Conversation With Friends is something I’ve wanted to do for a while … to sit down and talk open-heartedly with writers, musicians, activists, and artists of all types whose work is about making a difference, large or small, in today’s upside-down and sideways world. It’s kind of what my website is about, in various formats, and I hope that you reading this will help draw our circle of rascals and writers wider by passing the word.
With his performance of “The Fever” written by American actor & writer Wallace Shawn and produced by the Northwest Classical Theater Collaborative under the direction of Patrick Walsh, Paul Susi provided the perfect opportunity to get this ball rolling.
You may know Paul from his onstage work with the Red Door Project’s “Hands Up, Don’t Shoot!” and “Evolve”, or his performance of “An Iliad” that toured Oregon’s prisons (before Covid), or you may have read his thoughtful essays in Oregon Humanities Magazine. The current (summer) issue features “Here Lies … remembering Chee Gong in a city that would rather forget him”. It is a particularly moving story about Block 14 of Portland’s Lone Fir Cemetery where Chinese workers were buried in to-this-day unmarked graves, one especially who was hung for a crime that he very obviously did not commit. Or you may have never heard of Paul before now. Our inaugural Conversation With Friends would be a good place to meet him.
If you want to know more about “The Fever” and the unique way it’s being performed, check out the NWCTC website and join us on Sunday, September 18 at 4pm (PT) in the Zoom room.
