City Arts Blog

When a handsome French-Canadian bounty hunter shows up in a former Gold Rush town and begins poking around a 20-year-old murder case, questions inevitably arise. As the premise of Strawberry Theatre Workshop’s production of The Bells (written by Theresa Rebeck), the whodunit mystery is thin but serves as an effective vehicle for an investigation of moral relativity.

Set in the endlessly dark, harsh climate of Northern Alaska in the early 1900s, The Bells revolves around the murder of a Chinese prospector (Jose Abaoag) after he struck a fortune in gold. Mathias (Peter Crook), the owner of the town’s tavern, and his daughter Annie (Brenda Joyner) are the first to meet the sophisticated Baptiste (Patrick Allcorn) when he arrives claiming to look for gold. But before long, Baptiste’s true mission is revealed: He’s a bounty hunter in town to solve the murder.

Though a small group of townsfolk steer Baptiste away from digging too deep into the past, the bounty hunter soon uncovers some disturbing truths. Haunted by guilt (and the ghost of his victim), the murderer attempts to cover all tracks and justify every action, but soon those carefully laid plans begin to unravel.

The majority of character interaction takes place at Mathias’ bar—an old-timey Alaskan tavern constructed with rough wooden planks and decorated with a wooden table and chairs, a cast iron stove, and shelves lined with liquor. Scenic designer Montana Tippet filled the rest of the stage with sheet-covered boxes and a few sparse trees, creating a craggy, snow-covered terrain. One side of the bar is open to the snow scene, allowing supernatural characters to drift in and out, hovering like mystery and guilt.

As the ghost of Chinese miner Lin Xuifei, Abaoag remained on stage throughout the play, moving lightly among the snowdrifts, entering and leaving the bar in silence and observing the living with extraordinary stillness. As Annie, Joyner started off awkward, almost too emphatic, but eventually found her footing; her angry and passionate moments were the most believable. As Mathias, Crook manifested the barkeep's cocksure swagger using small gestures, unsure looks and a powerful voice inflection. 

The play pushes the audience to consider the ethics surrounding the murder. To this end, playwright Rebeck pulls a bait-and-switch on the audience—initially framing the murder as a take-one-life-to-save-another matter until it becomes clear that greed, not survival, motivated the killing. But even when judgment is passed, Mathias’ existential question lingers, “What does it mean to be human in the wilderness?”

In a play with so many visual, physical and metaphorical layers, there isn’t a straightforward answer. What is made clear is the complexity of human nature and the decisions we make; just like fickle weather of the northern Alaskan climate the results can be deadly—it all depends on which way the wind blows.

Photo by John Ulman.

I had never been to the Big House in Ballard--I had never even heard of it--until I was invited to see a few musicians play there earlier this month. Having been to plenty of house shows in my life I was expecting to find something familiar: show-goers huddled into the roomy basement of a rambler or the spacious den of an old Victorian to listen to friends play music.

What I found instead was something unusual: a big house of worship, its gothic windows framed with strings of orange lights, and rusted tricycles burrowed into a rock wall guarding the entrance over which the building's bell-tower loomed.

Inside, up a stairwell populated with more than a dozen bowling balls, I found an expansive room filled with people, seated on pillows and blankets on the floor, drinking wine from plastic cups in a low-light that seemed inevitable for such a place. Collections cast shadows and inspired conversation. A pile of old globes over here, vials of tiny colored beads lining stacks of shelves over there, wrought iron frames of old chairs everywhere. In a window, a glass-cast rendering of a crow looked down on the crowd. On one wall hung a swing that was clearly meant to dangle from the center of the room’s 30-foot ceiling, but had been retired for the evening. On another wall, above the stage where an alter once stood I’m sure, was an old chipped sign: “Revival Meeting,” it read. “Evangelist L.A. Larson, Old Time Gospel Message WITH POWER … All welcome.”

Shortly before the show, I was introduced to David K. Chatt, an artist who uses those tiny colored beads to create his work and one of the Big House's two owners. He told me the room we were standing in was the “Great Room.” He was ecstatic at the crowd that had gathered to hear Seattle singer-songwriter Noah Gundersen play his songs. “We’ve had a lot of events in the Great Room,” he said. “We’ve had recitals, weddings, memorials, birthday parties. But nothing like this. This is the greatest show we’ll ever have.”

I soon learned that Chatt was speaking with some certainty. After five years of living in the Big House and filling it with their innumerable artifacts, Chatt and his partner of 18 years will be putting the property on the market next month. Their partnership had dissolved and now too would their ownership over this big, unusual space.

Three weeks later we published the latest issue of City Arts with a large feature devoted to interesting interiors. I wish I would have discovered the Big House sooner so I could introduce readers to the space in the issue. Instead I settle for a farewell. I call up Chatt and ask for the full tour. Soon, photographer Nate Watters and I are standing in front of the Big House.

After greeting us outside, Chatt walks us through the Great Room, which has been rearranged back into a living space since my last visit, though the piles of globes are still there. "After that show, someone emailed us saying that they enjoyed the show, but that the lighting could have been better and that we should secure the globes because she saw one of them fall," Chatt recalls. "Out of that whole amazing evening, that is what that person took away. Why don't they just stay home and watch a video."

He leads us past the stage, which is now home to an altar sitting beneath a glass cast that the artist created during a three-year residency at the Penland School of Crafts near Ashville, North Carolina. Then we walk past a bathroom the owners built using the plumbing of the baptismal font, and down a hall to Chatt's workshop.

Chatt's own meticulously crafted artwork shares the space with meticulousy scavanged furniture. Our host brings out an old magazine article that features the old Victorian house on Capitol Hill that he and his partner, Ron Cole, lived in before discovering this building. The photos are filled with color and life, the couple's transformative sense of decor on full display. They had been happy at that house, Chatt says, but he was always looking for the most space for a low price. One day a friend pointed him to this big, drafty building that started its life as the Second Swedish Baptist Church. "I liked it because it's a wood building, and I know how to work with wood," he tells us. "Brick is so immovable. Wood you can put holes in. It's so much more malleable." Upstairs, Chatt informs us, is a separate apartment that he and Cole fixed up and rented out after buying the place. Downstairs, where we're headed next, is where the residence is found.

"When we first moved in here, people came down into the basement, which was bare at the time, and said, 'How in the world are you going to fill this," Chatt recalls. "I'm always amazed that people don't realize how to fill a space." As he has done upstairs, Chatt has managed to fill the space downstairs with more collections. He shows us the bathroom, the first room he and Cole remodeled after moving in. Above the shower is one of Chatt's early glass casts. "That one's called 'Peepng Tom,'" he says. As we head for the stairs and the bell tower, I ask about a model of a seemingly altered Big House sitting on the kitchen table. "That was my plan for changing this place," he says. "Don't look at it. It was crazy."

On a clear night, the top of the bell tower offers views of the top of the Seattle skyline, as well as the Cascade and Olympic mountain ranges. "We have spent a lot of time up here," he says. "It's a great place to take in the sunset with a gin and tonic."

Back in the Great Room, Chatt tells us the reason the crow adorns his windows. "I grew up in the Skagit Valley and there were always crows around," he says. "I like them because they're tool users, jokers, collectors." Chatt then tells us he had planned to someday build a crows nest on top of the bell tower, made out of metal and glass. A few moments later, the artist breaks the silence of his Great Room. "This place is as much a work of art as anything I've made," he says. "It's hard to let it go unfinished."

Mark Baumgarten’s At Large column appears on City Arts Online every Tuesday. If you have something you think Mark should see, in the flesh, email markb@cityartsmagazine.com and tell him why.

Noah Gundersen has been in my sights for some time. I first saw the young singer-songwriter when he opened for David Bazan at Seattle Pacific University three or four years ago. Bazan was playing a one-off show during the long break between his last Pedro the Lion album, 2004’s Achille’s Heel, and his first solo full-length, Curse Your Branches, which was released in 2009*. That performance was clearly a dream for Gundersen. I recall him talking a lot between songs, heaping adulation onto Bazan, an artist whose tussles with faith have inspired many to brave the question their own. When Gundersen sang the song “Jesus, Jesus,” Bazan’s impact was clear.

“If all the heathens burn in hell, do all their children burn as well?” he sang innocently as a slight melody escaped from his guitar. “What about the Muslims and the gays and the unwed mothers? What about me and all my friends? Are we all sinners if we sin? Does it even matter in the end if we’re unhappy?”

Those lines made my eyes water then (and they did again just now as I typed them). My girlfriend turned to me and said something to the effect of, “Holy shit!” It was a moment.

Then, Gundersen was living in Centralia, trying hard to get heard in this city to the North and having a little luck. Under the name Noah Gundersen & the Courage, he, his sister Abby and a few collaborators had recorded a couple albums and toured the West. Then, a couple years ago he moved to Seattle and decided to take a few curious turns. After recording the promising, though somewhat overwrought EP, Saints & Liars, with her brother, Abby decided to focus more on her studies than music. Gundersen then took the project in a wildly different direction, turning his acoustic guitar in for an electric, and adopting a full backing band and a more arena-geared onstage persona. When the band’s first full-length, Fearful Bones, appeared in the summer of 2010, they were billed simply as the Courage.

I wasn’t a huge fan of this turn. While adept at the rock ‘n’ roll swagger, Gundersen’s songs felt violated by such an aggressive treatment. I didn’t want the old Gundersen back, but it seemed that this experiment wasn’t going so well.

Then Gundersen shifted again. Earlier this year he cut the dreadlocks he had when I first saw him** and released an EP featuring just him and his sister called Family. It’s a welcome return to that earlier sound.

When I saw Gundersen play a show at the Big House in Ballard earlier this month, he sang songs from that album and from his past, about family, faith, doubt and love. “It’s not like the love is missing,” he sang. “It’s just not around, flowing like a river underground.” Later he introduced another song, saying “This is a song about bad choices.” After a yelp of approval from the packed house, he followed with an observation: “It’s a weird profession where you tell people about all the bad things you’ve done and they respond by buying your shit.” A pause. “I’m grateful.” At that point I wrote in my notebook, “The Earnest Young American” and circled it.

I also wrote a number of questions I have for Gundersen about his songs. After the show I asked if he would be the headliner of the next episode of The Song Show, the quarterly talk show that I host at the Rendezvous. He agreed.

Gundersen will be joining controversial emcee Fatal Lucciauno, who is making his second appearance on the Song Show following the release of his second full-length album (and the birth of his first child), as well as Robert Deeble, a powerful veteran songwriter who recently emerged from the shadows to release Heart Like Feathers, his first proper album in seven years.

Changes and choices will be on the agenda.

The Song Show takes place at the Rendezvous' Jewel Box Theatre on Thursday, March 8. It's a cozy room so buy your tickets now.

*Bazan also released an album of synthesizer-based pop songs under the name Headphones in 2005.

**I put this detail off until this point so the dreadlock-averse among you would continue reading.

Photo of Noah and Abby Gundersen by Evan Dell

“The Bible is a story,” Bill Cain tells us in his onstage persona, “a story of a family.”

That may be, but not all family stories are biblical in scope. The rejoinder is obvious, but this earnest meditation on family dynamics amid parental illness, currently on view at Seattle Repertory Theatre, offers limp defenses.

How to Write a New Book for the Bible is an intensely personal work by playwright Bill Cain, and very different from his historical speculations in Equivocation seen here in 2009. Using the diaries he kept while tending his mother Mary in her final year with cancer, Cain places himself and her before us, along with his father and elder brother, altering few facts and changing no names.

It’s a daring bit of scrutiny that few families could withstand, but Cain, while fiercely honest, is never cruel. “Don’t make me look foolish,” Mary cautions him, but she needn’t worry. Linda Gehringer’s portrayal of Mary is absorbing, richly complete, and a spectacular performance. Mary’s sin, if it is one, is to instill in her children a stern Yankee ethic that hard work will be rewarded—and, conversely, that reward’s absence means a failure to work hard. Never a caricature, Gehringer displays a woman of smart independence who bears the know-it-all arrogance of her adult children with wry dignity, even as her failing body and mind force her to rely on them.

Director Kent Nicholson deftly keeps his cast maneuvering steadily through the familiar tensions between mother and adult son. Outwardly they are the trivial differences in taste and preference, but reveal uncomfortable adjustments as a son learns to see his mother as a woman, while she must fall under his caregiving dominion.

As Cain observes, “We are a functional family.” And that becomes clear as see his late father Pete, skillfully played by Leo Marks (last seen in Seattle as the protagonist of All the King’s Men at Intiman). Pete is a self-taught engineer, a thoughtful parent, bedrock of common sense, and a slick dance partner. Arguments occur, but they have rules that avoid serious discord.

Bill’s brother Paul, the suspected favorite, has damage, but he has to leave the family, serving in Vietnam, to acquire it. Aaron Blakely offers some compelling work in Paul’s visit with his brother to the Vietnam memorial, but little is revealed in his part to explain the grudging physical distance he maintains from his parents.

Scenic Designer Scott Bradley provides a minimal, but highly confined space for the actors, suggesting the constraints that family comity demands. With lighting designer Alexander V. Nichols, a suspended arsenal of lamps take turns descending to shine light on the scenes.

Yet it is the playwright that fails to provide much illumination. As a result, Tyler Pierce, playing the author, struggles to convince us that there is something significant about the cleverly written scenes he presents us.

Cain, who is also a Jesuit priest, makes his point evident. There is, he observes, just as much that is holy in the mundane negotiation of family love as in the epic tales of the Old and New Testament. And watching Mary’s decline to death, as well as Bill’s emotional turmoil, is certainly moving.

But the stories of the Bible, as well as its concise parables, have lessons they are designed to teach. Cain seems to have none, admitting as much by acknowledging that stories are often mysteries. The Jesuit writer seems, maddeningly, to fall back on that universal escape-clause from theology’s internal contradictions.

That may excuse God, but never a playwright.

“How to Write a New Book for the Bible” runs at Seattle Repertory Theater’s Bagley Wright Theatre through February 5. Tickets: $15-$64, $12 for under 25; 206-443-2222 / 877-900-9285, or www.seattlerep.org.

Pictured above: Linda Gehringer stars in the world premiere of Bill Cain’s How to Write a New Book for the Bible at Seattle Repertory Theatre. Photo courtesy of kevinberne.com

On Monday, nearly 1,000 people braved the cold and snow, traveling from as far away as Tacoma to come out to Garfield High School to help celebrate the spirit of Martin Luther King Jr.  Gathering inside the gymnasium, attendees of the event were able to witness poetry and spoken word from the students of Youth Speak Seattle, as well as tap performances by the young dancers of Northwest Tap Connection and a marching band, who helped kick off a downtown march.  The celebration was put on by the Seattle MLK Celebration Committee and was the 30^th anniversary of their MLK event.

Local activist Dorli Rainey was in attendance to receive an award from the Seattle MLK Committee for her recognized efforts in the community.

Students involved with Youth Speak Seattle read poetry and spoken word inspired by King's legacy.

Young dancers from Northwest Tap Connection perform to music by Michael Jackson

Rev. Dr. Leslie Braxton's hearfelt and inspiring speech included an amended version of King's own "I Have a Dream" speech.  

Those who stuck around for the downtown march (almost everyone) were greeted by a live marching band outside the school before taking over the streets and walking together to the Federal Building downtown.

A few seconds after the lights went down, Allen Stone's instantly-recognizable hatted, long-haired, bespectacled, and cardigan'd silhouette lurched across the Neptune Theatre stage in the darkness to enormous welcoming cheers. It could only have been him.

“I've never been higher in my whole life!” he exclaimed as the stage lights went up, revealing a 20-piece Seattle Rock Orchestra assembled neatly in black in two rows at the back and his guitarist, bassist, and drummer waiting patiently at their instruments.

Perched on a stool in front of a mic stand, Stone effused excited gratitude and beamed joy. He opened with “Bed I Made.” His drummer snapped a perfect rim-shot as violins were finger-picked in the background, their bows bobbing in the air like rubber giraffes in the bath, as Stone picked at guitar chords and gently blasted a wondrous Stevie Wonder-esque vocal from a wide, open smiling mouth that was a sky of teeth and a sea of tongue.

Wearing his trademark gas station-carousel mom-glasses and a black pork pie hat that showered his head in straggly blonde locks, he also sported a busy blue, red, and yellow patterned cardigan that would make even the most outlandish Christmas sweater look positively boring by comparison. Underneath he wore an unbuttoned denim shirt that revealed a light blue vintage Alaska-logo t-shirt. Slightly baggy purple-gray pants and blue-black shoes completed his outfit.

And this is the first thing people will tell you about Allen Stone, the first thing after they've expressed nothing but awe and praise for the rich, powerful, unwavering, steady stream of heartfelt soul that is his voice, that he looks absolutely nothing like he sounds. There must be a small part of every record exec that's dying to get their hands on Stone that wishes he was a little more of an easier sell image-wise, like his modern soul contemporaries Mayer Hawthorne and Raphael Saadiq, who come in relatively well-defined packages. (Despite the pair being hugely successful in the genre, Stone sings much better than both of them.) Or that he could also beatbox and dance and therefore sell him as another Justin Timberlake.

But that's where Stone is careful to be different, casually enigmatic, and true to himself above all. Being different, casually enigmatic, and true to himself will serve him far better in the long run and he knows it. Dressed like every day is laundry day, he's what most people would expect to find in a Seattle coffee shop playing Mudhoney covers on a battered acoustic very, very badly. After you see him perform live, however, and after he completely wins you over with his singular vocal style and elated stage presence and his complete mastery of his just-got-into-a-fight-with-a-rack-of-clothes-at-Goodwill-and-the-rack-won image, it's somehow hard to imagine him looking like anything else.

Last night, Stone was genuinely enjoying himself at every moment. Despite his wrenched grimacing to reach the proper emotion required to perform some songs whose lyrics are steeped in pain, he was having a brilliant time. It was hard to feel bad at all. Joy underpinned everything at this second night of two sold-out consecutive shows for Allen Stone at the Neptune.

“Killing Time” and “Breathe Anymore” followed. Stone was wordy and passionate between songs, sometimes lapsing into the beginnings of a Southern accent as he implored the crowd with Motown and James Brown soul music rhetoric. Friendly and chatty, he proclaimed his love for every member of the audience virtually every chance he got. You got the feeling it was genuine, though.

He was more than comfortable behind the mic hyping the crowd and more than comfortable being a celebrant of all things good in life for the evening; clearly the fruits of growing up as a pastor's kid and a long experience of leading worship in churches. “Thanks for braving the snow to come see this hippie” Stone said, emphasizing his point with dual clenched fists. A couple of people shouted out “Yeah hippie!” and “I like your sweater!” but he ignored them both with a cool professionalism as he went to pick up his guitar for his next song.

“We're gonna funk the crap outta y'all!” Stone then warned, tiptoeing around the profane, before launching into “Shelter.” Later on his language would get slightly saltier when he would instruct us to “greasy up this bitch, okay?”

The Seattle Rock Orchestra then left the stage with Stone while his keyboardist and organist joined the rest of the band at their instruments, forming an eight-piece with the addition of a trumpet and sax. Stone galloped back onstage a few moments later. The energy in the venue intensified as the song tempo notably increased, and Stone couldn't stop jittering and swaying his hips to the beat, half-dancing, half-convulsing. His hands flapped in agitation, his “spirit fingers” plucked a million invisible harps that surrounded his head, and the top half of his body gently jerked around while the bottom half stayed largely rooted to the spot in front of his mic stand, like Thom Yorke panicking at the top of a tree in a windstorm. He never repeated the same move twice. It was both captivating and the diametric opposite of Lana Del Rey's sedated and unprepared performance on SNL this weekend. (Surely after playing on Conan recently it's only a matter of time before we see Stone perform on SNL? One imagines that he'd be pretty entertaining in sketches too.)

After the upbeat “Sleep,” Stone cut the audience in two and announced a “Dance-Off” between them, to which we all happily obliged by dancing as hard as we all could. Stone made fun of those in the crowd dancing weakly: “Y'all dance like you're from Wallingford!” His keyboardist spelled out “2-0-6” with three different hand actions and after the highly energetic “Dance-Off” had finished, mock-scowled at his instrument and fanned the imaginary heat from his keys with his stage towel.

A singalong to “Say So” followed, plus “Your Eyes,” a cover of Bob Marley's “Is This Love?” (Stone owned the song and made it sound like he wrote it), and a cover of “I Can't Make You Love Me,” popularized by Bonnie Raitt in 1991.

The Seattle Rock Orchestra shuffled back onstage for the first encore to perform “Contact High.” After a list of appreciative thank you's to a list of people, Stone set the stage alight one last time with “Satisfaction.” It ended with his entire band standing and pounding at their instruments.

The second encore saw Stone giving a swift but reflective minute-long sermon on the beauty of humility before starting to play “Last to Speak.” He then finished with his most well-known song to date: “Unaware.”

In support was Allen's friend Noah Gundersen. Allen Stone looks like his name should be Noah Gundersen. Noah Gundersen looks like his name should be Allen Stone. In stark contrast to the beanied and dreadlocked Noah previously seen performing in Seattle, tonight's Noah was clean-shaven and sensibly coiffed, snappily dressed in brown leather shoes, black jeans, and a black v-neck t-shirt with a tattoo peeking from the left side of his collar.

Gundersen sang both powerfully and delicately with expert control and understatement. His sparse chords on his acoustic guitar left plenty of space in his songs that were filled with equal parts bar chatter and rapt attention. When he sang “You remind me of cigarettes,” there was nearly a whole three seconds of silence before he continued with “The way I hold you in my chest.” His sister Abby Gundersen sang harmonies and played violin to accentuate the soaring verses and chorus of his songs. The introductory stomp of “Fire” had both of them facing each other, stamping the stage with their feet as hard as they could, and staring intently at the floor like they were both suddenly wondering whether they'd left the gas on. The siblings were then joined onstage by three more friends to sing harmonies, including Hot Bodies in Motion's Zach Fleury, his trilby, wool trenchcoat, red shirt and gray stripe-patterned tie making him literally look like a singing detective. It felt like a family had gathered to sing together and it sounded incredible. Everyone's head happily bobbed onstage to the rhythm. As Gundersen's set ended, he walked to the very front of the stage as the house lights came up and motioned for his friends behind him to do the same. We all sang and clapped as one as Gundersen led, his vocals the focal point of the performance. As with Allen Stone, and as with all great singers, first and foremost, it was all about the voice.

Read City Arts' recent cover story on Allen Stone from our December 2011 issue here.

Photo from Stone's Jan. 14 performance at the Neptune Theatre by Brad Curran.

We're excited to announce the 2012 Heineken City Arts Fest will take place Oct. 18-20. As our team assembles the line-up, look for lots of updates to come. In the meantime, if you have questions or want to sign up early to join our team, please email info@cityartsfest.com. You can also became a fan of the festival on Facebook for various inside scoops.

Or if you're feeling nostolgic, check out this video from the 2011 Fest.

When Spring Awakening debuted in NYC in 2006, it felt like a bit of a gamble. Based on a once-banned play by Frank Wedekind about a group of teens discovering themselves and one another against a backdrop of oppression in 19th century Germany, Spring Awakening was put in the hands of writer/lyricist Steven Sater and musical partner Duncan Sheik (of "Barely Breathing" fame). They transformed the work into a soaring rock musical. The show and its pop soundtrack defied definition, and in doing so became a touchstone of not only that particular Broadway season―picking up eight Tonys in total, including Best Musical―but also of musical theatre itself.

Spring Awakening is a play about growing up, about kids and adults, about first loves, about loss. It's a sad play, but it's also a heartwarming play. Spring Awakening's effect on the many who've seen it since its inception is long-lasting. So, frankly, it's about freakin' time that a local production came to fruition. As of last Friday, that first production is in the capable hands of Balagan Theatre for a two week run at their new space at 1524 Harvard Ave.

Both times that I’ve seen Spring Awakening―the first national tour at the Paramount Theatre (2008) and then at Tacoma's Pantages (2011)―it was dominated by its would-be third wheel, the frail, over-anxious Moritz Stiefel. Moritz has it pretty rough from the star: He's slight in frame with a father who expects a lot, school teachers who inexplicably don't like him, and only his pal Melchior Gabor to keep him company. Yet he always manages to be the most lovable character on the stage. As portrayed by local Jerick Hoffer, the "Seattle" Moritz is no exception. Every pained look on Hoffer's face is heartbreaking, every crack of his voice charming, and Moritz's journey quickly becomes the most gut-wrenching of the lot. Hoffer, perhaps known locally more for his performances as drag queen Jinkx Monsoon than his dramatic turns at places like Seattle Shakespeare Co., is a star waiting to be born, and Moritz undoubtedly takes him one step closer.

He's the main attraction here, but he's in great company. Melchior, the alleged instigator of all things corrupt in the play's world, is played by Brian Earp, whose local theatre history dates to 2003 and 2004, when he was awarded Best Actor by the 5th Avenue before going on to performances at Yale and Oxford. Wendla Bergmann, a role originated by Glee's Lea Michele, finds her equal shares of eager naivete and panic as played by Diana Huey (seen recently in ACT's A Christmas Carol). The rest of the principle cast takes full advantage of their moments to shine (keep an eye out for Kirsten deLohr Helland as Ilse and SA touring vet Justin Huertas as Hanschen).

The production takes some liberties that may irk loyal Spring Awakening fans―Moritz's hair never changes shape, the Bill T. Jones’ choreography for "Totally Fucked" is gone, the (spoiler)s of Rock roles are re-imagined and thereby missing much, if not all, of their panache, and "The Bitch of Living" is a little, uhh, humpier than you might recall. But these are little tweaks, allowed when you're bringing into the community the first local production of a play of this cultural magnitude. As a bonus, Balagan's new digs lend themselves nicely to the play's evolution, offering added intimacy without stifling the livelier moments.

If you're going in as a newbie, you're best advised to go in blind (spoilers are trouble on this one, so watch your Wikipedia links!). If you're not, well... don't spoil all the songs by singing too loudly.

Spring Awakening continues January 12-15 (with a likely return in April!). Due to adult content, audience members must be 14+. Visit balagantheatre.org for tickets.

The only thing the Bushwick Book Club has in common with any other book club is, perhaps, the amount of wine consumed at one of their gatherings.  During a Bushwick event, one is likely to encounter some discussion of a literary work, but unlike a typical book club, the real focus is on music.  Each month, the Bushwick Book Club chooses a different book and brings together a group of artists and asks each to write an original song or two based on that book.  This month, Levi Fuller, Joanna Horowitz, Debbie Miller, and a few other local musicians came together at the very crowded Fremont Abbey Arts Center to perform their own dark and hilarious interpretations of Lewis Carroll's Alice In Wonderland.

Book Club director Geoff Larsen draws names from a hat to determine the order in which the artists will perform.

Joanna Horowitz started the show with a Mad Hatter-inspired song.

The large upstairs room at Fremont Abbey was almost too small for the crowd that showed up Thursday night.

Galen Green brought a bluegrass twist to the story of Alice's Wonderland adventure.

A highlight of the night was watching the adorable Debbie Miller take on the role of the Queen of Hearts, as she sang an unexpectedly humorous song about the joys of chopping off heads wherever she goes. 

Geoff Larsen offered short readings, discussion about and terminology from "Jabberwocky" between songs

Vince Martinez drew inspiration not only from the Disney version of Alice in Wonderland but also his early obsession with G. Love and Special Sauce.