Podcast appearances and mentions of jeanette harrison

A sleepaway camp designed for and by Indigenous theater aficionados is being held at Portland State University July 29 through August 2. The 26 students in attendance will live in the dorms and attend daily theater trainings as well as college prep sessions. The students also get to meet and work with Native staff on campus. By the end of the week-long camp, students showcase their work in a variety of ways: some will act in student-written plays, some will create writing or art projects and others will perform in a short media project which is pitched by students then edited by camp staff. This is the fourth year of the camp, which has been held at different college campuses across the west coast. Last year, some of the students had the opportunity to participate in the Broadway production of “The Thanksgiving Play” by Larissa FastHorse. The camp has previously been held at University of Nevada at Reno, UC Berkeley and Southern Oregon University. Jeanette Harrison, co-founder of the theater camp for Native youth and creative director of Bag and Baggage’s Native theater project, joins us to share more. Returning campers Gia Fisher and Niyla Willow also join us. Fisher will be performing in “Diné Nishłį (i am a sacred being) Or, A Boarding School Play” by Blossom Johnson and directed by Harrison. The play will tour throughout the greater Portland area this September.

This is a black arts and culture site. We will be exploring the African Diaspora via the writing, performance, both musical and theatrical (film and stage), as well as the visual arts of Africans in the Diaspora and those influenced by these aesthetic forms of expression. I am interested in the political and social ramifications of art on society, specifically movements supported by these artists and their forebearers. It is my claim that the artists are the true revolutionaries, their work honest and filled with raw unedited passion. They are our true heroes. Ashay! 1. We rebroadcast the Jan. 18, 2018 show. Since our interview, there are Women's Marches in Oakland at Lake Merritt Ampitheatre. Rally at 10 AM then march to Frank Ogawa Plaza; Napa, Alameda City and of course San Francisco (begins at 11:30 a.m.) and San Jose at City Hall at (11:00). 2. We also speak to cast for Star Finch's "Bondage" through Saturday at AlterTheatre at ACT Costume Shop. We also spoke with playwright, Larissa FastHorse and director, Jeanette Harrison about FastHorse's Cowpie BINGO up at ACT Costume Shop through Sunday, Jan. 21, the up in San Rafael Jan. 26-Feb. 18.

For this episode of Podcast@SDA, Dean David Bridel of the USC School of Dramatic Arts, interviews Shakespearean expert and USC professor Bruce Smith for "A Midsummer Night's Dream." Directed by Jeanette Harrison, the play opens October 6, 2016 at the School's Bing Theatre.

Many playwrights strive to create poetry on stage, hoping to put such elegant words in the mouths of their characters that audiences will sit stunned and shaken, transported from their seats to some new world. If only all playwrights began as poets—as did San Francisco’s Marisela Treviño Orta—then all of our stages would be singing with poetry as beautiful as that in Orta’s rich fairytale ‘The River Bride,’ which just opened a five-month run at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland. The festival, which runs annually from February to November, always begins in the Spring with four shows, gradually adding new ones. The openers this time are Shakespeare’s ‘Twelfth Night,’ Gilbert & Sullivan’s ‘Yeomen of the Guard,’ Charles Dickens’ ‘Great Expectations,’ and ‘The River Bride.’ I’ll discuss the first three in my next broadcast. Easily the best of a strong batch, ‘The River Bride’ was first staged in San Rafael in 2014, part of the AlterLab new play development program sponsored by Marin County’s AlterTheater Ensemble. Originally co-directed by Ann Brebner and Jeanette Harrison, that early production was elegantly simple, using only a few wooden blocks as set pieces. In Ashland, Orta’s slinky, sexy blend of Brazilian river mythology and Grimm’s fairytales has now been given a magical, deceptively high-tech makeover by director Laurie Woolery, working with a stellar cast and a first-rate team of visual artists. Woolery fills her stage with gorgeous images, each scene a poem in its own right, a stunning collage of sight, sound, words and emotion. Fortunately, such bedazzlements never distract from the story, or from the incandescent heart of Orta’s indelible characters. Just three days before the wedding of 16-year-old Belmira and the local fisherman Duarte, the bride’s older sister Helena is doing her best to hide her own broken heart, having loved Duarte since childhood. During a stormy day of fishing, complete with raging thunder and mysterious pink lightning, Duarte and the sisters’ goodhearted father Senhor Costa haul up a well-dressed, unconscious stranger in their fishing nets. Initially suspicious, Senhora Costa soon welcomes the soft-spoken newcomer, who gives his name as Moises, and almost immediately forms a bond with the cautious, but gradually love-struck, Helena. As Helena, Nancy Rodriguez, is spectacular, revealing layer upon layer of hidden emotion. Armando McClain, who as Moises makes an art of enigmatically smoldering, is quite good in a part that less expert actors might have played too extravagantly. Jamie Ann Romero is excellent in the tricky part of Belmira, managing to be both innocent and selfishly devious, and as Duarte, Carlo Alban is all coiled intensity and molten jealousy. Triney Sandoval is delightful as Senhor Costa, and Vilma Silva, as Senhora Costa, is perfect, playing as many shades of motherly love as there are strings on a guitar. What happens next takes place in a world of grounded fantasy and stylized realism. On the Amazon, there are legends of trickster porpoises, which for three days in June take the form of human men, looking for love amongst those who dwell on the land. That myth eventually overlaps the lives of Orta’s characters in powerful ways, as Moises’ courtship of Helena stirs up deep and forbidden passions. As in all fairytales, the ending involves the breaking of curse, but with a poetic and heart-stopping twist, just one of many satisfying pleasures Orta serves up in this transcendent, one-of-a-kind masterpiece. ‘The River Bride’ runs in repertory with ‘Twelfth Night,’ ‘Great Expectations,’ and others, Tuesday through Sunday, in the Angus Bowmer Theater at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, in Ashland, Oregon. For information on this and ten other shows opening throughout the year, www.osfashland.org has all the details.

Music has a way of reaching out like no other art form. In times of stress it calms our nerves. It gives us strength when we are struggling. Then again, it also has a way of reaching into our souls and tearing us into sad little pieces. Two new Marin County shows, neither a traditional musical, each use music in unexpected ways to tell stories about tough, resilient people battling impossible odds. One is just so-so. The other is a must see. “The Way West,” now playing at Marin Theatre Company, is Mona Mansour’s intriguing but mostly unsatisfying examination of how self-delusion and optimism can make us feel like the heroes of our own stories, even when we’re not. Mom, played with forceful enthusiasm by Anne Darragh, just won’t let anything get her down. Her Central California home is being foreclosed upon. She has a mysterious illness. She keeps driving her car into things. But as long as she can pick up a ukulele and sing songs about the early pioneers - those plucky survivors who made it through on sheer grit and optimism - then she’ll get by. Her daughters aren’t so sure. Manda, a high-earning grant writer, is appalled at her mother’s ambivalence in the face of looming disaster, and Meesh is just looking for the next E-bay scam to earn a few dollars of her own. Mom’s friend Tress has taken what little is left of her friend’s money to invest in a cutting-edge weight loss business, something to do with magic water selling for 500 bucks a bottle. From this rather promising theatrical set-up, directed with a wobbly sense of pace by Hayley Finn, a rather rocky and rambling story unfolds, one that frustrates as much as it entertains. The songs are a nice diversion, and the performances are likable across the board. But like the less fortunate pioneers Mom loves to sing and talk about, the ones abandoned along the way or eaten by the others, this amiable failure of a play just doesn’t have what it takes to make it through to the end. That brings us to James Baldwin’s marvelous “The Amen Corner” presented by AlterTheater of Marin. In “The Amen Corner,” Gospel music underscores the roiling emotions lurking under the surface of a small storefront church in Harlem, 1953. Directed with fierce attention to emotional detail by Jeanette Harrison, this production unfolds, with minimal props and set pieces, in a cramped corner the Body Kinetics health club in San Rafael, a setting that lends an appropriate sense of urban place to the story. Sister Margaret, played sensationally by Cathleen Riddley, is the impassioned shepherd of a small flock of believers. She leads by example as much as by the fire of her sermons. When her long-estranged jazz musician husband Luke suddenly appears, Margaret fears he might pull their son David from God’s path. She never suspects that its her congregation, gradually incited by what they’ve learned about their leader’s past, who she should be wary of. Insightful and lyrical, with beautiful writing and strong supporting performances anchoring the rising drama, “The Amen Corner” is sensitively insightful and powerfully moving. It’s long, with two intermissions, but like a good old-fashioned gospel tune, it’s worth the time, and impossible to get out of your head. “The Way West” runs Tuesday–Sunday through May 10 at Marin Theatre Company. “The Amen Corner” runs Tuesday–Sunday through May 17 at Body Kinetics, and Saturdays at the Smith Rafael Film Center. I’m David Templeton, Second Row Center, for KRCB.

This is a black arts and culture site. We will be exploring the African Diaspora via the writing, performance, both musical and theatrical (film and stage), as well as the visual arts of Africans in the Diaspora and those influenced by these aesthetic forms of expression. I am interested in the political and social ramifications of art on society, specifically movements supported by these artists and their forbearers. It is my claim that the artists are the true revolutionaries, their work honest and filled with raw unedited passion. They are our true heroes. Ashay! We rebroadcast our James Baldwin feature from Friday, April 17, 2015 featuring: Lynn Brown, the editor for the Footsteps of Baldwin Anthology project; James Baldwin's "The Artists Struggle for Integrity", Blackademics playwright, Idris Goodwin, and directors: Mina Morita & Lisa Marie Rollins join us. Visit crowdedfire.org 4. AlterTheater Company joins us to talk about James Baldwin's Amen Corner. Jeanette Harrison, director; Cathleen Riddley as "Sister Margaret," Tracy Camp as "Sister Margaret," Chauncey Roberts as "Luke." Visit www.altertheater.org Music: Wadada Leo Smith's "No Name in the Street" for James Baldwin; and "Seed of Forgotten Flower"; selection from gina breedlove

This is a black arts and culture site. We will be exploring the African Diaspora via the writing, performance, both musical and theatrical (film and stage), as well as the visual arts of Africans in the Diaspora and those influenced by these aesthetic forms of expression. 1. Lynn Brown, the editor for the Footsteps of Baldwin Anthology project, is a freelance writer, blogger, and nonprofit communications consultant, who specializes in writing about culture, travel and social justice. She's been published in Conde Nast Traveler, the Colorado Daily News and the Atlanta Black Star. In addition to the anthology she's currently working on a speculative fiction novel centered around the mythology of New Orleans and an MFA in Creative Writing at San Francisco State University with a concentration in Multicultural Literature. Visit https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/footsteps-of-baldwin-anthology-project 2.James Baldwin's "The Artists Struggle for Integrity." 3. Blackademics playwright, Idris Goodwin, and directors: Mina Morita & Lisa Marie Rollins join us. Visit crowdedfire.org 4. AlterTheater Company joins us to talk about James Baldwin's Amen Corner. Jeanette Harrison, director; Cathleen Riddley as "Sister Margaret," Tracy Camp as "Sister Margaret," Chauncey Roberts as "Luke." Visit www.altertheater.org