JAW's second weekend PLUS Todd Haynes on 'Mildred Pierce'

Todd Haynes on Kate Winslet? Determined!

By Barry Johnson

As promised, here's my OPB-based post on the weekend -- which this weekend meant JAW and Todd Haynes.

Before a staged reading during the second half of the JAW festival of new plays this weekend, Portland Center Stage artistic director Chris Coleman suggested that theater lovers are really story junkies. We crave its ability to relate the tales of human experience so vividly.


I’m not sure that’s true, at least not for me. I found myself anticipating this weekend’s plays not so much for stories as the insights into our human predicament as we wander through the front end of the 21st century. And, maybe more than anything, I liked the buzz so many actors, directors, playwrights and committed theater fans create.


I didn’t get a clear signal from the four playwrights this weekend, no underlying themes or warnings about catastrophes to come. On the other hand I did get two excellent heroines, one autobiographical collision of a playwright and a war zone journalist and one doo-wop serial killer play. In brief:

• “Anna Karenina” adapted by Kevin McKeon: Heroine number one was the tragic Anna. When I saw the running time of the play was under three hours, I thought this must be a comic version, like the Reduced Shakespeare Company’s version of “The Complete Works of William Shakespeare.” But no, McKeon, an accomplished novel adaptor, has preserved the essential passion and plot of the play and saved us many days of Tolstoy reading. Perfect!
• “Tales From Red Vienna” by David Grimm: Heroine number two is Helena, a widow whose husband has died heroically in World War I. Material resources vanishing, she is reduced to prostitution to survive. This sounds tragic (and it is), but the play is also hilarious, thanks mostly to a wisecracking servant and Grimm’s gift for one-liners and aphorisms, and Helena refuses to become a tragic heroine.
• “The Body of an American” by Dan O’Brien: O’Brien exchanged emails with and finally met Pulitzer-winning photographer Paul Watson, and that forms the basis for this play. Watson is most famous for an image of the body of an American soldier dragged through the streets of Mogadishu, but that photograph has haunted him since 1993. O’Brien idolizes Watson and his own psychological issues entwine with Watson’s. The pace at which this happens? Breakneck.
• “The Huntsmen” by Quincy Long: Long drops some fabulous doo-wop numbers into the middle of his dark comedy, and when Cory Michael Smith as the seriously unhinged teenager Devon breaks into “Some people call me Speedoo, but my real name is Mister Earl,” the audience practically cried out “Wow!” in unison. Think of it as a coming-of-age tale with machetes involved.

All these playwrights have considerable credentials, and these plays are all likely to find their way to the stage of a major regional theater. Portland Center Stage will produce “Anna Karenina” next spring, for example. And all of them seem very close to production-worthy -- sharp, smart, with most of their internal issues resolved.

In addition to Smith as Devon, I should point out Katy Selverstone as Anna, Melinda Paige Hamilton as Helena and Tommy Schrider and Ward Duffy as Dan and Paul for the way they dealt with the demands of their roles. Staged readings are not walks in the park -- in fact, I’d argue that they put more strain on an actor because of the short rehearsal period and the absence of sets, costumes and props. (For more on the second weekend of JAW, you can link to my posts at Oregon Arts Watch.)


Portland film director Todd Haynes and producer Christine Vachon arrived at the Northwest Film Center on Sunday, ready to take questions from fans of Haynes’ HBO series, “Mildred Pierce,” which Vachon produced. And for around 90 minutes they were peppered with them, questions technical (Q: How could you afford so many reflected shots through glass?; A: By working in miniature we saved money on set construction), celebrity oriented (Q: Kate Winslet! A: I liked the physicality, determination and focus she brought to Mildred) and film geeky (Haynes discussed Fassbinder and the great genre films of the 1970s).


I’m already on record with my admiration for Haynes’ “Mildred Pierce.” It’s not a film noir, like Michael Curtiz’s adaptation of the James M. Cain novel, and the textures that result, both in the richness of its depiction of 1930s L.A., and the psychology of the characters seem amazing in contrast. So, it was enlightening to hear him talk about it in person with Vachon.

Arts Dispatch family business: Welcome to the family, Oregon Arts Watch!

By Barry Johnson

Wow! I know I've been gone a LONG time, and I should have explained myself LONG before now.

Mostly, I've been working on a new arts and culture journalism site, Oregon Arts Watch. A lot of other people have been working on it, too. And a couple of weeks ago, we launched a "starter kit" website, while our ace web designer builds a more functional and distinctive site for us. I hope you'll make your way over there. So far, the primary contributors are Brett Campbell, Lisa Radon and I, but more writers are working on stories as we speak.

For starters, we're going to focus on theater, dance, classical music and jazz, and visual arts, though we've already lurched into film and TV. If things work out, we'll deal with almost anything cultural.

The prime driver of Oregon Arts Watch is the observation that journalism (broadly speaking) as a profession is starting to disappear, especially journalism aimed at the cultural life we share together. The struggles of American newspapers and the news departments of radio and television stations is well know. At the same time, we observed that the practices of journalism needed to change, too, that the inquiry at the heart of all good journalism needed to be more open-minded, transparent and rigorous than what it had become.  Oregon Arts Watch is a non-profit, and we couldn't in good conscience ask for public support without reforming the way we did business.

What about Arts Dispatch? I'm going to try to keep it going. For starters, I'm going to post the little columns I'm writing for Oregon Public Broadcasting's Arts & Life page here each Monday. Those are little wrap-ups of what I ran into over the weekend. After that, we'll just have to see. Right now, I can imagine a lot of things that I'd want to put into a personal blog that I would NOT want to post on a more general journalism site. The question is time: Getting Oregon Arts Watch started has consumed a lot of that, and I just know that keeping it going will, too. As I said, we'll see.

For those of you who have visited, my deepest thanks. And if I think I can't do a better job of keeping this site operational, I'll let you know, and we'll give it a little vacation!

Symphonies by the numbers

By Barry Johnson

Comparing the financial numbers of symphony orchestras is tedious business.  You have to go to GuideStar and look up each symphony's IRS 990 form, scroll through the form and find the right row. Those 990s have lots of good information, but they don't have base musician salaries. For those you need to go to the American Federation of Musicians and the International Guild of Symphony, Opera and Ballet Musicians. It's a pain, especially if you want to be comprehensive. And the 990s are always a couple of years behind -- the 2008/2009 numbers are now available for just about everyone.

I'm happy to report that Drew McManus at his Adaptistration blog has done all that work for you! You can compare and contrast to your heart's content. Want to know how much Michael Tilson-Thomas makes conducting the San Francisco Symphony? It's there ($1,588,816). How much does a fulltime percussionist without tenure or title make at the Boston Symphony? That's there, too ($128,180).

Of course, McManus can't speak to the actual numbers -- just the ones the symphonies reported to the IRS. And remember, this is a slice of data from two years ago. We know that a lot has changed in the symphony world since then.  Nonetheless, the numbers are fascinating, if you're trying to make sense of how symphonies operate, though many of them beg for more explanation (for example, severance packages swelled the compensation numbers of some of the music directors).

Below, I've collected a few of McManus's numbers into my own chart.  I'm in Portland, so the Oregon Symphony is in my first line. I've compared it to some geographically pertinent orchestras and others that have a similar overall budget.

Symphony Orchestra Salary Comparison/2008/2009

	Total expenditure	Music director	Executive director	Base musician
Oregon Symphony	$14,930,007	$424,000	$240,330	$45,924
Seattle	$23,760,741	$785,113	$304,253	$82,250
San Francisco	$63,732,771	$1,588,816	$480,989	$124,800
New Jersey	$15,171,040	$375,000	$204,427	$39,712
Utah	$17,788,364	$323,731	$212,176	$61,828
Indianapolis	$35,619,798	$455,856	$281,933	$79,040
Houston	$23,550,981	$359,323	$226,732	$75,735

Source: Drew McManus, Adaptistration

It's easy to start drawing conclusions from just the bare numbers. And the numbers are all over the place. For example, both Houston and Indianapolis paid their musicians about the same base salary in 2008-2009, even though the budget at Indianapolis was far larger. Seattle paid its music director more than double what Houston paid, even though their budgets are roughly equal. These are local decisions, even personal decisions, and they are made from different financial circumstances -- total expenditure isn't necessarily a good barometer of the economic condition of an orchestra. Without knowing the specific background and history of those decisions, it's unfair to comment. On the other hand, the numbers do suggest questions and in some cases should require some explanations from the symphony orchestras themselves. By the way, I suspect that Michael Tilson-Thomas is worth every penny.

A negative review: The Voice makes life impossible for its dance critic, Deborah Jowitt

Deborah Jowitt out at The Village Voice

By Barry Johnson

When I was young and restless and living on the East Coast, I was an avid reader of The Village Voice. I read the political columns closely, because the mainstream press failed to appreciate either the depth of the disaster and folly in Vietnam or the old-boy corruption at home, and the Voice did. And I read the arts writers, Andrew Sarris for film and Robert Christgau for rock, because they understood that the arts of the times weren't a decorative sideshow -- they were at the center of things, reflecting the tumult of the '60s and containing  the most savage and telling critiques of American society. I understood that from reading those critics.

I also read the Voice's dance critics. Jill Johnston's columns barely qualified as criticism really. They were bright bursts of a cultural and personal consciousness summoned by dance, more than careful considerations. The shocking and wonderful dance experiments of the time, which questioned and redeployed all of the elements of movement into completely new approaches and concepts, were perfect for Johnston's enthusiasm.  Deborah Jowitt was aware of the cultural upheaval around her, but she focused her considerable powers of observation on the dance itself and the artists who made it, finding in their radical experiments a way for us all to engage the world creatively.

This is a column about Jowitt, because she recently resigned from the Voice rather than change her approach to writing about dance. Her editor wanted to her to write more "negative" reviews, and that's not the kind of critic that Jowitt is. She rightly refused to comply, and as a result, the Voice continues its mad dash toward irrelevance. Actually, I suppose it's more of a marathon, this slow unwinding of a once-great newspaper. On the other hand,  I'm confident that Jowitt will find interesting projects and places to write in the future. She is a national institution greater than the newspaper she is leaving.

Alex Ross, the Oregon Symphony and the argument for coherence -- not to mention drama

Carlos Kalmar, ebullient/Photo: Leah Nash 

By Barry Johnson

The triumph of the Oregon Symphony at Carnegie Hall was duly noted by the New York Times (and still somehow created a kerfuffle of sorts), and the New York Times is a very good recommendation indeed. But I was waiting for the full review from Alex Ross at the New Yorker. He'd given a vigorous, positive nod toward Carlos Kalmar and company on his blog, and for me, the author of The Rest Is Noise, is at the top of the classical music reviewing heap.

Just to remove all suspense, Ross called the Oregon Symphony's performance of its "Music for a Time of War" program "one of the most gripping events of the current season." He then proceeded to describe the music and its playing in the poetic phrases that are central to Ross's gift as a reviewer. You know, like "the brutal timpani strokes that open Britten's symphony fell like cannonballs on the hospital ward." And then: "A sense of fragile resolution at the end of the Britten was torn asunder by the scouring dissonances of the Vaughan Williams...."  Great stuff.

The primary point Ross made had to do with the thoughtfulness of Kalmar's programming, the way it created drama and a sense of coherence, the power of its concept. He compared this to the usual programming at American symphonies: "The mechanical reshuffling of canonical repertory creates the impression that classical music is all-purpose fabric that can be cut by the yard." (And may I just say that I love the professionally employed metaphor here?) This programming -- one old warhorse, one bright piece for the soloist, one newer but mostly harmless piece -- may serve some of the symphony's constituencies, but maybe isn't the most satisfying for any of them at the end of the day.

Can we connect a symphony's programming and "quality" to attendance (and financial health)? Does a symphony that plays more conceptually exciting programs very well have a better chance at success than one that plugs away at the old format in the old way? I'd love to see some attempt to measure this.

Documentary review: 'How to Die in Oregon' opens the conversation

By Barry Johnson

Last night I watched Portland filmmaker Peter Richardson's How to Die in Oregon on HBO, and that wasn't easy. In the past months, both of my wife's parents have died, her father quite recently, so the anxiety and sadness are very close to the surface. No matter how it goes, you have doubts -- could we have made it easier for them? Which is another way of saying, could we have made it easier on ourselves?

"Easier" here is the tricky word, because honestly we don't know. We don't get to experiment with different ways of dying to find out the one we want. We assume the less pain the better, but when we are attending a loved one who is approaching death, we can't be sure what that means. Not even the doctors can -- how many milligrams of this, how many milligrams of that.

We also assume that the more control we have over the death experience, the better. That's the rationale behind Oregon's 1994 Death With Dignity Act: If you are consciousness and dying, you should be able to choose when you die, have the means prescribed to accomplish your death and do it legally.


Richardson's How to Die in Oregon tells several stories that explore real experiences connected to the Death With Dignity Act, all of which give human depth to the provisions of the law. The central story, though, is that of Cody Curtis, who has terminal cancer. And here, the use of the word easier become ridiculous, because her experience is not easy. It's painful physically (sometimes more than others) and in every other way you can imagine, because she lives with it, with her impending death, consciously all the time.

Classical music links: Detroit reaches out and Philadelphia risks $50 million

Has Philly risked $50m by filing for bankruptcy? Appears so.

By Barry Johnson

We have made our bed, and now we must sleep in it. I'm cliche-ing about the ongoing situations of two major American symphony orchestra, the Detroit Symphony and the Philadelphia Orchestra, about which we've written at length in the past. Their situations are different -- Detroit is coming back to life after a toxic strike and Philadelphia recently filed for bankruptcy, an action that is still open to interpretation and one that may have repercussions the board hasn't considered.


The Detroit Symphony goes suburban: Although the story doesn't say so, Detroit's striking musicians played a few concerts outside Detroit's city limits -- where the vast majority of Detroit metro population can be found. Continuing to connect to the existing classical music fan base in the suburbs and proselytizing among the uncommitted extends that idea. Another story talks about music director Leonard Slatkin's programming for the 2011-2012 season, which may or may not have an impact on attendance and fundraising (the story assumes it does, I have my doubts), and a few other changes the symphony has in store, lowering some ticket prices 50 percent, for example.


Was the Philadelphia Orchestra bankruptcy a $50 million mistake?: That's the provocative question that Peter Dobrin, the Philadelphia Inquirer's fine music critic asks. It has to do with a $50 million endowment gift in 2003 to the orchestra by the Annenberg Foundation. That gift had a little stipulation: If the orchestra went into bankruptcy, then the foundation could ask for the money back. Complicating matters: Since the death of Leonore Annenberg, The Annenberg Foundation now rarely funds Philadelphia non-profits -- most of its giving occurs in California.  In another story, Dobrin suggests that the orchestra's current financial situation is worse than it seems.


A few more related links: One of the key questions -- and maybe it's not even a question -- is whether the Philadelphia Orchestra board is using bankruptcy as a negotiating tactic to get out from under its contracts with its musicians, the pops orchestra and the concert hall in which it plays. The symphony in Louisville attempted to do something similar but the bankruptcy judge ruled it. Drew McManus's Adaptistration blog gets into the issue via a post from conductor Bill Eddins on the blog he keeps, Sticks and Drones.

The Detroit Symphony has lost several musicians during the strike and its aftermath, most recently its concertmaster, Emmanuelle Boisvert, who has played with the orchestra since 1988.