Seen + heard: The Maine Deaf Film Festival shows everyone a new world

Published in the Portland Phoenix

These could easily be stories of alienation, of separation, of frustration. And those are here. But they are not in the majority of the fare at the Maine Deaf Film Festival, to be held on Saturday, April 15, on USM’s Portland campus.

Certainly there are the poignant, heart-wrenching stories of aloneness, of confusion, of fleeting connections, like in Stille Liebe, a Swiss film made in 2001 whose name, translated from the German, means “Secret Love.” Stille Liebe follows the life of a nun, played by famed European actress Emmanuelle Laborit, who was born deaf and has made a career of playing deaf characters in films that have won countless awards all across the continent.

But even as the film depicts her discovery of, and connection with, a deaf pickpocket from Latvia, and the change the relationship prompts in her life, it has another twist right out in front of everyone: “Stille,” in German, means not just “secret.” It also means “silent.”

A number of these films have puns and jokes in their names, as their deaf creators and actors play with a language not entirely their own, with the title No Talking Allowed, for example.

And that film also has what may be the most insightful look at deaf culture for hearing people — exploring the things hearing people do that drive deaf people crazy, as well as deaf people’s fears of a hearing world.

“We try to pick films that our deaf audience will identify with,” says USM linguistics lecturer John Dunleavy, one of the event organizers, who is deaf.

The concept that people have to be — or at least act — hearing to be “normal” is also explored in the British film Chronic Embarrassment, in which deaf people, as they often do, go to nightclubs pretending to be hearing because, well, nobody can really hear in a club. (The British Sign Language used in the film means the subtitles will be useful even for deaf audience members, who are likely to know American Sign Language best. They will recognize some of the signs but not all of them, and may be particularly confused by the fingerspelling alphabet used in Britain, which uses both hands, rather than just one, as with ASL.)

At a press screening (which only the Phoenix attended, to the shame of the other media around the city), Dunleavy, USM linguistics lecturer Brenda Schertz (both teachers of ASL), and several of their students explained some of the films’ subtle nuances.

Text, Batteries, and Earwax posits two divergent sub-cultures against each other, the “deaf culture,” in which people embrace signing and do not try to learn to talk, and the “oral culture,” in which people (often with partial hearing) do learn to talk, attempting to function as hearing people, and not always learning to sign.

There are also some straight-up silly films, including an eight-short series called “Pinky Tells the Real Story,” in which deaf actor and director Pinky Aiello explores the virtues and pitfalls of the Video Relay Service, one of the technologies hearing people pay for in our phone bills (grouped under the Universal Service Fund). With the VRS system, a replacement for the TTY device (which itself was barely a step above a telegraph), a deaf person can use sign language, combined with a video camera and a high-speed Internet connection, to communicate, through an interpreter, with a hearing person over the telephone.

Aiello’s shorts are laughably funny, if you understand the concepts she’s working with, including the idea that a person who is Too Far from the screen (the title of one of the shorts) is effectively whispering to the interpreter, who can barely see the signs. Many of the conceits treated in these films are inside jokes, but the frustration a deaf person has with an automated-answering system (in Get Real Live Person) is universal.

There are pictures here of a culture few of us will ever see — a thriving, vibrant culture with not just a lot of signs, but also a powerful voice.

Maine Deaf Film Festival | April 15, 1-10 pm | Luther Bonney Auditorium, USM, Portland | "inside deaf culture" films 1-3:30 pm | film discussion 3:30-3:45 pm | "telling it like it is" films 3:45-4:15 pm | film discussion with Pinky Aiell 4:30-5 pm | reception 5-6:30 pm | "British humor" films 6:30-7:15 pm | film discussion 7:15-7:30 pm | "to be deaf or not to be deaf" films 7:30-8 pm | feature film Stille Liebe (Secret Love) 8-9:30 pm | short films 9:30-10:30 pm | $15 full day, $8 half day | 207.780.4989 | TTY 207.780.4069

On the Web
Maine Deaf Film Festival: http://deaffilmfest.tripod.com/

USM's Radio days: WMPG launches election coverage

Published in the Portland Phoenix

WMPG-FM (90.9 and 104.1 FM) has launched news coverage of the upcoming elections, with the first installment already aired and posted online at the station’s Web site, www.wmpg.org.

While the community-minded, donation-funded station, based at the University of Southern Maine’s Portland campus, already has several talk and public-affairs programs on its regular schedule, “none of them are really news reporting, per se,” says program director Dave Bunker.

The new effort comes in part as a result of a listener survey taken last fall, in which nearly 80 percent of the 400 respondents said they would be at least “somewhat” interested in hearing local news produced on WMPG, Bunker says, noting that more than 50 percent of the respondents expressed “strong” interest in WMPG launching news coverage.

However, “radio news is the single most expensive and time-consuming . . . radio to make,” Bunker says.

So without the money or the production space or the production staff, Bunker’s approach is a bit toned down, using some of the station’s senior volunteer-producers as editors and putting together an editorial process for handling stories to air in the weeks before the June 13 primaries and the November 7 general election.

The focus will be on state and local races, with particular attention to those in greater Portland, Bunker says, though the first edition, aired in late March and reported by WMPG volunteer Erik Eisele (also a Phoenix intern this semester), focused on the US Senate race for the seat now occupied by Republican Olympia Snowe. She is running for re-election, and two Democrats, Jean Hay Bright and Eric Mehnert, will be in the primary seeking to oppose her.

Bunker says he hopes to be able to schedule reports to start at specific times each day, especially in the immediate lead-up to the election days, though he stressed that the reports will be only as long or as short as they need to be, with “no filler” to make the spots last a pre-defined amount of time.

“I want it to be substantive,” Bunker says. “It may eventually lead to having a full-fledged news department,” and he is very aware that “you only get one chance to establish your credibility.”

Sidebar: Comic economics

Published in the Portland Phoenix

Nearly none of Maine’s comedians make their living at it — really only the folks who make it big and travel regularly around the country can do that. The rest work office jobs, retail counters, and anywhere else they can — just like other young, emerging artists and performers.

For a night of stand-up at the Connection, a local comic won’t make anything at all, says owner Oliver Keithly and booker Tim Ferrell: they’re just putting in their time, earning experience. Liquid Blue’s rotating cast of about 10 local performers make anywhere from $20 to $150 each, according to regular host Tammy Pooler, depending on how many people come in.

National headliners at both those venues make between $250 to $500, with Connection hosts and feature performers making $50 to $75 and $100 to $200 respectively, Ferrell says. “You’re not going to make money in comedy for the first four years” at least.

The money to pay comedians comes from the box-office receipts — between $5 and $12 for most shows — with bar receipts covering other costs, Ferrell says. The Connection packs people in, filling about 150 seats most nights, especially in the summer. Liquid Blue’s biggest show packed the house with about 100 people standing and sitting, according to club owner Tom Manning.

Sidebar: Banned? Getting a gig at the Connection

Published in the Portland Phoenix

Tammy Pooler, a Liquid Blue regular, says she spent $1000 on classes through the Connection and performed there sporadically for a couple years, before deciding she wanted more stage time. But when folks at the Connection found out she was looking elsewhere, she says they told her she wouldn’t be booked at the Connection anymore.

“Even though you spent so much money on the class, they don’t want you to go anywhere else,” says Pooler, who performed in the Connection’s “Hot New Talent” show in 2003. Her accusation of a threatened “ban” is echoed by half a dozen other comics who also perform outside the Connection, and denied by Connection owner Oliver Keithly.

He says he doesn’t bar comics from his club for performing elsewhere, but does give “preference” to comics who hang out at his club and wait their turn, filling in for folks who don’t show up, getting occasional spots to work on new material, eventually building up to a regular gig. “It takes a while,” Keithly says.

Tim Ferrell, the comedy-class teacher who also books the Connection, denies the club bans performers for performing elsewhere. He acknowledges, however, that there is a tipping point, unspecified but real, which could put a performer into a less-than-favored category. “There is,” Ferrell says, “a limit to what we will indulge.”

Karen Morgan, who hosts the Wednesday–night showcases at the Connection, says she believes people who learned at the club should stay there to develop and grow, out of a sense of mutual loyalty.

Seth Bond Perry took Ferrell’s class, and credits it with his success on stages all over Portland. When he first finished the class, he waited his turn on the Comedy Connection’s stage. But after a year, the last half of which saw him onstage five minutes a month, “for the amount of time I was getting, on off nights, I just didn’t consider myself one of the players” at the Connection.

Though he says he was told that if he played there he wouldn’t be booked at the Connection, Perry tried out a Liquid Blue show and “had so much fun” he decided to stay. Now he’s getting slots of 10 minutes or more every week at Liquid Blue, and practices at the Acoustic Coffee open-mic nights every other week.

“I was more in charge of my own destiny,” not just “waiting to be given a slot,” Perry says. After the class ended, “I didn’t realize there was more that I could do,” but once he found out there were other stages, other audiences, Perry never looked back.

Comedian Brian Brinegar says he felt his advancement was limited by Keithly’s preference to work with folks who perform exclusively at the Connection. Now, “I perform four or five times a week sometimes” — a level of exposure and practice he says he would never get at the Connection.

“There’s a lot of comics that don’t care if they’re banned” from the Connection so long as they get stage time, and even a little cash, says Pooler, who started Laugh Your Ass Off Productions to compete with the Connection’s comedian-booking business. “The more I work to get shows, the more people say, ‘Now I dare to leave.’”

Standing up: Portland’s comedy scene explodes

Published in the Portland Phoenix

For more than a decade Portland has had only one venue for stand-up comedy, the Comedy Connection, on Custom House Wharf. But today, some see — or at least hope to see — the city’s comedy scene as being on the brink of national prominence. There are now 15 local stages devoting time to comedy and an overflow of new comics to fill them.

Younger local comedians are comparing Portland’s current funny-business landscape to Seattle’s homegrown grunge-music scene of the early 1990s, and Maine comics are beginning to break into larger markets. Leading lights — most notably Bob Marley — are going on world tours but still come home, to growing audiences and rapidly multiplying venues.

Portland’s schtick circuit has truly exploded during the past year. Though it’s still a far smaller scene than, say, Boston’s, where three major clubs attract top-notch national performers nearly every night of the week, Portland is coming on strong. There are five venues with regularly scheduled weekly or bi-weekly comedy programs and 10 more that host occasional stand-up shows. Portland comedy fans can now see at least one show six nights a week — and often have more than one to choose from. (See “Regular Comedy” and “Now + Again Comedy,” below)

“I think Portland is poised on the edge of — at least in comedy — where we can draw national attention to us,” says Seth Bond Perry, in his second year of stand-up.

Perry played a gig in Boston on March 19 — his first there — and has high hopes to do more. In the meantime, “I play anywhere I can find,” he says. And Portland is welcoming. “It is the kind of town that is open to all kinds of art,” including standing in front of microphone working hard to make people laugh.

Perry, like many of Portland’s comics, learned his craft through a class at the Comedy Connection. Perry estimates there are “at least 100” comics in Portland who are looking for the elusive resource for all performers — stage time.

Tim Ferrell, the class’s teacher, who also books comedians at the Connection, estimates that between 150 and 170 students have been graduated from the classes over the past couple years, and now form part of what he calls Portland’s “terrific talent pool.”

Ferrell agrees with Perry, that in the past couple years “the comedy scene has changed dramatically,” with bigger audiences, more comics, and better energy.

Opening up
Bob Marley, the dean of Maine comedians, contrasting the experience of today’s break-in Portland comedians with his own 15 years ago, sees the good — more venues to perform in — and the bad: “It’s kind of a little bit easier to get in.”

“When we started out, we were working bars” — sometimes literally standing on the bar shouting out jokes — “and we would drive to Boston every night,” Marley recalls.

It took a bigger commitment back then, agrees Quinn Collins of Falmouth, who has been moonlighting doing stand-up for 10 years, while practicing law. “I didn’t think anything of driving two or three hours for a five- or 10-minute show,” says Collins, who once drove more than five hours to Poughkeepsie, New York, for a 20-minute bit, then turned around and drove back.

Marley and Collins — and Ferrell and Comedy Connection owner Oliver Keithly — agree that comedy is “an endurance contest.” As Collins puts it: the people who are good get better, and the people who are not fall away.

These days, the barrier is lower for the newcomers. Novice comic Seth Perry holds down a day job and performs on nights and weekends. Brian Brinegar, a motivated and energetic young father who recently moved to Maine from California, does the same. Tammy Pooler, one of the ringleaders of the comedy expansion in the city, is a mother, and runs a retail store and the Laugh Your Ass Off Productions comedy-booking agency, in addition to performing stand-up herself. (See “Comic Economics” ).

These are not folks who have to give up their regular lives to pursue their passions, though all say they are prepared to. “I’m either going to make it big or I’m not,” says Perry fatalistically. Brinegar, meanwhile, insists he will one day soon be on Premium Blend, the Comedy Central television network’s showcase night that boosts mid-level comics into the limelight.

Keithly, who has booked comedy for more than 20 years (see “What’s the Connection?,” below), says he has been working since his club opened on Wharf Street about 12 years ago to “have a strong community” of comedians and comedy audiences in Portland.

Now, “it’s the type of atmosphere that I always wanted to have,” he says. Through the class and in dealings with local comedians who perform on showcase nights (see “Comedy Lingo,” below), Keithly says he is “trying to create an environment . . . where people can learn the art-form the way that it’s been taught for years” — namely, by watching other comics work, constantly developing new material, and trying it out. Keithly is looking for “people who are serious, who have a serious passion for the art form,” which he estimates at about four percent of the graduates of Ferrell’s class.

By contrast, Ferrell estimates that more than 80 percent want the class to “lead to something else” in show business. And that 76-percent difference may be one of the reasons behind the sudden expansion of Portland’s scene.

In the middle
With Keithly believing that one in 25 graduates is serious enough to make it, and Ferrell saying four out of five want to make it, there’s plenty of room for disagreement. (See “Banned?” ).

Pooler, for example, says she got frustrated with performing only about five minutes a month at the Connection. “There’s way too many comics that want stage time” to be satisfied with just the Connection, she says. “When you’re a comic, you just thrive on having a stage.”

She met up with Tom Manning, owner of Liquid Blue, at a point when he was thinking about how to “build a comedy scene,” he says. And for a year Liquid Blue has had a stand-up comedy show on Saturday nights. The audience grew so big in the first summer that late that season, Manning added a Friday–night show as well. (On the other nights, Liquid Blue offers a DJ and dancing.)

Perry is a regular at Manning’s club, as wells as at the open-mic nights held every other week Acoustic Coffee, on Danforth Street. “When I meet the national comics, they tell me, ‘go out and do what you’re doing, play any stage you can,’” he says.

Perry spent about a year at the Connection after graduating from Ferrell’s class, but by the end he, like Pooler, found himself reduced to a single five-minute gig each month. So he, too, looked elsewhere for an audience.

At about the same time, Brinegar, just arrived from California, got a good audience response in the Portland’s Funniest Professional contest, sponsored every year by the Comedy Connection — but was disqualified for going over the five-minute time limit. Five minutes may not seem like much, but it’s a daunting task to keep a crowd amused — let alone laughing — for that length of time.

He considered taking Ferrell’s class as an entree to stage time at the Connection, after being told it had no open-mic nights, and no opportunity for would-be comics to bring paying customers to the club in exchange for five minutes with the microphone.

“I didn’t want to sink money and time” — both of which he says were in short supply — into the $300 eight-week class with no sure “return on investment.” So Brinegar ended up at Acoustic Coffee, where he met Perry and Pooler, as well as Ian Harvie, a Bridgton native with ties to the Connection. Harvie got a gig there for Brinegar, who also began performing at some of the “satellite” clubs the Connection books, like Spectators Sports Bar in Sanford. He has since reconnected with Pooler, and become an independent comedian booking some shows for himself and others through Pooler’s Laugh Your Ass Off agency.

Not all comedians leave the Connection. Karen Morgan, a Cumberland mother of three and a former attorney, started out in Ferrell’s class and then did well in the Portland’s Funniest Professional show in 2004. She was a 2005 finalist (and 2006 semi-finalist) in Nick at Nite’s “America’s Funniest Mom” competition, an annual reality-TV show and national search for mothers who are good comedians.

Like many Comedy Connection regulars, Morgan has never even been to a comedy show at a competing venue. She hosts a Wednesday night showcase at the Connection, which continued through the winter this year, partly in response to the number of people who want to get up on stage, says club owner Keithly. This summer, he will for the first time open a Tuesday-night showcase as well.

Morgan, who also is part of a trio of comedian-moms called “Mama’s Night Out,” says the Connection is “a really really good room” to work in, and preaches patience for those who wish to “make it big.”

“You have to sort of pay your dues in the showcase nights,” she says, noting that “the only way to get good is to do it over and over.”

Where to turn?
Liquid Blue’s Manning says his foray into comedy was “not about making money. This was about creating something that wasn’t there in Portland.”

And even now, a year on, comedy is a “loss leader” — a way to get people into the club who might not otherwise come. Manning’s operating costs include paying the comics, but, he says, the acts do attract new folks to his venue.

Manning and others at venues featuring comedy have found an expanded demographic showing up on laugh nights, which Manning says shows that people in their 40s, 50s, and even 60s “want to come and experience the Old Port” and feel safe doing so. At the same time, Acoustic Coffee made its weekly open-mic night an every-other-week event, in part because stand-up brought in fewer folks than live musicians do, according to Brinegar.

The Comedy Connection is also banking on an expanded draw, with plans to book stand-up comics at neighboring Boone’s Restaurant as part of that venue’s conversion to host corporate and group functions, Ferrell says.

Dan Drouin, owner of Thatcher’s in Westbrook, hopes to have Laugh Your Ass Off comics “at least once a month.” Recent shows have gone “really well” with “a lot of response,” particularly from people who don’t want to go into the Old Port. “It would be great if there were more places” for folks to go for comedy, he says.

Steve Burnette, the new producing director at the Biddeford City Theater, wants to be one of those places. His take, influenced in part by his experience with the Second City comedy troupe in Chicago, is to have an in-house improvisation and sketch-comedy group who can fill in between theatrical runs and other larger shows. Burnette says he also plans to have local stand-up a couple of nights a year.

Another aspect of the scene will come from Tim Reed, the new booking manager at Asylum, who has a couple of major stand-up comics coming to town — Todd Barry and Nick DiPaolo, who have been on Comedy Central — in April. They’re the kind of comics Reed says he wants to see in person, and will have local openers (Brinegar and Eggbot will open for Barry in early April).

Moving on
Nellie Coes, who took Ferrell’s class and went straight into this year’s “America’s Funniest Mom” competition, also credits Ferrell’s class and Keithly’s club with generating enough would-be comics to drive the rapid changes in Portland’s comedy scene. And when Coes found out she was one of the 20 semi-finalists in the competition, the Connection gave her some time to perform to prepare. She made it into the top 10, but is forbidden by contest rules from saying how well she did beyond that point.

Coes recognizes the growing scene here, but doesn’t see that much room to grow. It’s hard to get stage time, she knows, but asks rhetorically of those who want it, “Why the fuck would you live here?”

That’s a point of view endorsed by Collins, who plans to visit Los Angeles in April and perhaps move there with his family later this year.

Collins started in stand-up before Ferrell’s class began, and estimates the class “saves people probably two or three years” of experience. But he worries that the glut of new comedians could set the business back 10 years, when part of what killed the national comedy scene was that so many people were performing, and so many of them were not actually funny.

And Collins wonders if more venues in a place like Portland means people don’t have to be as serious, or sacrifice as much to get on stage, meaning less-dedicated folks can think they’re making it.

Marley, who moved to Boston and then Los Angeles and is only recently back to calling Maine home, says he is only able to live in Maine as a comedian because he makes his living on the road. “You’ve got to go to a bigger city” to really improve and get known, he says.

Marley suggests people work on comedy in Portland for a year, working wherever they can. But then, “once you get 10 or 15 minutes together, the first thing you ought to think about doing is moving.”

“You’ve got to get out there and challenge yourself,” he says. “I always tell new guys, ‘work on your set and move out of here so in 15 years when I’m on my way down I can open for you.’”

Marley likes it that a lot of folks are involved in comedy, and thinks they are “better comedians” for the practice they’re getting in the various places, but he’s blunt about the future. “I think a lot of them are probably going to go on to do really great things, once they move.”

Into the unknown
A new crop of folks is already on the street, working on making themselves better comedians. The Portland’s Funniest Professional contest began earlier this month, with 80 or 90 would-be comics, many graduates of Ferrell’s classes.

Perry would like to see more open mic nights, more venues, and even comedians opening for music acts, like Andrew Dice Clay and Sam Kinison used to.

“This is something beginning here” says Brinegar, who is so driven to do things in unorthodox ways that he writes “M.H.” on his own skin before each show, in memory of comedy’s late off-beat renegade Mitch Hedberg.

Collins says the future of comedy may be looking brighter, but doubts it will ever return to where it was in the ’80s, when comedians were performing seven nights a week in the bigger cities, some raking in six-figure incomes. He says more folks are turning to comedy now, though — even his regular tiny gigs at the University of New England student center are drawing more folks than he’s seen in years. “I have no idea what’s causing that,” he says, though he guesses it could be because Comedy Central is back to showing more stand-up performances (rather than comedy shows like Reno 911 and South Park).

He says the money is in “the four Cs” — casinos, colleges, corporations, and cruises. The fifth C, clubs, are in a distant last place as far as making a living as a comic, Collins says. Clubs, however, are where comics make or break their reputations.

Marley and Collins see new ways to get “discovered,” besides just going somewhere else. Dane Cook from Massachusetts is nationally known from his massive following on MySpace.com (www.myspace.com/danecook). Collins notes there is a Maine effect as well, citing one comic who sold out his first performance at the Comedy Connection by networking online. And Marley filled his first-ever show in Denver the same way, bringing a seven-fold raise for his second show there.

New marketing, new venues, new comics — it all makes Marley “really happy,” he says. “None of that was ever available to me when I was starting out.”

REGULAR COMEDY:
Acoustic Coffee | open mic every other Wednesday | 32 Danforth St, Portland | 207.774.0404 | www.acousticcoffee.net

Chappie’s | every Thursday | 1192 Forest Ave, Portland | 207.797.9155

Cocktails | every Monday | 6 East Grand Ave, Old Orchard Beach | 207.934.4068

Comedy Connection | every Wednesday through Sunday | 6 Custom House Wharf, Portland | 207.774.5554 | www.mainecomedy.com

Liquid Blue | every Friday and Saturday | 440 Fore St, Portland | 207.774.9595 | www.portlandatnight.net

NOW + AGAIN COMEDY:
Asylum | 121 Center St, Portland | 207.772.8274

Café DeCarlo | every three months | 163 Main St, Bridgton | 207.647.4596 | www.cafedecarlo.com

City Theater | 205 Main St, Biddeford | 207.282.0849 | www.citytheater.org

Geno’s | the Escapists sketch comedy, monthly | 625 Congress St, Portland | 207.221.2382 | www.myspace.com/genosrockclub

Keeley the Katerer | benefit shows | 178 Warren Ave, Portland | 207.797.3550 | www.keeleythekaterer.com

Memory Lane | monthly | 2 Ossipee Trail East (Route 25), Standish | 207.642.3363 | www.memorylane2005.com

Oddfellow Theater | sketch comedy, monthly | Route 117, Buckfield | 207.336.3306 | www.oddfellow.com

Spectators Sports Bar | Route 4, Sanford | 207.324.9658

Steep Falls Fire Barn | every other month | 87 Boundary Rd, Standish | 207.642.3461

Thatcher’s Westbrook | 506 Main St, Westbrook | 207.854.5600

COMEDY LINGO
Host | Warms up the crowd, introduces comics, keeps atmosphere going throughout the night.

Showcase | A short (five- to 10-minute) slot for a young comic, often part of a “showcase night,” a series of eight to 10 such acts held usually on weeknights, in which comedians try out new material or refine existing jokes.

Feature | A mid-level comic; two or three perform 15- to 20-minute spots to get the night going and lead up to the headliner.

Headliner | A top-notch comic with 10 or 15 years of experience, the main performer of the night, who will perform for as much as an hour.

WHAT'S THE CONNECTION?
Oliver Keithly, owner of the Comedy Connection in Portland, used to work at the club of the same name in Boston. He owns the rights to the name, so when he moved to Maine, he used it for his club. The two are otherwise unaffiliated.