Photo: Wayne Bund
posted by patrick leonard
Seeing as the South Waterfront can feel like an urban ghost town, going to a performance in the development’s sales office didn’t seem too far off from an arts event held in an abandoned warehouse. Yet walking into the “Discovery Center” for BUILT could not feel more distinct from a contemporary art performance. The Sojourn Theater cast bustled about in a mix of friendly-aggressive real-estate style and straight-up June Cleaver Americana. Pristine surfaces, glossy photos, new home smell. Wait, freshly-baked cookies? Maybe this Artist in Residence program is just creative class equivalent of the warm chocolate chip aroma at an open house?
I’d been excited to see Sojourn’s work, though I’ll admit to being skeptical of a residency program run by a real estate developer in their unsold development. But BUILT maintains its credibility not just when it is critiquing the Portland condo boom, but also when the performance parrots back the familiar realtor lingo and flashes a big, “Buy Now!” smile at the audience. The cast perfectly adopted the demeanor of the sales floor: everyone had approachable, but enviable good looks, and a high-powered warmth that makes you feel like a part of the “in” crowd when they welcome you. “Maybe I do belong in the South Waterfront,” I began to think, “that is a nice counter top; I deserve that counter top.”
But for every statement in BUILT, a cast member delivers its antithesis. Our guides would gush over the green features and urban character of the development, only to lead us around the corner of a display and tell us in a conspiratorial tone that they could never afford (or want) to live here. “Does this really belong in Portland?” they’d ask.
Quite effectively, Sojourn carried this dichotomy throughout the dance elements of the performance. Early in the piece, the cast acted out a very Stepford-wives dance in the kitchen – a quirky, dated, American dream of being dipped by your husband as you effortlessly slide a pie from out of the oven and onto the counter. The scene felt like an old advertisement for a new washer-dryer combo or a suburban dream home, but minutes later, we watched as dancers stood atop a large conference table, moving in response to a spoken dialog about concerns over gentrification. As the questions became increasingly controversial, the movements grew more physical and harried. All of these contrasting attitudes found their embodiment in a young couple’s whispered argument over their house hunting qualifications, performed as a tightrope duet over a scale model of the South Waterfront.
And as the show revealed, these debates aren’t just dramatized source material for theater; they are present within the audience. Clipboard questionnaires and focus-group-style digital polling teased out some of our values and desires, but most central to the cast’s efforts was a Monopoly!-like board game that had no competitors, only constrictions. As we played, Sojourn purposefully complicated the rules, expanding the scope from personal concerns to public decisions that began to affect our neighbors. Even though the game remained safe and the cast was relentlessly encouraging, it still inspired some interesting Not-In-My-Back-Yard comments when our group tried to work together to site a low-income housing project or an airport. “Do I have to be honest?” pleaded one woman when asked if she liked her “home” tile being near to a water treatment plant.
The performance consistently shifted balance from the civic to the intimate; the outspoken advocacy for the common good to our whispered personal reservations. There is a divide between what we say about the towns we want, and what we we’re willing to live with to achieve them. BUILT helped to vocalize some of these concerns and make the audience more comfortable with saying what they want. And for all of my hesitancies about the role of the residency sponsor? The dream community drafted by the group in the final moments of the show could never be mistaken for Portland’s new condo developments. That may raise a lot of questions about how involved the community has been in planning for Portland’s growth, but to Sojourn, those are the most important questions.
-patrick leonard
