When you watch TV or a DVD movie or listen to a CD or iPod, it's a passive activity. Sure, you can hit "pause" or "stop" or "fast forward" or "shuffle" or whatever. Doesn't matter. It's all one-way communication, with you as recipient.
Not so at a "live" performance. You get the whole visual and aural package with whomever is on stage. You read their face and body language as they sing a song, coax a note from their instrument or suck you into their make-believe world as actors. The engagement is wonderful and so worth it in terms of what you get back as a member of the audience.
And so it was this weekend.
On Saturday night, we went to Simone's final performance of the season with Consonare Chorale, a co-ed ensemble of young to middle-aged adults that does four concerts a year in Portland. The group performed more than a dozen songs taken from Appalachia and the traditions of American folk music and earned a standing ovation.
Artistic Director Georgina Philippson has done wonders working with this eclectic ensemble of about three dozen men and women, leading through a 2 1/2-hour rehearsal every Tuesday night. During the four seasons, we've been exposed to every musical genre imaginable but I think I may have enjoyed this one the most, for its simplicity and small-group arrangements and the sheer joy evident on faces of the choir members.
The next day was even more satisfying. We used a gift certificate from last year's Dougy Center auction to snag two tickets to a Sunday afternoon performance of "Gracie and the Atom" at Artists Repertory Theatre -- and, as part of the package, had a marvelous seafood dinner at Southpark.
In an intimate theater where no one is more than six rows from the sunken stage, it's a wonderful place to see actors laying it all on the line. Again, it is the sheer joy of performing, evident on the faces of the cast members, that is so infectious. Well, that and the plot itself. Gracie is a non-Catholic who's dropped into a Catholic girls' high school after the death of her father. She abruptly has to figure out everything -- religion and theology, from stern Sister Francis; mind-stretching physics taught by the exuberant Sister Lidwina; and school traditions, hilariously explained by her classmates -- while also trying to learn more about the mother she never knew.
This ain't no dour drama. It's a musical, written by McKinley, a member of the local band Dirty Martini, and there are enough songs in the 2 1/2-hour show go around for each of the cast members as a group and individually. And the cast is more than up to it. They act, sing, dance -- and act, sing and dance some more -- in a show that anyone who's attended Catholic school or is even halfway acquainted with catechism would appreciate.
Gracie and the Atom from Artists Repertory Theatre on Vimeo.
The cast is fabulous -- with Beth Sobo, Marissa Neitling (University of Oregon graduate), Brooke Markham (current Portland State student), Melissa Murray and Kylie Clarke Johnson (Western Oregon University graduate) as the schoolgirls and Emily Beleele and Mary Baird as the nuns.
Listen to a couple of the songs here: http://www.gracieandtheatom.com/ And, if you can break away, go see it yourself. It runs through May 30.
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