We are giving away a pair of tickets to How I Learned To Drive at Backdoor Theatre on Friday, September 14. To win, comment on this post why you’d like to attend. Winner will be drawn and emailed Friday, September 14.
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From our sponsors:
How I Learned To Drive
Friday, September 14 & Saturday, September 15 @ 7:30 p.m.
Sunday, September 16, 2012 @ 2 p.m.
Tickets are $12 | All Ages
Purchase tickets HERE
Backdoor Theatre
4319 SE Hawthorne Blvd Portland, OR 97215
(503) 481-2960
Asae Dean directs “How I Learned to Drive,” a coming of age play that slides back and forth between a southern 1960s girlhood and the present. The play is a dark love story of family, abuse, incest, and survival. Li’l Bit is our narrator and protagonist, a smart young woman working to come to terms with the love she feels for the uncle who abused her. Peck, her uncle, is an alcoholic war veteran who struggles to control his predatory urges.
The Greek Chorus that surrounds Li’l Bit and Uncle Peck embodies her memories of the family she felt disconnected from, the teenagers she found repulsive, and even a teenage boy whom she seduced while teaching. Vogel’s play connects this specific tale of desire and dysfunction to a broader cultural context that fetishizes youth.
The cast features Natalie Stringer as Li’l Bit and Tommy Harrington as Peck with Melanie Mosely, David M. Brown, and Elizabeth Garret playing The Greek Chorus. Asae Dean and Patrick Cox co-produce. Tobias Ryan serves as music director. “How I Learned to Drive” features live music both before and during the show.
Tommy Harrington makes his theatrical stage debut as Peck. Prior to studying acting, Tommy toured the United States as a rock and roll musician and directed short films and music videos. Tommy’s one man band “The Wanteds” is the subject of the documentary “The Wanteds: The Part of Rock and Roll They Never Tell You About.” While “How I Learned to Drive” is Tommy’s first production, he says “I’ve been onstage all my life and my heart definitely lies in the theater.”
“How I Learned to Drive” is the first show that director, Asae Dean, is producing independent of an established theater company. Asae just graduated with an MFA in Shakespeare and Performance this past May. Last summer she served as assistant director on “Ghost Light” at The Oregon Shakespeare Festival. She loves “How I Learned to Drive” because the play deals so honestly with the pain involved in loving and freeing oneself from someone who has hurt you. Those themes – love and freedom – make “How I Learned to Drive” a story to which anyone can relate.
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I read the play back in college.
I’d LOVE to see it performed here in Portland!
Fabulous cast! Can’t wait to see it!
My husband and I would love to go see this production! He’s an artist, I’m a teacher and we’ve both spent time working with troubled youth, so this would really speak to us.
Pick Me Pick me! Friday is perfect for me!! :)
This is like my favorite play, add in that its free and it can’t get much sweeter. Choose me I love the 60′s throwback motif
I love comedy! Pick me!
Just wanna see this :)
Please, let me win tickets! Can afford much now without winning.
cool! pick me
Nice i would love to win these! We would enjoy it very much!
Awesome would love tio take the GF to this she would so enjoy it.
I haven’t seen a good theatre play in so long, would make my day to win these tickets.
me too
KIDS LEFT FRIDAY, FREE TIME, HOPE TO SEE PLAY SAT/ I WORKED WITH YOUTH
YRS AGO, ENDLESS REALITIES, I’M NEW TO PORTLAND!