Wade Madsen & Nancy Cranbourne (Seattle, WA): This Is It or Mandy Wakes Up
Movement Theatre

Photo of Wade Madsen and Nancy Cranbourne

Performers Wade Madsen and Nancy Cranbourne have created a heady, dark comedy animated by subtle physical antics, quirky language and a mysterious third character.

PERFORMANCE SYNOPSIS

“This is It” is an original creation of Wade Madsen inspired by Wade’s long Performing relationship with partner Nancy Cranbourne, his love of absurdist theater, philosophical meanderings, foreign films and the continuing questions about life, death and the power of art: What is life? Is it performance? Are we all on stage? We follow these two, and realize that maybe ‘Bebe’ has more to do with the inner workings of ‘Mandy’s’, ego or her higher self. They communicate, but only ‘Mandy’ can understand ‘Bebe’ toward her own understanding of a universal human truth.

BIO
Wade Madsen, a professor of Dance at Cornish college of the Arts, toured with Tandy Beal, Bill Evans and Dayna Hanson. Madsen has created over 180 works and has premiered many of them for the Cornish dance company since joining the faculty in 1984. For the fall of 2018 Madsen presented in the newly created Solo festival at On the Boards. Madsen has had various commissions throughout the United States and into Mexico. He has received various grants and fellowships from the NEA, Artist trust, 4 Culture, Seattle arts commission, and Bosak Heilbron.

Nancy Cranbourne is the Owner/Director of One Big Yes Productions, based in Boulder, Colorado. OBY has produced many large scale dance & theater productions over the past 25 years. She is a master teacher in contemporary jazz dance, and specializes in lovingly deepening the development of dancers over forty. Nancy has served on the dance faculties of the University of Washington, Cornish College of the Arts, the University of Colorado, Colorado State University, and the National Theater Conservatory @the Denver Center for the Arts. Nancy is also an award winning playwright and actress, receiving honors from the Denver Drama Critics Circle, Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art, and Westword Magazine.

CREDITS

Performers
Wade Madsen: Bebe
Nancy Cranbourne: Mandy
Eric Pitsenbarger: stage hand

Written and Directed by Wade Madsen

CHECK OUT A PREVIEW OF THIS IS IT

BUY TICKETS TO THIS YEAR’S FESTIVAL

FIND RISK/REWARD ON FACEBOOK

ATOLE (Portland, OR): CANELA
Ritual Performance/Electronic Music

Photo of ATOLE band

Photo by Renee Lopez (Miss Lopez Media).

Performers Amo Reyes and Jacob Soto interweave storytelling and improvised music to publicly tell the story of communal grief. “Love is hard. Nobody said it would be easy or perfect. But nobody said I would be a 38yo brown widow, either.”

PERFORMANCE SYNOPSIS

CANELA is an indigenous herb used to heal the body and delight the senses.

ATOLE is an ancient Mexican drink that is sweet, ambiguous, and served communally.

CANELA by ATOLE is a ritual performance. An experimental composition. Synthesizers, samplers, percussion, voice. Three songs thread together using storytelling and humor.

BIO
Amo Reyes and Jacob Soto are from Las Vegas, of Mexican descent, have Master’s degrees from Portland State, and are currently education professionals in Portland, Oregon. They have performed together since 2004 in Las Vegas, Nevada, where Jacob was the drummer and Amo was the singer for a dance punk band, Flaspar. They both moved to Portland and Jacob joined Amo and Tim’s band, Atole. Amo and Jacob have been performing as Atole since 2008. They have jammed many times in Amo’s basement the last few years, but this will be their first public performance in 5 years.

CREDITS

Performers: Amo Reyes & Jacob Soto

CHECK OUT ATOLE ON BANDCAMP

BUY TICKETS TO THIS YEAR’S FESTIVAL

FIND RISK/REWARD ON FACEBOOK

James Mapes – Fly Paper Games (Portland, OR): Confluence
Interactive Installation

Photo of a game board

Designer James Mapes’ large-format table-top video game will engage audiences in team play in the theatre lobby.

PERFORMANCE SYNOPSIS

In this interactive installation, Risk/Reward audiences will compete piece-by-piece to build the city of Portland on a giant, digital game board.

BIO
James Mapes is a lighting designer, writer, and board game designer based in Portland, Oregon. He has worked with BodyVox, Oregon Children’s Theatre, Portland State University, Reed College, Oregon Ballet Theatre, and – of course – Risk/Reward, all the way since the Someday Lounge. He has been the technical direector for festivals including Portland Playhouse’s Fall Festival of Shakespeare and numerous venues for PICA’s Time-Based Arts festival. He has toured the world. In 2015, he published his first board game via Kickstarter, Saga of a Dying World, and is eager to connect the fine arts with interactive, multimedia experiences. He has a family; they are great.

CREDITS

DESIGNER: James Mapes

VISIT THE FLY PAPER GAMES WEBSITE

BUY TICKETS TO THIS YEAR’S FESTIVAL

FIND RISK/REWARD ON FACEBOOK

Artist Profile: Olivia Louise

Olivia Louise (Portland, OR): the myth of Narcissus
poetry/movement/contemporary performance film 

Still from the myth of Narcissus film

Artist Olivia Louise and team bring a poignant and visually stunning look at how we see ourselves in a world surrounded by technology.

PERFORMANCE SYNOPSIS

A cyborg-feminist rediscovery of the Greek myth of Narcissus that explores the contemporary dance of selfhood within technology.

CREDITS

PRODUCER & DIRECTOR: Olivia Louise
CAMERA: Clamber (clamber.org)
NARCISSUS: Tiana Garoogian (tianagaroogian.com)
VIDEO EDITOR: Codec Ultra & Olivia Louise
SOUND DESIGN: Dustyn Astbury & Zak Nelson
SET INSTALLATION: Nijotz (process.life) & Olivia Louise

BUY TICKETS TO THIS YEAR’S FESTIVAL

FIND RISK/REWARD ON FACEBOOK

Artist Profile: Kelly Nesbitt

Kelly Nesbitt (Portland, OR): PENNY – THE CONDUIT
performance art film 

Collage of images from Penny - The Conduit film

We are thrilled to bring Kelly Nesbitt’s humorous and touching film, Penny – The Conduit, to Portland audiences and beyond.

PERFORMANCE SYNOPSIS

PENNY expresses our collective grief and despair, yet exemplifies the unquenchable hope that lies deeper in the human heart. Death, mourning, and healing are overt themes of this piece, as exemplified by Penny’s awkward yet earnest commitment to meditation, nature worship, and conversations with a radically different kind of deity.

BIO

KELLY NESBITT is a multi-disciplinary performance artist, midlife warrior, and frontline healthcare worker who plays at the intersection of humor and healing. With extensive training in the field of humor, Nesbitt has been awarded grants for the creation of solo and interdisciplinary ensemble performances, toured internationally, and collaboratively produced numerous DIY community arts events since 1999. 

Inspired by nature, contemplative arts, practice and technique ~ Nesbitt is a body based storyteller who embodies the archetype of the fool, juxtaposes absurdities with sincerity, pathos with surreal-humor, and pratfalls with sincerity. Performance aesthetics employ recycled layered costuming, makeshift props, and superhero motifs. Video work experiments with raw facial close ups and lowbrow video editing techniques for comedic effect. Audience members have described their performances as transcendentalist hilarity, utterly inexplicable, and earnestly epic.

MAD COMPOSER LAB, aka Kennedy, is an innovative and versatile composer whose imaginative music captures beauty, bursts of melodic and rhythmic energy. His compositional vocabulary is sought after by many collaborators who seek authentic but familiar sonorities. Kennedy’s scores can be found in a number of studio and independent productions including At The End of The Tunnel, Sightings, and This Is Us. In addition to composing, Kennedy’s orchestrations and arrangements can be found in films such as Deliver Us From Evil (Screen Gems), The Monkey King, Priest (Screen Gems), and Drag Me to Hell (Universal). 

His concert repertoire includes String Adagio no. 6, Western Sketches for Orchestra, Songs of the Seasons, 5 is Prime : 4 is Magic, and numerous experimental works for combinations of traditional instruments and ones created by Kennedy at the Mad Composer Lab.

BUY TICKETS TO THIS YEAR’S FESTIVAL

FIND RISK/REWARD ON FACEBOOK

Still image from Distancias film

Artist Profile: Moriviví Theatre in collaboration with Hand2Mouth

Moriviví Theatre in collaboration with Hand2Mouth (Portland, OR): Distancias Digital devised theatre work

In a new cut of the full-length documentary-style digital devised theatre work, Moriviví Theatre and Hand2Mouth premiere a work that will speak to so many of us about our experiences during the pandemic of the last year and a half.

PERFORMANCE SYNOPSIS

Distancias is an exploration of the distance we have been experiencing during the pandemic. Through a series of vignettes, three Latinx artists explore feelings of isolation, separation anxiety, and loneliness while also traversing their longing for a homeland, a home-people, a communidad that is rooted in their cultura.

BIO

Giovanni Alva is a theatre artist who likes to tell stories and help others tell theirs. He holds a BA in theatre arts from Humboldt State University and has worked in Portland at Milagro, Portland Playhouse, Action/ Adventure, CoHo, Roosevelt High School, and Hand2Mouth. Robi Arce is an actor, director and physical theatre poet. Robi holds an MFA in Ensemble-Based Physical Theatre from Dell’Arte International. He has performed, toured, and lead workshops in Mexico, Venezuela, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. His work is diverse, from theaters to churches, plazas and schools, bringing theatrical and educational shows to all. Fueled by social justice and change, his passion is to create a physical, dynamic and poetic theatre that connects with people as sports connects with the fans. Michael Cavazos is a Queer Chicano theatre maker and visual artist. He is the author of the play “Gritos y Chismesitos” and co-author of “Chic and Sassy” and “Chic and Sassy: The Higher the Hair, the Closer to God.” Before moving to Portland, he was a member of the sketch comedy troupe Gender Offenders and performed on many New York City stages, including the Beechman Theatre, Cherry Lane Theatre, The Culture Project, and P.S.122. Michael directed and performed in the theatrical concert, “Universo,” for Hand2Mouth and has worked with Imago, Milagro, Crave, Profile and Portland Center Stage. He is a company member at Hand2Mouth and is co-directing the new musical “Bad World” with Crave. He is part of two cross-cultural theatre collaborations with companies in Egypt and France. His art was recently selected as part of RACC’s new public art collection: Capturing the Moment. Michael is one of five Oregon performing artists to receive the 2021 Oregon Arts Commission Individual Artist Fellowship for artists of outstanding talent, demonstrated ability and commitment to the creation of new work.

VISIT THE MORIVIVI THEATRE WEBSITE FIND OUT MORE ABOUT THE FULL-LENGTH PROJECT: DISTANCIAS

BUY TICKETS TO THIS YEAR’S FESTIVAL

FIND RISK/REWARD ON FACEBOOK

Artist Profile: Wobbly Dance

Wobbly Dance (Portland, OR): TIDAL
film

 [Warm toned Black and white photo of 3 figures in surreal costumes. The central figure supports the two flanking figures. All are seated. The central figure wears a 19th century diving bell and a 20th century space suit. The flanking figures wear 19th century linen night shirts and strange breathing masks over their noses. Many spines protrude from each breathing mask, part medical device part undersea creature.]

In their Risk/Reward Festival debut, Wobbly Dance brings an exploration of oceans.
Photo by Kamala Kingsley.

PERFORMANCE SYNOPSIS

“TIDAL” is an exploration of the relationship between the rhythm of mechanized breath and the rhythm of the oceans. Breathing masks and ventilator tubing transform into diving gear and different creatures. An ancient diver, who calls the ocean home, draws us into his world. We fall, we dream, we dive.

BIO

Wobbly is a multi-disciplinary performance company in Portland, OR. Based on improvisation, authenticity, and a touch of Butoh, Wobbly is the unavoidable exploration of the body weathered by life. Wobbly is and is not dance depending on the day and which of us you ask, but we move. With relentless fascination, we still move. Sometimes small and caught on film. Sometimes bigger, outdoors and wild. Wobbly is a way of life, an expression of the belief that disability is a natural variation of the human form and in this variation there is art. With immersive environments, by engaging the senses, Wobbly invites the viewer to step into new worlds of possibility.

Wobbly’s mission starts with the belief that to present a disabled body onstage is a radical act capable of stitch by stitch transformation of the cultural fabric of our community. We believe that performance art cannot happen in isolation. Instead, it is something that must occur within the infrastructure of a larger community. By making our work largely within non-disabled contemporary dance contexts, we have promoted greater standards of accessibility in the theater community. Sometimes this access is architectural but more important than increasing physical access, we believe that by using our bodies in performance we coax audience members into a broader definition of art, beauty, and the lived human experience of people with and without disabilities. It seems to us that making a home for ourselves in the contemporary dance community has gone further towards promoting the full integration of people with disabilities in society than any political action on our part ever will.

FIND RISK/REWARD ON FACEBOOK

Photo of Princess Bouton, pixelated to look like a peacock tail

Artist Profile: Princess Bouton

Princess Bouton (Portland, OR): First Laugh
dance film

Princess Bouton previously graced the Risk/Reward stage in 2018 with her dance piece Planet Pink, bringing a mix of modern dance, vogue, and contemporary performance elements in a dreamlike landscape that we are still thinking about three years later. Welcome back to the festival, Princess!

PERFORMANCE SYNOPSIS

On January 6, 2021, Princess Bouton got the keys to her own production space, Last Laugh Studios. These are a few of the first projects she produced in the space; Her first laughs at Last Laugh.

BIO

Princess Bouton (she/her) is a Black Transfeminine freelance filmmaker and performance artist based in Portland, Oregon. She graduated from the Portland State University Film Program in the spring of 2020. Her work often incorporates movement art and explores topics of intersectionality and pleasure activism.  She has a dance background that includes modern dance, ballet, and vogue and she creates from a place that draws from each form. Princess Bouton is also a community builder and organizer in the Portland Kiki ballroom scene and is the princess of the kiki House Of Flora. The QTPOC models seen in her work are often individuals from her local queer community, who she invites to be highlighted and celebrated.

SUPPORT PRINCESS BOUTON ON PATREON

BUY TICKETS TO THIS YEAR’S FESTIVAL

FIND RISK/REWARD ON FACEBOOK

Joni Renee Whitworth (Portland, OR): Self-Defense
music/movement/poetry

Joni is a magic-maker, a mover and shaker, and responsible for some of the coolest events and work happening in Portland. If you haven’t heard of Future Prairie — get Googling! Her work in under-represented communities services creatives of different abilities, races, gender identities, national origin, religion, and age. Her personal poetry work has been published; her writing has appeared across the country, and we couldn’t be more thrilled to welcome her to our Risk/Reward stage!

PERFORMANCE SYNOPSIS

Self Defense is a passionately-spoken, poetic, slow-moving song and dance, looking at the world through an autistic lens. This stands in juxtaposition to the most commonly-known cultural narrative of autism, which is that of Rain Man – weird and quirky. Many types of people are autistic, and there are dozens of unexplored elements of autism, areas that may be not related to math or memorizing facts but details that are more generous, emotional, or sensual. Self Defense speaks to how Joni navigates being in public, being employed, and being in relationship with family, friends, in love, and more. Through this piece, her engagement with nature, and man-made systems and structures, shed light on cultural issues of exclusion.

BIO

Joni Renee Whitworth is an artist and writer from rural Oregon. She has performed at The Moth, the Segerstrom Center for the Performing Arts in Costa Mesa, California, the MacLaren Youth Correctional Facility in Woodburn in partnership with the Morpheus Youth Project, and the Museum of Contemporary Art alongside Marina Abramovic. Her writing explores themes of nature, future, family, and the body, and has appeared in Lambda Literary, Eclectica, Pivot, SWWIM, Smeuse, Superstition Review, xoJane, and The Write Launch. Her poetry chapbook, Your Full Real Name, was published in 2017. Joni is the creative director and podcast host of Future Prairie.

CHECK OUT JONI’S WEBSITE

VISIT FUTURE PRAIRIE’S WEBSITE

BUY TICKETS TO THIS YEAR’S FESTIVAL

FIND RISK/REWARD ON FACEBOOK

LanDforms (Seattle, WA): The Garden of Expectations
dance/theatre/music/sculpture/horticulture

LanDforms is making their Risk/Reward debut at this year’s festival. Recently finding themselves in Seattle after a stint at Martha’s Vineyard, where they made their hilarious and tragic Barbie-themed work, The Life in Plastic, Risk/Reward welcomes them to our Portland stage.

PERFORMANCE SYNOPSIS

The Garden of Expectations is a movement piece that presents the audience with a surreal and abstract glimpse into another world, presenting a wealth of symbolic and metaphorical readings, including but not limited to life, death, decay, vulnerability, the consumption of living things for human pleasure, and the never ending search for approval. The Garden of  Expectations turns reality TV on its head, forming its own thoughts about what it means to get the Rose. In this version of dating game show absurdity, challenges include basking in radiant sunshine, drinking water, and putting down strong roots.

BIO

Under the moniker LanDforms, Leah Crosby and Danielle Doell’s productions span dance, theater, music, sculpture, and horticulture. LanDforms’ often funny, sometimes tragic, always unusual performances explore the absurdities of human relationships, nostalgia, and the intersections of power, control, and love. Crosby was born in upstate New York to artist parents; Doell went to 13 years of Catholic school in the Midwest. Their early socialization around what is “normal” regarding gender, power, sex, and identity was, to put it simply, different. As LanDforms, they examine how their disparate histories build their present and future expressive bodies. LanDforms began on Martha’s Vineyard, where Crosby and Doell lived for two years. Danielle joined the Seattle dance scene in 2017, knowing Leah would soon follow. They collaborated long-distance and during several developmental residencies while separated. Now, LanDforms is excited to be a Seattle-based company, making work within the PNW’s thriving performance communities. The Garden of Expectations was created in close creative collaboration with the dancers.

CHECK OUT LANDFORMS WEBSITE

BUY TICKETS TO THIS YEAR’S FESTIVAL

FIND RISK/REWARD ON FACEBOOK