
ghostlight,” and “Wanted: Three Airline Seats.”

My heart went out to the poor director of a recent production of “Death of a Salesman” who needed not only a Formica-topped kitchen table, a vanity dressing table with mirror, and an antique tape recorder, but also a football helmet, a football, shoulder guards and pants -- from 1945-1950.

Anyone got a good story about a struggle to find a prop?

Thursday, April 6, 2006

Arthur on the go

When artist Arthur Krakower called to tell me about his new solo exhibit, I hope he didn’t mind that I told him he sounded like my grandfather.

I meant it as a compliment. There was the same intent kindness in his voice, and the same twist of New York (he said “be-caws” instead of “be-cuz”).

He didn’t seem to mind. He probably gets the grandfather thing a lot. After all, the Atherton artist became the oldest graduate of the California College of the Arts when he earned his master’s degree at the age of 80 in 2001.

Ever prolific, Arthur has come out with “Tears of Joy,” a new series of oil paintings and monotypes, which he’s showing at the
CPF Gallery (also a framing store) in San Francisco through May 26. Then he's off to Italy to capture villages and people; he expects those creations will be part of his September exhibit in Palo Alto at Smith Andersen Editions.

“Painting keeps you young,” Arthur told me. “You’re constantly looking at new ideas.”

For more about Arthur, check out a
sweet story that ran a few years back in our sister paper The Almanac (written by my dear friend Andrea Gemmet -- not that I’m biased).

Pictured: "Aunt Jean at Long Beach," a 2003 oil on wood by Arthur Krakower.