More than 60 years ago the Broadway performer Pat Stanley won a Tony Award, for best featured actress in the musical Goldilocks – “the only Broadway musical by Leroy Anderson (Sleigh Ride) and Walter and Jean Kerr,” as Ron Daum notes.
Daum, longtime director of the Lost Treasures Collection of rarely performed Broadway musical gems at Lakewood Theatre, knows this partly because he knows a great deal about Broadway history and partly because he produced Goldilocks about 10 years ago in Lakewood’s Lost Treasures series.
By that time Stanley – who had been on Broadway in shows including Carousel, The Pajama Game, One Touch of Venus, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Fiorello! and Of Thee I Sing – had retired from the stage and her Tony Award had been destroyed in a home fire.
In 1999 Daum read a newspaper story about Stanley and her lost award. “I contacted her and set on a quest to replace her award,” he says – a quest that for several more years remained to be filled. Stanley was living with her husband, Gerry Mathews, in Walla Walla, Washington, and Daum invited them to a performance of his production of Goldilocks. “Pat graciously spoke with our opening night audience and (because I was hitting lots of dead ends in seeking a replacement Tony) we presented her with an American Musical Theater Heritage Award made especially for her,” Daum recalls.
And still, no Tony. Daum persevered, eventually getting in touch with Corey Brunish, the Broadway producer who also maintains a home in the Portland area. “He said the guild would replace the Tony at a cost,” Daum says. “I started a collection at Lakewood, and Corey matched our amount to cover the cost.”
A week ago Stanley, now 90, received her new Tony in the mail at her home in Walla Walla. “She called me this morning to thank me through tears,” Daum said in an email last Tuesday. At long last, the circle was complete again.
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Two for the show (and one for the weave). The group United States Artists has announced 63 fellowships for 2022 in architecture and design, craft, dance, film, theater, media, music traditional arts, visual arts, and writing, including two awards to theater artists with Oregon connections and a third to a Eugene weaver. Each award comes with a $50,000 stipend.
- Cherokee playwright and performer DeLanna Studi‘s play And So We Walked was produced by Portland Center Stage in 2018, and her solo show Capae Infiniti in a filmed version last year from Portland’s The Theatre Company, starring Laura Faye Smith. As an actor Studi also performed in the epic Astoria at Portland Center Stage, and in Tracy Letts’ August: Osage County at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival and on the national tour that played in Portland.
- Nataki Garrett is artistic director of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, in Ashland, and a director of note. She’ll direct the contemporary opera Central Park Five later this year for Portland Opera.
- Jovencio de la Paz, assistant professor and curricular head of fibers at the University of Oregon in Eugene, combines traditional weaving practice and contemporary digital computer culture.
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At All Classical, a new Artist in Residence. Pianist, performer, and music educator María García has been chosen as All Classical Portland’s new Artist in Residence. The radio network’s artist-in-residence program began in 2019 and has included pianist Hunter Noack and flutist Adam Eccleston. The residency program also includes composers and young artists; one of García’s first tasks will be to help select and mentor the station’s next young artist in residence.
García has been a champion of classical works by women composers and composers of color, and will have a role in helping listeners explore classical music beyond the traditional canon. She’ll perform live on March 24 on the station’s weekly “Thursdays @ Three” broadcast. In the meantime, you can hear her talk on this video interview.
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To the rescue. The National Endowment for the Arts has announced $750,000 in grants divided among eight Oregon cultural organizations through the American Rescue Plan for federal Covid-19 aid. The groups and amounts:
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- Eugene Opera: $50,000.
- University of Oregon/Oregon Folklife Network: $100,000.
- Caldera, a.k.a. Camp Caldera: $50,000.
- Oregon Bravo Youth Orchestra: $150,000.
- Portland Art Museum (on behalf of Northwest Film Center): $100,000.
- Third Angle New Music: $50,000.
- Wallowa Band Nez Perce Trail Interpretive Center: $100,000.
- Confederated Tribes of the Warm Springs Reservation of Oregon: $150,000.
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Coming and going at BRAVO. The innovative BRAVO Youth Orchestras, which are based on Venezuela’s El Sistema and offer a music home and training for underserved young people, are taking a step toward their future with a pair of announcements.
- Portland native Cinda Jackson has been named to the new position of Director of After School Programs, rejoining executive director Alonzo Chadwick, with whom she worked at Self Enhancement Inc. Jackson has more than 20 years’ experience in community outreach, program and staff development, program management, social services, education, after school programming and youth mentorship.
- And Seth Truby, who was founding executive director and current development director, is leaving after nine years to be executive director of LEAP Wilderness Adventures. His last day with BRAVO will be Feb. 13.
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On beyond Covid. What have artists and cultural organizations learned from the trials of the past two years? How will they shape a “new normal”? Portland State University’s College of the Arts is hosting a pair of virtual community discussions called “Deepening Resilience: Creating a Sustainable Arts Ecosystem in Portland.” Subashini Ganesan-Forbes, Portland’s former creative laureate, will be moderator.
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- The first will be 7-8:30 p.m. this Wednesday, Feb. 2, and will include Kris Anderson of the Multnomah County Cultural Coalition; Jeff Hawthorne, city arts program manager; and Kimberly Howard Wade of Caldera Arts. If you’re interested, you can sign up here.
- The second will be Feb. 28 and will include among its panelists Martha Richards, executive director of the Miller Foundation; RaShaunda Brooks, Open Signal Labs and Young, Gifted, and Brown; Marissa Wolfe, artistic director of Portland Center Stage; and Reuben Roqueni, director of Transformative Change Programs for the Native Arts and Cultures Foundation.
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Slow down. Take some time. Dive deep. The Portland Art Museum’s “Slow Looking” series continues this week with a pair of paintings from the collections. Slow Lookings are virtual gatherings with museum docents, who lead leisurely yet concentrated viewings of specific works. They’re offered at noon every first Thursday and third Tuesday, and at 1 p.m. every last Saturday of the month. Up this Thursday, Feb. 3, are an untitled 1940 abstract painting by Anne Ryan, and Francesco di Giorgio Martini’s ca. 1480 painting Meeting of Dido and Aeneas. It’s on Zoom, it’s free, and you can sign up here.
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A new leader at Cerimon House. Vin Shambry, the multi-talented Portland actor who performed on Broadway in Rent and Miss Saigon and toured nationally before returning to his home town, has been named the new artistic director at Cerimon House, the Alberta Arts District performance space and cultural center that was founded by actor Randall Stuart. A singer, filmmaker, storyteller (The Moth) and headline actor, Shambry is also a resident artist at Artists Repertory Theatre, and will continue in that role.
Covid times haven’t been easy on cultural centers, which like museums and theaters are gathering places in a time when people are reluctant to gather. Things aren’t shut down tightly the way they were a few months ago, but they’re hardly wide open, either. Shambry’s smart and talented, and it’ll be interesting to see how he programs Cerimon.
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