PSU Magazine Spring 1999

Japanese dancer and choreogra– pher Setsuko Yamada (left and below) moves delicately through complex dance steps as she and her company perform "Dream Seeds." It took more than a year, but he put the idea of PIP Fest together, sold it to the University, and was brought on staff to organize it. Griggs canvassed his wide network of international theater contacts, and the 6.rst shows were staged the following year. "The idea is to really challenge the community to open up new cultural perspectives, not only to learn some– thing new about cultures but to stretch their~ in terms of what's possible in the arts," Griggs says. That's why, he says, PIP Fest specializes in emerging artists on the edge of stardom (such as storyteller and National Public Radio commentat<X Lorraine Johnson– Coleman, who performs her one-woman Architect of the alternative Michael Griggs and his crew were bank– ing on a new idea. They'd spent long hours figuring out the details; in the end, they went with a hunch. When the Senegalese dancers finished performing at the Hispanic migrant workers' camp, there came a moment that defined the whole concept of home as the place for art and for heart-the campesinos brought out a home-cooked feast for the African performers, and they all sat down together to enjoy it. After all the effort focused on performance, Griggs saw his vision bring about things he had only hoped for: cross-cultural connections, respect, friendship. An articulate man and consummate intellectual, recalling the scene still leaves Griggs at a loss for words. HThere was this quality that was so ... so ..." Griggs is more than just the artistic director of PIP Fest; he's the person who first thought it up, built its support system, and got it to fly. "I was interested in other styles of the~ter," Griggs says. HI knew that in other cultures in other countries there was a whole other world of theater that we never see here." show, "Other Voices, Other Lives," and shares the bill with celebrated poetry slam star Dael Orlandersmith July 16- 18, and performers unknown in the United States but revered in their own countries (including Setsuko Yamada, whose company from Japan dances "Dream Seeds" July 22-24). Storyteller Mahesh Dattani from India is a seasoned PIP artist. For the past three years, Griggs has brought Dattani to the festival to lead seminars on the movement and storytelling styles of India. He's not well known in this country, but Dattani recently won a Sahitya Akademia Award, which is essentially India's equivalent to the National Book Award. With his MFA in theater directing from Boston University, Griggs spent years in alternative theater from coast to coast before landing an artistic directorship with a stage company in Santa Cruz, California. He stayed there 11 years, then moved to Portland in the mid-1980s to take over creative reigns at the New Rose Theatre. "My idea, when I came here, was to make it a place for exploring new ideas. The New Rose already had a reputation for doing the classics, but I had an eye for exploring the classics in a new way, with an emphasis on their . relevance today." The New Rose is now defunct, but today, many in the younger generation of local theater artists regard Griggs as Portland's resident alternative expert. "I think theater has real transfor– mative power-emotional, kinetic, physical. It really energizes people and gives them new ideas, new feelings," Griggs says. "It's not spoon-fed to them-they have to participate, it requires a commitment from them. It has the power to transform people in major ways." D It may seem a little smprising that Portland could even support Japanese butoh dancers and Indian storytellers. This isn't exactly New York City, after all. "I gathered that there was a fear of foreignness almost," says Griggs. "Am I going to understand it? Are they performing in another languager' Nevertheless, last year's festival drew more than 7,000 attendees for classes and performances, including Rick Najera's "The Pain of the Macho" and British artist Wendy Houstoun's "Haunted, Daunted and Aaunted." One of Poland's leading contemporary theater companies had the hit of the festival with a Yiddish SPRING 1999 PSU MAGAZINE 5