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[ ♪♪♪ ] WOMAN: I like to play with assumptions and turning them around and putting them in a new place.

Whoo, voila!

MAN: I love capturing the essence of Mesoamerica and bringing it to a place where it doesn't really exist.

It's very empowering.

WOMAN: The future's so bright.

I inherit an organization that is moving towards something that is so big, I can't see it.

We want to share a story with you that we filmed just before the coronavirus hit.

It was the summer of 2019, and Nataki Garrett had just become the new artistic director of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival.

We were excited to film an interview with her just as she moved to Ashland, but then, within months of our filming, coronavirus shut all of her theaters for more than a year.

Now, as Oregon Shakespeare continues their reopening process, we're happy to finally share this story with you and give you a chance to meet Nataki Garrett.

If in Naples, I should report this... --was the way in?

[ laughs ] Hello.

GARRETT: Oregon Shakespeare is one of the largest theater operations in North America.

So this is a doublet.

GARRETT: We have about 580 employees.

And we sell about 450,000 tickets a year.

So people follow OSF.

We set the path, and other theaters follow us.

I get to inherit that.

Hi, everybody.

[ crowd cheering, applauding ] My name is Nataki Garrett, and I am the incoming artistic director of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival.

[ all cheering, applauding ] Thanks for being here.

Thank you for that.

This audience is a very committed stewarding audience.

Audience members will come up to me and tell me that they're so happy to have me here.

These people love this place.

Hi.

Hi, it's so great to meet you.

Oh, thank you.

Nice to meet you too.

OSF doesn't belong to me.

It actually is something that belongs to the community that supports and serves it here and abroad and all over the United States.

No, I'd like to get it away from the sofa, so come this way, yeah.

Right now I'm directing How to Catch Creation by Christina Anderson.

[ music playing ] On this night in the year of 1966, "Midnight Song" is finished!

GARRETT: How to Catch Creation is a beautiful, masterfully written play that is simply about love.

I gotta get back in the gym.

I'll schedule the rematch.

GARRETT: There is a lot more behind a play than what the audience gets to see.

It is remarkably, at its essence, a collaborative art form.

Then when I leave, I take computer?

Yeah.

You can take your glasses too if you want.

Okay, yeah, yeah.

Beautiful.

My job is to create a space where people can do their best possible work.

Swing your body that way, but I think if you're here, and then you swing back... What I really love about her direction is she has really strong vision and is very clear about her vision.

You can also start this way.

She's also really collaborative and wants to build something that is you, and she's told us all, "I cast you for a reason.

So how are you in this role?"

which is so nice in the room!

I feel like an important actor.

[ laughs ] So if it could just go a little bit slower.

I tend to lead from the middle as a director as opposed to from the front.

You have put everything in the bag.

I really do a lot of listening.

And what I do while I'm listening is I look for ways in which I can insert where my ideas intersect with theirs.

And sometimes that means I have to be quiet, and sometimes that means I have to be loud and I have to say, "We're gonna do it like this."

And then this should come up.

[ ♪♪♪ ] I was in every Easter pageant and Christmas pageant and church play growing up.

So I could say it's in my blood.

I grew up in a family that said, "What college are you going to?"

I'm a legacy of women that went to college generations back.

And I'm thankful for the limitations that society put on me, because if you want to test what I'm capable of, tell me I can't do it.

Oh, dear father, make not too rash a trial... GARRETT: If you really read Shakespeare's plays, they're about our kind of visceral, primitive, like, humanity.

They're about the base nature... For one thing she did, they would not take her life.

And the brightest part of that base nature, it's joyous and it's amazing and it's -- In its full expression, it can really penetrate you.

[ gasping ] Hell is murky!

And he wanted you to witness.

He wanted you to witness you, he wanted you to witness other people so that you and I understand something about who we are and why we exist and what we might want to do in order to create a better world.

[ ♪♪♪ ] What if that was the way in?

I'm full.

I'm full of creative energy, I'm full of ideas.

I'm in rooms with people who came here because of their level of expertise, and I get access to their expertise as we begin to work and grow together to make this organization into what it wants to be in the 21st century.

Theater's good, though.

HODGSON: I'm so excited about what Nataki's going to do.

The way Nataki directs with people, her viewpoints on the world.

The type of collaboration and inclusive collaboration that she likes to do, I'm just really excited about those being our company values still and continuing.

GARRETT: The future's so bright.

I inherit an organization that is moving towards something that is so big, I can't see it.

And at this time where the American theater has made a decision to shift what leadership looks like in terms of race and gender -- and not completely shift, I want to make sure I'm clear.

But there has been a shift, and I get to be a part of that movement.

And I can't imagine that I'm here.

Every morning, I go, "Okay, all right, what's my challenge?

How do I make this happen?

How do I make sure that there's a generation of people who come behind me who are like, 'Listen, I'm here because you were a ladder'?"

Please, please, universe, let me be a ladder.

That's how it makes me feel.

The festival looks a little different this year, with the audience in masks, social distancing, and everyone keeping an eye on potential wildfires.

But as Shakespeare said, "The play's the thing," and the festival perseveres with artists heading back to the stage and Nataki Garrett leading the way forward.

[ ♪♪♪ ] MAN: This place is, um, kind of like a community spot to come and paint.

I come and mostly just try out different ideas or different concepts that I'm, like, thinking about.

This space has allowed me to grow artistically.

Like, if I'm really stressing about something and I'm gonna do like a commission and I wanna try something different, I can come here and just really feel it out and try things that I haven't tried.

[ ♪♪♪ ] I feel like when I'm painting, I'm, like, in a moment of bliss.

Like, everything that's going on in the world just kind of can wait.

I'm able to just channel in and really focus.

It kind of feels like I'm sitting in a movie theater, the lights kind of go off, and you know it's gonna start.

That's kind of how it feels sometimes.

I'm excited about this one.

It's gonna be cool.

Today I'm doing an Ixchel.

Ixchel is a Mayan goddess, but kind of interpreting her as kind of like a rocker girl, like a punk rocker.

Wanted to do something more friendly, but also has like a little more depth to it.

As an artist, through my murals, in the city, in Portland, I'm creating imagery for brown folks.

Growing up here, I didn't see a lot of that, you know?

A lot of multicultural art.

[ rattling ] My focus right now is to hone in more on my indigenous background, where my folks are from.

My dad is from Oaxaca, and I'm trying to hone in on the imagery, the culture, where my blood is from.

[ ♪♪♪ ] I love capturing the essence of Mesoamerica and bringing it to a place where it doesn't really exist.

It's very empowering.

Empowering for myself to do, but also for other people to see that.

[ cans rattling ] When you're doing large-scale murals, it's more of a physical thing.

You're standing, you're climbing, you're moving.

Like, if I'm gonna pull a line, I have to figure out a way to get from point A to point B in the cleanest, most efficient way.

What I've learned from different things is like breathing and then positioning yourself, like, so opening up your legs and flowing, because if you bend your knees, you can move without moving your hand.

So, like, those little tricks keep you consistent.

I think I use a lot of cartoon characters within my work mostly because people connect with it quicker.

Like, you see a cartoon, and it feels more welcoming.

You know, you go, "Oh, an animation, what's this about?

It's gonna be funny or cute or something like that."

With this character, I had an idea of just doing kind of like a brown boy and being more in touch with the feminine side or like just purity.

At first glance, you just think, "Oh, it's like a cool little character," but it's a little deeper for me as well, you know?

This is healing for me.

This is kind of like my therapy.

There's a story going on in my own head, things that I've gone through and trying to get in touch with that inner child.

[ ♪♪♪ ] My first introduction to painting outside was graffiti, was my friends.

Like we'd just find little alleys or little bridges, and we'd go under there.

You know, there'd be space for us to paint.

I was really scared.

I thought I was gonna go to jail.

[ chuckles ] Because it was, like, breaking the law, you know?

Or it was mysterious, but at the same time, it was creative and it was really contradicting at times, because I don't feel like I'm doing anything wrong.

I'm just painting, you know?

I think a lot of it for me when I was a kid was trying to create, for sure, but also I wanted people to see me, you know?

Didn't need to know me, but they needed to know that I existed in a way, whether it was my real name or this persona, right?

[ ♪♪♪ ] My style of art kind of started more with character work, for sure.

I would always draw monsters and just like big, scary faces and incorporate it into my letter work.

With this one, I was just mostly working with, like, letter structure and trying to break it down, figure out different ways of writing my name.

Just kind of like my artist name, graffiti name, just "Sus."

It's kind of like Hey Sus, so just me like trying to chop it up in different ways, trying to find a letter format that I like.

This one's cool.

Ooh, that's actually pretty cool.

As I've grown, graffiti has changed for me.

Now I'm able to blur the lines and do basically whatever I want because I've made a name for myself, but it was really hard just being a kid that only did graffiti, right?

Or was seen that way within the artist world.

This project was brought to me by Carlos from the Morpheus Youth Project to focus on the community of color and then work with youth as well.

I did the cactus, the purple one, but then I inspired them to do that too, so I kind of showed them how to do it.

I'm starting to see now that I'm influencing a lot of younger artists and people wanting to come out and help me out, even though I feel like I'm not on that level yet, I'm still trying to figure it out on my own.

But people see that I'm -- I'm like leveling up.

It's inspiring on both ends.

[ ♪♪♪ ] Mm-hmm, almost there.

Graffiti is, like, a form of folk art that's still alive today.

These artists that are doing graffiti, they're always evolving and changing, but they're always leaving this art behind.

I love it.

I don't think I'm ever gonna stop doing it.

I've met a lot of older folks that started in the '80s, doing illegal graffiti, but now they're like muralists, but they still will come out here and paint, you know?

And that's how I wanna be when I get older.

Kind of be like a veteran at the wall, you know?

[ woman scatting ] My name is Jetty, and I play music.

Jet Black Pearl is my stage persona.

Actually, it's my real name.

Jetty Swart is my name.

"Swart" meaning "black."

"Pearl" is the guy I'm married to, Louis Pearl, the Bubble Man.

So if that's on your plate, you just eat it.

I feel a little shy.

I mean, I really wouldn't like to talk in front of ten people.

But I can sing songs in front of 2,000 people.

I think a lot of performers have this thing.

[ blowing notes ] Like the overcompensating of shyness.

It's easier to have a mask on, just a persona.

Yay, it works!

I don't know where it comes from.

[ Jetty scatting ] Maybe when we were kids, we weren't able to let out all these things because we were too shy.

But then we found out a way to over-scream all that.

Like, "Hey, here am I!"

and then, "Oh, that works."

[ honking tune with beats playing ] [ playing tune ] [ singing in French ] I come from the Netherlands, and then I moved to France, and I discovered the musette music, like the typical accordion music from France.

And I kind of dived into it, because I really loved it.

[ singing in French ] I traveled to Cuba, spent a month playing flute with the people there, and then I went to India to take singing lessons.

I don't know.

It's a whole mishmash of things.

[ people cheering, applauding ] Heh-heh, thank you!

Whoo-hoo!

♪ I've got acropa-lips When standing on a hill ♪ ♪ Necropo-lips When I want to kill ♪ ♪ Catac-lips to destroy ♪ ♪ Apoca-lips now ♪ ♪ The fire Is burning us alive ♪ ♪ There's spare-lips On the grill, wow!

♪ When I write music, I like people to get a different view of things, like things like, "Oh, never thought about that before."

My name is Gertrude.

♪ Ooh-ooh ♪ ♪ What's your name?

♪ Gertrude!

Gert-rude.

Hmm.

And you?

You have a name?

♪ What's your name?

♪ I like to play with assumptions and turning them around and putting them in a new place.

Gertrude, thank you.

And sometimes Aunt Gertrude kicks in there.

♪ Prude ♪ [ singing indistinctly ] Aunt Gertrude is a little bit the opposite of Jet Black Pearl.

She is a bit cheeky and a little bit naughty.

She behaves very well usually, but sometimes she loses the control.

♪ Break it down ♪ [ vocalizing ] Whoo, voila!

♪ Look at me I'm super chic ♪ ♪ The chic-est chick I know ♪ ♪ With a big Botox beak ♪ ♪ Shiny feathers Nice and sleek ♪ ♪ I'm ready, ready My heart's bl-blooming ♪ ♪ I'm ready, ready My loins are bl-blooming ♪ A lot of my songs are about animals, but they're not only about animals.

♪ I'm broody I want an egg ♪ I think it's funny to talk about the love life of animals.

♪ Broody I want an egg ♪ It's a much nicer way to express really crude things going on.

♪ Broody I want an egg ♪ ♪ Menopause is just Three eggs away ♪ ♪ Bawk!

♪ Bawk, bawk, bawk -- [ laughs ] I am a middle-aged chicken.

♪ I better do this On my own ♪ ♪ I'll just be a mom alone ♪ ♪ I've found some seed On Amazon ♪ ♪ Next-day delivery By drone ♪ ♪ Bawk!

♪ I never intended to become a musician.

I was becoming a graphic designer, and I was doing an internship in New York City, and I didn't know anybody there.

But then I had this accordion with me and I knew a couple songs, so in the evenings and on the weekends, I would go out and start busking in the streets.

It was just pure for fun.

[ Jetty singing in French ] And then I moved to France.

I didn't speak French, so it may sound bold, but it was just really naive, basically.

And I was lucky.

I had a band, and then we started touring, I got an agent, a booker.

I just had to open my emails and get on the train and play.

I was a little bit spoiled in France.

[ audience cheering, applauding ] I met Louis in Edinburgh at the Fringe Festival.

We fell in love, and I started playing music for the Bubble Show.

[ ♪♪♪ ] So then we moved here in 2014.

It was a good place, lots of musicians and a good community.

At the beginning of the pandemic, we had planned six months in Europe with a hundred shows, and there we were, April, nothing to do.

But you know what, there was something -- like knowing that everybody was in the same boat and there was something so huge going on and we couldn't do anything about it, I -- somehow, I got really inspired by it, And so I started drawing, I started making little videos.

Being creative really helped me.

♪ Today is my day I give my brain a hand ♪ ♪ And I put my thoughts Far away ♪ ♪ Today I open a new bag... ♪ And first of all, I just -- frankly, I did it just for myself for fun.

♪ Oh, the places That I know... ♪ Then people started sending me emails like, "Hey, thank you so much.

This is -- You're lighting up my days."

I'm like, "Really?

That's cool."

It's just silly stuff, you know, that I put out there.

♪ One, two, three, four ♪ But apparently, silliness and stupidity can take the edge off life.

♪ Ow!

♪ ♪ Good morning... ♪ I should've started making videos a long time ago, because that's the thing that goes so well with music, right?

Now that I started, you're not gonna stop me.

[ laughs ] [ vocalizing echoes ] [ playing tune ] [ children laughing ] [ audience exclaims ] [ ♪♪♪ ] [ honking ] Level number two, baby!

Support for Oregon Art Beat is provided by... And OPB members and viewers like you.