PHAME pushes boundaries with new production of ‘Stop Making Sense’

PHAME, an experiential arts academy designed for people with intellectual or developmental disabilities, has been around for decades. Students take classes in visual art, photography, improv, voice acting and much more. The academy has put on plays, musicals and even rock operas before, but it’s never undertaken anything quite like this weekend’s show, says Jessica Dart, who co-directs “Stop Making Sense” with her husband and PHAME teaching artist Jason Rouse.

The show recreates the Talking Heads’ classic 1984 concert film. Like the film, the PHAME show includes music, dance and videos. PHAME student JJ Ross is the show’s choreographer and dances in the show as well. Ross, Dart and Rouse join us to talk about this unique collaboration.

Note: The following transcript was created by a computer and edited by a volunteer.

Dave Miller: This is Think Out Loud on OPB. I’m Dave Miller. PHAME, an experiential arts academy designed for people with intellectual or developmental disabilities has been around for decades. Students take classes in visual art, photography, improv, voice acting and a lot more. The academy has put on plays, musicals and even rock operas before, but it’s never undertaken anything quite like this weekend’s show. It will be a full recreation of the Talking Heads classic 1984 concert film “Stop Making Sense” featuring live performances of music and dance, in addition to video. You can see it at Portland’s Revolution Hall this Saturday evening and Sunday afternoon. PHAME student, JJ Ross choreographed the show and dances in it. Jessica Dart co-directed it with her husband and PHAME teaching artist, Jason Rouse. They all join me now. Welcome to the show.

Jason Rouse: Hey, good morning.

Jessica Dart: Good to be here.

Miller: Jessica, first, can you just remind us, in a fuller way, what PHAME is?

Dart: So PHAME is, first and foremost, an educational institution for adults who experience developmental and intellectual disability. It’s all very fine and performing arts focused. And then there are also significant performance opportunities for students who want to take advantage of that.

Miller: What’s the goal of the work, Jason? I mean, what do you want to accomplish with any one of your shows?

Rouse: I want everyone to feel cool and to… why do we get on stage? We wanna do our best and we want to perform and we wanna create art that we’re making through dreams. And that was the purpose of this show, is like I wanted to do a rock concert. I wanted to work with the artists of PHAME. I wanted them to have this experience of getting on stage and singing some of the, 11 of the greatest songs I can think of, in front of a packed house at Revolution Hall, under lights and with amazing accoutrement and have that experience. That’s where I think it started. Like, how can we all have that experience together? I’ve never had it. So this is how I’m getting it, by building it. So that’s what I want.

Miller: JJ, how long have you been involved in PHAME?

JJ Ross: I remember I was in PHAME, I was involved for 12 years.

Miller: 12 years. What are some of your favorite classes from that time?

Ross: I took the theater for acting, playing games, and shows.

Miller: What do you like to do outside of PHAME classes?

Ross: What do you mean?

Miller: I mean, in addition to PHAME, what else gives you joy right now? What else makes you happy these days?

Ross: I feel happy in PHAME because it makes me feel good, like classes and theaters and stuff.

Dart: JJ, if you’re not taking PHAME classes, what do you like to go out and do? Do you like to go to the movies?

Ross: Oh, yeah. We also watched movies with Jason. He’s a good fellow too.

Miller: He does seem like a good fellow.

Ross: I like to sing karaoke with Jason. I can do [inaudible] singing with him, too.

Rouse: That’s true. That’s true.

Ross: And bowling, I can beat Jason at Wii bowling.

Rouse: This is turning into a one sided, one sided thing.

Miller: One day, Jason, you can compete better at Wii bowling.

Rouse: Maybe, I appreciate that.

Dart: Nobody can beat JJ at Wii bowling.

Rouse: But no, I really try. No, he’s really good. Yeah.

Miller: How did you decide to do “Stop Making Sense”?

Ross: About two years ago, Jason and I were driving to the coast for a weekend and the “Stop Making Sense” album is one of our favorite things to listen to while we drive and as we were listening to it this time, Jason had been teaching a video lab class at PHAME and he was like, what if we made a video for ‘Burning Down the House’? I was like, yeah, that’d be cool. And then it was like, well, what if Aaron Hobson, who’s a pretty well known PHAME performer, what if he sang this song? And then it just became this avalanche of, ‘what ifs’ and ‘wouldn’t it be cools?’ And then by the time we got to Lincoln City, we were like, what if we restage “Stop Making Sense” at Revolution Hall with all of these accompanying videos? And what if we asked JJ to choreograph because we knew he could move and was a great dancer. And so we had this crazy idea, by the time we hit Lincoln City, thinking that PHAME would never want to do it because it was so off the wall. We held on to it.

Miller: And two years ago was one of the heights of the pandemic, right? I mean, an even more impossible dream in some ways or at least an idea of a possible future.

Ross: Yes. And we really had no idea when or if it could happen or if PHAME would go for it. And then Jason had the opportunity to pitch it to Jenny Stadler, the executive director of PHAME, one day. And her answer was yes, immediately. And we were like, whoa, OK. And then we started getting grants and now we’re doing a show. So it’s nuts.

Miller: We skipped right in, and I did mention in my intro a sentence or two about what “Stop Making Sense” is, but I’m sure that many people listening don’t actually know what it is. First, before we get your live version of it, you shared with us an introductory video that’s gonna play, as I understand, before the performance. Let’s listen to just a little bit of that, because this is something that audience members will experience this weekend.

(Recorded announcement): “Their debut album was released in 1977 to positive reviews. They collaborated with the British producer Brian Eno on the acclaimed albums, ‘More Songs about Buildings and Food,’ ‘Fear of Music’ and ‘Remain in Light,’ which blended their art school’s sensibilities with influence from artists such as Parliament Funkadelic and Fela Kuti. Talking Heads reached their commercial peak in 1983 with the US Top 10 hit ‘Burning Down The House.’ In 1984, they released the legendary concert film ‘Stop Making Sense,’ directed by Jonathan Demme. And now nearly 40 years later, here you are at Revolution Hall in Portland, Oregon about to witness a new interpretation of ‘Stop Making Sense.’ Sit back, relax, and enjoy the show and enjoy the ride.”

Rouse: That was PHAME student Willie Chapman providing the voiceover narration for that 90 second video that we’re gonna run at the top of the show.

Miller: And he doesn’t describe what’s “Stop Making Sense.” So what is it for people who haven’t seen it?

Rouse: What is it? It’s…

Dart: It’s the greatest concert film of all time.

Rouse: It is, it is. The Talking Heads were touring their album, “Speaking In Tongues,” and at the end of the tour, they had it filmed, but what it was was their first real attempt at, I don’t know how to describe it. They used projections and the show was built and fully choreographed. So the show began on an empty stage, with David Byrne, who would walk out and he would sing a song to a backing drum track and then…

Miller: With a boombox.

Rouse: With a boombox, yeah. And, then he would perform the song solo. And then Tina Weymouth joined him and they would perform “Heaven” and slowly gear and equipment and personnel started to arrive and by, I don’t know, five or six songs in, the full band was on stage. So it was this progression and it’s telling a story that doesn’t, you don’t feel like you’re walking into a story and pretty soon you’re just immersed in this world of art and grays and these wonderful projections and this wonderful energy on stage. Everyone is in this flat plane in front of you. And if you’re on a riser, you’re performing, if you’re on the floor, you’re energetically dancing and moving and running in place. And it’s an amazing experience that grows and grows and builds and then just sort of explodes at the end. And so that was in our minds the whole time. It was like, well, I think we can do that. We have all of the tools at our disposal right now.

Miller: Jessica, what are the tools at your disposal?

Dart: The artists of PHAME. Just their willingness to be a part of something that at first, I think, a lot of them were like, wait, who are the Talking Heads? Like we have a cast member who’s 21 and he’s like, I have no idea who these people are. And we have another cast member who’s in her early 70s, and she’s like, oh yeah, I remember this. So…

Rouse: But 95% had any idea about this album, this movie, it was called. For months, we had a lot of questions of, “what is this?” A lot of side eyes, like a lot of nerves - we don’t understand this. Again, it’s unlike anything they’ve ever attempted.

Dart: So we had the artists and a Creative Heights grant, among some other things. So time, money and really creative people were the tools at our disposal. And also knowing that we had JJ . . . I had worked with JJ on a show several years ago, where he was a performer who did a lot of really amazing movements. And I’d seen him on the dance floor, at PHAME dances. And I’m like, this is a person who could be a really amazing choreographer. And so we knew that we had specific artists at PHAME who had specific skills that we wanted to utilize in a new way and then create opportunities for visual artists, digital photographers and things like that. So it really was inspired by the people that we had at PHAME.

Miller: JJ, how did you come up with the dance moves for the show?

Ross: The dance moves is for a certain kind of dance.

Miller: You needed a certain kind of dance for this?

Ross: Yeah.

Miller: Can you describe it?

Ross: I can do hip hop too.

Miller: There’s some hip hop in it.

Ross: I got hip hop in it.

Dart: JJ, when you made up the dances, where did you do that? Were you in your little house when you made up dances?

Ross: I went to my little house and turned on my computer, and danced for a while, before I danced with the students.

Miller: So you first, you would sort of practice or try things out yourself in your home. And then once you had those, you would show those dances to the other students?

Ross: I would show the students, yeah.

Miller: What do you like about dancing?

Ross: I like dancing. I was like [inaudible] and with her friends, I knew hip hop. They got country and jazz in it I like.

Miller: So all different kinds of dance - country, jazz, hip hop.

Ross: Yep.

Miller: What’s it like to teach the dance moves to other dancers?

Ross: I think when I’m teaching the dances, I’m a choreographer of the dance moves and I teach how to dance with the kids.

Rouse: And I think watching JJ in this process has been really cool because like you said, we would give him like, “all right, you’re working on this song,” he’d work on it at home and then he’d bring in a video of what he worked on and Lineah, his choreography assistant, and I would look at that video and he would do some live dancing and then we would help him refine these moves to then teach to other students. And then we would move into our class for the day and JJ would demonstrate the moves and he was such a great leader in the room of just demonstrating like, this is how the move goes. And he has a very gentle, authoritative way of teaching. It’s very quiet, like he’ll just kind of look at somebody and demonstrate the move very intensely until they’re like, “oh, I get it.” This is what I’m supposed to be doing.

Miller: But do it, I mean, until the students get it.

Dart: Yeah.

Rouse: He draws their eyes, he will be doing the moves and he will stare at them and they will catch his eye and then he holds their gaze, demonstrates the move and then he gives them a nice nod when they’ve got it and it’s like released back into the world. You got it, and he’ll move on to the next.

Dart: It’s very quiet and gentle and wonderful to watch.

Miller: JJ, do you have a favorite dance from this show?

Ross: My favorite is, “Burning Down The House.”

Miller: Why?

Ross: Why? Because it’s about setting you free. I like to be free.

Miller: I’m curious, Jason, can you just give us a sense for the scale of this project compared to other productions that PHAME has done over the last 40 years?

Rouse: I think it’s safe to say this is the largest. We figured out that we’ve been able to utilize a over 100 PHAME artists, individual artists, in piecing this show together, whether they appear on stage as a vocalist or instrumentalist or dancer, whether they were in the video lab, which spent 20 weeks concepting and developing the 11 videos that are presented. Within those videos, we have videographers, we have still photographers, we have fine artists. We have, we have these beautiful paintings and drawings from the different fine arts classes all coming to bear. Jessica sifted 10,000 still photographs from the digital photography classes and all culled and curated for this one purpose. So the scale is quite large. We moved in to Rev Hall yesterday and spent the day on stage and it’s a real show. I mean, the lights were on, the projections were going, the band was wailing and our team was up there like they do this every day, which is what you want. And they weren’t thrown by the lights. They were like, OK.

Miller: It seems like you were more scared by it than your students.

Rouse: Yeah. Well, I’m like, I’m nervous, I’m excited. I need to be tucked away on the side of the stage with the video. And I kept coming out and running out into the house to see these pictures that Jessica and I have been dreaming about for two years, and that all of us have been dreaming of. We talk about this as a partnership. It’s not Jessica and myself and Jenny Stadler putting it on, it’s all of us. It’s taken everyone on stage, everyone, all of our fabulous assistant stage managers, all the artists at PHAME, to create this moment. And, yeah, I’ve sort of got ants in my pants, back there. I think I’m getting in the way. Every once in a while I’ll bump into… I bumped into Jim, one of our dance ensemble and he’s like, “Look out” and I’m like, “Jim, I’m…”, he’s like, he knows I’m not… there’s a square that he’s in and I’m not supposed to be in the square.

Miller: You’re messing up his show.

Rouse: A little bit. He gave me a pass yesterday. He’s like, “First day, first day.” And I’m like, OK, and I got back.

Miller: Jessica, how much over the last two years have you thought that your job collectively was to recreate something faithfully, something that you all love as opposed to creating your new thing, your own thing?

Dart: It’s become our own thing. It really has become our own thing. “Stop Making Sense” is the inspiration. We are, we’re drawing moments from that, that we really like, like the video elements we love. We loved that there was choreography, but JJ is not just imitating David Burns choreography, it’s his own twist on it.

So there are moments that are recognizable from the film. We’re not doing all of the songs from the film. We’ve added a couple of studio tracks that we just really loved. So it’s definitely our own thing. But it’s very much still “Stop Making Sense”. So it was finding the balance between that, because we knew that with the amazing folks that we had involved, it would become something else and that was always kind of the purpose.

Miller: What have some of the biggest challenges been?

Dart: I mean, when we’re working with artists who have disabilities, I think the impression that a lot of people at large might have is like, oh, that’s gonna be really hard and that might be impossible. And it’s really not, the accommodation that most people need is just extra time. And so scheduling for me has been a big challenge because for us, from concept, it’s been two years. We started working with PHAME in fall of last year on this and then we’ve been rehearsing this since April of this year. And so it’s the scheduling to accommodate that.

And then also, I think combating the idea that this is a special arts for special people, because this is really about opportunity for people with disabilities. This is about excellence and performance. This is about the dignity of taking a risk and performing in public. We’re not going in to say, “Look, we’re doing an inspiring show.” That’s not our intention. Our intention is, this is an awesome rock show that you came to see and it just so happens to feature artists who have visible disabilities, invisible disabilities, artists without disabilities. It’s a mish-mash of just cool people doing a cool show.

Miller: Let’s listen to another clip that you shared with us, and let us know if there’s something that our audience should know before this. But it’s a piece of the singer Aaron Hobson singing the song “Psycho Killer.” Anything we should know before we hear this excerpt?

Rouse: It’s gonna be really awesome.

Dart: Yeah. And I cannot wait for people to see the joy that Aaron brings to the show. He loves performing.

Rouse: As powerful as his voice is, that’s 50% of his magic. The other magic is watching his physical form. He’s performing it as much as his voice is. Just the energy that emanates from this guy is insane. And the show, for us, two years ago started with, we want Aaron to sing “Psycho Killer” on stage.

Miller: As you mentioned, literally, that was the beginning.

Rouse: This is it. This is Aaron, in a spotlight down center at Rev Hall, two years ago. We said that and we got to see it yesterday. It’s insane.

Miller: What we’re gonna hear, I should say also, just to temper your sonic enthusiasm, is audio from a cell phone camera that’s not very close. So that’s the recording, that’s not him. Let’s have a listen. This is Aaron Hopson singing part of “Psycho Killer.”

(Singing): “I can’t seem to face up to the facts, I’m tense and nervous and I can’t relax, I can’t sleep because my bed’s on fire. Don’t touch me, I’m a real live wire. Psycho killer, qu’est-ce que c’est? Fa fa fa fa, fa fa fa fa fa fa... Better run, run, run, run, run away.  Oh oh oh…aye yi yi yi yi, oh…”

Rouse: So that’s Aaron singing. And what you heard in the background was our iPad ensemble that are Rebecca Davis and Cody McCullough, they are the backbone and they’re taught and led by Dave Chachere, who’s our assistant music director, whose, I mean, tireless work with our iPad ensemble, because they’re our percussion outfit. And they’re on stage the whole time and they’re playing iPads and they’re amazing and Dave has worked tirelessly to, oh, I don’t even know what the word is, to sort of reinterpret all of the Talking Heads of music to be played via iPads. It’s a huge task and it’s just fantastic.

Miller: JJ, one of the ideas behind PHAME is that imagining your dreams and pursuing them is for everyone. What are your dreams?

Ross: I think my dreams, like, I can feel like dancing. I like singing. I like karaoke, I like to do art and then relaxing with like TV shows and stuff.

Miller: And it seems like this show actually lets you do a lot of those things you just talked about.

Ross: Yeah.

Miller: And just briefly, I mentioned that there are going to be two performances only, for this show that has taken the two of you and 100 other people between six months and two years of work. Just two shows. Can audiences or people who are not gonna be the audience this weekend, will they be able to see this ever?

Dart: Yes. We are filming both nights of the show. We’re going to edit together a version of it that will be available to rent via streaming. And that should be available in the fall at some point. PHAME will have that linked on the website. And I think the plan is that you can rent it once and have it available through the end of the year if you rent it. So, yes, it will be available.

Miller: Jason Rouse, Jessica Dart and JJ Ross, thanks very much.

Rouse: Thank you.

Dart: Thank you.

Ross: Hey.

Miller: JJ Ross is a PHAME student and the choreographer for this new production of “Stop Making Sense”. It will be at Portland’s Revolution Hall this Saturday evening and Sunday afternoon. Jessica Dart and Jason Rouse are the co-directors of the show.

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