Second, we are thrilled to announce our appearance this Saturday at the Portland Armory for PCS's 2007 JAW Festival.

"STILL FEELINGS IN STILL TIMES"
A performance for JAW by Liminal in the Armory Lobby
128 NW Eleventh at Davis, 2-4 pm

Between public spectacle and private meditation resides Liminal's still act for JAW 2007. This performance merges the format of a work by artist Roman Ondak with essential accessories of the stage and an ensemble of mannerist performers and musicians.

On-the-ground coordination was provided by John Berendzen. Alex Reagan provided sung text in Portland. From New York, Bryan Markovitz directed the concept, Ryan Dohoney composed music, and Amanda Boekelheide provided written conceptual choreography, exploring movement and language as an act of translation in collaboration with artists around the globe.

The work was performed by more than 25 Portland artists and musicians. To them, Liminal offers its sincere thanks and gratitude.

PS - Amanda's choreography translations, contributor credit and a call for an around-the-world making of still life performances is available at her website.

Reports from preview audiences are strong and this may be some of the best new music heard in Portland in a while. I hear that the lecturers and their visual aids are also excellent. Hopefully, all that LOVE will radiate across the country and melt the snow on my lawn here in Chicago.

Break a leg to everyone and have a wonderful opening weekend!

Oh, and if you haven't read the previews yet, here they are from Willamette Week and the Portland Tribune.

- Bryan

Soon you will be able to see Liminal's newest work, which promises to be quite a stimulant of mind and senses. However, the Portland team, led by Liminal's sound designer and composer John Berendzen, has a few more weeks of work before their lecture is finished and the visual aids come back from the lab.

In the meantime, we hope you'll read more about the Theory of Love here.

Also, Liminal needs your support! Please help us match a generous grant from the Regional Arts and Culture Council by making a gift of any size at our new Liminal online giving page.

Personally, I can't wait for LOVE to open, because I'm hoping that it's radiance will extend many thousand miles and melt the three feet of snow outside my Chicago window.

Yours truly,

Bryan

"Yearly it gets less and less like the real life of which I know the theater to be capable, and more and more like a weirdly empty replica. On many nights, sitting through some numbingly vacuous event, I have begun to worry that perhaps the fabulous invalid is indeed deceased, that what we are seeing instead of a living theater, far too often, is a reconstituted zombie version of it. Mistaking this simulacrum for the real thing is easy enough."

I'd love to get my hands on this "real thing." I bet it smells like roses and cuddles like a cute puppy. Sometimes it might also make me a little sad, or make me think about how crazy life is.

Feingold's desire for "real-life" holds theatre prisoner to sensibilities and methods used to achieve modernist truth and transcendance that is at least a century old. Worse are those of us in the avant-garde who earnestly re-enact subversive tactics that keep theatre moored to these and other modernist concerns. Then there are theatre's false friends, who serve up the most brutal doses of boredom and abject reality that Feingold hates. None of this seems worthy of debate anymore. We're all stuck in a schizophrenic endgame of halfhearted poses, earnest nostalgia and semiotic exercises in futility. Hardly a revelation.

On the upside, theatricality has never been more present in society. Seduction (political, consumptive, violent, erotic and aesthetic), spectacle, reflexivity and ephemeral operations are everywhere. Ironically, most theatre artists seem to be the least imaginative users of theatricality today. The best users are probably politicians and terrorists.

Theatre is a distinct technology that has the power to interrogate notions of artifice, time, liveness and representation. It also has the power to bring together site and body in a social sphere of incredible detail. Theatre is pure analog with infinite degrees of ambiguity. What it has the power to achieve might be something far more interesting than the coterie theatre Feingold longs for.

What might this theatre be? Theatre's success might depend on its involvement in larger aesthetic operations that blend public and private interactions with shifting modes of attention and reciprocal engagements. Theatrical operations that take place in sites beyond the theatre or the art gallery. What I am not referring to is a festival or an art fair. The experience would require your suspension of disbelief, contain an epic unity and a directed vision.

- Bryan

Love is a kind of sung lecture for vocalists and musical accompaniment that investigates the nature, history and meaning of Love. It examines the cultural biases and assumptions made in our modern Western view of Love and offers insight about why we desire Love, what Love does to us and where Love might take us in the future.

This fall, Liminal will start rehearsing music, designing visual media and orchestrating the live performance. As with much of Berendzen's music, the innovative electro-acoustic score will create a maximum sensual effect from a minimum of musical information. For this is how John is, do you see.

If you want to know more about Love, just send us an e-mail.

Ever,

Bryan

Tonight is closing night for Far Away, so if you haven't yet made reservations, do so now before the show is gone.

I'm sad I'll miss the closing night cast party. Everyone, here's a toast from your far away director for a show well done. Someone please give Georgia a hug for me for her especially deep commitment to Liminal #14!

My God, have we really done 14? It's interesting to think about how much ground we've covered hidden away in the Willamette Valley.

Ever,

Bryan

Caryl Churchill's "Far Away" is the story of a girl who comes of age in a time when xenophobia and violence are a normal part of life.

Critics derided Liminal for our detached and hyper-mediated interpretation, but this state of detachment is precisely what is needed to objectively compare the acts of violence in Churchill's work to the violence we see in the world today. As Bertolt Brecht would remind us, it is only from an estranged distance that we can recognize the boundaries between right and wrong.

Join us on closing weekend for one of Churchill's lesser-seen plays. Liminal's live video and sound design make each performance unique. Thursday is already sold out, so please make your Friday/Saturday reservations now.

Yours,

Bryan Markovitz

It is a little over 8 minutes, so those with long attention spans will be rewarded with the lush progression of sound and images. If you like what you see, let us know. We hope to bring the Resurrectory to other cities in the future.

Ever,

Bryan Markovitz

Secondly, if you like delicious Thai food and avant-garde theater, then there is no better place to get it than at Liminal this Friday night. We have a special deal for dinner and a show (not simultaneously, alas, but we are considering doing dinner theater someday as it should be done).

The dinner is at 6:30 pm and is co-hosted by the Portland Art Center. It will take place in their Annex gallery at 32 NW 5th, which is just below Liminal's performance space. If you, dear reader, would like to join us for this Liminal family supper, send us an e-mail or call us at 503 890 2993. Cost for cocktails, dinner and the show is $50. The menu is long and I think we'll be adding additional vegetarian options, but here is what I saw on the most recent menu:

Lemongrass Chowder wiith purple potatoes, roasted pepper, bacon, oregano and cilantro.

Phad Thai with vegetables, ground peanuts, bean sprouts, tofu and greens.

Spicy string beans wok fried in spicy chili oil.

Grilled beef with grapes and spicy garlic-lime sauce.

Wok Seared fillet of salmon in an orange curry sauce.

Coconut and mango sorbets.

Thank you, Typhoon!, for this amazing dinner.

One of the things that makes being a part of Liminal so exciting is the diversity of talent and interests among members of the company. I'll talk all day with Chris about potential theater projects that utilize rigorous formal constraints and Amanda will spend that same day working with young muscular actors, developing an impossible looking action for her future book on movement for actors. At the same time, John is furiously composing a new score about LOVE and Georgia is taking the ensemble into the world of Caryl Churchill. I feel so energized by the great work that is happening in all the cities that Liminal currently occupies.

Before I left, I was able to see the opening performances of Far Away (which, let me gently remind you, is running through February 18). As you might know, even though I'm the artistic director of the ensemble, I have been busy at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and didn't have a hand in the production of this play. I'm proud to say that director Georgia Luce and the rest of the group has done a fine job without me. Moses Gunesch's video and set design features many lovely transient images, John Berendzen's tangled music sets just the right mood, and kollodi's hats are each unlikely and stunning. All the actors are great, but special kudos goes out to young Hallie Blashfield, who has a career ahead of her. I almost wish I had been part of the creation!

The play runs for 6 weekends, and seating is very limited, so make your reservations today.

—Bryan Markovitz

The 70-foot-long stage and its multitude of side wings is reminiscent of Richard Foreman's 1970s Soho loft and provides the perfect setting for Churchill's play, which blends mundane everyday activities (such as going to work in a hat factory and putting a child to bed) with absolutely terrifying situations (like a parade that ends in mass execution). The Liminal cast creeps me out with their heavy movement, amplified whispers and physical intensity. The extremely tall hats remind me of the 1920 Salle Gaveau Dada festival. The ensemble's dark vision for the piece also includes some technically savvy sound and video. Thanks to a great directorial debut from Georgia, Churchill's contemporary play is perfectly balanced with Liminal's signature subversion of traditional theater.

I'm very happy to have had a chance to be a small part of the production before it opens. It's going to really creep audiences out.

I'm also planning to see defunkt's production of Gertrude Stein's Dr. Faustus Lights the Lights this weekend. It looks like a strong production and features the work of some great Portland artists and friends including James Moore, David Abel, Matt Marble and, of course, kollodi.

Meanwhile, I am sitting at Liminal HQ with our Web designer, Chris Piuma, as he puts the finishing touches on our updated site for 2006. We were inspired by the framboise lambic that we are sipping, not to mention the dark themes surrounding Far Away, which accounts for the new color scheme. We hope you like it and that you take a few minutes to explore the site.

Until next time, here's wishing everyone a prosperous new year.

- Bryan Markovitz

Well, even though your trustworthy and sometimes crumudgenly Liminal director is far away at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, I encourage you to sink your teeth into the depths of Liminal's home on the Internet.

We have tons of archives from past and ongoing works, as well as lots of radical (and not so radical) ideas for fellow practicioners to peruse. In upcoming weeks, look for some new material, including photographs and a video sample from our most recent performance facility, The Resurrectory.

We're also planning to re-paint the site in a slightly more vibrant color scheme before the rain comes, but we have no clue what colors to choose. If you have any suggestions, please e-mail them to us. If we choose a winner from the your submissions, we will reward your effort with a couple of tickets to the next Liminal event.

Speaking of Liminal events, they are rare occurences, but well worth your wait. Keep an eye open this winter for a new performance headed by Liminal's Georgia Luce that will indulge our passion for the work of Caryl Churchill.

And, if you haven't heard, our sound and music director, John Berendzen, will periodically make appearances in and around Portland with the Parametric Orchestra. The first of these will be a free event this Sunday, 9/25, hosted by Spare Room to celebrate the release of "Salt: A Collection of Poetry on the Oregon Coast."

The event runs from 7-10 pm with free admission.

GO, because yours truly cannot.

Finally, if you happen to find yourself in Chicago, for God's sake, let me know. I would love to visit with fellow Portlanders and I desperately need a pound of Stumptown.

Fondly,

Bryan Markovitz

Of course, we must thank all of the artists who deserve recognition for the Resurrectory's design including Jim Blashfield, kollodi and most especially Gabriel Liston.

One week remains for the Portland Resurrectory before we close this branch and move the facility to another city. I think we will all miss the time we have spent immersed in the world we created at the Portland Art Center, but we are also eager for a break and a long period of reflection.

If you haven't yet experienced the Resurrectory, this is your last chance.