"We automatically try to see patterns," says Jerry Tischleder, producing artistic director of the Risk/Reward Festival of New Performance, when I mention that three out of five of the works in this year's festival are expressly about culture, heritage, and diaspora. "Last year everyone thought Risk/Reward was a feminist art festival."
Was it intentional that last year's performances focused so strongly on the experience of miscarriage? Not at all. Tischleder contends that if Risk/Reward is thematically cohesive, it's entirely by accident. There's some wonder to it, and also a sort of pulse of what's going on in the world. He thinks that ideas of origin and heritage are "part of a particular moment right now that artists are responding to."
Risk/Reward is curated by a panel of regional artists and administrators who select proposals without knowing what the actual performance will look like. Some, as in the case of Carla Rossi/Anthony Hudson, are illuminating departures from previous material. Hudson will share the stage with his alter ego, drag clown Carla Rossi, in Looking for Tiger Lily. The "one-woman-ish" show explores Hudson's childhood impressions of his Native American culture, as informed by Disney movies and his father's work as a Grand Ronde Tribe social worker. It's a little amuse-bouche for a longer piece Hudson will present this fall at the Hollywood Theatre.