Tami Dixon's One Person Show Tells South Side Stories

The idea of doing a one person show based on South Side characters seems sort of obvious-- mainly cause this is such a weirdly interesting place- that has grown and evolved as it should, with layer after layer of personal and collective history. An amazing, if often annoying neighborhood like no other.

From Pop City

Taking audiences on a vibrant, hometown adventure, the ambitious one-woman show depicts a dynamic neighborhood--from steep city steps and teen rebellion, to the J & L plant and local haunts--via more than 100 interviews with South Side residents, multimedia projections by Pittsburgh-based artist David Pohl and original music by Nathan Leigh.

Tami Dixon, the main creator/ writer/ actor is from Cleveland, graduated from CMU and lived in NY, bringing some perspective to the work.

The resulting content, which ranges from the highly funny and poignant, to the deeply personal and sad, addresses a myriad of human experience, including addiction, race, community, family, loss and death, and the issue of what is left in a community over after something goes away.

"It's an unflinching look at a community I see myself in. I started out as a tour guide taking people through the South Side and then I had to address how and why I am connected to them, and why I was the one telling the stories. It's been an incredible learning process for me about the craft I have been in for most of my life," adds Dixon. "I realize these people have been in my body for years and now I am putting them into a physical space. I am telling real people's stories and I have to be really careful about honoring them."

My opinion off the bat is that, if the work is weak-She should tweak away, it's not like there the place is short of stories worth telling and characters worth meeting.

 

Written and performed by playwright and actor and South Side resident Dixon, co-founder of Downtown-based Bricolage Production Company, South Side Stories runs November 10th through December 16th, in City Theatre’s Hamburg Studio Theatre. Opening night performance is Friday, November 16th, at 8 pm.

Red, A Drama Based on Mark Rothko Comes to Pittsburgh's Public Theater

Seems like the Abstract Expressionists are really in vogue, a major de Kooning retrospective at MOMA; a whole museum dedicated to Clifford Still and shows dedicated to lesser know artist's like Richard Pousette-Dart.

Rothko's more minimal and lyrical work is not always put in this box, but he very much shared their sincere belief in the power and spiritual nature of art.

Seems like this a major subject of the play.

Rothko, who flourished during the abstract expressionist movement, found himself rejecting the arrival of Pop Art in the late 1950s, particularly one of its practitioners.

"You really think Andy Warhol will be hanging in museums in a hundred years?" Rothko asks Ken dismissively.

"Andy Warhol's like the 'great' third [human] character in the play," said Mr. Logan. "He represented a lot of the things Rothko rejected. He felt that artists needed to know where they belonged in the continuum of artists.