THREE TIMES THE THEATER < CHARLES DEEMER TAKES
THE BITTER WITH THE SUITE IN A PORTLAND< BARROOM
OK, so Saturday nights can get pretty hot and heavy at a
neighborhood bar. But at Petticoat Junction, it seems like the roof
is ready to blow off.
Whoa. What was in that last beer?
In one corner a fast-talking old drunk is being chewed out
loudly by his frustrated son, who's spent weeks tracking him down. A
few tables away a moralistic former convict is doing a slow seethe
as his smarmy roommate spouts cynical garbage about women.
Across the way a boozy husband and wife -- in the last stages
of splitsville -- are airing their intimate and embarrassing dirty
laundry for everyone within earshot: Seems they're both haunted by
the ghost of a genius physicist who slept with one and wanted to
sleep with the other.
And perched happily on a stool, taking it all in, is a
broadly smiling
Charles Deemer.
These days Deemer is orchestrating battles in a barroom.
You could call it 3-D soap opera. Deemer calls it
simultaneous-action theater -- that hectically experiential new
genre of which he's a leading exponent and practitioner.
What's going on in this industrial Northwest Portland bar is
``Cocktail Suite,'' a trio of environmental plays that Deemer, the
Portland playwright, has written to interlock and be performed at
the same time.
The bar-and-cafe setting seems ideal for Deemer's
``unstaged'' plays. Previous efforts have been performed in the
Pittock Mansion, on the stern-wheeler Columbia, in a Southern
California bank. Another, written to be performed at a
bed-and-breakfast inn, was stopped at the last minute by zoning
regulations.
Why a tavern this time around?
``It's really hard to find a Pittock Mansion you can use,''
Deemer commented last week after a preview performance. ``It's
really hard to find a stern-wheeler. But bars are all over the
place. It's your generic theater space.''
At Petticoat Junction -- where ``Cocktail Suite'' was to open
officially Saturday night -- the drama comes in beery flashpoints of
heightened naturalism, suddenly focusing on the last barstool or the
table by the dartboard. That argument you overhear might actually be
a barroom conversation, and the woman who sits down in the next
chair might be an actress or might be another customer.
There's no stage here; actors and audiences intermingle
freely, though they don't talk to each other.
``It's a lot like TV acting,'' noted actress Bonnie Ross, who
has been in all of Deemer's Portland simultaneous-action shows.
``The audience is right up in your face; you just have to be
natural. You don't want to be bigger than life.''
Ross, who plays a social worker who falls for one of the
homeless men she's supposed to be helping (``that sweet
misunderstood lush,'' she comments laughingly) also likes the
interlocking continuity of the show. Whenever she leaves one scene,
she immediately moves to another in one of the other plays, and
always with a purpose that carries over from one play to the next.
``You don't have the chance to go backstage and rest, and you
miss that,'' she said. ``But it's nice just to be going all the
time.''
The three plays -- ``A Chateau for Mort,'' ``Lonely and Horny
in the City'' and ``The Contract'' -- can be seen as separate shows
or in any combination. An audience member could, for instance,
follow ``tavern owner'' Barbara Irvin as she moves from a major role
in ``Mort'' to supporting scenes in ``The Contract'' and ``Lonely,''
getting her complete story but missing the full narrative of any one
show. Or a person could wander about freely, going from flare-up to
flare-up in the different staging areas and trying to make sense out
of the whole thing.
``I hate to think these shows are competing with one
another,'' Deemer said. ``I like to think of them as a whole. And if
this thing works, the whole is greater than the parts.''
In his heart of hearts (and pocketbook of pocketbooks) Deemer
would like to see audiences attend at least four times -- to see
each of the three shows separately, and then to get an overview.
This is, after all, a commercial venture. Deemer, cast and
crew have put together a cooperative company called Counterpoint to
develop and perform simultaneous-action plays and run them long
enough to keep ticket prices reasonable.
Tickets to ``Cocktail Suite'' are $12 -- a far cry from the
high-priced fare for ``Chateau de Mort'' and ``Bateau de Mort,''
which were short-run benefit affairs.
Both ``Chateau'' and ``Bateau'' were written on commission,
with instructions that they be murder mysteries. ``Cocktail Suite''
gives Deemer the chance to work in simultaneous action without
worrying about whodunit.
``I like the form a lot,'' he said. ``But I'd never worked in
the form in a way that was continuous with my other work, that
wasn't a commissioned show. Ordinarily, I wouldn't write a
soap-opera mystery.''
``Cocktail Suite'' certainly has its melodramatic moments,
and a lot of repeated dialogue designed to clue in audience members
who've just arrived from one of the other plays. But Deemer sees a
more serious intent in his intricately logged script.
All three plays are about the relationship between men and
women and their difficulties in understanding one another.
For preview audiences, said Deemer, the most popular
character has been Mort (Chris Thompson), the homeless charmer of
``A Chateau for Mort'' who woos Ross' social worker. ``I wanted to
create a Damon Runyan, John Steinbeck sort of character,'' Deemer
said. ``A guy who drinks Night Train and who's witty, but who still
screws up.
``I have a very strong sense that one of the plays is about
young men, one is about middle-aged men and one is about old men,''
he said.
``In every play,'' Ross added, ``somebody asks someone, `What
do you want from me?' And of course, nobody knows. Also, in every
play, somebody says, `He makes me laugh.' ''
``And,'' said Deemer, ``alcohol is sort of an unspoken
character in all three plays. It's ugliest in `The Contract.' ''
Though Deemer professes not to play favorites, he also sees
the lean ``Contract'' as the most pungently philosophical of the
trio. At the center of this tale of a marriage fallen apart is a
long argument about quantum mechanics, a subject that fascinates
Deemer for its specialized, revolutionary sense of relativity.
Quantum physics includes the notion that any act of
observation alters the thing being observed. Therefore the ``common
experience'' of an audience, each member of which observes from a
different perspective, doesn't exist.
Why then, Deemer wonders, pretend that everyone ought to look
at the same stage at the same time? In the new physics he finds both
inspiration and explanation for simultaneous-action theater -- an
argument that is sound scientifically, if open to debate
aesthetically. Yet Deemer would like to prove his case with the
classics, by writing a simultaneous-action version of Anton
Chekhov's ``The Seagulls,'' with new material written to follow the
characters' action after they go off Chekhov's stage.
Certainly matters of time and space are exceptionally
important to simultaneous-action theater -- and not just for the
audience.
``That's the kick about this script,'' noted Ross, discussing
how the actors know when they're supposed to be doing what in which
play. ``There aren't page numbers to follow, and there aren't
scenes. There are times.''
Or one time -- but a time packed with action. THEATER
Cocktail Suite Author:
Charles Deemer Directors:
Charles Deemer, Gerald Moran Where: Counterpoint
Theatre at Petticoat Junction, 1036 N.W. Hoyt St. When: 8 p.m.
Saturdays, 7 p.m. Sundays Tickets: $12; adults only (248-0875)
Photo of CHARLES DEEMER