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I just did so myself, and be assured: It’s quick ‘n’ easy.

Parts of the Festival have been resounding successes. Ballet Maribor selling out their two performances and, as Anya points out, inspiring probably Pittsburgh’s first-ever ballet scalpers, for one. Hosting Teatro de los Sentidos’ indescribably beautiful El Eco de la Sombra was undoubtedly one of the greatest artistic performance triumphs in the city’s history. Not everything was a smashing success: I haven’t heard too many people rave about Peter Reder’s Guided Tour, and have certainly heard my share of complaints. And there were certainly those who didn’t “get” Kassys’ Liga, and at least part of the time, I was one of ‘em.

But as a showcase for the city, and an illustration of what “The Arts” are capable of here, this was a wake-up call. Maybe Teatro wrote and performed their show, but it was the combination of the Ellis School armory’s urban mystique and the Clear Story Creative team’s multi-faceted talents that brought it to fruition in such subtle grandeur. And while 13 Most Beautiful… might be broadcast in the world as the latest project by well-known New York City indie popsters Dean and Britta, it was no false pretense that put a giddy smile on the face of The Andy Warhol Museum’s Ben Harrison Friday night: This was, to a great extent, his baby, shepherded from the idea’s inception to creation by Harrison, the Warhol’s film and video curators, and an almost absurdly creative North Side team that we’re so lucky to have.

Friday afternoon, I went to lunch with a New Yorker looking to possibly relocate to the ‘Burgh – a task I’ve performed before, and always relish. This time, however, I noticed my strategic tack changing. There was less emphasis on prices, though that can never be discounted. (“See that house? For what you pay for your 400-square-foot apartment, you’d own that house.”) Less emphasis on civility, though I still find Pittsburghers to be startlingly fair – as long as you know your Hines from your Heinz. This time, speaking to a highly successful graphic designer who’s grown tired of the struggle of New York City, it was how exciting it is to live in Pittsburgh right now. (It doesn’t end here by any means: Not only are Gravity of Light and the Festival of Lights ongoing, there’s Life on Mars at the Carnegie Museum of Art, and the Warhol’s Off The Wall series, plus our everyday, brilliant array of artistic pleasures.)

I think of this city as a team mentality – you can talk smack on your teammates, and often do, but when it’s time to pull together, you give that proverbial 110%, and our triumphs, like our failures, create shared joys and sorrows that make them all the more emotionally palpable. (One of the most sublime moments in my adult life: The jolt of ecstatic energy from a text message, received onstage with my then-band on tour in Brooklyn, saying simply “All Nine Miners Alive.”) That team showed another side of its assets and abilities over the past two weeks creating the Pittsburgh International Festival of Firsts – a project willing to risk it all, but destined to succeed. And whether you were an audience member, a set builder, a production manager, or an armchair blog-reader (and, of course, just below that on the work scale, a blogger), you’ve got reason to be proud of what we’ve accomplished.

So boast and brag about what this town’s got to offer. I know I’m going to.

13 Most Beautiful

I feel a little sad and a little relieved entering the Byham Theater for the world premiere of 13 Most Beautiful…Songs for Andy Warhol’s Screen Tests. The 2008 Pittsburgh International Festival of Firsts is at an end, and the entrancing performance of 13 Most Beautiful was a perfect toast to a truly memorable and transformative festival.

In 13 Most Beautiful, Dean Wareham and Britta Phillips formerly of the indie rock sensation, Luna, compose 13 original songs to accompany 13 short films by Andy Warhol. The films are a selection of Warhol’s four-minute, silent film portraits called Screen Tests. Made between1964-1966, visitors to Warhol’s studio were often asked to pose, while he filmed them under a strong keylight on a stationary 16mm silent, black and white camera.

In an arts age where multi-media feels like a necessity in contemporary performance mediums, 13 Most Beautiful was a refreshingly simple and elegant fusion of live performance and film. Projected onto a basic large screen directly above the band, Warhol’s subjects confront the camera and ultimately themselves. The unsympathetic eye of the camera seems to evoke an inward gaze in Warhol’s subjects as they stare down, defy, or flirt with the mirror of the camera lens.

Young women wear thick eyeliner and heavy mascara, and youthful men often project a 60′s cool and confrontational persona. Screen Test subjects are so honest and unadulterated, it’s like going back in time to stand face to face with a young and hopeful 60′s generation. And yet, this is all history. These men and women must now be in their 60′s or 70′s, if even they are still alive.

In front of you, the live band performs with a hip and relaxed perfection, never overpowering or manipulating the images. The music is mesmerizing, driving, and soothing at times, with complexly designed rhythms and repetitive melodies subtly layered and interwoven. Not just a live presentation of a film underscore nor a rock concert with media, 13 Most Beautiful finds instead a symbiotic relationship between the live band and the 40-year-old film footage. In this way, time and emotion are intertwined in a hypnotic and charismatic performance.

The show creates a perfect harmony for the Festival itself, as the performances are all now history. And yet, the Festival’s influence and ambition is sure to continue to inspire and motivate this city and its arts in this present time and the future.

The Department

The show begins with a bleary-eyed office worker typing monotonously in the green florescent haze of an unfeeling office. Design aspects such as an antiquated typewriter, outdated paper files, and vintage costumes create a kind of a cold war era feel. This context is supported by the “language” of the play, which is an invented gibberish full of Eastern European and Russian affectations like deep throated “r’s” and strong “s” sounds.

Government middle-men anxiously follow orders from above, as they work seemingly miles beneath the earth’s surface. The drudgery and underlying fear of such an existence seems as if it would be the only topic of the night’s performance. Except it seems that even forgotten communist office staffers need “coffee breaks,” as the workers erupt in random games, bizarre movements, and moments of discovery about their surroundings and the world beyond their concrete bungalow.

The show’s real success lies in the relationships between these hapless workers. The four male actors, which make up the ensemble create a charisma on-stage that is unmistakable. Though the language is nonsense they are clearly listening and communicating. Scenes and moments are often anchored by a somewhat recognizable word. After the workers are critiqued on their command performance of radio show broadcast, one is accused of being too, “monotone-ya” much too his surprise and heart- broken chagrin.

However, the most influential and moving moments of the show transpired when there were no “words” as all. Truly the highlight of the performance is a spontaneous dance that erupts after a shared meal of bread. Though the actors are clearly not professional dancers, they move with a captivating and awkward grace. The choreography includes astounding balletic lifts and stunningly beautiful stage pictures.

I also enjoyed how every piece of the stage was incorporated into the blocking of the show in continually surprising and transformative ways. It’s clear that the show evolved through committed and masterfully crafted improvisations on the part of the actors and director. This creation process yielded delightful and unexpected moments of exuberant and quirky interactions between characters.

However, despite all of The Department’s fascinating elements, the sum of the parts doesn’t seem to equal a whole. While I greatly respected many of the theatrical ideas and goals within the piece, often scenes within the show felt repetitive, and the show itself a little under-edited. I found myself feeling unengaged from the actions and characters’ motivations on stage. The rules of this world felt too ambiguous to build enough momentum to completely carry the show or the audience through any kind of journey or greater revelation about the world on stage or off.

Despite its flaws, however, the The Department seems to fit perfectly into the PIFOF cannon for its exploration and style both in the creative process and final presentation. Its attempt to investigate the need for childish wonder and play despite all obstacles, seems to ring true in a peculiar way with the work of Kassys and even Teatro De Los Sentidos.

Gravity of Light

But I can’t find the entrance. I recognize a blurry poster of a gray-faced monk from promo materials, which is pasted over a small door that opens onto Liberty. I pull on the door. I yank. I push. Nothing. I try knocking. I knock louder. Perhaps I’m just at the wrong place. Luckily, I know who to call — Doug McDermott, technical theatre guru extraordinaire, and with Rob Long the heart of Clear Story Creative, the production company managing the festival.

“Doug,” I say, “Where’s Gravity of Light? I’m standing at 3000 Liberty Avenue, but I can’t get in.”

D: Are you across from City Collision car shop?

A: Yes.

D: You haven’t walked passed the Strip Club yet have you?

A: Nope

And then Doug does something amazing. He goes on a monologue something to the effect of:

“Well, maybe you can go in the back door. Duck under the railing between the Pipe Building and the red brick warehouse. Go up that little cobblestone side alley. Ignore the little, rusting, iron door off to your left, that’s just a closed shaft. Keep walking up the alley. You should see a little hill with clumps of grass ahead. The alley dead ends. To your right you should pass under a closed air conditioning shaft. It’s covered with a plywood circle. Keep walking. Now to your left should be two doors. That’s the back of the Pipe Building. One’s a large garage door, which the old railroad tracks run into, and then there’s a small door to the left of that. Try that door.”

This door is locked too, but I don’t care at the moment.

“Oh my God! Doug. That was amazing. You have this whole area memorized like a picture in your head. Do you have a photographic memory?”

He chuckles a little embarrassed, a little proud, and says “Ah, well no, but I just kind of have a memory for industrial or production details…I mean I can’t remember my kid’s birthday, but I know that kind of stuff. Want to see more?”

“Please!”

“Follow the railroad tracks to right in front of the Pipe Building. About two feet in front of the garage door, there’s part of a really old chain there. It’s huge. The links are like four inches or more.”

“Wow!” I quiz him, “What’s across from me in the alley?”

“The back of the brick warehouse. There’s a large white garage door and to the left of that a small metal door.”

“Holy crap!” I say, “Doug, you are a savant!”

Just then Karla Boos, artistic director of Pittsburgh’s Quantum Theatre drives up from an intersecting back alley. “Well, Doug,” I say, “Everything is still locked. They must have closed up early, but I gotta go, Karla Boos just pulled up.”

“Oh yeah,” he says. “Quantum Theatre’s storage is in that warehouse too.” I mean the guy must know every theatre pulley in the city!

Karla approaches. “It’s locked,” I say. “They must have closed early.” We engage in some conversation about the Festival. Something similar to:

K: Did you see Liga?

A: Oh, yes, what’d you think?

K: I thought it was a commentary on theatre and theatre people.

A: Well, I definitely think it was about the rules of pretend, so that makes sense.

She goes on to explain how her daughter was sure that the show was about reality TV. She had some good evidence to support this. Cool interpretations.

K: Did you see Sentidos yet?

A: Yes, I loved it. It’s incredible. It’s an experience.

K: Everyone keeps saying that. I’m seeing it tomorrow. But I must admit, I have a chip on my shoulder about it. It doesn’t seem like theatre to me. I mean, isn’t theatre about community experience? But then I guess, here we are talking about it. And I keep getting into conversations with people about it. Everyone asks me if I have seen it yet.

A: Yeah, that’s true. Everyone is talking about it.

We muse over this for a while, then realize we are both hunched over in defense of the cold win. We decide it’s time to leave the alley. I warn her that I may have write about this in the blog.

As Karla pulls away, I head back down the alley taking stock of Doug’s observations. The wind is cold, despite the gorgeous sunny weather. It’s an odd paradox.

I grew up in the country, and I always thought autumn sunlight was the most beautiful. The fields of shorn off crops and drying corn stalks just seem to glow soft shades of gold and orange. But as I head back to my car, I notice the same seems to be true of these tired Strip warehouses. Under the saturated hues of a fall sunset, they really look to be part of a gentle natural landscape.

“Ouch…”

I’m still stupidly wearing summer shoes though the weather has turned, and I feel every little piece of gravel and uneven sidewalk under my feet. My senses are still more awake after my love affair with Teatro de los Sentidos.

The entire PIFOF experience seems to be commenting on itself now. From one of my first articles interviewing Doug McDermott about the making of The Echo of the Shadow, to the experience of it. From Liga to discussions on theatre and community in Pittsburgh. I’m appreciating the enveloping fall light-even though I still have not seen Gravity of Light.

And though I’m exhausted from PIFOF, and it feels like my wrists might collapse and my brain turn to steam if I have to write one more blog at 5am – I am filled with an immense gratitude for this city and this festival. For this incredible embarrassment of artistic riches.

And like one of those NPR bits these days playing for Pittsburgh 250, “What Pittsburgh Means to Me,” I want to unabashedly write about “How PIFOF has changed me.”

13 Most Beautiful...

 

Ann Buchanan is crying. She’s always crying, and always will be crying, and it’s likely that no one can ever – ever – tell you why. Watching her plainly beautiful face, framed by raven hair, with Dean Wareham’s emotionally evocative guitar song accompanying her, becomes an exercise. Confusion: Why am I watching? Quickly, the staring contest turns to embarrassment: The glancing blow of Anglo prudishness against your eyes and cheek. By the time those tears subtly roll, it’s adoration: I hope that, somewhere, as Buchanan’s permanently filmed tears roll, the real woman is laughing in sunshine.

The concept of 13 Most Beautiful… Songs for Andy Warhol’s Screen Tests, as seen in dress rehearsal last night, is as simple as can be. First, commission Dean Wareham and Britta Phillips, indie-rock icons of Luna fame, chock-full of Velvet Underground-esque Lower East Side hip. Place them and their band in front of Andy Warhol’s Screen Tests – four-minute long film portraits of Warhol’s Factory pals, famous (Dennis Hopper) lesser known (Warhol beau Richard Rheem), and infamous (the other ten), filmed from a single steady camera, and slowed down to give a molasses-like appearance. Give Dean and Britta free reign to write or arrange songs particular to each film, within that brief time frame.

That’s what The Pittsburgh Cultural Trust and The Andy Warhol Museum have done over the past year of working with the New York duo. Tonight, the performance makes its live debut, to be followed in early 2009 by a DVD release and tour.

The resultant songs, taken separately from their filmic foundation, might prove album-worthy – dreamy, melancholy guitar-based songs worthy of a long indie-pop half-life. But as was their brief, Dean and Britta’s compositions shouldn’t stand alone. Like “Teenage Lightning,” a rock tune performed for Warhol superstar Paul America – whose shifting discomfort seems, after Buchanan, like a child at the department store portrait sitting. Or Dennis Hopper’s dark instrumental, “The Enabler,” which builds reservedly until – Wareham watching for some nearly invisible visual cue – releasing into its bridge, just as Hopper’s tight features relax into a rare smile.

The sweeping beauty of 13 Most Beautiful… is in the Dean and Britta songs’ ability to transform these famously action-free portraits into four-minute narratives; to lend dramatic arc and an emotional tension to inaction. (Serious exception: Baby Jane Holzer brushing her teeth with what one can only dream was her ‘usual panache.’)

There’s a general rule applicable to several of these films – one that might allude to other Festival of Firsts work, particularly Kassys’ performance Liga – which follows a pattern just like Ann Buchanan’s viewer. At first, Warhol sitters tend to express an attitude of their choosing: Cool, calm, star-like. But your average 1960s party-type can’t sit still very long, and a minute or so in, they’re squirming uncomfortably: What am I doing? This is embarrassing? Who am I looking at? And it’s after that point that the real portraiture – the mask-less face of the primitive, less learned, sitter is revealed.

On the huge screen, and in the gorgeous setting, of the Byham Theater – and accompanied by the live, emotionally evocative soundtrack of new music – these films become not just “new” Warhol works, but a new means of thinking about portraiture.

13 Most Beautiful… has set itself the unspoken task of reimagining Warhol’s work in a new performance setting. But rather than close the books on this idea, its success only raises new questions: What ideas, tears, joys and sorrows might other musicians see in these films? Does 13 become 26? Opening the possibilities is a pandora’s box – Dean and Britta’s can’t be the definitive musical narratives for Warhol’s Tests. But for now, they’ll do just fine.

Dean and Britta

As many most of you know, Dean and Britta (formerly of indie-dream-pop superstars Luna) will be in town this week to debut their new song cycle, accompanying Andy Warhol’s Screen Tests, entitled 13 Most Beautiful…

As many most of you don’t know, a special offer went out this week via text message: For a limited time, tickets to this world-premiere event can be purchased for only $10. Yeah, that’s ten American dollars. 

All you need to do is head down to the Box Office at Theater Square, call 412-456-6666, or visit this website and say/type the promo code FLICK when ordering. 

13 Most Beautiful… is going to be one of the most important and talked-about events to combine visual fine art and pop music to debut in 2008, ANYWHERE, and it’s happening in The ‘Burgh. Since indie rockers and college types aren’t known for their cash flow, and we wanna make sure you interweb-generation-blog-readin’-iPhone-dialin’ types don’t wind up missin’ out, here ya go. 

Not sure about these Dean and Britta types? Check out their beautifully lush Velvet-Underground-meets-Serge-Gainsbourg-and-Brigitte-Bardot sound on songs like “Nightnurse” and “You Turn My Head Around.” Obviously, this is what I believe the kids call, The Good Stuff.

Special Offer

Since seeing Doug and Mike Starn’s Gravity of Light, in its debut American exhibition at the Pipe Building in the Strip District through Oct. 30, I’ve noticed a change in my own sensitivity to light. It’s something that was striking in the hours after visiting the show. But that feeling’s stuck around to some degree. And what do we do in ’08 when something like that sticks with you? Blog it up, son.

Notes after visiting Gravity of Light, Oct. 10, 2008:

Leaving Gravity, light has changed: Not permanently, but certainly for this evening – I hope for this weekend, week, month. Driving down Liberty Ave. in Pittsburgh’s Friday-night dead zone between late Downtown happy hours and the 10 p.m. Strip District rush, the head-lit street and bright moonlight frame the industrial train bridges. It’s like Edward Hopper’s houses, ordinary American abodes made extraordinary in their portrayal: It’s hard not to see Pittsburgh just a tiny bit differently.

This time of year makes our minds susceptible to subtle changes in light and shadow – a defense mechanism, the same that makes us carve and light pumpkins, stock our shelves with candles and strung bulbs, and buy those hearth-log DVDs. The Starn brothers have evoked both sun and moon with Gravity of Light, drawing our attention to their stark lamp in the bare ways we might once have seen fit to worship: spend too many hours in the Pipe Building and you’re likely to revert; build a Stonehenge. A friend pointed out yesterday that Gravity‘s most beautiful aspects are simply the architecture of that building as prompted by the lamp. I’m starting to think that’s the whole point, the photographs some kind of gorgeous MacGuffin that simply allow us to look at our own illuminations differently.

I generally wake up early – early enough to enjoy the pre-dawn dark on most autumn days, like this morning, when the moon beats down like a carbon-arc lamp across the pavement. Most of these recent mornings, the deciduous leaves of Pittsburgh’s tree-lined streets sit on that pavement, like the Starns’ leaves sit in the Pipe Building, crinkling visibly in the light.

This is a beautiful city – one of the most beautiful cities in America – and sometimes that’s easy to forget, mentally buried under one’s worries over the election the recession our own profession life in general. With Gravity of Light, Doug and Mike Starn make us sign a waiver, don protective eyewear, and scamper around a dirty and dilapidated building just to remind us that our streets, sidewalks, houses and neighbors are all reflecting whatever beauty we choose to see in them. It’s simple, and for that I thank them.

Jo Stromgren Kompani The Department

Interview with Jo Stromgren

This weekend the whirlwind that is the Pittsburgh International Festival of Firsts will close with a work by the internationally revered Jo Stromgren Kompani from Norway. The company is led by multi-faceted performing arts entrepreneur, Jo Stromgren who directs, writes, and choreographs a wide range of theatre, dance, and original works around the globe. He was gracious enough to speak with me briefly before hopping on yet another international flight

Though it was first performed in 2004, The Department will make its U.S. premiere as a part of our Festival of Firsts. (For more new work trivia see A Fresh Old New Work.) With eight or nine other Jo Stromgen Kompani works on tour at the moment, I ask Stromgren why he thinks The Department was chosen to tour the U.S. this fall.

He chuckles mischievously, or perhaps nervously. “The current political backdrop of the States, might have something to do with it,” he admits. According to PIFOF promotional materials “In The Department, Strømgren creates the innermost and secret office of an imaginary government, where agents analyze and scrutinize society through peepholes, doors have long ago been sealed off for extreme secrecy, and mysterious orders arrive from above.” But Stromgren is quick to say that this work was created with no specific political agenda or hidden message in mind.

This show, like many of the company’s original works uses only “non-sensical” language or gibberish as spoken text in the performance. It’s a genius idea on Stromgren’s part, who created the company for the purposes of international touring. The language of the show is equally not understood by audience members no matter their nationality, and therefore equally open for interpretation. In this way the show has the ability to be understood by every audience member in a personal way. “All of our text is done in a naïve way. There is no kind of expectation behind it,” says Stromgren.

This theatre-making technique started as a company experiment, but they continued utilizing it because, “There is so much to discover,” Stromgren claims. For example, “What is communication? How can we trick people to see further than us?” he questions. Audiences from around the world have found brilliant slapstick to ominous political metaphors in The Department. “People read things differently depending on their cultural baggage,” says Stromgren.

And man, does it feel like we have a LOT of cultural baggage these days. From the economy, to the looming election, our bags are packed – and not in a good way it seems. Yet, the aim of The Department is not to weigh down audiences, but to lighten their load with poetic possibilities and great comic timing. “Being light of heart is a better way to enter the theatre than full of heavy expectations,” says Stromgren.

I for one am looking forward to letting our present cultural burdens enlighten instead of just discourage.

The Backstage Bar at Theater Square certainly has one major hurdle to overcome in striving for this goal: being only a few seasons old, it contains none of the ancient psychic masks and holy corners of a theatrical tippler’s mainstay. But the stage is set for it to get there. First off, it’s got location – just a slide across the boards from the O’Reilly, and an intermission dash from most of the District’s other locales. It’s also got the prerequisite shady-looking outside entrance – on Friday night, upon our arrival, a car was parked on the sidewalk blocking its doors. (There’s an easier way in, through the Cabaret at Theater Square’s main entrance, but what fun is that?)

Most importantly, however, the Backstage has a menu of theater-specific drinks – which, in the case of the Pittsburgh International Festival of Firsts, doesn’t only mean they’re packed with ABV. You’ve got one week left to savor the yumminess, and rue the following morning, of the PIFOF drinks menu. In honor of the Festival, the bar-istas at the Backstage have concocted cocktails for each of the PIFOF’s shows.

Sitting back for a little bit of two-piece New Orleans-style jazz from members of the Boilermaker Jazz Band, and in spite of the autumn chill in the air, I sank my teeth into the Sangria de los Sentidos – a cherry-sweet red sangria that takes Teatro’s sensual overload to heart.

With one of those in the guts, it’s probably not a great idea to order the POP T’art, a fluorescent, candy-yellow beverage that’s as tart as its name implies. But looking forward as I am to 13 Most Beautiful…, and regaled by Boilermaker Paul Cosentino’s stories of playing clarinet for beers and etouffe in a French Quarter dive, it just kind of happened. (Plus, the POP T’art is made with my favorite gin.) The general rule is, once you’ve passed age 29, stick to one kind – or at least color – of liquor in a night, but despite the fruit toss-up sangria and the tart devil’s booze of the POP, things sorted themselves out just fine in this blogger’s belly and brain. In fact, I think I’m fairly certain that, just for a few minutes, I had super powers.

I did not drink, nor do I quite “get,” the Festival feature – the Stemtini, with Mandarin vodka, passion-fruit liquor and sours. The Cherry Pineapple Martini, on the other hand, makes such perfect sense for Kassys it’s almost a joke: Child-like but deadly potent, with the flavors of a mid-summer’s dessert and a morning-after that’d make you stomp around and cry.

Next weekend’s boozing plans will have to include the Jo Stromgren-inspired Water/Melon Cooler: What has watermelon rum got to do with Norwegian avant-garde theater? I think there’s something there, on the tip of my tongue – all I need is a few more sips…