Talking terror One-man show quotes us BY MEGAN GRUMBLING
	The Power Play Written and performed by Tim Collins. Produced as part of the Festival of Cultural Exchange, Aug. 7 and 8, at MECA’s Baxter Auditorium. Call (207) 761-1545.
	BACKSTAGE • Whenever "edgy" became an actual adjective wasn’t soon enough, and I’m happy to report that the newly created Lucid Stage Productions aims to make it one I can use more often. The new company professes dedication to making innovative and — yes! — edgy theater, using site-specific productions and unique approaches to popular texts. They kick off with the ever-popular A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Thursdays through Sundays, August 5 through 15 at the Portland Yacht Services complex, Building 11, 58 Fore Street. Call (207) 773-4601. • Long ago in wartime Portland (the other wartime, I mean), a young fellow named Will Holt was singing his way through the city, from the State to the Columbia Hotel to a young WCSH. From there, he vaulted into Broadway, earning himself numerous Obies and Tony nominations for playbooks and lyrics alike. His new play, A Little Out of the Light, recreates the cellar clubs of post-war New York and an era when an entertainer did a little of everything. It debuts on August 5 at 8 p.m. as part of the Deertrees Theatre Festival in Harrison, now in its fifth year as a collaboration with GreenLight TheatreWorks of New York City. Call (207) 583-6747. • Lovers of the interpersonal ambiguities of Albee, Beckett, and Pinter might enjoy puzzling over Under a Mantle of Stars, by the late Argentinian writer Manuel (Kiss of the Spider Woman) Puig. The Generic Theater gives a free public reading of this 1982 drama on August 10, 7 p.m., at Kittery’s Rice Public Library. Call (207) 439-4319.

Can you name today’s color on the Terror Alert palette? Does that hue make you want to put off your trip to Spain? Stockpile duct tape? Vote? Just what exactly is it meant to make us do — and can we do anything else?

Tricky but timely questions, and some of your Portland friends and neighbors — and perhaps even you, dear reader — have offered some answers fit for the stage. These topical musings of our fair demos will find theatrical expression in The Power Play, a one-man show by Tim Collins that he performs this weekend as part of the Festival of Cultural Exchange.

"I wanted to talk to people about their own sense of power, in light of current events," says Collins, who interviewed more than 50 Portland residents. "Do the alleged threats of terrorism and the war in Iraq make people feel empowered or disempowered? In what ways? The answers I’ve heard have been fascinating, hilarious, and totally sobering."

A recipient of the Hal Wallis Foundation Theater Grant and a three-time winner of the 15-Minute Playwrighting Festival in Belfast, Collins hit the Portland pavement and approached the city’s people with three questions: Had they been staying up-to-date with the latest communiqués from the Department of Homeland Security? How had this information made them feel? And — perhaps most importantly — could they do anything about it?

The theatrical form he’s made of their answers, fears, and rage has greater dimension than a pure ethnography. Instead, he weaves the threads of his encounters around the narrative center of a single character, an average Portland guy who’s embroiled in a domestic battle with his downstairs neighbor, who blares music and news alike. It’s the deafening news that really rattles this fellow because what he hears about most acutely, and at unholy hours and decibels, is the ever-imminent threat of terrorist attacks. And thus, as Collins puts it, "his growing anxiety in his personal environment is heightened by a sense of insecurity at the larger, national level."

The narrative that emerges incorporates the words of his interviewees as the fears and the two cents of people who touch his character’s daily life. Collins heard knee-jerk reactions from both ends of the political spectrum ("More weapons;" "Less Bush"); diatribes on the fear-mongering popular press; muddy knowledge ("There isn’t any oil in Iraq!"); and a lot of outright despair. The Power Play entwines all of these reactions in a mix of monologues, stand-up, and rapid change-ups between dozens of characters.

Since the power of communication is the blood of his project, it’s fitting that Collins sought expressly to talk with people who might not normally have many outlets for social interaction during the course of the day. He approached many homeless folks with his questions, and was thrilled at both their willingness to talk to him and their drive to express themselves. One woman, whom he found collecting bottles, was particularly ravenous for an audience. "She was furious about the actions of the Bush administration, and every time she spoke it was like a slingshot," says Collins. "My interactions were most moving when, as with her, the people who were given the opportunity to speak reacted as if they really needed it."

The Terror Color of the Day is yellow, for "Elevated," in case you’d lost track, and it probably won’t be getting any lighter any time soon. It’s a truism to say that what we can do about terrorism starts with talking and listening, and The Power Play is a laudable attempt to do both. It’s up to us, after all, whether we let the day’s official hue — or anything else from the DHS — apprise or terrorize us.

Megan Grumbling can be reached at mgrumbling@hotmail.com