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- Subscribe - Contact Us - Rate Card - Place an Ad Archives Revels Classifieds Real Estate Menu Guide Wedding Weather Subscribe Contact Us October 8, 2005 ‘ONE’ showcases Ashland man’s skills By Richard Moeschl Ashland Daily Tidings When I saw Wade McCollum in Portland last weekend on the closing night of his musical “ONE,” he had that look on his face. Open, joyful, engaged. In the context of his play about a contemporary recounting of the life of the Buddha, you could say that McCollum appeared “awake.” The cast of �One� just finished a Portland run of Ashland native Wade McCollum�s musical. Submitted photo Drama teacher Betsy Bishop, remembers McCollum had that look as a student at Ashland High School about 10 years ago. “He’s a natural actor. He has a God-given instrument for stage,” Bishop said. “He has a theatrical face and the voice to match. It resonates a sensitivity. So do his eyes. He is a bright light.” The last time I had seen McCollum was on the streets of Ashland after his stunning performances in “Snow White and Several Dweebs” and “Five Years Later” at the Oregon Cabaret Theatre. Back then, he talked about this musical he was writing: a modern retelling of the story of Buddha he called “ONE,” with music by himself and Eric Nordin. “ONE” had a seven-week run a few years later in 2003 in Portland, produced by Insight Out Theatre Collective, which McCollum co-founded. The show had a brief run in Ashland before being workshopped in September 2004 and February 2005 with the second-year acting class at the Pacific Conservatory of Performing Arts in Santa Monica, Calif. Now the show was in Portland again, poised to attract backers for a shot at New York. The $200,000 production drew financial support from such Portland businesses as Tazo teas and the foundations of the Bank of America, PGE, Equity, Wessinger and many others. Audiences filled the Wonder Ballroom’s 275- to 340-seat auditorium for the 13 sold-out performances. “There’s so much potential for this show,” said Andy Lindberg, who is in the cast. “We’ll be done with it, but it’s not over. It’s special to have had an impact at this point in the process.” Cast member Noah Jordan, who is also on the board of directors of Insight Out, wished the show’s run could have been longer. “Huge breakthroughs were made a week ago,” Jordan said. “The play shifted dramatically. It keeps changing. There’s nothing more I would rather be doing.” “It’s really an ensemble piece,” McCollum said. He described the process of staging the show as non-dictatorial, as opposed to the often heavy-handed imposition of the director’s will on the cast and the production. McCollum called it “divinely guided anarchy.” “A lot of [what the play is about] is lost knowledge,” said Julianna Jaffe, cast member, co-artistic director and co-founder of Insight Out. “In the midst of the trials and tribulations of being adults, we forget. Innocence. Compassion. Love. Honesty. The play stands on its integrity. It’s true.” For McCollum part of that truth is inherent in the art of theater and part of it stems from the teachings of the Buddha. “We’re creating a sanga, a community of art and theater,” McCollum said. “Practicing truth in illusory circumstances and how that relates to Buddhist thought always gets to me. (As artists and consciously striving people) we’re asked to be present in a lot of moments.” Jordan described some of those moments in the rehearsal process. “Sometimes we’d get assignments to go home and create three gestures for things like ‘awake,’ ‘home,’ ‘truth’ and ‘suffering.’ That became a vocabulary that got used when a scene was being created.” Lindberg found the personal nature of the process to be necessary for what the show was about, and its exploration of dream vs. reality. Jaffe also noticed how children in the audience “truly, truly got the message.” Bishop recalled how McCollum went to state and nationals a number of times in speech and debate. “He loved the verbal repartee,” Bishop said. And when it came to theater, “he always enjoyed the absurd pieces. He loved Christopher Durang.” McCollum was in “A Company of Wayward Saints,” the first co-production of Ashland High School and Oregon Shakespeare Festival. He played multiple roles. He also played the prince in “Once Upon a Mattress.” “His father was a musician,” Bishop said. “Wade has a lot of music in him.” And there’s a lot of music in “ONE.” And a lot of McCollum. And like McCollum, the show is still evolving, still in process. A bright light indeed. Creation, illumination — in the glory of our loving, we are one. 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