That theater happens in the Gerding Theater at the Armory is nothing (very) new. It is home turf for Portland Center Stage, after all. But yesterday theater spilled out of the main stage and studio theater taking place in a long concrete hallway two stories below ground, in a puppet theater in the boiler room, and in the lobby, spilling out onto the sidewalk. During the Theater Fair that was part of the Just Add Water (JAW) festival, and in between other events (staged readings, etc.) Liminal Performance Group, Fever Theater, and Dim Sum Puppet Opera Company created work for three non-theater sites in the building for “You Are There.”
We loved Fever Theater drawing us through the hallway with monologue, “song,” movement, and sound in a smartly abstract way. And we were f-l-o-o-r-e-d by Bryan Markovitz and Liminal’s “Still Feelings in Still Times.” 25 actors and fine improvising musicians participated in this still piece (added one by one until the line of them snaked out the door of the lobby and onto the sidewalk) for which the actors held poses (based on paintings, we understand) for an hour at a stretch, and the musicians responded to one another and their environment based on a loose instructional armature.
