Time, A Fair Hustler

July 28â&#x20AC;&#x201C;August 16, 2015 Artists Repertory Theatre

TIME, A FAIR HUSTLER DIRECTOR Jonathan Walters* PERFORMED BY Jean-Luc Boucherot, Julie Hammond*, Erika Latta,

H2M COMPANY MEMBERS JESS DRAKE JULIE HAMMOND LIZ HAYDEN FAITH HELMA ERIN LEDDY MAESIE SPEER JERRY TISCHLEDER JONATHAN WALTERS

H2M STAFF ARTISTIC DIRECTOR JONATHAN WALTERS

EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR JEN MITAS

H2M BOARD OF DIRECTORS MERRIDAWN DUCKLER (CHAIR)

Jenni GreenMiller, Jason Rouse, and Anne Sorce Dramaturg ��Jess Drake* Collaborating Writer �� Andrea Stolowitz Stage Manager �� Chelsea Lowrie Consulting Writer �� Jack Gibson Creative Producer ��Jen Mitas Production Manager ��Margaret Clement Lighting Designer. �� Chris Kuhl^ Associate Lighting Designer ��Katelan Braymer^ Technical Director �� Seth Chandler Scenic Designer �� Peter Ksander Sound Designer & Videographer �� Seth Nehil Video Designer ��Patrick Weishampel Costume Designer ��Jamie Meinecke Props Master & Designer �� Amy Katrina Bryan Scenic Builder................................................. Seth Chandler, Portland Center Stage Assistant Director ��Michelle Milne Assistant Choreographer ��Hannah Edelson Video Trailer Production & Photographer..................................................Alex Huebsch Graphic Design.....................................................................Hunter Sharp, Mike Pham Marketing Project Manager �� Lena Munday Marketing Consultant �� Nicole Lane Marketing Associates ��Parker Bolden, Luke Boone, Jess Drake*, Faith Helma* Program Editor �� Max McGrath-Riecke Production Associate ��Zed Jones Curator “Gus Van Sant 30 Years” ��Mario Falsetto Portland Then & Now Events Team �� Jess Drake*, Erin Leddy*, Jen Mitas, Maesie Speer*

ANTHONY GREEN

*H2M Company Member, ^H2M Resident Artist

TERESA KOBERSTEIN

MUSIC CREDITS Soundscore, All original compositions �� Peter Holmström

JEN MITAS STEVEN NEIGHORN JERRY TISCHLEDER* JONATHAN WALTERS*

2 Hand2Mouth | Time, A Fair Hustler

Additional dance tracks �� Jack Gibson ‘In the Fall and ‘If I Find Love, How is it?’.......................................Written by Al James ‘Ghost of David’ & ‘Johnny Go Riding’ �� Written by Damien Jurado ‘Bob’s Theme’ & ‘44th Dutch Boy’ ��Written & arranged by Jack Gibson ‘Dear Adler’ Written by Udo Kier �� Remixed by Jack Gibson All songs performed and recorded by Jay Clarke and Al James for this production.

ARTISTIC DIRECTOR’S NOTE What must a Hand2Mouth show be? It’s a question we’re continually asking and answering: in the moment and in the long term. It has become clear that in the last 15 years of creating new theatre following only our artistic fixations, Hand2Mouth has created its own theatrical language. It’s a complex one to describe or to sum up in a short bit of notes. The simplest way to say it is that Hand2Mouth creates work that is highly theatrical (read: it delights in the imagination and live-ness of theatre) and creates events that bring people together to share an experience (“shows” are the preferred term these days). These shows use all of the tools we know, but not to highlight our mastery of dramatic form or impress you with the cleverness of a well-made play. Instead we focus on making the audience really feel, really think, really travel in their own mind to places and memories in a way much, much different than one does in the normal light of day. As we have built up this language and these techniques, our own unique artistic vision has become more clear to me. And as Artistic Director I want to guide our ensemble into tackling projects no one else is thinking of, or would dare to tackle: projects that cater to our strengths, and that we can inhabit in a fascinating way. I want Hand2Mouth to choose only shows that would be best exploded by our special way of presenting live theatre.

Now 15 years after forming a company, we are fixated on what it is about Oregon and the Northwest that is so unique and powerful a place to live, grow up (grow old?), and make a life. Gus Van Sant’s film paints a picture of an older, grittier, freer, remarkably alive Portland that we all remember very well from our first years arriving and working here. We want to make a show that speaks about our own (adopted) hometown of Portland, and about our youth, and what has been lost and gained in the passing of time as both we and the city have grown up. Second, Hand2Mouth makes work drawn from deeply universal themes, accessible to anyone. I wasn’t 100% sure that My Own Private Idaho was that, until I went to the Yaddo residency to watch the film and research its creation for days and weeks on end. I came away stunned. The film was deeply simple and potent in a timeless story, told through the lens of 1990s Portland male street hustlers. Idaho is the story of a two young people. One person has means, power and charisma, and he becomes best friends with another remarkable person, a more vulnerable, free, lost soul. Together, they complete one another and a remarkable bond is formed; everyone can see that this is a once-in-alifetime connection. Finally, a decision must be made: to go on together and break out of their respective paths by living together, or part ways and each head towards their own seemingly pre-ordained future. The more times I watched the film, the more moved I was by the power of this simple story. I wanted to tell the story from the perspective of 25 years later—to feel the lingering impact of this decision to part ways on the people most closely involved.

SO, TIME, A FAIR HUSTLER IS THE ULTIMATE HAND2MOUTH PROJECT; PERSONAL AND ROOTED IN PLACE, UNIVERSAL IN THEME AND NEAR IMPOSSIBLE TO PULL OFF.

So why do I feel that this show tonight, inspired by the 25th Anniversary of the filming in Portland of Gus Van Sant’s My Own Private Idaho is the ultimate Hand2Mouth project? Well, that’s easy. First and foremost, a Hand2Mouth show must be deeply personal and somehow speak from the real life experience of the artists who create the show. 20+ years ago I saw Idaho and was so moved by the story of love and friendship between two very different young men that I began to dream and obsess on the city (Portland) where this story took place, and the empty roads (Central Oregon) that the young men escape to in the film. One year later I had packed up a car with some highschool friends from Texas and a few dollars and was living in a crappy apartment in a very crappy corner of downtown Portland, too young to buy beer. And I have been living here since, discovering a self-confidence and self-realization by living in this city that allowed me to try my hand at being an artist. In fact, every member of Hand2Mouth moved to Portland at some point in their 20s to become a theatre artist. We all came here for some reason, and we found each other.

And last, a Hand2Mouth show must be impossible to accomplish. The idea of staging an iconic, complex, visually-stunning American film is, well, insane. How on earth can you stage a film? And especially a masterpiece performed by two of America’s most famous young male actors (River Phoenix and Keanu Reeves) from two decades ago. As soon as it was clear this project was near-impossible, I was ready to dive in. So, Time, A Fair Hustler is the ultimate Hand2Mouth project; personal and rooted in place, universal in theme and near impossible to pull off. Yet now, after a two-year journey, hundreds of meetings and script drafts and design ideas, and thousands of hours of workshops and rehearsals, we come to the end of a long road and are ready to share our work with you here tonight in Portland. Or perhaps it’s just one stretch of road, a road that goes all the way around the world! –Jonathan Walters, Artistic Director

Time, A Fair Hustler | Hand2Mouth 3

Hand2Mouth’s Portland Trilogy: Making Time, A Fair Hustler Hand2Mouth’s Portland Trilogy launched in Spring 2013 when the company teamed up with Portland Playhouse to produce an adaptation of Ursula K. LeGuin’s gender-bending sci-fi novel The Left Hand of Darkness. Hand2Mouth’s Portland Trilogy launched we are “growing up good and wonderful” workshops, the “brain-trust” team of in Spring 2013 when the company (PEP TALK, to his son, Rocky Balboa) by director Jonathan Walters, writer Andrea teamed up with Portland Playhouse following our own unique artistic visions, Stolowitz, and I met to discuss what we to produce an adaptation of Ursula K. practices and convictions. were finding and organize a strict and LeGuin’s gender-bending sci-fi novel The clear technique for how to work with that Typically, H2M devises a show from one Left Hand of Darkness. This connected material. broad thematic idea, for example love us with a Portland-based artist from and pop music for Something’s Got Ahold We discovered this show must be set the another discipline whose work we are of My Heart or sports and inspirational only place H2M shows are ever possibly challenged and impressed by, and built new speeches for PEP TALK. For months the set, in the present, the right now of this collaborative relationships with talented ensemble researches loads of related place, 2015 Portland. So the characters in creator-performers from outside the H2M material, searching for the most interesting the film become real: they’ve continued ensemble. As the company considered performative pieces, then begins stringing living their lives (or dying or disappearing) our next new work, we decided to tackle them together, arriving at the structure and for the past 25 years just like us and the another stage “adaptation,” this one from people we interviewed. film rather They have the capability to than literature: remember, to make stories we chose Gus from memories, to conjure Van Sant’s My Most of the H2M company members arrived in people long gone or almost Own Private forgotten, to bring the past to Idaho, another Portland in the early 1990s—creative pioneers the present. Hand2Mouth has iconic work generated many sophisticated drawn to the natural beauty, unorthodox by a Portland techniques for performing artist, and one highly-personal memory community and fierce freedom My Own Private that took us material in 15 years of deep into the Idaho depicts so poignantly. work, and by working with past of our own non-company members we city rather than were forced to recognize and away to the articulate these methods in a foreign planet shape of the show with a mutable script way that might have gone unspoken within of Gethen. We were welcomed as company that can change radically day to day up to the ensemble. in residence at Artist Repertory Theatre opening night (and beyond!), with some to develop and perform this new show, After seven months of these workshops, pieces always left open for improvisation or connecting with even more collaborators each with a different group of amazingly audience interaction. from outside the immediate company. In adaptive and good-spirited creator2016, Hand2Mouth is excited to collaborate For this project, the company was performers, we arrived at a lengthy and with Third Angle New Music to make a interested is a more strict and limited mind-boggling casting period (What new show inspired by the music of Elliot source of inspiration: just this one characters from the film were best suited Smith, completing the Portland Trilogy. film, My Own Private Idaho. Early on, to tell our story? Would our cast have Jonathan went on a residency to Yaddo aged realistically 25 years? Can handsome Most of the H2M company members where he watched the film obsessively women best perform youthful masculinity? arrived in Portland in the 1990s and early and transcribed the true film screenplay, Does Hans have to be German? Can 2000s—creative pioneers drawn to the which departs from the original published Bob be French? Maybe. Yes. Nein. Oui.) natural beauty, unorthodox community screenplay in some interesting ways, as Forming an ensemble is about the person and fierce freedom My Own Private Idaho happens when you make art that remains more than the type, and H2M’s unique depicts so poignantly. Myself, I landed here open to discovery. Jonathan returned with performative techniques are most effective, in 2011, drawn to the promised land of a a more clear vision of the story we would most theatrical, when the casting is not more Portlandia Portland, but one still tell: one of youth and friendship, the choice so naturalistic. It’s an ability to be fully remarkably affordable and accessible for between freedom and responsibility, the present on stage as a true storyteller, both young (queer) artists, the cultural refugees search for home and family. always one’s present self and the container and inspired misfits searching for a safe for other characters who might be named, place to call home. Hand2Mouth found/ In May of 2014, we began a series of 3–4 summoned and recognized. made this home with one another, and day workshop intensives with invited with the people we love to create and share collaborators, most from outside of the By the time we entered the 5-week full time our work with. I’m proud and grateful that H2M ensemble. In between these monthly rehearsal period at Artists Rep in June 4 Hand2Mouth | Time, A Fair Hustler

2015, we had a stellar cast assembled, a Portlanders seem to strongly self-identify mostly-finalized script and a design concept with place, maybe because so many of us both brilliant and challenging that turns transplanted here or stayed here because naturalism inside out. The team grows in of the freedom to be oneself. Here we are, number and Portland-based talent with the artists making presence of a new work Portland might be chided for being selfour assistant set in Portland director and inspired obsessed, highly proud, and critical at choreographer, by another once. The city itself is a strong character, costumes Portland artist’s and Portlanders seem to strongly selfand props Portland-based sure to please film from 25 identify with place, maybe because so any detailedyears ago. I many of us transplanted here or stayed obsessed film don’t know if here because of the freedom to be oneself. buffs, and this play will newly recorded influence the music from character of Portland singerour city the songwriter Al James of Dolorean. As I way Van Sant’s film arguably did, but it write this we are three weeks from opening does provide a point of access for us all to night, meaning everyone’s vision of what consider how we remember our city’s past this show is meant to be is clear and strong, and our younger selves. As Scott realizes, but there is still lots of work to be done to the choices we made in the past, for better manifest it, and likely more surprises and or worse, make us who we are today. This discoveries to make as well. I can’t wait to is not fatalistic, rather I hope it empowers see it. us to consider and make present choices that are good for our future selves, our Portland might be chided for being selfcommunities and our city of Portland. Your obsessed, highly proud, and critical at once. home. You’re home. The city itself is a strong character, and –Jess Drake, Hand2Mouth Dramaturg

Criollo and Novo-Andean cuisine 1314 NW Glisan St., Portland, OR 97209 (503) 228-9535 www.andinarestaurant.com For private events, please contact events@andinarestaurant.com

When the is over.

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Time, A Fair Hustler | Hand2Mouth 5

MAPPING PORTLAND: THEN & NOW

You Are Here

6 Hand2Mouth | Time, A Fair Hustler

MAPPING PORTLAND: KEY GOVERNOR HOTEL 1909: The boutique hotel is built by visionary

architect William Christmas Knighton, and becomes the deal-making spot for the booming timber and mining industries after the Lewis & Clark expedition.

1990: Gus Van Sant films scenes of the downtown squat for

My Own Private Idaho in the then empty building—after its designation as a National Historic Landmark but before its massive renovation in 1992 and the opening of Jake’s Grill in 1994.

2015: Renovated to luxury standards and re-dubbed The

Sentinel: A Provenance Hotel, this building “continues to serve as meeting place for the city’s new sentinels—the visionary artists, musicians, designers, makers and doers—who flock to this verdant, rain-soaked Pacific Northwest city for entrepreneurial and artistic inspiration.”

O’BRYANT SQUARE 1971: The property at the cross streets of SW

Park Ave. and Stark St. in downtown Portland is donated to the city and named in honor of Portland’s first mayor.

1990: The park is known as “Paranoid Park”, is frequented by

street kids, homeless people, drug users and sex workers, and is a hub for the punk scene. Nearby organizations include Salvation Army’s Greenhouse, Street Church, Streetlight and Porchlight youth shelters, and New Avenues for Youth.

2007: The park inspires both Blake Nelson’s novel and Gus Van

Sant’s film adaptation Paranoid Park, although they are set at the Burnside Skatepark.

2015: The park continues to be a meeting place for street kids and skaters.

CHINESE LOTUS 1990: My Own Private Idaho is filmed at the then closed Lamthong restaurant christened Chinese Lotus for the film.

2015: Bailey’s Taproom celebrates its 8th

anniversary as a bar with 24 taps and an emphasis on Oregon brews.

GREYHOUND BUS STATION 1985: Re-located from the center of downtown to a building just south of Union Station to create a transit hub.

2015: The station has buses that go to cities across the country, including many smaller cities in the Pacific Northwest. One controversial posting on city-data.com describes the Portland station as “the cesspool of downtown...There is drug traffic day and night...and the private security guard looks away and the city police do not respond or show up”. As a second poster responds, “What urban Greyhound station isn’t a cesspool?” SOURCES: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artists_Repertory_Theatre, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/

YOU ARE HERE

ARTISTS REPERTORY THEATER 1982: Rebecca Adams, Peter Waldron, Joe

Cronin, Amy Fowkes, David Gomes and Vana O’Brien formed Artists Repertory Theatre with the aim of presenting “contemporary playwrights’ work in an intimate space.”

1990: Artists Rep creates an improvisation and role-playing

program to teach life-skills named ART Reach (later renamed Actors to Go) in 1990. In 1991, Artists Rep began a development program, focused on creating new plays; and in its first year Artists Rep earned an Oregon Book Nomination for their world premiere production of Nancy Klementowski’s After the Light Goes.

2015: In 2013, new Artistic Director Dámaso Rodriguez

expanded Artists Rep’s resident artists to include not only actors but also directors, designers and writers. Artists Rep became an arts hub and began housing eight arts organizations within its red walls.

POWELL’S CITY OF BOOKS 1971: Walter Powell founded the bookstore in

downtown Portland, which would later become the Powell’s chain of bookstores

2015: Powell’s headquarters, contains over 68,000 square feet (6,300 m2), about 1.6 acres of retail floor space. CNN rates it one of the ten “coolest” bookstores in the world. CITY NIGHTCLUB 1983: First version of the city’s only all ages gay nightclub opened in a destitute old motel on SW Morrison Street.

C. 1990: Moved to warehouse on NW 13th Street. Famous for its light up dance floor and nightly stage shows and drag acts. Owner Lanny Swerdlow recorded commercials boasting that the club has been “violating traditional family values since 1983” and sold t-shirts that said, “I Had Sex in the Restroom at the City Nightclub.” 2015: RIP City Nightclub. Owner Lanny Swerdlow “a

government biologist-turned-KBOO gay-issues commentator and then marijuana activist, with a prominent mustache and kooky-uncle demeanor” sold the venue, now the all-ages gay club Escape. (333 SW Park Ave.)

OUTSIDE IN 1968: Founded with a mission “to help

homeless youth and other marginalized people move towards improved health and selfsufficiency.”

2015: Their services include programs in housing, education, employment, counseling, needle exchange, medical care, healthy meals, recreation and art, and safety off the streets. As a Federally Qualified Health Center, Outside In provides 20,000 medical visits each year to the most vulnerable members of the community. Outside In’s medical clinic is a teaching site for medical students.

Outside_In_(organization), en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Powell%27s_Books, www.wweek.com/ portland/article-22975-in_the_city.html, www.sentinelhotel.com/

Time, A Fair Hustler | Hand2Mouth 7

A NOTE ON GUS VAN SANT

and My Own

Private

Idaho

8 Hand2Mouth | Time, A Fair Hustler

MY INVOLVEMENT WITH GUS VAN SANT

begins in Portland in late 2002 when I conduct my first interview with the director for a collection of interviews with independent filmmakers that is eventually published. That first interview is a thoroughly exciting, free-wheeling conversation that lasts five hours, and leads to many more conversations between us over the next decade. These interviews eventually result in a book entitled Conversations With Gus Van Sant published in 2015, which also includes my thoughts on the director’s work. Since I have devoted most of my working life to teaching film in an academic setting, I have become selective about which works of art have the power to genuinely transform my understanding of cinema or my world view. Yet, it must be acknowledged, that I have been deeply moved, and tremendously stimulated by much of Gus Van Sant’s work. Over the course of a career lasting more than 30 years now, I see an artist who has great curiosity, strong technique, bold ideas, not afraid to risk or to experiment, and who is not removed from his emotions to the point where he is cynical about his characters and their tribulations. I also see an artist who strongly believes in the power of art to transform the world. Even when he paints characters whose lives are far removed from my own, I feel that I share with them many of the same vicissitudes of life, and I am truly thankful for his film’s insights into human nature. Unquestionably, Gus Van Sant can be boldly original and formally audacious, but he can also be romantically naïve, even sentimental in some of his films. Although some viewers find this a kind of contradiction in the director’s aesthetic sensibilities, I see nothing strange about an artist whose different aspects of character must find expression in different aesthetic forms. If one considers films like Good Will Hunting and Finding Forrester, then one needs to acknowledge that Gus Van Sant is a story-teller with a strong belief in the emotional power of cinema, even at the expense of originality or formal experimentation. Yet, this is the same director who has created such boldly original visions as Gerry (2002), Last Days (2005) and Psycho (1998), which are nothing short of aesthetic interrogations into

the very nature of film form. How do we reconcile these seemingly contradictory traits in an artist who has now created 16 features and a number of short films in the span of over 30 years? As with any significant artist, it does no good to lament the shortcomings of any individual work or seeming lack of consistency in the artist’s vision. Ultimately, it is more productive to give ourselves over to their vision, and trust that they will take us to places we could never would have imagined going. When one thinks about Gus Van Sant’s entire body of work, it is not only the range of expression that is admirable, but the fact that he always seems attuned to the cultural moment when his films were made. Something within Gus Van Sant, the artist, is somehow capable of tuning in to the world around him in ways that allow for a true and accurate portrait of the world he lives in. This accuracy is most strongly felt in the remarkable series of films we have come to know as “The Portland Trilogy” made up of Mala Noche (1985), Drugstore Cowboy (1989), and perhaps most importantly, My Own Private Idaho (1991), the film that most concerns us here. My Own Private Idaho (1991) stars Keanu Reeves and River Phoenix as two hustlers living by their wits on the streets of Portland. Phoenix, who plays Mike and suffers from narcolepsy in moments of emotional crisis, gives a great, heart-breaking performance as the troubled, mercurial young man who loves Scott (Reeves), and longs to connect with a mother who may now only exist in his mind. The film ultimately becomes a meditation on the longing for home and community, but what makes it formally risky is its melding of the main narrative with portions of Shakespeare’s Henry plays reimagined and updated to the hustler world of the streets of late 1980s Portland. What also makes the film more than unusually involving is that the entire film is filtered through Mike’s interior world so that the viewer shares Mike’s on-going, emotional journey to wholeness.

Van Sant’s romantic gesture of making the marginal characters who inhabit the world of Portland’s streets central to his narrative feels right, and the film creates great empathy for them. These are the only kinds of families that characters like Mike

can now have. One of the WHEN ONE THINKS ABOUT GUS VAN SANT’S film’s strongest statements ENTIRE BODY OF WORK, IT IS NOT ONLY THE is created by contrasting Mike’s world with Scott’s RANGE OF EXPRESSION THAT IS ADMIRABLE, at its conclusion when BUT THE FACT THAT HE ALWAYS SEEMS Scott assumes his family ATTUNED TO THE CULTURAL MOMENT WHEN responsibilities after his father’s death. Scott’s HIS FILMS WERE MADE. monied world, which is represented in the posh experience need not be stifled by restaurant scene, is inter-cut with our experiences of growing up, and the outdoor funeral for Bob’s Falstaff our journey through this world, no character, and the contrast could not matter how sordid. He wants to argue be more pronounced. Nowhere are that the Faustian bargain that Scott Van Sant’s sympathies more clearly on makes is too high a price to reap the view than in the way he sets up these rewards of the world. Better to live on contrasting worlds. If this strikes the margins and truly feel the world some viewers as hopelessly romantic like Mike and his friends, even if and naïve, it is nonetheless genuinely fleetingly, than live in great comfort felt. Mike’s screams and his “out-ofand wealth like Scott and become one controlness” at the funeral are an of the walking dead. expression of his authentic self. The wild abandon and intensity of the If Scott’s character at the film’s end characters as they celebrate Bob’s life exemplifies the idea that naïvete is made to seem attractive in some and the ecstasies of youth might strange way. However sordid and have to give way to the jaded adult grubby their lives, these denizens of world when we take up of our the streets at least have each other. worldly responsibilities (as they do They are authentically themselves, in Shakespeare’s Henry plays when and crucially accept each other the young king turns on his former without reservation. They belong to friend, the corpulent, hedonistic a family that truly cares about them. Falstaff ), we still feel a mixture of By siding with Mike and the other emotions about Mike’s character. the funeral revelers, instead of the Even if there is a side to us that wants conventional world of politics and to embrace the energy and reckless money that Scott now represents, Van vitality of Mike, it is difficult to fully Sant offers the viewer a moment to embrace the lost character we see consider whether youthful aspirations on the streets after he is rejected by and energy need to be sacrificed at the Scott. That the character still suffers altar of ambition, upward mobility from narcoleptic episodes at the end and the trappings of a successful life. of film, seems to imply that Mike’s emotional journey and search for Scott’s rational coolness, both his wholeness is far from finished. The character and the world he inhabits, loss of his friend’s love has sent the provides an apollonian contrast to character into a downward spiral Mike’s dionysian ecstasy presented in the final episodes of the film and most emphatically by the wild Mike continues his cycle of selling his abandon at Bob’s funeral party. body interspersed with his narcoleptic What will strike some viewers as episodes. Scott continues the cycle of the stunted emotional world of a of abandonment begun by the mother character who cannot grow up will we only see in Mike’s imagination. seem to others like a character who But despite his downward spiral, the is more authentically in the world, funeral scene emphasizes that Mike who feels the complexities and is not entirely defeated. He is still contradictions of the world more more alive than Scott will ever be deeply. The great irony of course is even though he has none of Scott’s that Mike’s narcolepsy prevents the trappings of worldly wealth and character from fully engaging in the success. world. It is a world with gaps of time, periods seemingly edited out of the Mike’s strange condition, which film that his life has become. The results in his narcoleptic blackouts, character cannot control when these is probably meant to be seen as narcoleptic episodes occur, but they something of a metaphor for the are always connected to a crisis in interrupted process of growing up and his inner emotional life. Despite this the emotional growth that generally partial engagement, Van Sant seems happens to us all in fits and starts. to want to argue that the ecstatic It is something we all must learn to

work through as best we can as we inevitably enter into adulthood. Adjusting to the adult world is something that Scott (Keanu Reeves) slides into very easily at the end of the film, but it is something that eludes Mike, who remains child-like in his enthusiasms for life. Mike’s natural curiosity and naivety endear him to the audience in ways that Scott’s cooler character never does. We never feel emotional about Scott in the way we do about Mike because we know that ultimately Scott can take care of himself. He will definitely be O.K. and not just because he was born into money. The audience knows that Scott’s rationalism allows him to interact and navigate the world in ways that Mike never will. We may admire Mike more, but we also know that the Scotts of the world always get ahead. Van Sant seems to understand this. It may be why he has emotionally stacked the deck in favor of Mike. Van Sant knows that in the end, people like Mike will always lose out in some way to the Scotts of the world. On the other hand, Mike also has his community, his body and his enthusiasm for life. It may not be enough, but it is authentically his. –Mario Falsetto (A portion of this text has been extracted from Conversations With Gus Van Sant by Mario Falsetto, Rowman & Littlefield, 2015. Used by permission of the author and the publisher.)

Time, A Fair Hustler | Hand2Mouth 9

to > Memorial \

From Interview

to > Performance

When asked to describe how Hand2Mouth will weave the details of fact into the fabric of performance, Jonathan says of the interviews and research: “We will bury [them] into the text of the show as all part of this fictional world.” Despite the strong emphasis on interviews, the show will also embrace theatricality. In part to elude the problem of how to cast the iconic leads without constant comparisons to Reeves and Phoenix, Jonathan has cast them as women. In this revisiting of a beloved film that was inspired by a classic play, Hand2Mouth foregoes the Shakespeare, except for the title, which is drawn both from Henry IV and from Scott’s appropriation of its lines:

WHAT DO YOU CARE? WHY, YOU WOULDN’T EVEN LOOK AT A CLOCK, UNLESS HOURS WERE LIKE LINES OF COKE, DIALS LOOKED LIKE THE SIGNS OF GAY BARS OR TIME ITSELF WAS A FAIR HUSTLER IN BLACK LEATHER?…THERE’S NO REASON TO KNOW THE TIME. WE ARE TIMELESS.

The integration of interviews into the performance text provides an important level of material detail to our performance. Dramaturg Jess Drake will mine interview transcripts for interviewee first-witness accounts about life ‘on the street’. She and Playwright Andrea Stolowitz will also draw out patterns that get used when interviewees are deep in recollection: the umms, the ahs, the gaps in speech. The interviews are also strategic tools intended to work against notions of “new” Portland as the clean utopia, the “liveable” city as which it is so often cast. One 10 Hand2Mouth | Time, A Fair Hustler

To create Time, A Fair Hustler, which premieres this summer at Artists Repertory Theater in Portland, our director Jonathan conducted interviews with a wide range of people involved in My Own Private Idaho, including extras, crew, and others who were part of the subculture of homeless youth in Portland in the late 1980s and 1990—all of which will be woven into the script. The “real” Mike and Scott will also be interviewed. Hand2Mouth’s interviews with long-time residents of Portland speak—as the film does for some—as memorials to a lost city.

interviewee, who was a street kid and “child prostitute” in the late 80s, recalled the details of the sex trade, including “the wall” downtown where she and other underage prostitutes often stood to attract customers. She links her period of homelessness and prostitution to “catastrophic poverty” and parental neglect. Like the interviews in Van Sant’s film, these narrative accounts serve as a reminder of the brutal aspects of being young and marginalized. They also offer an important female perspective absent in Van Sant’s focus on boys and men. While it’s true that parts of Portland are shiny and new and that one of Van Sant’s ‘own’ hustlers has found success as a photographer for local film and TV, including the television show Grimm, it’s important to note that the same interviewee observed that far from being gone, child prostitution has been pushed East, towards the strip malls of outer Portland. And yet, she noted, the landscape has substantially changed for homeless young people as a result of a growth in social service agencies that provide a range of services including shelter, needle exchange, and professional development to at-risk youth. In conjunction with the premiere, Hand2Mouth will curate an event series, “Portland: Then and Now,” to generate conversation about Portland and its future. ”Before the Pearl” will be a walking tour of sites from the film (some still there, some lost) that will address the changes since 1990 in NW Portland, where much of Private Idaho was shot. Another event, “Young, Queer, and Homeless,” will invite social service providers and formerly homeless young people to consider how conditions have changed in the last 25 years for marginalized youth. Hand2Mouth is coordinating with local organizations that serve homeless youth to create professional development opportunities in production for the run of the show. The third and last event in this series will be “A Funeral for Old Portland.” This is especially fitting since one of the final scenes of My Own Private Idaho is a funeral. Scott Favor turns 21, his father, the Mayor of Portland, dies, and he inherits his fortune. Upon this embrace of a heteronormative, affluent life, with

prospects for a political career, Scott turns his back on the street and his old friends. Our funeral will take place in the theatre with eulogies commissioned from interviewees and others who were active in the city in the 1990s. We are hoping that everyone will be there: today’s street kids, yesterday’s street kids; the former mayor and the current mayor; emerging and emerged artists; the moms and dads; young creatives and the old creatives; musicians (who have aspired to their pictures on record covers) and those whose aspirations have only ever been digital. After the eulogies are read we will ask everyone to take a moment to imagine the place they want to live, and to consider: What of “old Portland” do we want to leave behind and what do we want to take with us into the future? Then we will ask people to speak these out loud. I like imagining this scene, because the story of many 21st century cities is one of transition, and of flux, as new flows of capital come in, many people who are firmly entrenched and have made helped define the city and its institutions, are pushed out to the margins. As we tell these stories of flows of capital and people, it is useful to reflect upon the ways that My Own Private Idaho plays with what Bill Nichols argues in his work: that all fiction can be classified as documentary. Fictions, he writes, are “documentaries of wish-fulfillment…they give a sense of what we wish, or fear, reality itself might be or become.” Every city had its own subcultures of artists living cheaply in industrial spaces and/or depressed neighborhoods. The story of our generation is the story of gentrification: the story of people choosing urban communities over suburban ones. The question is how we will tell it, and how we act upon it. How do we navigate the paradox of gentrification on which the privileged creative is always on the front line of that change? –By Jen Mitas Excerpted from longer essay ‘Don’t Underestimate My Point of View’, published in Brooklyn Quarterly (June, 2015) brooklynquarterly.org/dont-underestimate-mypoint-of-view-2/

BIOS JEAN-LUC BOUCHEROT

(BOB) Jean-Luc is a French actor based in Portland, Oregon. He received a classical education at a conservatory in France. He has performed Oedipus, Orlando in The Frenzy of Orlando by Lariosto, and in several Moliere masterpieces. Last July he was seen as Don Adriano de Armado in Post Five Theater’s Love’s Labour’s Lost, and more recently in Portland Playhouse’s The Other Place. He also has worked for cinema, television and radio, in France as well as in Portland, were he appeared in Leverage and Grimm.

JENNI GREENMILLER

(MOM) Jenni is an actor, playwright and storyteller who has performed in the Portland theater community for over 15 years. She was a company member with Sowelu Theater and worked with A.R.T., Curious Comedy, Lakewood Theater Company, Fuse, Lunacy, and Triangle Theater. Most recently her play An Island received a Regional Arts and Culture Council Grant. She studied with Anne Bogart at SITI New York and with Burning Wheel in L.A. Jenni is thrilled to be working with Hand2Mouth.

JULIE HAMMOND

(MIKE) Julie is a performer, theatre maker and Hand2Mouth company member. Since 2005 she has made 12 full length shows with Hand2Mouth and toured to Poland, Mexico, NYC, San Francisco, Helena, and across the Pacific NW. Favorite recent performances include PEP TALK at Coffee Creek Correctional Facility and in rural Oregon. Additional projects include Tilth (Conduit Dance+), Untitled #1 (PuppetLove!), and the development and tour of William Pope.L’s The Black Factory. Her work has been supported by the Oregon Arts Commission and in September 2015 she will begin a MFA in Interdisciplinary Studies at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, B.C.

ERIKA LATTA

(SCOTT) Erika is the Artistic co-Director of the multi-disciplinary company, WAXFACTORY (New York). She has worked in New York for the last seventeen years as an actor and director in theater and film where she has made new innovative work in traditional and nontraditional space, creating long lasting

PETER KSANDER

international collaborations between NYC and Europe. She is an associate director of the site-specific company Begat Theater (France). She is a former fellow in performing arts at the Akademie Schloss Solitude (Germany) and the Liguria Center for the Arts + Humanities (Italy). Recent projects include: 416 MINUTES, Punchdrunk’s SLEEP NO MORE, CONCUSSION (Sundance Film Festival) and LILY (Tribeca Film Festival). Upcoming projects: the tour of LA DISPARITION (France) and WaxFactory’s PULL YOURSELF TOGETHER (NYC). She holds a BFA in Theater (University of Washington) and a MFA in Acting (Columbia University). It is a great honor to work with the cast and crew of Time, A Fair Hustler and the Hand2Mouth Theatre.

JASON ROUSE

(GARY) Jason previously worked with Hand2Mouth Theatre in 2013’s adaptation of Ursula K. LeGuin’s The Left Hand of Darkness. He’s appeared at Portland Playhouse in Detroit and Blood Bloody Andrew Jackson, and cowrote and starred in Weekend at Bernie’s. He’s currently a writer and the announcer on PRI’s Live Wire Radio.

ANNE SORCE

(HANS) Anne is Artistic Director of the physical theater company Push Leg and a performer with Imago Theatre. Other companies she has worked with include Portland Playhouse, CoHo Productions, Northwest Classical, defunkt, and Theatre de la Jeune Lune. She studied physical theater at L’École Jacques Lecoq.

KATELAN BRAYMER

(ASSOCIATE LIGHTING DESIGNER) Katelan is a Lighting Designer and Technical Director for Theatre, Dance and Opera Performance based out of both Los Angeles, CA and Portland, OR. She began working with Hand2Mouth in 2008. Recently Katelan has designed for Milagro, Boom Arts, Holcombe Waller, Bootleg Theater, and Samantha Goodman. She has spent the past couple years touring with David Rousseve and Lionel Popkin. Since 2011 in LA she has been a Lighting Assistant at the LA Opera, Center Theatre Group, and Co-Director of Production at a festival called Live Arts Exchange. www.KatelanBraymer.com

(SCENIC DESIGNER) Peter is a scenographer and media artist whose stage design work has been presented both nationally and internationally. Previously for Hand2Mouth he designed the sets for The Left Hand of Darkness, Pep Talk, Repeat After Me, and City of Gold. In 2008 he won an Obie award for the scenic design of Untitled Mars (this title may change). In 2014 he won a Bessie award for the set design of This Was the End. He was a curator at the Incubator Arts Project and is an Associate Professor at Reed College.

CHRISTOPHER KUHL

(LIGHTING DESIGNER) Christopher is a lighting and scenic designer for new performance, theatre, dance, and opera. Time, A Fair Hustler marks Kuhl’s 10th collaboration with Hand2Mouth. He has also had the pleasure of working and making art at PICA’s TBA Festival, On the Boards, The Fusebox Festival, BAM, REDCAT, The Public Theatre, Queer Zagreb, Santiago a Mil Chile and the Holland Festival. He received a 2014 Bessie Award for his contribution in the Outstanding Visual Design of This Was the End, which premiered at the Chocolate Factory last year. He is originally from New Mexico and a graduate of CalArts.

JAMIE MEINECKE

(COSTUME DESIGNER) Jamie spent her early years at her grandmother’s knee learning the old school method of fit and construction. Impeccable fit, tailoring and focus on details are her trademark. Jamie earned a B.F.A from the Art Institute of Portland in 2009. Over the past six years she has had the pleasure of working for several notable theater companies including OBT, Portland Playhouse, the Trey McIntyre Project and now Hand2Mouth.

SETH NEHIL

(SOUND DESIGNER) Seth is a sound and video artist. He has composed original scores for dance and theater companies including Linda Austin Dance, Linda K. Johnson Dance, Liz Gerring Dance and video artist Kelly Rauer. He has released over 15 albums of experimental music since 1998 and has performed internationally. Seth Nehil previously worked with Hand2Mouth as a composer for The Posture Queen (2001) and Jerusalem: Nat Turner’s Uprising (2002). www.sethnehil.artdocuments.org

Time, A Fair Hustler | Hand2Mouth 11

BIOS PATRICK WEISHAMPEL

(VIDEO DESIGNER) Patrick is an award winning filmmaker, the creative director of BLANKEYE, and a video and motion graphics editor who has directed, designed motion graphics, and edited more than ten films. He has designed video for People’s Republic of Portland, The Mountaintop, Sunset Blvd, The Chosen, Frost/Nixon, and was video assistant on One Night with Janis Joplin. Recent collaborations have been with Spin Film as editor on the documentary Metolius, Finding Face, and currently co-producing and editing 101 Seconds, a documentary film surrounding the gun debate.

JONATHAN WALTERS

(DIRECTOR) Jonathan founded Hand2Mouth Theatre in Portland in 2000, after beginning his career in Poland. As Artistic Director, Jonathan has co-conceived, co-created, and directed the bulk of Hand2Mouth shows, and works closely with the ensemble to develop original devised theatre work. Under his direction, Hand2Mouth Theatre has premiered over 20 major new works, as well as site-specific and commissioned short pieces in the Portland area, and toured these works regionally, nationally and abroad, presenting at today’s leading venues for contemporary theatre performance, and in small towns, colleges, prisons and high school gyms.

ANDREA STOLOWITZ

(COLLABORATING WRITER) Andrea is an award-winning internationally produced playwright. Her most recent play Schlüterstrasse 27 was presented in May, 2015 in Berlin, Germany (ETB/ International Performing Arts Center) where she is a 2014-2015 DAAD scholar and playwright-in-residence. Her play Ithaka won the 2015 Oregon Book Award in drama and was produced in 2014 to critical acclaim in Chicago. The play world-premiered at Portland’s Artists Repertory Theater in 2013 where it was commissioned. Andrea’s play Antarktikos (Oregon Book Award 2013) has been presented in Pittsburgh, Berlin, L.A., NYC, Seattle, and Philadelphia and published in Theatre Forum Journal of International Drama. The play received an honorable mention ranking on the 2015 Kilroy’s List. Andrea is a founding member of Playwrights West and is a resident artists 12 Hand2Mouth | Time, A Fair Hustler

companies such as NWCTC, MBT Rep, and Lunacy Stageworks, but is delighted to be dedicated to devised theatre. at ART She teaches dramatic writing at the University of Portland and Willamette University. This is her second collaboration with Hand2Mouth. andreastolowitz.com

JESS DRAKE

(DRAMATURG) Jess is a company member with Hand2Mouth (PEP TALK, Left Hand of Darkness, and Something’s Got Ahold of My Heart.) Since graduating from Westmont College with liberal arts degrees in Theatre & Literature, Jess has focused on dramaturgy for devised theatre and new play development, also working with Lit Moon Theatre Company, Ratatat Theatre Group, and PCS JAW Festival 2013. Jess was awarded a fellowship to the Eugene O’Neill Critics Institute by KCACTF in 2011, and returned to the Kennedy Center in 2012 for the New Play Dramaturgy Intensive with Mark Bly (Colossal by Andrew Hinderacker). Other related work includes reading scripts for various new play festivals, freelance arts journalism, and marketing for CoHo Productions.

JEN MITAS

(CREATIVE PRODUCER) Over the last twenty years Jen has worked in experimental theatre and performance as a producer, administrator, lecturer, performer, and critic. She began her career in New York as an assistant to the Producing Director at Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM), facilitator for the Field’s interdisciplinary performing arts workshops, and theatre critic for Citysearch New York. Her performance work was commissioned and presented both nationally and internationally by Brooklyn Arts Exchange (BAX), Dixon Place, Zet Kunst Mediale (ZKM), and London’s Exit Art Gallery, amongst others. In 2002 Jen moved to England where she was awarded a PhD with full funding from Queen Mary University of London, and developed performance projects at Battersea Arts Centre (BAC), and through the Live Art Development Agency’s East End Collaborations. She has worked with Hand2Mouth since late 2012.

CHELSEA LOWRIE

(STAGE MANAGER) Chelsea is proud to be entering her fourth year stage managing with Hand2Mouth Theatre. Lyrics from Something’s Got A Hold of My Heart and speeches from PEP TALK still get stuck in her head. She has previously enjoyed working with regional

MARGARET CLEMENT

(PRODUCTION MANAGER) Margaret is excited to be back in her hometown of Portland and working on her first production with Hand2Mouth Theatre. She spent the last year in the Bay Area as Berkeley Repertory Theatre’s Production Management Fellow. In 2014 Margaret graduated from the University of Puget Sound where she majored in Business but found solace in Theatre.

MICHELLE MILNE

(ASSISTANT DIRECTOR) Michelle is a theatre artist and educator who has worked across the US, including Chicago, San Francisco, New York, Baltimore, various places in Indiana, and Portland. Favorite recent shows have included directing a highly physical and immersive production of Romeo and Juliet, Sarah Ruhl’s Eurydice, and several ensemble-devised productions; as well as performing her original writing as “Carmelina du Jour” in Chicago’s Poetry Bordello, and being a part of the ensemble for Palissimo’s The Painted Bird at La Mama in NYC. She will be directing The Best of Everything at Bag&Baggage in September. Michelle is a Feldenkrais Method practitioner; teaches in the theatre departments of Columbia College Chicago and Goshen College; has taught classes in prisons and jails; and is currently traveling around the US for the second time in three years as part of an ongoing writing project. She performed with Hand2Mouth over ten years ago in the first incarnation of Posture Queen, and is thrilled to be reunited with one of her favorite ensembles for this production.

HANNAH EDELSON

(ASSISTANT CHOREOGRAPHER) Hannah is a senior at Lewis & Clark College. Past theatrical endeavors include creation/performance of Don’t Panic!, performing the role of Juliette in Exit the King by Eugene Ionesco, Anna and dance captain in Spring Awakening, and Celia in As You Like It.

AMY KATRINA BRYAN

(PROPS MASTER & DESIGNER) Amy is an actress, playwright and musician last seen in please validate your identity for the Fertile Ground festival. She is very happy to be collaborating with Hand2Mouth Theatre!

BIOS PETER G. HOLMSTRÖM

(COMPOSER) Peter is a founding member of The Dandy Warhols and has recorded and toured with them for over 20 years. He also records and performs under the Pete International Airport name. He has created music for the Begat Theatre company in France on numerous occasions.

AL JAMES

(COMPOSER) Al is a songwriter and singer, born and raised in Oregon. He writes and records simple, but honest songs in the vein of Townes Van Zandt, Willie Nelson and Gene Clark. He has recorded numerous records with his band under the name Dolorean. He has also collaborated with songwriter Bob Desper, performing live in Bob’s band, in support of the re-issue of his 70s folk masterpiece New Sounds .

JAY CLARKE

(COMPOSER) Jay is a composer and musician from Portland, Oregon. Under the name Ash Black Bufflo, he has composed for numerous film, dance and theater productions including the H2M productions of Something’s Got A Hold of My Heart, Uncanny Valley and My Mind is Like an Open Meadow for which he won a Drammy award.

JACK GIBSON

(CONSULTING WRITER & MUSICAL ARRANGER) Jack is a writer, director and musician who has lived and worked in Austin, Los Angeles, and Portland, Oregon since 1992. His musical group Tenlons Fort released five albums from 2005–2014. In 2005 he co-founded Against These Walls, a down syndrome campaign with musician Cam Lasley. Jack was a student at the NW Film Center in 1993, and a crew member on the original Beverly Hills 90210, Gus Van Sant’s Elephant, and has made over ten short films from 2000–2014. This October he will start production of a feature length film The Lockhart Girls in Tygh Valley, Oregon. This is is his fourth collaboration with Hand2Mouth.

THIS PRODUCTION IS PRODUCED in association with Artists Repertory Theatre with additional support from: PROJECT SPONSORS: The Oregon Community Foundation’s Creative Heights initiative; the Autzen Foundation; the Collins Foundation; the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde via the Spirit Mountain Community Fund; the Regional Arts and Culture Council; the Herbert A. Templeton Foundation. Auxiliary events are supported in part by the Multnomah County Cultural Coalition; Oregon Humanities (OH), a statewide non-profit organization and independent affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities, which funds OH’s grant program. Season sponsors: Kinsman Foundation; Meyer Memorial Trust; the James F. and Marion L. Miller Foundation; Oregon Arts Commission; Ronni LaCroute, Willakenzie Estate. WE’D ALSO LIKE TO THANK OUR IN-KIND SUPPORTERS:

Andina Restaurant, Attorney Lake Perriguey at Law Works LLC, Full Sail Brewing Company, LIBRA; Balanced Wines, media sponsors Willamette Week and Artslandia, and Valaurum.

THANK YOU TO OUR RAFFLE DONORS:

Stumptown Coffee, Portland Playhouse, Flying Pie Pizzeria, Por Qué No, Cinema 21, Profile Theatre, Third Rail Repertory Theatre, Artists Repertory Theatre, Ground Kontrol Classic Arcade, Kaj-anne Pepper, the Wellness Center, Tea Bar, Cinema 21, Creative Guide Faith Helma, The People’s Yoga, Eastside Distillery, and White Bird Dance.

SPECIAL THANKS TO:

Damaso Rodriguez, Sarah Horton, Nicole Lane, Shawn Lee and Karen Rathje, and the rest of the wonderful staff at Artists Repertory Theatre; Gus Van Sant; Scott Green; Kathy Oliver and Outside In; Yaddo Artist Residency; Playa’s Residency Program; Boom Arts; Performance Works Northwest; Anon It Moves; Know Your City; Milagro Theatre; CoHo Theatre; Third Rail Repertory Theatre; Blue Sky Gallery; Northwest Film Center; Clinton Street Theatre; McMenamins Mission; Cinema 21; Academy Theatre; Portland Playhouse; Profile Theatre; Emma Post and Clare Whistler; Jared Goodman/ Morgan St Theater; Carole Zucker; Molly Gardner; Casi Pacilio; Jason Rouse and his dream video-team; Naomi Adiv; Dave Weich/Sheepscot Creative; and Mac Kimmerle.

SPECIAL THANKS TO EVERYONE WHO CONTRIBUTED TO THE CREATIVE DEVELOPMENT PROCESS OVER THE LAST YEAR:

Orion Bradshaw, Sasha Blocker, Tara Coen, Carin Counihan, Jeremy Catterton, Grace Carter, Noah Dunham, Tony Green, Otniel Henig, Daniel Hill, Patrick Hilton, Wisteria Loeffler, James Luster, Brittany Nicastro, Heather Rose Pearson, Melissa Schenter, Seven Stevens, Holly Marie Suda, Rusty Tennant, Robert Tyree, Katie Watkins, and Judson Williams. Also to those we interviewed for their memories of 1990 Portland and the making of My Own Private Idaho: Nils Benson, Ricky Benson, Sean Aaron Bowers, Rene Denfeld, Scott Patrick Green, Eric Hill, Ricky Meyers, Vana O’Brien and Tim Streeter.