Artslandia at the Performance: Portland Playhouse Nov/Dec 2014 | Page 4

DIRECTOR’S NOTE by Brian Weaver
A PLACE FOR BREAKING DOWN WALLS
Welcome to Portland Playhouse and thank you for joining
us today for Sharr White’s puzzle play, THE OTHER PLACE.
This is the “director’s note” section where I would normally
talk about the play and how much I love it and how hard
everyone worked bringing it to the stage, and what kinds of
gems of wisdom you might glean from it, BUT I don’t want
to give anything away! It’s too much fun, and I don’t want
to spoil the surprise.
I would love, however, to take a second and
think about the role art can play in our lives
and in our community.

and magnify, embody and illuminate it; and the work of the
audience is to open intellectually and emotionally and form an
empathetic bond with the characters in the story. This active
practice of feeling and thinking, openness and vulnerability
increases our “muscles” or capacity for understanding.

This work is vitally important in our world, where we see every
day the incalculable cost of NOT understanding each other,
the damage and violence that is the result of differences that
cannot be bridged, and the relentless atrophy
our muscles of feeling and thinking experience
when we do not use them.
A choice to either engage,

and move beyond her
comfort zone, or to stay
behind her wall; this is
the moment that gets
me. It’s a choice we have
to make every day.

Art can create a sense of wonder. Our world
is startling, complex and beautiful in both
every little detail and in the grand scope of
the universe, yet our minds work tirelessly
to organize this splendor into the “normal”
and mundane. In order to go about our
lives in an efficient and pain-free way, we
narrow our perspective and dull our senses. Art can blow
this up. We see, hear, feel, think something, as if for the first
time, and plug in to the overwhelming WONDER of life.

There’s a moment near the end of this play
(I know said I wouldn’t talk about it!), when
a women encounters a stranger. She has a
choice to make, and it happens quickly and
unexpectedly. A choice to either engage, and
move beyond her comfort zone, or to stay
behind her wall; this is the moment that gets
me. It’s a choice we have to make every day.
Hopefully theatre can be a space that prepares
us to make that choice and art can activate our sense of wonder
and of what might lie beyond.
Sincerely,

Art can enlarge our understanding of the other and bridge
differences. Theatre, specifically, is a practice of empathy.
It’s like we take “life” and bring it into our laboratory. Our
job as artists is to plumb the truth of the human experience
Brian Weaver
Artistic Director

WON’T YOU JOIN US FOR THE LAST SHOW OF SEASON SEVEN?

MR. BURNS, A POST-ELECTRIC PLAY

MR BURNS,
A
POST-

ELECTRIC

PLAY

(Yes, that
Mr. Burns)

May 13June 7

By Anne Washburn
Directed by Brian Weaver
REGIONAL PREMIERE
Yes, THAT Mr. Burns. Acclaimed playwright and ex-Portlander Anne
Washburn leads us into an unlikely post-apocalyptic (and postelectricity) future in which survivors pass the time — and maintain a
grip on their past — by recounting episodes from The Simpsons. As
they are told and retold, these snippets of pop culture become the
stuff of epics, myths, and legends among the survivors. “Downright
brilliant ... With grand assurance and artistry, Ms. Washburn makes us
appreciate anew the profound value of storytelling in and of itself ... Mr.
Burns ... makes the case for theater as the most glorious and durable
storyteller of all.” (The New York Times).

MAY 13–JUNE 7, 2015

P2 | PORTLAND PLAYHOUSE THE OTHER PLACE