Robbins seattle johnson in jennifer miller nyc

Audiences have long enjoyed Book-It Repertory’s crinoline-and-bustle
productions of Charles Dickens, Jane Austen and Edith Wharton. But
that familiar history might leave them agape at the company’s latest
romp into the free-spirited irreverence and rootin’-tootin’ raciness
of Tom Robbins.

The theater of literary adaptations takes on the second novel of the
Pacific Northwest’s adopted son with Friday night’s opening of “Even
Cowgirls Get the Blues.”

The story of Sissy Hankshaw, a stunning beauty who turns her two
outsize thumbs into hitchhiking bliss, captured the zeitgeist of the
late counterculture when first published in 1976. Running parallel to,
and ultimately intersecting with, Hankshaw’s road narrative are the
“cowgirl interludes” that track the story of Bonanza Jellybean and her
partners at the Rubber Rose Ranch.

Robbins spent his own rambling youth as a poet in New York, a
meteorologist in the Air Force and an art school student in Virginia.
But he felt most at home in 1960s Seattle, where he worked as a copy
editor and arts reporter for the Seattle P-I and as an arts editor for
The Seattle Times.

It was as a contributor to the more freewheeling underground newspaper
The Helix that Robbins honed his countercultural voice. It’s a style
that merges the lusty words of the Beats with the gonzo charge of
Hunter S. Thompson, pushing language’s boundaries and mirroring forays
into hallucinogenic edges of consciousness.

A critic once suggested he should make up his mind whether to be funny
or serious. Robbins answered, “I will make up my mind when God does.”

Russ Banham, who directs the production, believes the context of the
women’s and gay rights movements, and the quests for spirituality and
self-actualization in the ’70s are essential to understanding what he
describes as “a manifesto of female sexuality.”

Hankshaw (played by Kate Czajkowski) becomes a model for The Countess,
a homosexual feminine-hygiene tycoon, and marries a Mohawk aesthete
before hitting the road again and connecting spiritually and sexually
with Bonanza.

Banham believes Robbins’ themes came largely from the sexually
antagonistic overtones of feminism. “He was affirming that women
should give up on men because men aren’t worthy,” said Banahm. “They
don’t appreciate women’s power.”

The sole exception is the lascivious guru Chink (a mislabeled
Japanese, but also the “chink in the armor”), whose wise
pronouncements provide philosophical backbone.

“It needed a woman’s perspective,” she said, recognizing that the
novel “really says things about female sexuality that were not being
said.”

She found that she had to excise the novelist’s fanciful digressions
and deliberate jumbling of time, lining events up sequentially to get
it to work on the stage.

It was no small irony, Johnson explained, because time, and the need
to break free from it, is among the book’s many themes.

She admits, “We had to get rid of all the stuff that’s fun to read
when sitting on your sofa.”

Johnson did, however, retain the portion of the book in which “Dr.
Robbins” enters his own novel (creating a nice existential paradox
when the real Robbins, who lives in La Conner, attends opening night).

Married partners Banham and Johnson are frequent collaborators on
Seattle stages, estimating that this may be the 15th they have worked
on together as director, actor or writer at with such groups as Book-
It and Seattle Shakespeare Company. Johnson can be seen next month in
“The Three Musketeers” at Seattle Repertory Theatre.

The production also features music from composer/musicians Jo Miller,
of Ranch Romance, and champion fiddler Barbara Lamb, for some Dale
Evans ambience.

Banham and Johnson agree that the passionate election season is an
exciting time to produce a work that forces an examination of one’s
beliefs.

“I was drawn to the theater as an art form of protest and change,”
said Banham. “It’s wonderful to direct a play like this that holds the
potential of changing the audience.”

The religulous trailer film political films

It was interesting to be in Canada for the Toronto International Film
Festival and see media coverage there of events happening here.

Both political conventions (and Hurricane Gustav) filled the news and
opinion pages of all the Canadian papers with the bulk of the coverage
tilted in favor of Obama, but with a spirited rebuttal from readers
and columnists alike.

The announcement of their own elections stole the spotlight from all
this, and shame on me for not caring enough to pay attention.

Back home, the relief I sought in the sports pages from the U.S.
media’s obsession with political minutiae and trivia was as short
lived as Milwaukee Brewer’s wild card hopes.

And now I find that escapism in film entertainment is also futile,
because the multiplex is as polarized as the rest of the country.

People turned to political films during the last election for
information that was often not reported anywhere else. And one of
those films – “Fahrenheit 9/11” by Michael Moore – became the highest
grossing documentary of all time.

It was written and directed by Shorewood native David Zucker, who
directed “The Naked Gun” and “Airplane!,” and stars Kevin Farley – the
late Chris Farley’s brother – as Moore.

“An American Carol” was funded by Beloit resident Diane Kendricks and
her late husband Ken Hendricks. In the film Farley’s character is
visited by several historical characters – ala Charles Dickens – when
he proposes banning July 4.

The Hendrickses are investors in the production firm founded by
Stephen McEveety, producer of Mel Gibson’s “Braveheart,” “The Passion
of the Christ” and “What Women Want.” A release said the firm
specializes in “high impact, socially relevant films.”

The Hendrickses are also major supporters of the Beloit Film Festival
and McEveety has been named honorary chair of the 2009 event.

Bill Maher, of course, comes from the polar opposite viewpoint, and
his new documentary is the anti-“The Passion of the Christ.”

The comic and HBO talk show host is a caustic and outspoken liberal
and his film – by “Borat” director Larry Charles – disputes the
notions of God and faith and ridicules the sorts of extreme elements
like ganja worshippers and Scientologists, that gather in his name.

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