Critics and references
Charles Deemer
Charles'
impact on Northwest literature and theater over the past twenty-plus
years is impressive. As a critic I've followed his work since the
early 1980s, and no playwright has had such an important or
long-lasting effect on this community's cultural life. Charles's work
has always had an intense sense of place, but also the technical skill and
intellectual breadth to give it strong impact far from home, as his
many national and international productions attest. In the 1980s,
when theater budgets were even more paltry than they are now, Deemer
proved that a good playwright working with talented Portland actors
and directors could create brilliant, engaging theater that could
inspire an entire arts scene. With such plays as "Chateau de
Mort" and "Turkeys" he also became a national pioneer in
the field of simultaneous action or hyperdrama, anticipating an
artistic movement that would later sweep such centers as Los Angeles,
Chicago and New York. Many of his plays have also dealt specifically
with matters of local or regional history and the history of radical
politics, from "Ramblin' " to "1934: Blood and
Roses" to "Abigail aud Harvey."
But mostly it's the broad
intellectual range of Deemer's many plays that distinguish his
career. The beautiful, compassionate and very funny meeting of East and
West in "Christmas at the Juniper Tavern," the personal and
artistic struggles of the great French satirist Moliere in "The Comedian
in Spite of Himself," the hardscrabble humanity of "Waitresses,"
the conjunction of sexual politics and nuclear physics in "The
Half-life Conspiracy": Each of these constitutes a high point in
the history of Portland drama. Deemer has a special talent.
Bob
Hicks
Senior Critic, The Oregonian
For over 20
years, Charles has persevered as a playwright, screenwriter, fiction
writer, essayist, editor and teacher. In recent years, he has been an
innovator in publishing his projects in hypertext, and, since
Charles has written over 40
plays and numerous scripts, essays, short stories and web projects. Over
three dozen of his stage plays have been produced. I am unaware of another
Oregonian who has had such a versatile and productive career in these
areas of the arts.
Brian G.
Booth
Founder, Literary Arts and the Oregon Book Awards
In the best
sense, Charles is a professional. In theatre that means he comes in with a
complete work but willing to collaborate with the other artists involved
in creating theatre that lives. Despite - or , more likely, because of his
extensive experience - he remains open to new ideas and responds to what
is happening in rehearsal.
During the years we've
worked together, I feel Charles was the clearest and most important
theatre voice in Oregon.
Steve
Smith
Artistic Director (retired), Theatre Workshop
Mr. Deemer
teaches screenwriting in the MA in Writing and minor in writing programs and
has become a staple of the curriculum. I have seen him teach and have
reviewed his student evaluations for close to 10 years now. Students
appreciate his expertise and his mentorship. He is generous with his
time and advice, offering guidance to writers who are curious about
not only the craft of playwriting and screenwriting, but also
about breaking into the profession. As you probably know, his credentials
as a writer in these fields are impressive, but I wish to emphasize
how accomplished he is as a teacher. Not all good writers are good
teachers, and not all good teachers write well. Professor Deemer does both
superbly...
W. Tracy
Dillon
Chair, Dept. of English
Portland State University
I am
writing to congratulate you on publishing The Seagull Hyperdrama -- an original translation and
expansion of Chekhov's classic play The Seagull -- into the hyperdrama
form on the Internet.
Faculty productivity at
this level is a source of pride for the Department of English, the College of
Liberal Arts and Sciences and Portland State University.
Marvin A.
Kaiser
Dean
Portland State University
Love at
Ground Zero is a
shard through the heart. Timely, powerful and sadly resonant. One of many
stories that will emerge from that archetypal event, it is a fragment of
the collective experience that represents the whole. It feels like
you said what should be said. What a painful ending. Opening with
9/11 establishes a mood of catastrophe that extends through the
narrative like the debris smoke from the falling towers. The sense
of inevitable doom makes the novel feel comparable to Greek tragedy. This
vision gives unusual poignancy to the love story. The allegory, an
ideal union between West and East, also feels like an ill-fated dream. Your
calm, humane, tolerant and generous tone contrasts with the noise
surrounding the events and with the hatred that prompts
terrorism.
Mike
Hollister
Novelist, Holywood
I am really thrilled about
your novel. It's cracking good! Magic. Just finished it, and felt very moved--
somehow I really sort of..know you. I really liked the tone and the
youthfulness of this work.
H.D.,
reader
About "Love &
Country"...
In his compelling work,
Charles Deemer focuses on ordinary people whose lives undergo extraordinary
windshifts after the tragedy. His vivid characters love, divorce, die, and go
to war. Deemer’s fine portrayals make the reader care about each character –
writers, students, teachers, patriots and even tramps. This is a fine work with
strong narrative and clean, clear prose. Everyone should read it and rethink
their own lives.
-- Craig Lesley, three Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association Awards, the
Western Writers of America Golden Spur Award for Best Novel, and an Oregon Book
Award.
Theater can
be risky business. Hundreds of works come and go each season with little
notice, seen and appreciated by only the experimental set. Successful Sam
Shepards are rare. Portland, however, is lucky to have a stellar playwright in
Charles Deemer, three-time winner of the local Willies award for Best New Play.
Tim Sills
Northwest Datebook
Seven
Plays by Charles
Deemer.
In this volume of plays, Deemer shows impressive range and scope; the plays deal
with everything from contemporary out-of-work mill workers to Old West
gold-diggers to modern urban alcoholics to the life of Moliere. The fact that
the diverse characters in all these plays seem totally organic to their own
millieu is a significant achievement in itself. Deemer also shows significant
range in his structure. He has a gift for dense plotting and is also adept at
simple character-based work. Christmas at the Juniper Tavern is probably most
impressive structurally, as he merges sophisticated plotting while maintaining
the feel of a loose, naturalistic slice of life.
Comments by
Doug Grissom
University of Virginia
Judge, Oregon Book Award.
For pure
media hype and upscale audience adulation, however, Baryshnikov was the only
act to upstage [Charles Deemer's] Chateau de Mort. An unprecedented full
page in The Oregonian was devoted to the show...
Northwest Arts
(Seattle)
Deemer's
act [Ramblin'] is unusually faithful to the material, graced with the
selfsame sense of commitment and trust in the common people that continues to
keep Guthrie's spirit alive in this country, a spirit that's needed now more
than ever.
Doug Marx
Willamette Week
On the list
of "some of our favorite Portlanders" celebrated in Willamette
Week's 25th anniversary issue, 1999.
"They Rule: We're sure
we've left a few thousand names off this list, but the following people, during
the last quarter-century, have all helped to make this a better and more
entertaining place in which to live. We've haven't always agreed with them, but
these folks have made Portland Portland." "Charles Deemer: Dramatic License." Details.
Thank you
for letting me read The Comedian In Spite Of Himself. It's impressive work.
I'm up to my ears with
three projects for just this season, and I don't respond obsessively enough to
your play to want to commit myself further. But,
as I said, it's first rate.
Harold
Prince
Producer, Phantom of the Opera etc.
I wrote to
you back in 1995 to praise your web site. You sent me back a very nice e-mail.
I have learned a lot
reading your writings. You have made a big contribution to the understanding of
the craft.
Many, many people know that
all over the world.
Eneida Molina Ortenburger
Puerto Rico
During the
three years that I was his student, I benefited greatly from Instructor
Deemer’s love of teaching, his professional, friendly, generous, and
artistically inspiring manner, his reliability and dependability in terms of
helping me to meet strict deadlines related to the completion of my thesis, and
his intensely focused and unwavering commitment to excellent writing. Due, in
great part, to Charles’ superlative guidance, I was able to option my first
screenplay to a Los Angeles production company. Charles assisted me in every
step of this process, from writing the project to marketing it. Upon
graduation, Charles was generous enough to recommend me for an online
screenwriting course that he had decided to give up teaching. I am aware that
he has similarly guided other students toward creative and professional
success.
Charles arrived at Portland
State University with a strong academic and professional background in
screenwriting and playwriting (his list of personal accomplishment is quite
extensive,) and went on to single-handedly create PSU’s distinguished
screenwriting program. His classes have been so popular, PSU instigated a Film
Studies to satisfy the growing interest in film created by his presence in the
college community. His college-level classes are characterized by fascinating
lectures, delivered with the knowledge, humor, and the type of no nonsense
affect that characterizes many of the great writing teachers of our time.
Adriane
Rainer
Graduate student (former)
Although
each of my professors has been very good and has taught me a lot, Mr. Deemer is
undoubtedly among the very best....
In the classroom, Mr.
Deemer is energetic and enthusiastic about writing. Although he is honest about
the possibility for success as a screenwriter or as a playwright, he is very
encouraging to his students, not only telling us to go for it, but also telling
us how to go for it. Besides being very knowledgeable about his craft, he is
very approachable as a teacher, inviting his students to ask questions and talk
to him about their concerns. For a writing student, this is very important.
Because Mr. Deemer is a
practicing writer with many years of experience, he is able to use both his
vast wealth of knowledge and his practical work experience in his teaching,
which I found immensely helpful. He is able to recommend specific scripts for
his students to study depending on their individual writing and the story they
are telling.
Lisa Frank
Undergraduate student (former)
Url- http://www.ibiblio.org/cdeemer/cdref.htm
Academic year 2008/2009
© a.r.e.a./Dr.Vicente Forés López
© Roxana Purdea
ropur@alumni.uv.es
Universitat de Valčncia Press