Suzanne Burns

Panic attacks, psych wards, medications and mental illness are usually the stuff of deep, dark family secrets. But in his film-writing debut, Bend local, Derek Sitter, shines a light on these themes as he tells the story of a man's struggle with bipolar disorder and the would-be cures offered by the pharmaceutical industry.
Sitter, whose life has been rent by his own anxiety and depression, drew on his experiences to forge the scenes in Second Sleep, Sitter's short film, which chronicles a night in the life of Seth Leer, a middle-aged man who volunteers for drug research in exchange for cash. The still-in-production short film is a test balloon for a bigger project and Sitter's goal is “to gain momentum in the festival circuit to make a feature-length film.”

With a Union Jack painted in a Day-Glo mod swagger across the floor of 2nd Street Theater and a pinball machine poised in the far corner, director Sandy Klein and musical director Stan Roach are bringing The Who's rock opera, Tommy, to town.
I sat in on a rehearsal of the cast and band last week, and from the first notes of the overture I was hooked. As a long-time Who fan who recently saw Roger Daltry perform Tommy in L.A., I was immediately transported by the band to the world inhabited by a deaf, dumb and blind boy who becomes first a pinball wizard, then a messiah. The Who's Tommy is known as the first rock opera. It spawned a multigenerational fan base drawn to the stunning rock God-ness of Daltry coupled with Pete Townsend's lyrics, which pitch and yaw between the mystical romanticism of youth and the acerbic viewpoint of the quintessential outsider.

“The neighbors all had walls and curtains to hide the things they did but we, we were exposed.” – excerpt from We.

“My play is mythic more than seedy. I see D as a cross between Mary Magdalene and Don Corleone,” says Howard Schor, co-founder and executive director of the Bend Experimental Art Theatre (BEAT).
A veteran theater producer with more than 30 plays to his credit, D's Place, written and directed by Schor, will debut at 2nd Street Theater. Five years in the making, the playwright views his piece, which encompasses two acts revolving around prostitutes and brothels, the first in Denver in 1864, the second in 1881, as “My ode to women. My myth of the first liberated woman.”

Written by New York native Teddy Wayne, Kapitoil, is this year's Deschutes Public Library Novel Idea community read. The acclaimed book chronicles the pre-9/11 life of Karim Issar, a computer programmer from Qatar who attempts to reconcile his Muslim faith with the trappings of American culture as he begins a wildly profitable career predicting oil futures.
There is something inherently compelling in Wayne's work, a tone that is never sentimental, but because his novel is told through an immigrant's eyes, this causes readers to become attached to Karim's enchanting way of using the English language with both humorous and heartbreaking effects.