I've talked my share of shit about the Broadway Across America touring shows that roll into town every so often, but I'm nothing but excited for this one: Next Tuesday sees the Portland premiere of August: Osage County, a show about a big dysfunctional Oklahoma family that Charles Isherwood described in the New York Times as "flat-out, no asterisks and without qualifications, the most exciting new American play Broadway has seen in years."

So happens I've got a pair of tickets to the show's opening night performance this Tuesday, Oct 20. Email me by noon tomorrow with "Oklahoma" in the subject line, and these tickets could be yours. (I'll pick at random, so save your flattery, it only embarrasses us both.)

Theater season is starting to rumble into gear—there are two openings this weekend, plus one-night revival of one of the surprise successes of the summer.

The Cuban Missile Tango opened last night at Imago; the original work "crosses a Halloween night dinner party with the Cuban missile crisis," using movement and dance to explore, as I understand it, how seemingly mundane situations can have high-stakes consequences. Imago Theatre, 17 SE 8th, $10

And at defunkt, Portland's other-weirdest theatre company, you've got Len Jenkin's The Country Doctor. It's described in their press release as being based on "Franz Kafka’s Ein Landzart," which is a pretentious way of saying that it's based on the short story "The Country Doctor." I'm curious about this one—defunkt recently lost a couple of longtime company members, including founding member and co-artistic director James Moore, making this is the first show of a new era. That's at the Back Door Theater, 4319 SE Hawthorne, $10-15 Fri-Sat, Sun pay-what-you will.

On Sunday night, Trek in the Park... at the Bagdad, with Atomic Arts' production of classic Trek episode Amok Time, followed by a screening of the new movie. That's $6, 8 pm, and I promise you it will be fun. (21+, btw)

You know who I hate? The kind of douchey mcdouchersons who, when I say, "Go see Trek in the Park! You don't have to be a huge Star Trek fan, it's still a lot of fun" kind of roll their eyes and scoff and just generally convey their total disdain for this ridiculous concept—like I have clearly taken temporary leave of my senses and am just blundering around in an addled nerd haze and I really should clean my glasses because the Cheeto-dust fingerprints must be obscuring my judgment. Well, fuck you people. YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE.

Everyone else? Go see Trek in the Park! It's a lot fun, and this weekend is your last chance to catch it until next summer. That's tomorrow and Sunday, Woodlawn Park at 13th & Dekum, 5 pm, FREE (get there early). And then you can send me a thank-you note. Or some Cheetos.

Also running this weekend is Chariots of Rubber, an absolutely ridiculous rock opera about... derby... and singing... and... there's a paper maché car... and I can't tell you much more about it because, thanks to stiff pours at the bar in the lobby, I was kinda wasted. Sorry. It happens. What I CAN tell you is that the show is pure camp, with a high-energy, Rocky Horror vibe. (Can't quite think of a local theater analogue.... Although, show writer/director Jeffery Wonderful was an early Portland Organic Wrestling guy, so maybe that's it.) Opening night was sold out and people were drunk and happy and had fun—the music is legitimately "rockin'", as my mom would say, and the whole thing is Portland as fuck, in that old school, over-the-top, slightly scuzzy sort of way. I had a good time. Beer and booze at the bar—PBR and a shot for $6. Fans of roller derby should definitely check it out. That's tonight and tomorrow, Theater! Theatre!, 3430 SE Belmont, 10:30 pm, $15, email for ticket reservations. And do email—it was PACKED last night. Here's the trailer:

JAW's festival weekend starts tonight at the Armory—staged readings of brand-new plays, site specific performances, a theater fair.... All of this is free and all of this is air conditioned. (I love PDX Pop Now! too, but hipsters die in hot clubs, people.)

Here's a quick roundup of the scripts that look most interesting to me (the full readings schedule can be found here):

Tonight, Marc Acito's Birds of a Feather at 4 pm, which, if PCS' writeup is to be believed, is about gay penguins. (How many gay friends do I have to have before I can make gay jokes on the blog? Just wondering.)

Tomorrow at 4 pm, Jordon Harrison's Futura—which is, yes, about fonts. This either seems impossibly awesome to you, or impossibly lame. I'm thinking awesome.

Hot poop playwright Will Eno debuts Middletown tomorrow at 8 pm.

Sunday at 8 pm, a play with the best title ever: 99 Ways to Fuck a Swan, by Kimberly Rosenstock.

The creepy, intelligent dancer company tEEth will be debuting a new work tomorrow afternoon (four performances between 1 pm and 4 pm). Other site-specific performances are promised from Fever Theater, Third Rail Rep, and Action/Adventure. And tomorrow from 1—4 pm and 6-8 pm, a theater fair will feature representatives from most of Portland's theater companies. All of this goes down at the Armory, 128 NW 11th.

Interesting article in the New York Times about the decision to exclude theater critics and journalists from voting for the Tony's (Broadway theater awards), the argument being that asking critics to vote on shows causes a conflict of interest because "they vote on Tony contenders at the same time that they have a platform to champion a show in news and entertainment media." I actually fail to understand how that's a conflict per se—and bear in mind that Tony voters include producers, publicists, and others with a much more direct stake in the ceremony's outcome. However, while concerns that the new policy potentially eliminates the largest unbiased pool of Tony voters are valid, I do tend to agree with this quote:

"'I have to say the press’s job is to cover the theater, not participate in it,'" [producer Jeffrey Seller] said. “'As soon as they’re a voter, they’re a participant.'”

Portland's got the Drammy awards, which were founded by the Willamette Week, though they've since spun off, and there are a couple local critics on the judging committee (Richard Wattenberg from the O, Ben Waterhouse at Willamette Week), along with working theater professionals. We also have a new organization called the Portland Area Musical Theater Awards, which keeps the identity of their judges a secret—I don't know if they have any critics on their panel, though I'd like to think that no self-respecting journalist would agree to participate anonymously in something like that. (Then again, what do I know about self-respect.) My general feeling is that a critic's primary obligation is to her readers, not to the theater community, so it's a little weird to participate in a ceremony of which the sole beneficiaries are members of that community. Thoughts?

This weekend, should you require more stimulation and spectacle than explosions, hot girls in cutoffs, and the mouth-watering scent of grilled meat on a summer's evening can provide—

Wait. Let me try that again.

Should you have a philosophical objection to observing the Fourth of July, insofar as it's a nakedly nationalistic celebration of American militarism that also scares all the dogs and cats, here are a couple other options for your weekend entertainment (both of which happen to promise a fair amount of spectacle themselves):

San Francisco-based company the Carpetbag Brigade presents the Portland premier of their show You Don't Know Jack, alongside a performance of Hand2Mouth's creepy fairy tale/rockstar deconstruction Undine—that's out at Milepost 5, tonight and Saturday, 8 pm, $10.

Tomorrow night, it's the first of the Wanderlust Circus' three-show series The Endless Road, a circus show that promises dancers, acrobats, and other circus-y things, plus performances by a different band DJ for each show—this week, it's the March Fourth Marching band. That's tomorrow at the Bossonova Ballroom, $17-22.

(Storm Large is taking the weekend off.)

More theater listings here.

Here's a thing that happened: In 1998, my best friend and I camped out on the steps of the Civic Auditorium—now the Keller—for $20 rush tickets to the touring production of Rent, the hit Broadway musical about smack-addicted gay hipsters with AIDS. I saw it three times in one week, twice from the front row. I loved that musical in the way that shy teenagers always love things; that is to say, I over-identified. Not with any of the AIDSy characters, but with Mark Cohen, the filmmaker whose efforts to document the lives of his friends provide the show its loose framework. He's the consummate outsider, an awkward dude more comfortable observing life than participating—in short, he's a perfect foil for adolescent self-consciousness. I even had a Mark Cohen scarf.

All of this is to explain the dramatically low expectations I had for the current touring production of Rent, which opened at the Keller last night—featuring original cast members Adam Pascal (Roger) and Anthony Rapp (Mark). Since discovering irony in 1999, I've been mortified by my Rent phase, and I was half anticipating bolting at intermission (I had "Rent, rent, rent, rent, rent! We're not gonna pay rent!" stuck in my head all day yesterday). Turns out I didn't give the show enough credit—its social relevance has almost entirely waned (sorry kids), but it still boasts a great score, lively writing, and a terrifically strong ensemble.

Remember last week's Rent ticket contest? One of the winners never claimed their victory spoils, so I've still got a pair to give away. Email me if you want 'em. The show's at 7:30 pm tonight at the Keller; I'll be there, so pickup should be easy to arrange.

UPDATED: The tickets have been claimed!

UPDATE: I forgot to mention that Dance Naked Productions is remounting Inviting Desire at the IFCC, starting tonight and running through June 27. The show is based on information women provided about their sexual fantasies; I wrote about it back in February. If the premise doesn't scare you off (the show is funnier and less self-serious than it sounds), go see this one.

Brad Fortier's one man show about gay sex, Glory Hole-llelujah!, gets top billing because of this line in the press release: "Everyone is encouraged to fashion a hole as big as your fist in cardboard and watch the show through it." That's tomorrow and Saturday nights at the Brody (16 NW Broadway), 10:30 pm, $8.

It's officially Shakespeare in the Park season; there's a couple shows opening this weekend. Portland Actors Ensemble's King Lear opens tonight at Cathedral Park, 7:30 pm.

A new company called the Original Practice Shakespeare Festival opens A Midsommer Night's Dream on Saturday at 2 pm, also at Cathedral Park. Their approach to performance is based on the now-incomprehensible fact that Shakespeare was once populist entertainment:

The Ops Fest performs using the same performance techniques as they did in Shakespeare's own time, which means limited rehearsal; an onstage prompter; fast-paced, energetic acting; and lots of audience interaction. This lends a much more immediate, organic, improvisational feel to the performances.

Episode 2 of Action/Adventure's Fall of the House opens tomorrow; read more about that show here.

Apparently Storm Large's Crazy EnoughCrazy Enough will be playing Portland in perpetuity; it's been extended once again, now through July 27.

Dance United, the big Oregon Ballet Theatre benefit show, is tomorrow night. If after Stephen Marc Beaudoin's post last week you're still not convinced as to whether the ballet is worth saying, go read this now.

More listings here.

photo by Stephen Marc Beaudoin. Yes, that flower is smoking a cigarette. Oh, theater people.

[Sorry the promised live coverage didn't materialize. My roommate's cat knocked over a glass of water on my laptop last week, which totally harshed my blog.]

So last night was the 30th annual Portland Drammy awards, an ceremony that promises to recognize deserving members of the theater community. This is accomplished by giving out multiple awards in many categories, bringing different local theater professionals onstage to present each award, and, this year, in celebration of the anniversary, recognizing 30 "unsung heroes," a thoughtful gesture that added at least a half an hour to the proceedings. At this point, it's like your fourth grade soccer team party at Guido's Pizzeria [that's what it was called! not racist.] where awards like "Perkiest Ponytail," and "Best Reflexes, for a Fat Girl" ensure that everyone who played gets an award. (I should also note here that being trapped in a room for two hours with several hundred actors is not too far from my personal definition of hell. Basically it's like going to a party at which all of the guests know you've talked shit about them.)

There is an important message hidden inside this blog post. It's unrelated to theater. I'm trying to trick you into reading about theater. Will it work?

No openings this weekend that I know of, but a few good ongoing offerings:

CoHo Productions closes their season with The Uneasy Chair, an existential comedy disguised as a period piece. I really, really liked this show, and I think you should go see it.

The Miracle Theatre's The Shrunken Head of Pancho Villa is a different kind of period piece—a fast-paced and frenetic relic of the Chicano rights movement of the 1960s, it smooshes together Mexican and American cultures on a stage that isn't big enough for the both of 'em.

On Thursday, June 11 at Club 21, Mercury/Blogtown trivia night. Why're we scheduling it so far in advance? Because special guest-friend Kiala Kazebee will be in town.

Everyone Who Looks Like You, the newest from Hand2Mouth, is out at Milepost 5. Andrew Stout gives the show a tepid review in this week's paper—but I'm still curious. This ensemble's failures are more interesting than other companies' successes.

And I would be remiss in not mentioning "MILFs at Wilfs" at 7 pm tonight.

More theater listings here.

*of the La Grande Observer

La Grande High School's controversial production of Steve Martin's Picasso at the Lapin Agile opens tomorrow at Eastern Oregon University—the drama program had to find a new venue for the show after the LHS school board voted to cancel the production based on concerns about its "adult content." (You may have heard the "Think Out Loud" about the controversy, which featured the production's remarkably articulate, reasonable, and generally wonderful-seeming director, Kevin Cahill. My high school drama teacher, the legendary Stephen Clark, was also all of those things—big ups to drama teachers right here.)

High-schooler Ritchie Scott, who performs in the play, forwarded me a letter that he also sent to the La Grande Observer, entitled "An Angry Letter to an Ignorant Town." It's quite well-written. I'll post it after the jump.

As per my ongoing efforts to court internet popularity by giving away free stuff, I've got a stack of vouchers to any play left in Portland Center Stage's current season—you're looking at a choice between Storm Large's solo show Crazy Enough (which just extended its run an extra three weeks, until 6/28), or Grey Gardens, the musical based on the 1975 documentary of the same name.

All you need to do is email me by 3 pm Friday with "Crazy Broads" in the headline; winners will be selected at random.* I've got six two-ticket vouchers, so your odds ain't bad.

*flattery helps