NEWS/ARTS ARTS/STAGE COURTESY BOISE CONTEMPORARY THEATER
NAVIGATING NEPAL Namaste Man opens at BCT TARA MORGAN Take a picture. it will last longer.
OH, SNAPSHOT Are you an amateur photog looking for some exposure? The Alexa Rose Gallery—a cooperative art gallery space located next to Superb Sushi in the Idaho Building—is turning its focus to the art of photography. Gallery curators recently put out a call to artists asking for submissions of up to 10 photos per person for inclusion in an art show opening Thursday, May 6. Everyone from Polaroid-wielding amateurs to professional shooters can submit their creations to be a part of the exhibit. The gallery is aiming for 1,000 photos on any topic imaginable, including “pets, children, people, places, things, scenes, landscapes, art, food, your choice.” After obtaining the submissions, exhibit curators will then creatively display all of the photos in flashy patterns, including mosaics, themed rooms or spelled-out words. But it doesn’t f-stop there. Each of the submissions will be priced from $1-$25 a pop, with 30 percent of the sale going toward the gallery maintenance fund and the rest going to the photographer. The Alexa Rose Gallery is encouraging photographers to donate their 70 percent to a charity of their choosing. The deadline for submissions is Thursday, April 22, at 5 p.m. and organizers ask that all photos be placed in an envelope and slipped through the mail slot on the Alexa Rose Gallery door at 280 N. Eighth St., Ste. 118. If your photos can’t fit through the mail slot, you can call 208-761-9678 to arrange a special delivery. In other ambitious artistic collaboration news, Alley Repertory Theater is kicking off its third season with Between 6 and 8, an event that brings together six to eight artists of various disciplines and gives them six to eight days to create a six-to-eight minute performance, which they then present to a live audience. On Saturday, April 17, Phil Atlakson, American Films (Kelly Broich, Brett Netson and Brad Kaup), Nick Garcia, Elijah Jensen, Elizabeth McSurdy, Grant Olsen, Karena Youtz and Hollis Welsh will flood the Visual Arts Collective stage with their interpretations of the theme Us and Them. To shake things up numerically, tickets are $7 and doors open at 7 p.m. —Tara Morgan
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Yak cheese. Bing Crosby. Cow dung. Hepatitis. For years, actor Andrew Weems scrawled down the sights and sounds of his childhood spent as a State Department brat bouncing from South Korea to Zambia to Virginia to Nepal. But it wasn’t until Weems met Bartlett Sher, former artistic director of Seattle’s Intiman Theatre, that his vivid, startling memories found their way to the stage. Weems premiered Namaste Man at the Intiman in June 2008, and last weekend, he opened the play for the second time to a mostly full house at BCT. hikes with his hippie ex-pat teachers, bumping On a warmly lit stage scattered with toys into a bloated, charred corpse while splashing and trinkets, Weems—a short, animated in a river, his mom listening to Nat King Cole 40-something given to making rubbery Robin Williams-like facial contortions—set the scene. on vinyl, “boiling alive” while tripping on hepatitis—all the while weaving in glimpses of It’s Christmas in New York City and he has his present life as an acstumbled across a tor in New York City. Nepalese man hawking And while his stories tchotchkes. Suddenly, Runs through Saturday, May 1. are engaging, packed Weems is a child back BOISE CONTEMPORARY THEATER with bright colors, in Kathmandu with 854 Fulton St. pungent smells and his father, a straight208-331-9224 bctheater.org crazy characters whom forward U.S. State DeWeems mimics with partment engineer with spot-on accents, they a Dubya accent, and his mother, a gentle Bostonian whom everyone never quite coalesce into a solid whole. The whole thing ends up feeling a tad indulgent. called Mable. Through all of his recollections, it’s Weems’ Weems hops around, sometimes confusingdepictions of his folks that ring most true. ly, from one memory to another—Himalayan
Oh, have I got a story for you ...
Though Weems doesn’t sugarcoat his memories, he also doesn’t seem to pass judgment. “To me, there’s really three ghosts ...” said Weems in an interview with Seattle’s KPLU radio. “One is this beautiful country of Nepal where I grew up in the 1970s, and the other two are these fascinating, incredible people who were my parents, who are now both gone.” BCT’s production of Namaste Man is well-oiled—with Peter John Still’s punctuating sound design floating in at all the right moments—but the show suffers from an overall disjointedness. Unlike Lauren Weedman’s one-woman show No, You Shut Up, Namaste Man doesn’t feel quite at home on the BCT stage. Maybe that’s because Weems is still figuring out exactly where home is.
BALLET IDAHO’S BECOMING Sophomore season ends with hope for the future AMY ATKINS Though it has grown since striking out on its own, Ballet Idaho suffered a few missteps in its sophomore effort, evident in its final offering, the All Italian Program, which wrapped up the company’s season this past weekend. The program featured Mendelssohn’s Italian Symphony, Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons and Stravinsky’s Pulcinella and featured skilled principals Heather Hawk, Jared Hunt and Phyllis Rothwell Affrunti. Their grace and ability to articulate the choreographer’s vision is something other members of the company would be well served to observe. One of the biggest issues this season has been watching several of the dancers telegraph their next moves, rolling from one position to the next, with a lack of precision. Without that meticulousness, it feels like having a conversation with someone who is constantly thinking of
what he or she is going to say next. It’s uncomfortable and feels rushed. Italian Symphony was a lovely, albeit slightly flat piece. It opened with the dancers dressed in a kind of Sound Of Music meets Olive Garden vibe, the sense of glory that should have accompanied the majestic music just not there. Following that, however, A Florentine Renaissance Necklace revealed the dancers resplendent in cream and gold. Hawk, supported by Steven Bain—who has shown great strides this season—was surrounded by six female dancers, daintily circling her in tiny steps on pointe, evoking sunlight fluttering across a melting snowcap. Ballet master Alex Ossadnik took the reins of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons and infused it with a sense of humor and drama. Long practice bars lined stage like a geometry problem, and
dancers’ flowy tunics were juxtaposed against the hard lines. Hawk was a force like the moon and Rothwell Affrunti was a breath of spring, her long hair loose, her movements organic. Anastos expressed his own sense of humor and theatrics with the commedia del arte Pulcinella. The men in loose black-and-white costumes served as foils to the women’s beautiful golden bodices and liquidy crepe de Chine skirts. The dancers seemed to find their groove in this piece, pulling off well-done slapstick and complicated choreography. A quartet of gradeschool-aged dancers added to the levity, and, in the titular role, dancer Andrew Taft captured the sense of mischief, mirth and melancholy requisite for any good clown. Along with the ever-changing Ballet Idaho, he’s definitely one to keep an eye on in the coming season. WWW. B O I S E WE E KLY. C O M