THEATER SCENE Act like you mean it BY MEGAN GRUMBLING

Between the fairness and balance of the Murdoch empire and the defensive disclaimers of NPR, do you ever hanker for some public pronouncements of candor, vigor, and unabashed partiality? Have you been itching for Portland to just go ahead already and put its theatrical powers to the good use of heckling the status quo? And are you hoping that just such a histrionic tonic might turn up in a locale where you could also, say, down a few brews?

Why, how prescient of you! Because that’s exactly what a new little production team called AmeriCo inaugurated last week at the new Geno’s: a monthly political cabaret, which is slated to become a monthly Portland institution. It’s billed as Speaking the Unspeakable: A Totally Biased and Slanted Look at the World We Live in Today.

Think of it as a performed political forum. The brainchild of actor/singer/director/producer Daniel Noel (who also helps coordinate Longfellow’s Shorts at Portland Stage) and lawyer/entrepreneur/activist Rebecca Weinstein, Speaking aims to arrange a collision between art and politics. Once a month, AmeriCo Productions will rev the vehicles of scripts, poetry, and song — all submitted to them by the creators themselves — and set them screeching off toward confrontational cultural comment.

In last Thursday’s inaugural cabaret, Geno’s clientele heard from local performers Ron Botting, Liz Chambers, Sean Demers, James Hoban, Daniel Noel, and Janice O’Rourke. The actors gave readings of scripts ranging from the politically apocalyptic to the divertingly silly, by Christopher Merrill (director of the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa), Alexander Wallace ("the least discovered published writer from NYC that resides in Maine"), and NPR’s Heather King. O’Rourke covered songs by Nancy Griffith, Sinead O’Connor, and Elvis Costello, and Demers and Noel recited two poems by local poet Duane Robert Pierson, including "Apologize Mr. President."

"Liberal bias" is indeed common to the works of the first Speaking (proceeds from the cover went to MoveOn.org) but the producers urge folks of any and all political persuasions to come and to submit their work for consideration. In future cabarets, they hope to include original works written and performed by wide a selection of our friends and neighbors. Do you have something urgent and brazen to say with puppets, interpretive dance, blank verse, the accompaniment of a theramin? Bring it on. Life may not be a cabaret, exactly, but it sure could use a good cheeky one every now and again.

Stay tuned for the date of the next Speaking, and check out www.AmeriCoProductions.org for more.