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Thirty years ago this week, the July 3, 1996, Reno News & Review dedicated its cover-story space to a show that was one of the highlights of a brand-new July arts fest.
The sidebar, headlined “Art Attack,’ was written by a new summer RN&R intern named Jimmy Boegle. (It was the first newspaper byline I ever received outside of my college newspaper, by the way.) The piece—a roundup of other interesting events happening during the new festival—started out thusly:
It is being billed as the largest arts festival in Reno’s history.
From July 8-28, Reno will be besieged by all types of artists for “Uptown, Downtown, Artown,” Reno’s summer arts festival. Cosponsored by the city of Reno, Nevada Bell and Washoe Health System, the festival is being hosted by the C.IT.Y. 2000 Reno Arts Commission. Thirty Reno arts organizations are coordinating the 101 events during the festival.
Today, of course, we simply call this festival Artown. But you knew that already.
As for the far-more-interesting main story: Headlined “Triple Threat: The Weird Sisters Bring Adult Drama to the Summer Arts Festival,” it was written by R.V. Scheide, and was about a play developed by three local artists. I think you may recognize them.
Here’s the first portion of that story:
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more; it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury.
Signifying nothing.—Shakespeare, Macbeth
In the basement theater of the Sierra Arts Center, Stacey Spain cups a mannequin’s hand underneath her bare left breast, as if the hand was her suckling child. From across the room, I can see the stretch marks radiating out from her large nipple like the fragments of a newborn star.
“My stretch marks are testimony of my motherhood; each have their own story, speaks Mary Bennett from the center of the room.
In the far corner of the room, encircled by candlelight, Jeanmarie Simpson, naked from the waist up, crouches on the carpeted floor, arms crossed in front of her, hands clawing the shallow pilings, silent except for strained, laborious breathing.
“My breasts are like suns, rays stretching out from the center,” exults Spain.
“The center,” agrees Mary.
“My center,” says Spain.
It is a ‘poignant’ moment that touches my center, and like the erogenous stretch marks that radiate from Spain’s nipple, sparks fly out from somewhere in my brain that is beyond male and female. I interpret this feeling as my body’s response to art, and have an uncontrollable urge to tell Spain, Bennett and Simpson, aka The Weird Sisters, that they’re on to something good.
However, I am just an observer, so I remain silent as the threesome continue their rehearsal of Moonblood, an original “performance collage” that should prove to be one of the highlights of this month’s Uptown … Downtown … ARTown, the Reno Summer Arts Festival. It will be performed at the Sierra Arts Center July 9, 10, 13 and 16 at 8 p.m.; tickets are $15, and since seating is limited, reservations (call 324-2106) for the adults-only production are recommended.
If the rehearsal I observed is any indication, the Weird Sisters (they take their name from the three witches in Shakespeare’s Macbeth, a work that is referred to often in Moonblood) really are on to some-thing.
Moonblood is not a “play” in the traditional sense. To create the script, Simpson, Bennett and Spain each took one of their own personal stories, cut it up, then pasted and edited the pieces together into the whole that is Moonblood. It’s an extremely post-modern technique—pioneered by Byron Gysin in the visual arts and William S. Burroughs in literature—that has been relatively unexplored theatrically. It’s no coincidence that the Weird Sisters originally created the piece for the San Francisco Fringe Festival this September.
While each character in Moonblood has her own through-line, the juxtaposition of the three stories necessitates a dynamic where the character in the spotlight must be supported by the other two. But since the spotlight shifts often, lines overlap, creating a weave effect that provides a slight epiphany at each three-way intersection.
The effort might collapse on itself if it weren’t for the fact that Simpson, Bennett and Spain are three extremely talented individuals. Both Simpson and Bennett are well-known members of the Nevada State Council on the Arts’ Artist-In-Residence Program; Spain, a newcomer to the area, holds an MFA in theater from Purdue University, where she won the 63rd Annual Literary Award in Playwriting.
Talent alone, however, doesn’t explain the chemistry that bonds the Weird Sisters together. There’s a vitality to their relationship that emanates from the desperateness inherent in those who devote their lives to art. It is this devotion that has carried each of the Weird Sisters this far, and if Moonblood is anything, it is essentially the story of the attempt to harness this devotion. It is the universality of that attempt that makes Moonblood appealing as a work of art, and it’s best understood by looking at each sister individually, examining the gray and perhaps nonexistent line that divides each of their lives from their art.
By the pricking of my thumbs,
Something wicked this way comes.
If you’re somehow unfamiliar: Mary Bennett today is the producing artistic director of the Brüka Theatre and the Carson City Ghost Walk, among many other things—including being the current titleholder in the Best of Northern Nevada’s “Best Local Actor/Actress Not Named Jeremy Renner” category.
Jeanmarie (Simpson) Bishop is an actress and peace activist who has done so many things that it’s not possible to list them all here; she currently lives in Arizona but still does productions in Reno from time to time.
Stacey Spain—the “newcomer,” circa 1996—is a playwright, director, actor and nonprofit executive, best known as the executive director of Our Center.
All three have done so many amazing things—and that new arts festival has done pretty well, too.
—Jimmy Boegle
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