Oregonian, The (Portland, OR)   (1988-Current)
NewsBank Inc.
SEARCHING: OREGONIAN, THE
for:  Advanced Search | New Search 
return:
Search Hints:
To find an exact name or phrase, use quotes.
Custom date example: Jan 1, 2000 - Feb 3, 2000.
timeframe:     
custom date:
Record 88 of 92
 Save this Article 
Email this Article To:
PLAYWRIGHT TAKES REAL RIVERBOAT GAMBLE
Oregonian, The (Portland, OR)
October 26, 1987
Author: BOB HICKS - of the Oregonian Staff
Estimated printed pages: 5


True, William Shakespeare says that all the world's a stage. But for crying out loud, who takes him literally?

Charles Deemer, that's who.

Not only is the Portland playwright busily expanding the possibilities of space in the theater, he's playing hob with conventional concepts about time.

Tuesday evening, he launches his latest simultaneous-action drama -- ``Bateau de Mort, or, Revenge on the River,'' which takes place not in a theater but smack in the middle of the Willamette River, aboard the stern-wheeler Columbia Gorge.

``There's something to be said,'' Deemer commented in a rare moment of understatement, ``for being in a real space rather than on a set.''

``Bateau,'' like its popular predecessor, the Pittock Mansion mystery ``Chateau de Mort,'' spins several scenes at once in different locations. Audiences are invited to wander around, picking and choosing what they wish to see as if they were wandering down the aisles of a theatrical supermarket.

This is not the work of a madman. Deemer is certainly an unrelenting individualist and perhaps even a character, but not a crackpot.

A big, restless, rambling fellow who sprawls untidily across the corners of conformity like a sheep dog flopped down on the daily wash, Deemer sees stages where other people see architecture. He has to. How else could he find room for all the things he stuffs into his plays?

Deemer isn't the first person to latch onto what he calls simultaneous-action theater. As near as anyone can tell it was born in Los Angeles, where a murky mystery titled ``Tamara'' has been playing the past four years in an old American Legion Hall remodeled as a splendid Italian villa. But he's rapidly becoming one of the new form's busiest exponents.

His first four shots have been melodramatic comedies, but he figures the sky -- or the classics -- is the limit.

``I'm sold on this form of drama,'' said Deemer, whose long list of traditional plays includes the popular ``Christmas at the Juniper Tavern'' (which features a Rajneeshee-style mystic Eastern cult called the Kree) and ``Ramblin','' based on the songs and writings of Woody Guthrie.

``I would like to figure out how to found a theater company to do nothing but simultaneous action. I'd like to explore -- I'd like to do the classics. I want to do Chekhov. I'm looking at `Seagulls' or `The Three Sisters.' ''

``Bateau de Mort'' is distinguished not only by its oddball location but by its new-dimension structure, which sets as many as five scenes going at once in separate parts of the boat. Audience members are encouraged to wander from one scene to another as the mood strikes, though they can't actually enter the action: This isn't participatory theater, like the you-solve-it murder mysteries that pop up now and again.

The result is a play of staggering possibilities. In the average nightly audience of 180, 180 individually devised plots may be seen -- and, omnipresence not being part of the human repertoire, no one can see the entire play.

Such are the attractions -- and frustrations -- of simultaneous action.

``Let's take a typical play, like `Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?','' said Deemer. ``What'd happen if you played that in an actual house, and when the characters go upstairs you follow them up there and watch what's happening `offstage'?''

For the author, director and actors, this kind of drama can mean a massive headache. Scenes must be intricately structured so they connect at the seams. An actress walking out of one scene in a huff, for instance, must make sure she arrives on cue at another scene in another part of the boat, ready to flirt or plot with an actor who himself may just have arrived from yet another scene.

``I can't imagine not doing this with a computer. Anybody'd be crazy to try to do this without a computer,'' Deemer said.

``I find myself writing longer scenes in this type of play. Almost always you cut when you re-write. At least I do.

``But in this genre you've got to leave it the same length, so you don't throw off the balance with the other scenes that're going at the same time. If you re-do a five-minute scene, it's still got to be five minutes.''

The many plots of ``Bateau de Mort'' whirl around a cult wedding aboard the stern-wheeler. The action takes place on the boat's main and upper decks.

``Basically we've got eight playing areas -- fore and aft, starboard and port. And it's all indoors. It's warm in there,'' said Deemer.

While actors and audience are rolling down the river, the bride is being delivered from a 27-foot motor boat. ``How you time that is going to be quite a trick,'' Deemer said.

Complicating matters, the Coast Guard requires the sternwheeler to come to a dead stop while the transfer takes place; bride and delivery vehicle will be bathed in bright spotlights from the larger boat.

Like his earlier efforts in the genre, ``Bateau'' is a broadly styled, almost soap-operatic comedy-mystery. Sex, drugs and greed are still integral parts of the plot, and religion has been added as a major factor: Deemer's invented a cult he calls the Universal Church of Primitive Balance.

The new play includes many of the characters from the Pittock Mansion's ``Chateau de Mort,'' plus a double: B. Joe Medley, who starred in ``Chateau'' as a no-goodnick West Hills doctor who was murdered at the end (his wife and the family maid did it) returns as Dr. Brodey's identical twin, a lawyer trying to straighten out the will.

In ``Bateau,'' the maid, Maxine (Karen Boettcher-Tate), has turned state's evidence against Mrs. Brodey (Gaynor Sterchi).

``After the trial, Maxine disappears,'' Deemer said. ``Trudy, the daughter, got wind that Maxine had joined this Church of Primitive Balance in order to become a surrogate mother. That's the church's big way of making money.''

Soon Trudy, too, is caught up in the church, which indulges in practices unknown to the average Sunday school. Vital to the faith is an artificial insemination ceremony -- ``but it's really very benign,'' Deemer commented. ``It's a PG-rated ceremony.''

Like ``Chateau,'' ``Bateau'' is a benefit for The Musical Company (which still is selling tickets) and will run only six nights. ``It is, I must confess, frustrating to spend six months writing a play and then have it play just a week,'' Deemer said.

The short run also necessitates a high price -- $37.50 a pop, which the author finds unfortunate: ``I do have a hard time with that. Nobody I know can afford to buy a ticket to it.''

His dream is to put up a show that can run indefinitely, enabling him to lower the ticket prices.

Deemer has written two other simultaneous-action shows -- ``Turkeys,'' which was canceled at the last minute because of a zoning flap at the bed-and-breakfast inn where it was to have run; and ``Rancho,'' which was a sellout hit in a bank in Rancho, Calif.

He's also been approached to do shows in Atlanta and New Orleans.

Earlier this year in Los Angeles, he finally took a look at ``Tamara,'' the play that started it all.

``I was doing my Woody Guthrie show down there and I took the plunge,'' he said.

``Tamara,'' he found, offers far less audience choice than his own shows.

But he was delighted to find that a non-comedy -- ``it's a very obscure story about this Italian poet who Mussolini puts in exile in this villa'' -- can work in the new genre.

Deemer hasn't abandoned traditional theater. He's still struggling with ``Hiroshima Maiden,'' an oft-rewritten script that's become an obsession and a bane.

And he's writing a TV script for Oregon Public Broadcasting about the late Sen. Wayne Morse -- ``to show on the tube next fall. I'm real excited about it. It'll be taking up a lot of my time.''

But simultaneous action has him in its grip. ``There's such a density of texture and drama,'' he said with passion. ``It's a new form.''

PREVIEW Bateau de Mort Author: Charles Deemer Director: Ghita Hager Where: aboard the Columbia Gorge sternwheeler, departing from Waterfront Park at S.W. Front and Stark When: departure 7:30 p.m. Tue.-Sun.; boarding 6:30 p.m. Tue., 7 p.m. Wed.-Sun. Tickets: $90 Tue.; $37.50 or $70/couple Wed.-Sun. (280-6592 or 235-4551)
Playwright Charles Deemer forsakes conventional staging to set
his new play on a boat.
Edition: Fourth
Section: Living
Page: C01
Copyright (c) 1987 Oregonian Publishing Co.
Record Number: 8710250134

OpenURL Article Bookmark (right click, and copy the link location):
http://docs.newsbank.com/openurl?ctx_ver=z39.88-2004&rft_id=info:sid/iw.new
sbank.com:ORGB:ORGB&rft_val_format=info:ofi/fmt:kev:mtx:ctx&rft_dat=0EB084B
2517F878C&svc_dat=InfoWeb:aggregated4&req_dat=0D0CB55EC55440C0
Record 88 of 92
 Save this Article 
Email this Article To: