Time Out
July 6, 2000
The brainchild of wicked accordianist Mis Murgatroid,
downtown dancer Jenifer Allen and writer Drew Pisarra,
Lady M puts a female-centric spin on Macbeth.
Have we mentioned that it's a rock opera? The spookily
atmospheric music is like the answer to an Edward Gorey
drawing, and we hear there will be videos and various costumes.
We're not sure Kelsey Grammar will put in a special guest
appearance (he must have time on his hands now that his
Macbeth has tanked ignominiously on Broadway), but Lady M
sounds delirious enough to warrant a visit.
The avant-garde rock opera Lady M came kicking and screaming
Two former Portlanders, dancer Jennifer Allen and author-artist
"I became obsessed with Freeway," says Allen, "especially the
Allen and Pisarra incorporated various pieces of Miss Murgatroid's
The three began to play together whenever they collided in Portland
"I suddenly asked Jennifer, 'What is this?'" says Miss M, "and she
As the piece developed, the three decided not to be slaves to
After the song "Welcome to My Kingdom", the music turns suddenly and
Lady M is the first piece Allen has choreographed on her own.
Lady M premiered last July at Galapagos in Brooklyn, playing for
Laurie Anderson considered creating a contemporary opera
Though Pynchon might have balked at such liberties, it's too late
Wild girls storm Performance Mix at the Joyce Soho.
The heat at Context Studios is real enough, but the crowd
Spoofing sci-fi isn't a brand new idea, but Pisarra and Allen's
It just goes to show you. Very good art that's also
Theme Park
Former Portland performers Jennifer Allen and Drew Pisarra were
Theme parks conjure fantasies, encourage excess and revel in
"FUTUREWORLD" and "The Land of Mystery," the two dance/theater
Allen, a Portland native known for her dancing,
"The Land of Mystery" tackles old radio mysteries. Voice-over
Willamette Week
October 4, 2000
into the world to the strains of improvised accordion accompanying
a dancer flailing around in a ravaged wig. Even so, that was
hardly the most surprising, or unlikely, phase of its genesis.
Drew Pisarra, developed Lady M with Portland musician
Alicia J. Rose, a.k.a. Miss Murgatroid, diva of the squeezebox.
Allen, a former Jefferson dancer, and Pisarra now reside in
New York, where they've collaborated on dance-theater duets such
as FUTUREWORLD and The Land of Mystery, both of which played
in Portland two years ago. While creating the soundscape for
The Land of Mystery, Allen stumbled upon Miss Murgatroid's
haunting accordion durges in Matthew Bright's cult film Freeway.
music. I began to hunt down all the Miss Murgatroid CDs I could find,
and that's when I discovered that she was back home in Portland."
music into their work, then contacted the accordionatrix when they
arrived in Portland for a performance. "From that came our bizarre
entanglement," says Miss M.
or New York, and it was in the latter metropolis that Miss M began
improvising while Allen donned a ratty wig and started to move.
said, 'I think it's Lady Macbeth.'" At their next meeting, each brought
copies of Macbeth, reading passages from the play to more
improvised accordion. "From there, we developed free prose," says Miss
M, "which became rock songs."
Shakespeare, departing at various points to reach a deeper sense of
the bloody queen. Allen, who plays Lady M, sees her as a women who
rises from a servile position in the court to attain some prestige.
Her hunger for real power drives her to knife her way to the throne,
but her moment of glory is short.
blackly tense. Finally, painted into a corner with an inpasto of gore,
she descends back to the level of domestic, desperately hauling buckets
around the stage, though there's never enough water to scour the stains
from her hands. The three creators concentrate, as well, on the women
who flank Lady M, her handmaidens, who double as witches.
Pisarra provides the text, as well as a libretto made up of haikus,
while famed video artist Tal Yarden takes charge of projection designs,
which include a French embalming documentary from the 50's that stands
in for the murder of King Duncan. Linking everything together is the
menacing ambience of Miss Murgatroid, who plays live from the side of
the stage.
"The music's a strange hybrid," says Miss M. "It's a combination of goth
and glam." "We wanted to create a thematic score for the opera," says
Miss M," and I think we've succeeded."
just two nights. "In New York, you constantly find yourself pushing huge
ideas into small spaces," says Allen. "I'm looking forward to placing this
in the Hollywood Theater. I'm glad we're performing this here, because
Portland is where we all seem to have developed as artists." - Steffen Silvis
The Oregonian
October 5, 2000
adaptation of "Gravity's Rainbow," yet when she asked
permission of Thomas Pynchon, the novel's famously reclusive
author, the project hit a first and fatal snag.
"Yes, you can do that," Pynchon replied in a letter, "as long
as the only instrument in the opera is a banjo."
Presumably such an odd limitation wouldn't have deterred
Jennifer Allen, Miss Murgatroid and Drew Pisarra, the creative
trio beind "Lady M". There's no banjo in their "avant rock opera,"
but accordion and a bit of electric guitar aren't likely what
you'd expect to provide the atmosphere for an adaptation of
Shakespeare's classic tragedy "Macbeth."
Allen's choreography and Pisarra's theater skills have been
combined before, as in "FUTUREWORLD," a sci-fi spoof that they
performed here and in their current home, New York City.
That show also featured some of Portlander Miss Murgatroid's
strange accordion soundscapes, which led to her meeting the pair
and collaborating on what they describe as a very dreamlike,
conceptual meditation on "Macbeth."
The show blends a small ensemble of dancers, featuring Allen as a
somewhat deranged Lady Macbeth, soliloquies and a libretto penned
by Pisarra, and Murgatroid's songs and spooky incidental music,
plus projections by New York videographer Tal Yarden.
Rather than lifting any material from the original, they've
reimagined the tale of betrayal and murder from Lady Macbeth's
power-hungry, almost hallucinatory perspective, complete with
overtones of Gothic glamour and the androgynous twist of using a
woman in the role of Macbeth.
for the Bard to voice any objections.
And it's probably just the right time for Portlanders to enjoy a
skewed new take on a classic. - Marty Hughley
The Village Voice
Performance Mix at Joyce Soho
July 4, 2000
Jennifer Allen wears a short, tight dress and frowzy
red wig. Sharp, glowering moves. Stillness. More glowering.
Crackhead Barbie. Number 13 is an improvisation by Allen,
Fritz Welch, and an accomplice on percussion and electric
guitar, and Drew Pisarra reading text that the music
drowns out. Allen-always compelling-jolts formidably on the
floor as if short-wired to the guitar. - Deborah Jowitt
The Village Voice
Context Studios - NYC
July 29, 1999
gathered to see the shared program "Mountains and Mysteries"
mainly comprises youngish downtown dancers and choreographers,
and there's nothing they wouldn't suffer to check out a friend
or a rival. However, a much better sort of warmth is generated
by the smart choreography and ideas of two recently formed duos,
Loca (Erin Cornell and Miguel Gutierrez), and Allen/Pisarra
(dancer-choreographer Jennifer Allen and performance artist
Drew Pisarra). The concert puts heart in me. Maybe I've overdosed
on go-with-the-flow dancing recently; beautiful, tender stuff from
a generation bred on release work.
endearingly wacky wit and sophisticated performing give it a
sharp new look. In Futureworld, they dissect and re-glue all the tales
the century has grown up on: out-of-control spaceships, robots on
the rampage, the fellowship of outer space, and beam-me-up-
Scotty adventures. Helmeted and swathed in aluminum foil and
cling-wrap tunics, they're a cross between machines and '20s
bathing beauties. They move in robotic little bounces and
lurches, and Pisarra, clumsily adjusting imaginary wheels and
switches, gives them both fearful electric shocks; Allen,
sitting on the floor with her legs stuck straight out in front
of her like a Martian Barbie, literally jerks into the air,
her mouth opening in a silent yowl. These two are copeless
in the cosmos. It's hard to swagger when you're jiggling, but
they manage. In the course of the work, they lip-sync high-
sounding pledges and dance to lugubrious music in new tunics-
slithering their feet and fluttering a hand. That's the poetic
part, I guess. They face off and zap each other at a distance
until an outside force unites them in slow-mo dread; then,
as a tiny, rickety spaceship flies in on a cord, they run and
run forward, getting nowhere, constantly pushed back. "Will
she get her first mate, GuarGum, to safety? " inquires a voice.
Safety isn't an option here. Life, as these two survivors know
it, is a saga of short circuits.
entertaining can overcome underpowered air-conditioning
without any trouble. - Deborah Jowitt
Willamette Week
Echo Theatre - Portland, OR
June 19, 1999
back in town last weekend to present Theme Park, a
double-bill dance program that playfully dealt with the art
spawned from genre fiction. The first piece, FUTUREWORLD,
is unquestionably the best. Frocked in Glad Wrap and foil,
Pisarra and Allen executed a series of science fiction sketches.
Referencing Lang and DC comics, the two first created a world
of robotic humans trapped by pointless drudgery. Fluid movement
erupted into spasmodic action, most strikingly in Allen's
enactment of electrocution. After a clever send-up of
sci-fi's turgid prose stylings, Allen and Pisarra ended the
piece with a race across an alien planet that brilliantly
aped Hanna-Barbera animation. The principal strength in
Theme Park was Allen and Pisarra's gift for making a
Kabuki out of genre cliche. Though there were promising moments,
the second piece, The Land of Mystery, should still be
considered a work in progress. Though the light design was
strictly rental, the sound score, with helpings of Miss
Murgatroid, was excellent. - SS
The Oregonian
Echo Theater - Portland, OR
June 21, 1999
crass commercialism. They're loud, unrestrained, ill-mannered.
"Theme Park"-- two short performance works that creators
Jennifer Allen and Drew Pisarra run together for an evening of
dance-based experimental theater -- is quiet, subtle,
innocuous. Fun house giggles, not roller-coaster screams.
duets that Howie Baggadonutz presented Friday and Saturday at
the Echo Theatre, are the latest collaborations by Allen and
Pisarra, New York-based performers with longtime Portland connections.
most recently performed "Candybox" here with Linda K. Johnson.
Pisarra, whose local work was predominantly text-based
performance art, recently choreographed "Ladies' Voices" for Johnson.
Allen and Pisarra use only a limited-movement
vocabulary, a taped score and plastic wrap to suggest a range
of settings and actions for the beginning of "FUTUREWORLD."
It's up to the audience to construct a narrative: "Flash
Gordon," "Lost in Space," anything is possible. They jitter,
push and pull, swear oaths, explore, fight and flee.
"FUTUREWORLD" gently parodies old science fiction -- movies,
pulp novels, TV. Allen couples driving movement with a
distracted focus. She makes us feel she is seeing something
quite interesting just out of our sight. Pisarra, with his
chest pitched back and his arms slack, combines charm and
confusion; he's a very appealing clown.
and movement sequences alternate. The dancing displays character
through gesture - the way he suggests a pistol; the way she
cocks her head to listen as she picks a safe; a silly, flirty
game of croquet played with a golf club. Some scenes remain
ambiguous - the two performers wheeling and turning in a fog,
Pisarra stumbling, losing his glasses, apparently beaten - but the
piece is generally quite predictable. And in between each
movement scene, a photo of an old radio projected on the wall
and another installment of the story delivered on tape,
further narrowing and focusing the narrative until the final
scene's mime becomes entirely literal -- opening doors, climbing
stairs, shining flashlights, discovering bodies.
- Cerinda Survant
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