Mike Daisey is currently on hour 19 of his 24-hour monologue. I gave up last night at about 3 am, and couldn't settle into it again this morning when I went back, so now I'm checking out the livestream from the relative comfort of my couch. Erik is still there, though, and he's been blogging all night. It's pretty fucking great.

2:39 am—In what is either a brilliant satire of goofy performance art or just goofy performance art, Mike Daisey is now delivering a monologue/anecdote/dream sequence about that one time he turned into a female “prostitute in a brothel in Düsseldorf.” Meanwhile, two young, cute, immaculately dressed vegans fry bacon onstage on either side of him. —Erik

2:57 am—Overheard from one of the young, cute, immaculately dressed vegans: “It’s cool. I’ll shower afterwards.” —Erik

4 am—“My favorite episode of Battlestar Galactica is the clearly the best episode of Battlestar Galactica,” Daisey says, citing “33” as the best (this opinion is neither uncommon nor controversial, and is the correct opinion to have), and then going on to note that the series ended well (which is both an uncommon and controversial opinion, but also the correct one to have). Like that episode—in which the Galactica’s fleet has to jump via a faster-than-light drive every 33 minutes in order to avoid their enemies—Daisey says he’s on the clock, here, every 45 minutes, having to compile notes on every break, then come out at the top of every hour. “The whole episode’s about fatigue. It’s a beautiful episode,” he says. He is grappling, he adds, with “the very real possibility that this is not sustainable.” —Erik

12:12 pm—because we are in a decrepit old high school with really uncomfortable seats of fucking course there is a fire alarm and everybody follows daisey out to the flagpole like we are all six years old —erik

Go read the whole thing.

Tonight at TBA, a visit from Jenny Slate, Gabe Liedman, Max Silvestri, the hosts of the well-regarded Brooklyn comedy night Big Terrific—SNL short-timer Slate wrote and voiced "Marcel the Shell with Shoes On," and she stars with Liedman in the awesome web series Bestie x Bestie; they'll also be showing short films from the director of those videos, Dean Fleischer-Camp. After a not-particularly-successful comedy interlude as part of last night's programming, I'm looking forward to this—these guys are pros. That's 10:30 pm at Washington High.

Also tonight, dance performances by zoe|juniper and the Offsite Dance project, and another round of Andrew Dinwiddie's faux preacher schtick. (Has anyone else seen that? I'm curious what other people have thought.)

If you're wondering about the Offsite Dance project, which takes place at roving locations in industrial Southeast, there's a review and some video on our TBA blog. Also on the blog, we've got a review of the recent works program New Musics, which included a collaboration between Grouper and the Portland Flash Choir, plus a look at the first performance of Dean and Britta's 13 Most Beautiful... Songs for Andy Warhol's Screen Tests:

Hey demographic, you're about my age, right? Which means we're too young to remember Andy Warhol's experimental art scene of the 60s but old enough to have died of an overdose by now if we'd been a part of it.

Read the whole thing.

Over on our TBA blog, I've got an interview with Mike Daisey about the 24 hour monologue he'll be attempting for the first time this weekend.

I'm sitting at a coffeeshop, working on this very post, when I get a text from Mike Daisey:

"Surprising development: there will be a tremendous amount of bacon cooked live when least expected."

The well-timed news just broke that PICA has received a $200,000 grant for their "hub-and-spoke" programming model, which allows them to curate programming in venues around the city from one central office. PICA is currently looking for a new office space, which they intend both as hub of activity on its own, and as a home base for projects around town. This grant will allow them to invest in mobile technology and "mobile architecture," which will both support their new space and facilitate their model of hosting temporary events in other venues.

Details are on our TBA blog. You have to click.

With 13 Most Beautiful... Songs for Andy Warhol's Screen Tests, Luna's Dean Warham (former frontman of Galaxie 500) and Britta Philips provide a soundtrack to 13 of Andy Warhol's screen tests—filmed portraits of Factory visitors including Edie Sedgwick and Nico. The soundtrack includes a few Velvet Underground covers and reprisals of Luna songs; Dean and Britta will perform it live in front of a projection of Warhol's portraits.

Also tonight, a few promising dance options: The Offsite Dance project, featuring a site-specific performance created in industrial Southeast by three Japanese dancers; and A Crack in Everything, from the well-regarded Seattle company zoe|juniper.

And finally, at the Works, Catch, a grabbag of short-form programming co-curated by fake preacher Andrew Dinwiddie:

Hey Brooklyn, thanks for sharing Catch with us. In return, you can open as many Stumptown Coffee locations as you see fit. While most collectives claim great range (but seldom live up to it), Catch is a truly eclectic collection of dance, video, theater, and just about everything else in between. A bi-monthly staple of the Brooklyn art scene for eight years running, this “rough and ready” crew will include choreographer Luciana Achugar, art collective Oregon Painting Society, and the hypnotic dance of Woolly Mammoth Comes to Dinner. EZRA ACE CARAEFF

As always, PICA has your tickets 'n' info.

In his review of Michael Reinsch's Gallery Walk, Matt Stangel has some choice words for the way TBA audiences approached Reinsch's public performance, as opposed to the way people on the street reacted to the work:

So, I wonder, what differentiates “art audiences” and “people who don't fucking care about your stupid fucking art”? The defining difference I keep coming to: Non-TBAers are more willing to engage, to ask questions, to react with blunt, qualitative assessments, to scream from car windows and laugh without hesitation.

The polite TBAgoer responses were, frankly, kind of disheartening: Clearly people weren't taking the time to figure out the work, nor were they willing to risk tarnishing a cultured veneer and— gasp— ask about what was going on. Palpable was the divide between onlookers with advanced knowledge of Gallery Walk, incidental audiences, and artsy folk who weren't willing to do what's necessary to figure it out.

Ultimately, I think Gallery Walk is for the public, but not necessarily the art-minded public. Maybe the street folks weren't always kind, but they were honest, and, in my mind at least, honesty equates respect.

Being polite in the fashion of the TBAer isn't honest or respectful, it's self-serving and dismissive.

It's Edwards' last year as guest artistic director at TBA, and we've got an interview checking in with her right over here.

I'm sorry, internet, I screwed up yesterday and posted the wrong info for TBA's late night show. I promise to be more diligent today. OK. Here goes.

Tonight, the sole TBA performance of Sarah Douger's Fin de Siècle

You’re in good hands with Sarah Dougher. The former indie rock queen from Cadallaca and the Crabs is now a choral mistress supreme who directs regular performances of her Flash Choir ensemble. For TBA, Dougher sets her sights on a choral performance of three of poet Leslie Scalapino’s poem/plays, accompanied by video projection and a live band of cello, piano, violin, brass, and percussion. COURTNEY FERGUSON

You can also catch Andrew Dinwiddie's reenactment of a 1971 sermon by preacher Jimmy Swagger, which I wrote about here.

And finally, tonight, for REAL, New Musics:

It’s no secret Portland’s robust musical community is the envy of the free world (sorry Brooklyn), and a large subsection of this localized creativity will be on full display tonight. New Musics was birthed by local photographer Megan Holmes and Claudia Meza (Explode Into Colors), and their quarterly series of events centers around unique one-off collaborations between the most unlikely of pairings (for example, Classical Revolution PDX teaming up with electro-pop keytarist Copy). Tonight you’ll witness Meza’s instrumental opera Mourning Youth, a Flash Choir assisted tape collage from Grouper, composers, dancers, and so much more. EZRA ACE CARAEFF

That's at Washington High at 10:30 pm, $5-8. As always, PICA's got the more info you need.

Tonight kicks off Andrew Dinwiddie's fake-preacher act Get Mad at Sin!

In 1971, evangelist Jimmy Swaggart—the bible thumper best known for banging a prostie in 1987—recorded onto vinyl a sermon warning the “now generation” that retribution in the fiery lakes of hell surely awaits all sinners who refuse to repent. Now you can relive Swaggart’s prime in all its ostentatious glory, thanks to a spot-on re-creation of this out-of-print record, performed by artist Andrew Dinwiddie. WM. STEVEN HUMPHREY

And then later at Washington High, an intriguing lineup of music and performance:

It’s no secret Portland’s robust musical community is the envy of the free world (sorry Brooklyn), and a large subsection of this localized creativity will be on full display tonight. New Musics was birthed by local photographer Megan Holmes and Claudia Meza (Explode Into Colors), and their quarterly series of events centers around unique one-off collaborations between the most unlikely of pairings (for example, Classical Revolution PDX teaming up with electro-pop keytarist Copy). Tonight you’ll witness Meza’s instrumental opera Mourning Youth, a Flash Choir assisted tape collage from Grouper, composers, dancers, and so much more. EZRA ACE CARAEFF

That's at Washington High at 10:30 pm, $5-8. As always, PICA's got the more info you need.

UPDATE: Ugh, I had the wrong night on that TBA event. Hope nobody's night was ruined! Sorry.

And, of course, reviews, interviews, critical infighting, and more at our TBA blog.

• Experimental 1/2 Hour

I saw drag artist Taylor Mac's show last night, and found it funny and thought-provoking—although I liked it more than a few of our other writers. There's some point/counterpoint action over here.

We review last night's Works show Whispering Pines, which Jenna Lechner favorably describes as "Opera meets New Age meets Spandex."

There are only two more performances of Rude Mechs' excellent The Method Gun, which I'm hoping to see for a second time tonight. It's a show I keep trying to get my friends to see—perfect, I think, for people who are theoretically interested in this contemporary performance stuff, but in practice think everything seems expensive and weird. I wrote about it here. (I'll probably do another writeup once the show is over, since there are a few things about the show I didn't want to give away before people had a chance to see it.)

Tonight at Washington High School, Experimental 1/2 Hour curates an evening of local, cable-access based entertainment:

Cable access in the flesh. Tonight the Works stage is offered up to Portland Community Media’s Experimental ½ Hour, a show that biweekly unearths the oddity and originality that cable access has always permitted (if not guaranteed). This special TBA edition features an interactive performance from Lucky Dragons; an “industrial S&M band”; and plenty more from the true fringes of Portland’s experimental music and video communities. AH

That's 10:30 pm at Washington High School, $5-8. For tickets 'n' other details, see PICA's website.

Our TBA coverage continues! (Well actually, it kinda just started. You've got a whole week of this ahead of you.)

On the blog :

One outdoor TBA performance was interrupted by an angry drunk guy—the best part was watching the crowd try to figure out if it was part of the show.

Jesse Sugarmann's Lido (The Pride Is Back) creates a slow-motion car crash by placing three Chryslers on 42 slowly inflating air mattresses—you can catch that performance live today at 4 pm and 7 pm at Washington HIgh. We've got a review of the piece, plus an interview with Sugarmann, right here.

Our reviewer found Kyle Abraham's The Radio Show to be a moving "reflection on loss, how to build a community, and the stages of intimate relationships. She also said—and yes, this is the part that made me decide to catch its final performance tonight—that "Sometimes it feels like you’re watching outtakes of Fame."

I fell hard for Austin-based experimental theater company the Rude Mechs, calling their show The Method Gun "focused, funny, and breathtakingly surprising." I meant ALL of those words. The show runs through Tuesday—I highly recommend it. It has a talking tiger.

Noah Dunham found Taylor Mac's drag performance Comparison is Violence, or The Ziggy Stardust Meets Tiny Tim Songbook super entertaining, but questions whether cabaret is the best medium for the points the show is trying to make.

Plus, the comment thread on my TBA pass giveaway—where I asked folks to critique a picture of my cat—is pretty excellent. (It even features a weird, Todd Mecklem-related twist.)

All that and so much more on our TBA blog.

Good for entry to any show (except the Mike Daisey monologue) as well as all the late-night Works programming? Goes for $250 if you buy it yourself?

Clicky clicky.

There's some action over on the TBA blog today: I write about last night's fantastic opening night show (which included some a very sexy bonus dancer during DJ Beyonda's set), Virginia Thayer considers the big public art piece The Hidden Lives of Bridges, and intrepid gal reporter Sarah Mirk takes on the CASE OF THE DEFLATING BOUNCY CASTLE. It's all right over here.

And a bunch of great-sounding shows open tonight: I'm particularly keen to see Rude Mechs, a highly regarded Austin based company whose The Method Gun is about a troupe of guru-influenced actors who take nine years to produce an adaptation of A Streetcar Named Desire; Kyle Abrahams The Radio Show, a dance performance that investigates the decline of community-based African American radio in Philadelphia; and Taylor Mac's Comparison Is Violence: or The Ziggy Stardust Meets Tiny Tim Songbook, which is directly inspired by the kind of glib comparison that every arts writer has made at some time or another, in this case that Mac is like "Ziggy Stardust Meets Tiny Tim." PICA will sell you tickets.

PICA's 2011 Time-Based Art festival kicks off tonight. The festival's free visual arts programming is once again hosted at Washington High School (531 SE 14th) in Southeast—doors open tonight at 8 pm. Then at 9 pm, the aforementioned public installation The Hidden Lives of Bridges runs at 15-minute increments until 11 pm. And as always, the fest kicks off with a free opening night party at Washington High.

At 11 pm:

There is dance music—in all its many forms—and there is New Orleans sissy bounce, and never the twain shall meet. Brewed deep in the pulsating nightlife of the Crescent City and popularized by the charismatic Big Freedia, bounce is an intense, freak-heavy, sweat-heavier, dancefloor eruption that makes just about everything else in this world seem wholesome and predictably tame in comparison. Vockah Redu (Javocca Davis) is an icon of the sissy bounce experience, a master of cultivating a deep-rooted sexualized sound that borrows from both Dirty South hiphop and performance art (albeit, performance art that isn’t afraid to pop some booty) to create a mesmerizing sound that’ll beckon you to the shake it ’til you make it. EZRA ACE CARAEFF

If you have ever been compelled—truly compelled, as if the Holy Spirit were shaking your hips for you—to dance, chances are Beyondadoubt (or her slightly more constrained alter ego, DJ Beyonda) was the DJ perched behind the turntables. Her monthly “I’ve Got a Hole in My Soul” night is a Portland institution like no other, and her connection to New Orleans’ bounce music is at the core of her freak nasty Buck & Bounce party. Tonight Beyondadoubt kicks off TBA in a down and dirty fashion with a sultry set of thick grooves and (quite literal) booty shaking. EZRA ACE CARAEFF

And now might be a good time to revisit the TBA Survival Kit post that Patrick Alan Coleman did last year.

Oh, and apologies in advance to the regulars at Hal's. Art people are about to fuck up your local. (It's my local too if that's any consolation.)

The annual Time-Based Art festival kicks off tomorrow, promising ten days of theater, dance, visual art, film, and dance parties in the back of a truck (true!). We'll be covering the festival extensively over on our TBA blog: that means reviews, daily picks, beer-garden gossip, interviews, attempts to survive Mike Daisey's 24-Hour Monologue, and anything else we deem internet-worthy. Up first, we've got a preview of tomorrow's event The Hidden Lives of Bridges, an opening night spectacle that involves giant video projections on the side of the Morrison bridge.

After last year's festival, I wrote that TBA:2010 felt insular and shut off, compared to previous years:

One thing [the festival was missing] was the citywide programming that former artistic director Mark Russell emphasized—Khris Soden's Portland Tour of Tilburg; the Halprin project, which brought Anna Halprin's modern choreography to Portland fountains designed by her husband, Lawrence Halprin; that ill-fated scavenger hunt; big opening night spectacles involving Portland's public spaces. Sure, they were occasionally underwhelming and/or ridiculous, but at their best they lent the festival a sense of adventure and excitement.

The Hidden Lives of Bridges is just such a project: It's a big free public spectacle that attempts to shed some new light on an element of our cityscape we all kind of take for granted. Over on the blog, we've got video and more details about just how the show will unfold.

Click here for complete TBA event listings.

• MINH TRAN

Okay, my physical and intellectual TBA hangover has finally subsided, and after a few days to reflect (and a serious no-art-allowed TV binge) I'm finding myself a little underwhelmed by this year's TBA offerings. My assessment? Overlap with MusicFest Northwest, early onset SAD, and a lineup that ultimately offered only a few must-sees all conspired to strip TBA:10 of some of the momentum I've come to expect from the festival. In years past, friends have badgered me for TBA recommendations; this year, responses were more along the lines of "Oh, that's happening?"

Continue reading »

Nature Theater of Oklahoma's Romeo and Juliet: Amusing conceit, great actors, but... WHAT DID IT ALL MEAN??

Emily Johnson/Catalyst's The Thank You Bar: You know the girl with the fish on her arms? The one who was on the Mercury cover? I really liked her show.

Tender Forever and Lovers: Andrew Tonry breaks down the technology in Tender Forever's impressively creative set.

Radoslaw Rychcik/Stefan Zeromski Theatre: Gives Patrick a panic attack.

Guantanamo Baywatch: "It wasn't art, but it was a good time," says Ned.

And Noah's got some cheap festival picks for those of you on the broke end of the spectrum.

I really love Patrick's writeup of the Woolly Mammoth Comes to Dinner show at TBA. An excerpt:

Let’s see... The audience was young and very pretty. I do remember that, because I’m not young or pretty and was therefore suffering acute anxiety combined with lust—which always leads me to shame. This makes me want to drink more; the idea being that my shameful anxious lust can be somehow masked by drunkenness. I know from experience this rarely works, but damn if I don’t keep trying.

As we were seated, I remember how surprised I was at the size of the audience. I had no idea that Woolly Mammoth was so popular with the young. But what would I know about that, really.

Read the whole thing.

Last night at the Works, Tender Forever played pong with a human head. These are the kinds of things we're talking about over on our TBA blog.

...which is great, because it was a bummer seeing empty seats on opening night. To buy your tickets, call the box office at 503-224-7422. And even if you can't snag an advance ticket, day-of tickets are available to all shows—there's some wiggle room in PICA's balancing act between ticketholders and passholders.

I saw the Daisey show last night; as Erik wrote in his review, "This is a show that, if you let it, has the power to change the way you think—a show that can alter the ways you use and consider the fundamental communication devices of our time."

Freshly loaded to our TBA blog this morning, you'll find reviews of Jérôme Bel’s Cédric Andrieux (Patrick is impressed) and Dayna Hanson's Gloria's Cause (Noah is impressed—New York Times cultural blogger Claudia La Rocco, blogging for Portland Monthly, is not). Plus, photos, snarky comments from Blogtown's finest, and more. Read all about it!

What does Patrick Alan Coleman think about when he's watching Rufus Wainwright perform? INQUIRING MINDS WANT TO KNOW! (Spoiler: Gay shit.)

What TBA shows should YOU see this weekend? INQUIRING MINDS WANT TO KNOW! (I'll have a preview post up soon, I swear.)

What did Erik Henriksen think of the "fancy art exhibit" about "books and shit" he saw this morning? INQUIRING MINDS WANT TO—wait. Erik can read?

Answers to these questions and more—plus, the contents of Patrick's satchel REVEALED!— on the Mercury's TBA blog!

Mosh pit, THWARTED!

Laser pointer, DEPLOYED!

Beer garden, CROWDED!

CLICK HERE for more TRUE LIFE STORIES from last night's Japanther show at TBA! (Also, an anecdote about my cat. What.)

Think Out Loud threw a little love at the TBA festival this morning, dedicating their program to an interview with Rufus Wainwright—right over here, if you missed it. We've got our own interview with Wainwright hitting the streets this evening; our interview does NOT however include the question "Your parents were obviously huge influences... What do think about the world they gave you?"

Shameless plug: Starting tomorrow, we'll have reviews of all of TBA's offerings on our TBA blog. You could also follow MercArts on Twitter, if you liked.

A few weeks ago, I got the chance to interview Mike Daisey, a TBA favorite who will be returning this year to perform The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs, a new monologue about how the game-changing design of Apple products comes with horrific labor and environmental consequences. Daisey spoke with me from Seattle, where he was premiering Agony and preparing for a three-week run in India.

It's a pretty good interview—I just sat there and occasionally made encouraging noises as I was treated to what amounted to a monologue for one, ranging from why China is terrifying to how performing is like flying an airplane to what inspired Daisey to take on Steve Jobs' empire in the first place. (Lest that make it sound like Daisey is simply enthralled with the sound of his own voice, after the business of the interview had concluded, when we'd been on the phone for an hour or so, he shifted gears to chat about TBA and ask for some suggestions as to what to see.)

The full transcript of the interview is on our TBA blog; if you're a fan of Daisey's, or if you're curious about what his live show might bring, it's a nice little preview of what his upcoming shows have to offer.