Each week in August, TBA:09 Artistic Director Cathy Edwards will zero in on different artists and projects coming to the Time-Based Art Festival this September. This is the third post of the series.
The second week of the TBA:09 Festival includes an extraordinary line-up of international ensemble theater, featuring Back to Back Theatre from Australia and Pan Pan Theatre from Ireland. Having the opportunity to see both of these companies and their extraordinary brand of contemporary theater is a truly rare experience and I hope you won’t miss it!
Because of its site-specific nature and limited seating, small metal objects by Back to Back Theatre is the only presentation that is not included in your TBA passes; so please make a point of buying your tickets now! The piece is performed in Pioneer Courthouse Square and will provide a special window into the heart of Portland. I love small metal objects, which has toured all over the world, because it always reflects a very special sense of the place in which it is being performed. When I saw this piece sited in a busy train station in Adelaide, Australia, I had a theatrical experience on multiple levels, and I’m thrilled to share those experiences with Portland audiences. small metal objects is a fantastic piece – subtle and beautifully conceived, and utterly original.
What are some of the elements to look for when you see small metal objects? First of all, there is the way in which the piece theatricalizes the everyday by re-framing the pedestrian patterns of a public space. It is one of the things I love most about site-based work. Also remarkable is the acute sense the audience has of being “on stage” as we sit on risers, wearing headphones in a public space, becoming the subject of puzzled onlookers. And finally, I love how the piece itself unfolds, with its performers initially hidden in the throngs of people going about their daily business. In fact, that is a perfect metaphor for the work itself, which highlights a dramatic unraveling of the lives of people all too-easily-overlooked. This is truly a special experience, a perfect TBA Festival performance in which both the drama and the city take center stage.
And there is even more theater during the second half of TBA:09 – Pan Pan Theatre, which hails from Ireland, will present The Crumb Trail, a hallucinatory piece of devised theater–funny, fragmented, and eerie. The “crumb trail” in question refers both to the Hansel and Gretel story of fractured parent-child relationships at the core of the piece, as well as to the cookies we leave behind on the internet as we navigate private curiosities and desires through increasingly transparent digital and communications media. This piece is hilarious, deadpan, chilling and truly contemporary in the way that it links multiple levels of media and live experience. I’m so happy that TBA is able to bring Portland audiences such a rare opportunity to see new work from Ireland, which continues to be an unparalleled source of acting, directing, and writing in English language theater.
Here is what New York Times critic Ben Brantley had to say about The Crumb Trail at Under the Radar.
I look forward to seeing you out in Pioneer Square and at the Winningstad for these two amazing projects!
