Area theater troupes gear up for annual Santa Cruz Improv Fest

There’s one story that I must tell you, and I always quote this,” says Gerry Orton, who begins telling a story about Keith Johnstone, a pioneer of improvisational theater. “He was in San Francisco, and I was taking a workshop from him—this was several years ago—and on the evening of a performance while he was there, he was interviewed on stage by a teacher of improv. The teacher said, ‘Keith, why do you still do it after all these years? Why do you still travel the world and teach?’ And his answer was, ‘Because I still don’t understand it.’” Orton lets out a knowing laugh. “And that’s so true.”

Ben Lomond author gives prolific inventor, John J. Montgomery, the long-overdue credit he deserves

Few Santa Cruzans know that some of the breakthrough experiments in aviation history occurred right in their own backyard. When humankind began to believe in the seemingly impossible notion of controlled flight in the early 1900s, the Wright brothers held the spotlight for their powered aerial flights in Kitty Hawk, N.C. Meanwhile, another man’s breakthrough inventions took to the skies above Aptos.

“Aptos was the Kitty Hawk of the West,” says Craig Harwood. The Ben Lomond resident recently co-authored the book “Quest for Flight,” which tells the tale of a prolific inventor named John J. Montgomery, whose breakthroughs in human-controlled air flight—many of which took place in the Santa Cruz region—fueled the legacy of American aviation. “It was this significant transition from idea and model to being fully demonstrated in a controlled flight hundreds of feet above the earth,” he explains.

Editor’s note: Frances Hatfield lives in Santa Cruz, where she also maintains a private practice in depth psychotherapy. Her poetry has appeared most recently in Parabola Magazine, Memoir (and), Jung Journal, Undivided, and Numinous Magazine. Her first book of poems, “Rudiments of Flight,” was published this year by Wings Press. She will participate in the Poetry Santa Cruz reading series, along with nationally known poet Steve Kowit, at Bookshop Santa Cruz at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, May 14.

The Invitation

In the house of shame

good news is worse than bad

Who set me wandering through my dreams

L.A. artist choreographs the highs and lows of motherhood

Christine Suarez, Los Angeles performing artist and choreographer, recalls a conversation in which a 40-year-old single mom friend of hers told her that motherhood meant that from now on, everything she did would have to be half-assed.

“That really struck me,” Suarez says. “The tension when you become a parent … My house is never going to be really clean ever again, everything’s not going to be in its place ever again, I’m never gonna spend two hours getting dressed to go out. It changes, it shifts things.”

Local filmmaker looks to produce feature about final victim of prolific serial killer

Filmmaker Cameron Cloutier’s still-unfinished journey with his film, Bird with a Broken Wing, began four years ago when he heard a story that was stranger than fiction. While chatting with a couple of friends, one of them asked Cloutier if he had ever heard of the East Area Rapist. He hadn’t, so his friends started telling him the story, which they had both heard about in the news a few years prior. Cloutier couldn’t quite believe what he was hearing. “What are you talking about?” he remembers thinking. “Everything they said was out of control.”

Downtown art display unites community with eccentricity

On the first Friday of April, more than 1,000 Santa Cruz residents participated in an unprecedented filming session at the Civic Auditorium, where a veritable parade of diverse personalities took turns walking in front of a camera, doing as they chose, and walking off. “Everybody was so jazzed out of their minds to be there,” says David Sieburg, an executive producer at The Impact Media Group, who adds, “It was pretty much off the charts.”

The event was merely the first phase of “We are Santa Cruz – Reflections of our Community,” a video art project organized by Impact, a local production company with more than 30 years in the Santa Cruz area. The second phase of the project involves compiling the footage into a nighttime art display that will be projected as a silent, black-and-white looping video. The completed exhibit will debut at the E.C. Rittenhouse Building on May 3, where a street-level window on Pacific Avenue will come to life with full-size, moving reflections of Santa Cruz residents.

Two local theater companies collaborate to produce two one-act plays by the late playwright Harold Pinter

If what isn’t said speaks louder than what is said, then Harold Pinter’s work shouts volumes. And to explore the voluminous meaning between the late playwright’s lines, two local theater companies have banded together this season.

Jewel Theatre Company, in collaboration with Shakespeare Santa Cruz, presents two one-act plays by Pinter: “One for the Road” and “The Lover.” The show opens on Friday, April 26 at Center Stage in Santa Cruz. There will be one discount preview showing on Thursday, April 25.

Marco Barricelli, artistic director of Shakespeare Santa Cruz, is directing “One for the Road” and Julie James, artistic director of Jewel Theatre Company, is directing “The Lover”—marking the first time that the two companies have come together to collaborate on a production. Featured performers include James, Mike Ryan and Paul Whitworth.

National Dance Week Santa Cruz April 18 to April 26

This year my work as a dance educator and presenter has brought me into contact with multiple dancers, teachers and administrators from other communities in the state and the country.

As I have moved through phone calls and emails, texts and chats with these new acquaintances and friends, looking for more inspiration and ideas to support dance in Santa Cruz, I am reminded once again, just how incredible this dance community is.

Our dance community continues to impress me with the endless commitment and joy that each and every one of our dancers bring to the stage, the studio and the streets. This is a mid-size city with a large-city commitment to dance.

Celebrating world culture and exorcising demons with Dead Can Dance’s Brendan Perry

The disparity of the labels most commonly assigned to Dead Can Dance’s style—gothic, neoclassical, world fusion—bears witness to the breadth of this Australian-born ensemble’s artistic scope. Seemingly contradictory elements intertwine with the utmost grace in DCD’s work: The group’s very name juxtaposes the grim with the festive, while its music is both elegant and primal, foreign and familiar, ethereal and earthy, witchy and angelic, ghostly and vibrant … and, as singer/multi-instrumentalist Brendan Perry states, an exorcism as well as a celebration.

Sixth annual National Dance Week Santa Cruz challenges preconceived notions of what dance can be

What do the post office, cafés, intersections and an abandoned Wienerschnitzel have in common? They will all—believe it or not—be transformed into performance sites in honor of National Dance Week Santa Cruz 2013 (NDWSC).

The sixth annual county-wide event will take place April 18-26, and feature numerous performances in addition to more than 100 free dance classes—from ballet to samba to hip-hop to African—open to the public. Created to recognize and grow the local dance community, NDWSC brings creative movement directly to the people, with performances in the street, in local dance studios, in community centers and in delightfully unexpected venues (in 2010, three dancers from The Aerial Collective twirled while dangling from the roof of Lulu Carpenter’s in downtown.)