Recent Stories in Theatre

Melissa D Brown and Shelley Virginia in "deCOMPOSITION" at the Erickson Theatre. Photo by Reed Nakayama.

deCOMPOSITION, (previewed here last Friday and running this Friday through Sunday at the Erickson Theatre; tickets $12-$20) is an original play framed by, and tangentially about, the scientific process of decomposition. At the outset, and for anybody who's seen a fair amount of experimental theatre, this might sound like a risky proposition, sort of a theatrical bridge to nowhere. What emerges instead is intelligent, intimate, and fresh.

deCOMPOSITION unfolds as three separate threads that entwine but rarely intersect: a childhood friendship gradually unravels as two women's adult lives begin to diverge; another woman whose grandfather has died struggles to understand loss; and a biology professor delivers a lecture on the life cycle of the king salmon.

At its best, deCOMPOSITION examines loss and decay as ever-present forces of entropy that we experience in our relationships and everyday lives. Dissecting the word into its linguistic roots for the audience, the professor (Alaska native Ty Hewitt in a nearly pitch-perfect performance) explains that salmon begin to decompose even before their deaths.

This plays out metaphorically in the other two stories. Insecurities and resentment gradually create a rift between the two friends, while the grandfatherless young woman tries to make the absence in her life amount to something emotionally palpable by compiling memories, enumerating facts, and, unexpectedly, baking. All of this hints at the many ways that even as we live our lives things are crumbling down around us, often just as we begin to make sense of them.... (more)

From left, Dr. Horrible (Eric Ankrim), Captain Hammer (Jake Groshong), and Penny (Annie Jantzer) in Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog at Balagan Theatre (Photo: M. Elizabeth Eller)

There's a lot of backstory to Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog, but I am going to dispense with it on the assumption that if you haven't heard about it by now, it can't possibly be your thing. (That doesn't mean you won't enjoy seeing the show--just go in blindly and let it wash over you.)

A "musical tragicomedy" web series created by the Whedon boys and Maurissa Tancharoen during the writers' strike of 2007-08, it starred Neil "How I Met Your Mother" Patrick Harris and Nathan "Castle" Fillion, as Dr. Horrible and Captain Hammer, respectively. (Oh look! A fansite.)

It also clocked in at just 42 minutes, so the Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog that Balagan Theatre is presenting (through September 4) has material that will be new to Dr. Horrible fans, but is delightfully faithful in tone and spirit. My only reservation was that Balagan isn't by trade a musical theatre, so could they come up with the goods? Hell yes. It's wonderfully sung, and leads Eric Ankrim (Dr. Horrible) and Jake Groshong (Captain Hammer) do much more than sub in for NPH and NF.... (more)

Late last month, The New York Times rans an article on "theatre for audiences of one," a trend, mostly originating in Europe over the last few years, of companies that produce work that's meant to experienced by one person at a time. The reason the article came out was that a pair of interesting shows--Aaron Landsman's Appointment and Dominic Huber's Hotel Savoy--would be opening in September in New York.

But the trend's been going strong for a while now, and Seattle's already seen a fair share of work that explores an almost uncomfortable level of intimacy with the audience. In 2009, the Belgian company Ontroend Goed presented their intensely intimate show The Smile Off Your Face at (or during) Giant Magnet. I didn't get see the show, in which audience members are one by one blindfolded and led through a labyrinth of sensory experiences, but the several people I know who did swear it was an incredible experience.

More recently, choreographer KT Niehoff played with performances for a single audience member as a component of her show/project A Glimmer of Hope or Skin or Light, selecting more than 30 people from the community who applied to have one of her company members develop a solo just for them (however, the solos were performed in public, for whoever wanted to show up).... (more)

When it rains, it pours, they say, and in the case of devised theatre--normally in short supply in Seattle--this weekend is a veritable deluge. In addition to The Irrealist Theatre's Amniotes and the restaging of the apparently Seattle-legendary Frankenocchio, both of which opened last weekend, tonight Jess K. Smith, a theatre artist who worked with Seattle Rep, Live Girls!, and Redmond's Second Story before heading to New York to study directing at Columbia, presents a two-week run of deCOMPOSITION at the Erickson Theatre off Broadway (tickets $12-$20).

Earlier this week, I had a brief phone conversation with Smith, who's in Seattle working on the play, which she developed with collaborators at Columbia under the guidance of Anne Bogart and staged this last spring as part of the Schapiro Series.

The work is based around the scientific process of decomposition--a morbid enough topic in the abstract--but Smith and the company she worked with built out a show from that basic concept that's anchored not in abstraction but in the deeply personal.

"We were interested in watching the decomposition of a friendship over time," Smith explained. From that basic idea--Smith's own--the group developed three simultaneous tracks for the work. Besides simply tracking the downward spiral of friendship, they built out two other components--one a series of monologues on the life-and-death-cycle of salmon, and the other, based on work by dramaturg Hannah Hessel (another Pacific Northwesterner turned New Yorker), an exploration of a woman's "loss of the sense of her own loss," as Smith put it. This track is based around a recipe--an actual recipe, as it happens, that was used by Brown's grandfather--for a cake, which is prepared during the performance and served each night.

"We knew that there was going to be a recipe," Smith said chuckling, recalling the work's beginning as little more than a set of seemingly unrelated ideas. "And an Appalachian folk song." (In this case, "Oh, Death.")

As abstract as some of the ideas seem, Smith assured me they're rooted deep in her artists' personal experiences. The lectures about salmon, for instance, were developed and performed by Ty Hewitt, a performer originally from Ketchikan, Alaska, who spent several summers working as a fishing guide lecturing tourists on salmon.

"I think what we try to do," Smith explained, "both in process and product, we've tried to find a way to communicate something honestly."

"The essence of the thing is in the storytelling," she continued. "How a folk song tells a story, or how a recipe is passed down."

What strikes me as most exciting is seeing this sort of theatre being made by Seattle artists--even if they had to move away to get a start--and then being brought back home. For quite a while, there hasn't been many artists or companies willing to work outside the narrow confines of the standard process of selecting a text, rehearsing it, building a set, and running it for three weeks. There's a risk going into this sort of performance that's exciting compared to most other work you'll see, and I'm glad that Smith & co. have seen fit to bring their work home.

"The Irrealist Theater (TIT) defines Irrealism as the subjective use of established, empirical truths for the auspices of awesome and aberrant circumstances," we are told, rather offhandedly if not completely sensically. Their play, Amniotes: an Imaginary History of the End of the World from 1954 - 20XX, is showing through August 28 at Implied Violence's warehouse (2115 5th Avenue). The title probably gives it away, but its audience is the adventuresome or deranged.

Parts of the evening are really awful (the acting is variable); other parts slip the surly bonds of Earth and briefly fly. (There are going to be a number of bird metaphors in what follows, so brace yourself.)

As befits a not-fully-fledged company, there's a substantial amount of unconventionality, awkwardness, and experiment on display in this their maiden flight. A doctor (Meredith Binder) comes out and lectures to you for about 15 minutes as the show begins, on amniotes and irrealism, and this produces a "coyote tedium" (in that gnawing your arm off as a distraction is an option).

However, playwright/director William Brattain is not without ideas, or ways to dramatize them to unusual effect, and once the play truly begins you may find its blend of scifi absurdity and drawing-room apocalypse strangely rousing. Clara and Chance are wearing caked-with-whitewash clothes (her a dress, he military fatigues) and replaying a scene where he enters, home from the war, and they bicker (over whether they can have a child, or whether she's slept with another man).

She bakes a number of pies, he tosses a basket of eggs to the floor. Behind them, a non-whitewashed Clara and Chase are projected doing the same thing, in advance a few seconds. It's an imaginary 1954. Are they ghosts? (This is a question they ask themselves.) Later they will advance in time to the present day, and try to raise their young from eggs. It's freeing, to hear Clara tell it. Chance takes up crochet.... (more)

Kate Whoriskey's Hey-Seattle-I'm-here! production of Ruined at Intiman has been been earning strong reviews and lighting up Twitter for weeks, but all good things must come to an end: Ruined closes on August 15. Intiman tied a number of topical events to the production's run, and the final night is no exception:

Intiman Theatre announces that U.S. Congressman Jim McDermott will speak and answer questions about his personal experience with and interest in African issues following the final performance of Lynn Nottage's Ruined on Sunday, August 15, at 2 p.m.

As a U.S. Foreign Service Regional Medical Officer in the late '80s, "Congo Jim" McDermott was based in what was then known as Zaire (in 1997 it became the Democratic Republic of Congo) where Ruined is set. If you've already seen the play, you can still go hear McDermott speak at 4:30 p.m.; the talk is free and open to the public.

The night after the final curtain, August 16, the Intiman is holding its Ruined Cabaret concert, a fundraiser hosted by Daniel Breaker (from Broadway's Shrek and Passing Strange), with members of Ruined's cast performing their favorite songs, and DJ Lady Lane. Tickets are $50, and the money raised helps send the production to South Africa.

Let us now praise Charles Leggett.

Back in February, he was a glowering, bullying giant of dashed dreams as Dave Moss in Glengarry Glen Ross.

This August he's a paranoid conspiracy- theorist Falstaff in Steven Dietz's Yankee Tavern at ACT (through August 29). Leggett's rotund Ray schlumpfs and circles about the stage like he's a heavyset, aging bee entranced by booze-laden petals, taking conspiracy theory to a rigorously abstract level, where the absence of conspiracy is in fact a conspiracy.

His brayed ravings--Dietz reaches inspired heights--encompass everything from the wedding industry and moon landings to assassinations and allergy medications. He talks to dead people upstairs in the rat-infested rooms of New York's Yankee Hotel, where he, an "itinerant homesteader" has staked his claim. He's a hopeless gasbag but a warm avuncular figure for Adam (Shawn Telford) and Janet (Jennifer Lee Taylor).

He's also a 9/11 skeptic. It's 2006, and still too soon, even for the people who love him, for anyone to be worrying over the bones of the World Trade Center dead, noting how this or that doesn't "add up." In the first half of the play, Dietz accomplishes the not-so-minor miracle of bringing you around to Ray's point of view--the program notes many of Ray's claims are technically factual. It's up to you whether this amounts to any one thing, or the inevitable result of chaos, post-disaster CYA, feuds for control of information for its own sake, and a willingness to "shape the narrative."... (more)

Ah 14/48: the World's Quickest Theatre Festival! Always a fun time. Only briefly mentioned in On the List last week (shame on us!) weekend two of the 2010 summer edition of the biannual event is cruising along.

If you don't know what 14/48, here's the rough break-down: last night, seven playwrights were each given a theme chosen (if I recall correctly) from a random drawing based on audience suggestions from last week. They stayed up all night writing a short play, which was delivered to their director this morning.

All day the director has been rehearsing the show with the cast while the designers rush around like madmen trying to put together a production that goes up tonight at 8 p.m. at Theatre off Jackson. Got that? A play written, rehearsed, and put onstage in 24 hours. And the kicker? In the downtime between the two shows tonight (the second's at 10:30 p.m.), the same seven playwrights get another random topic, slough off to the bar (to seek the muse at the bottom of the class) or the coffeeshop (to hop the pegasus with an aneurysm-inducingly strong Americano), and start all over again for tomorrow night's shows.

It's an awesome, incredible, boozy time featuring the gamut of Seattle's theatre community, with an emphasis on 14/48 "virgins" (I don't recall what percent of the invite only participants are first-timers each festival), including, in a blogger role, Seattlest's own (and friend-of-the-site) Amy Mikel, who's trying to keep up on the madness along with Chris Bell, Kimberly Coffin, Troy Fischnaller, Mik Kuhlman, and MJ Sieber.

All week, we've been doing a series of profiles on the artists behind Contemporary Classics three-show summer season. Today, we shift from onstage to backstage with Danielle Franich, the company's production manager, the person responsible for all the behind-the-scenes magic that makes the shows possible.

1. Where did you grow up and how did you end up where you are now? I grew up in the Sumner/Lake Tapps area. I started doing theatre in high school as a fun activity. As I kept working on shows, I started choosing theatre over other things. It was so much more fun to be doing a show then going to practice for a sport or planning a school dance. I attended the University of Washington where I majored in Drama and Political Science. It’s where I got my first taste of production managing and creating theatre with the Undergraduate Theatre Society and met many of the amazing artists I still work with today. At the end of my senior year, we had just finished a production of Into the Woods for UW undergrads and Brandon Ivie and Robert Aguilar asked me to join them working with Contemporary Classics.  I have worked with them as the production manager for three pretty amazing years.  I have also stage managed, directed and performed in the last few years around the Seattle area.

2. Which performance, song, play, movie, painting or other work of art had the biggest influence on you and why? My grandma used to take each of her grandkids out for their birthday to do something special with just her. A few times she took me to see a play. I couldn’t tell you what shows we saw or where we saw them, but I remember being so in love with watching the show. I was so wrapped up in the live performance and the feeling that it was all real. That feeling is the same as the one I get now when I work on a show. The magic feeling that comes from creating relationships, and making it real for the audience. It gives me the same rush that I used to feel watching and just being wrapped up in the story taking place on stage.

3. What skill, talent or attribute do you most wish you had and why? When I was younger, I took piano lessons for a few years. My parents got a piano and at first I loved playing and going to lessons. But, eventually I stopped practicing and I quit. I wish I had stuck with it. I do love the small amount I still know and my ability to read music, however limited, has turned out to be a great skill.... (more)

For the past week, we've been profiling the artists who've made Contemporary Classics' summer season of three musicals a success. Today, we have Ashley FitzSimmons, who's currently playing one of the leads in the The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, playing at Ballard Underground Theatre through August 14 (tickets $15-$20). In addition to her work with CC, she's worked extensively with the Village Theatre and also teaches at Youth Theatre Northwest.

1. Where did you grow up, and how did you end up where you are now? I grew up in Good Thunder, MN, which is a small town in the southern part of the state, on a farm. Needless to say, I didn't have access to much theatre or arts education. After studying dance from the age of 3, I gained an interest in theatre in high school and decided to make a career of performing. I earned a BFA in Acting from Minnesota State University and moved to Seattle to find work. 

2. Which performance, song, play, movie, painting, or other work of art had the biggest influence on you and why? When I was thirteen, I saw a B-squad tour of Rent in Minneapolis, MN, and was left spellbound. I promptly purchased the cast album and memorized every single song. I can still sing anything from that show on command. It was then that I began to focus more seriously on theatre and vocal work. 

3. What skill, talent, or attribute do you most wish you had and why? I wish I had even a little ability to paint, draw, sculpt, or create anything visual. When I first moved to Seattle, I was bored and decided that I wanted to try painting as a hobby. I went out and bought all sorts of supplies and tried to paint a masterpiece. Unfortunately, I couldn't even paint "happy trees" with Bob Ross. They looked like "angry blobs." That canvas has been hidden away because I'm still a little embarrassed. 

4. What do you do to make a living? Describe a normal day. A normal day for me consists of doing morning office work for a construction company and a real estate company, then teaching musical theatre classes at Youth Theatre Northwest. And, somewhere in between, some walking of my small and feisty dog, Wally. 

5. Have you ever had to make a choice between work and art? What did you choose, why, and what was the outcome? I have had to make the choice between work and art in the past. I decided to quit my day job as a childcare professional and focus on film, commercial, and theatre work. Shortly after, I booked my first show at Village Theatre, Disney's Beauty and the Beast. It seemed that the universe agreed with my decision. Since then, I have been filling my time between shows with office work and classes, which has worked out quite nicely for me.

"Five Questions" was originally developed by Andy Horwitz of Culturebot.org, an NYC-based website covering contemporary performance.

This week, we've been profiling some of the artists who've helped make July a stunning month for Contemporary Classics, a Seattle-based theatre company dedicated to producing new musicals. Today, we have Diana Huey, who had lead roles in both Zanna, Don't! and The Yellow Wood, which closed last weekend at the Center House Theatre. Diana's also worked with the Village Theatre, 5th Avenue, the Balagan, StageRight Theatre, and Second Story Rep. Later this month, you can catch her in the Village Theatre's In Your Eyes (August 14) and then at the Balagan in their staged production of Joss Whedon's Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog, starting August 20.

1. Where did you grow up, and how did you end up where you are now? I grew up in Mukilteo, just north of Seattle.  Ever since I can remember, music has always been a huge part of my life.  I was always singing--whether it be with my favorite Disney princesses or making up my own songs to accompany my day. I started taking dance classes when I was in preschool and private voice lessons when I was about ten to focus my energy towards my passion of performing. All through grade school I was incredibly active in any form of the performing arts I could fit into my schedule--drama, choir (where I spent most of my free time working as a council member), jazz, barbershop--and my favorite: musical theater.  The high school musicals were the highlight of my high school career.  Playing Eponine in Les Miserables my senior year really solidified my love for musical theater and drove me forward to attend Cornish College of the Arts in Seattle, where I received a BFA in theater with an emphasis in the Performing Arts.  After graduating in 2008, I got accepted into an intensive Acting Internship at the Milwaukee Repertory Theater, where I spent the entire season learning the ins and outs of the professional theater world, performed, and understudied their resident acting company.  Now I'm back home in Seattle and itching to do all the work I can get my hands on!

2. Which performance, song, play, movie, painting, or other work of art had the biggest influence on you and why? Growing up I absolutely loved all the Disney movies.  I appreciated how beautifully they were animated, the stories, the characters--but most of all, the music.  In a way, Disney was my first taste at musical theater. I was so drawn to how the music moved the story forward and explained things in a way that simply speaking couldn't.

3. What skill, talent, or attribute do you most wish you had and why? I kick myself all the time for having quit piano lessons when I was a kid.  My older sister Kathy and I both took piano lessons from a young age--but I found it difficult and after a few years gave up. I regret that decision with all my heart. If there was some way that I could turn back time and have a do-over, I would. I spend some of my free time now practicing on my keyboard at home and hope to someday re-teach myself how to play.... (more)

Recently, I noted the phenomenal work Contemporary Classics, a company dedicated to new musicals, has put on over the month of July. Tonight, Mon., Aug. 2, happens to be the newest edition of their revue of new musical songs, New Voices, performed by the best of Seattle's theatre scene (at ACT Theatre; tickets $15/$20). We're spending the week profiling some of the talented performers who've appeared in their shows.

Today, Daniel Berryman is under the gun. Still in college, where he's majoring in musical theatre at the University of Michigan, Berryman played the lead in The Yellow Wood, which closed this last weekend at the Center House Theatre.

1. Where did you grow up, and how did you end up where you are now? My father works in the theatre. He introduced my sister and I to the theatrical world from an early age, and to the surprise of my mother, we followed in his footsteps. I was born in Texas. When I was six, we moved to the Northwest and eventually found ourselves living in North Seattle. I attended Roosevelt High School and was very involved in their theatre department. Now I'm pursuing a BFA in Musical Theatre from the University of Michigan, and in the fall I'll be studying abroad in London for the semester at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts (LAMDA).

2. Which performance, song, play, movie, painting, or other work of art had the biggest influence on you and why? This is a tough question. I don't think I can site one specific piece of art. However, I can tell you the artist who has made the largest impact on my life. His name is David Wilcox. He is a folk singer-songwriter and guitarist. My father first introduced me to his music. I would play around in our garage while my father worked and we would listen to Wilcox's album Big Horizon day after day. Ever since, the wisdom of Wilcox has pulled me out of my sulk many times. On level with Pixar, David Wilcox is the greatest storyteller I know.

3. What skill, talent, or attribute do you most wish you had and why? I wish I had many things. I wish I could play the piano well enough to sing and play Billy Joel tunes. I wish I could dance in such a way that I would have the chance to work with Twyla Tharp. I wish I had the time to study opera, play soccer, and be a monk. However, there is one attribute I truly wish I had. This desire arises every single time I yawn: To open my mouth as wide as I can, wishing against all hope that I could roar like a lion. Now that would be cool.

4. What do you do to make a living? Describe a normal day. Right now, I'm a full-time student. Thankfully my parents still love me, feed me, and house me. What does my normal day look like? Depending on whether I had a show the previous night, I sleep in. When I wake up I eat breakfast and shower. Then I do some reading on our back deck. Sometimes I'll watch a movie. And in the in between time I prepare for the shows, cabarets, etc. that I have coming up. I'm very fortunate to lead the life I do, and I look forward to the challenges that are no doubt barreling towards me as I write.  ... (more)

Just in over the transom, in response to my review of Seattle Opera's Tristan and Isolde:

Help us out, please!  We've been to many Seattle Opera productions since the '70s and have seen several Israel designs, especially his Ring, so we had some idea of what to expect. Wrong! The singing and orchestral work were of a caliber that made the production a stand-out, but we were totally confused with the set design. What was the red laser light all about? How about the large wrapped "parcels" stage left? We are both trained musicians but, as you stated, listening with eyes closed was a preferred method in this production.

Potential spoilers alert: my response after the jump.... (more)

"This is a terrible thing for a designer to say," Robert Israel is quoted as saying in Seattle Opera Magazine, "but sometimes I just want to listen to the music and close my eyes." By that standard, his design concept for Seattle Opera's Tristan and Isolde (through August 21) succeeds. I did close my eyes at times to better enjoy the production; General Director Speight Jenkins has worked his uncanny casting magic once again.

Seattle Opera's singers and conductor make a feast of Wagner's score, so there's plenty to reward you even if you can't make the concept work. (At curtain, the audience rose for a standing ovation for the vocalists, then a large group turned boo-bird for Israel and director Peter Kazaras's walk-on.) Even the third act--of a long opera--rivets you. Vocally, Clifton Forbis's wounded Tristan suppurates with post-breakup bile, then sinks into a fevered vision of escape. Eaten alive by his need, shame, and self-doubt, he wavers on the edge of oblivion and self-forgiveness.

The remarkably dramatically astute Peter Kazaras can add little to this "disembodied" take on the opera (though his touches in other areas are evident and welcome). Wagner, on the other hand, does not go quietly--or even capitulate at all. Words and music still convey his brooding genius, even as the visual discontinuities accumulate.

Israel rolls the dice with his designs: Seattle Opera's post-modern Rochaix-Israel Ring (with flying carousel horses) is legend--as are the tiny gold soldiers who "marched" in Aida, sucking all the pomp and pageantry out of a triumphal display. At his best, Israel's juxtapositions form new emotional touchstones. When he errs, he professorially forecloses the audience's process, directing them to the correct result.... (more)

Annex fields a large, capable cast for "Her Mother Was Imagination." (Photo: Ian Johnston/Annex Theatre)

Her Mother Was Imagination (at Annex Theatre through August 28), the dystopian satire from local playwright Elizabeth Heffron and collaborators Ellie McKay (director), Max Reichlin, and Daniel Worthington, is at war with many things, one of them being my desire to laugh all the way through the play. It's a fitfully entertaining fever dream, never settling on being either satire that leaves a mark, a timely cautionary tale about the world to come, or an affecting allegory about women's restricted choices.

At $15, you're getting more than your money's worth, except in lumbar support. The play stretches to two and a half hours so that it can fit all its targets in--Beck, LDS, eugenics, climate-change deniers, elderly patriarchs, young men who are dicks, whacked-out revolutionary feminists, subservient artists--but as the play progresses, the satirical impulse that fueled its opening number is sapped by earnestness.

From sketchy scene to scene, the energy level varies, and an unwonted sense of profanely dramatic importance grows, as if Will It Blend had tried works by Margaret Atwood and Mamet. Heffron's knack for dragooning historical figures (see Mitzi's Abortion, New Patagonia) into hilariously effective duty hasn't deserted her, but here her imported personages are made mostly of straw.

A raucous opening pageant retells how the prophet Glenn Beck (complete with mythologizing, homespun song, right out of "The Ballad of Davy Crockett") withdrew from public life as a "TV soldier" to the upper reaches of an empty high-rise (the WaMu tower, apparently). Beck's mask is on top of someone's head (none of the press materials notes who plays what role), so that when the actor's head is lowered, Beck's beady-eyed grin comes at you like a battering ram.... (more)

Yesterday, I wrote about the phenomenal summer season Contemporary Classics has put on, producing or co-producing three contemporary musicals overlapping themselves during the month of July. Over the next week, we're going to be featuring several of the performers making these shows happen.

First up is Sarah Davis, who appeared in Zanna Don't!, which closed at the Rep earlier this month, and is currently playing one of the leads in The Yellow Wood, CC's well-received musical, which finishes its run at the Center House Theatre this weekend (tickets $15-$20). Sarah Davis has also worked with the 5th Avenue and the Village Theatre.

1. Where did you grow up, and how did you end up where you are now? I grew up in Bellevue and started taking voice lessons after joining a girls choir when I was seven. I starting doing theatre when I was ten and never stopped going. I grew up doing the KIDSTAGE program at Village Theatre in Issaquah, which taught me so much about the professional theatre world--it was amazing training. From there I knew I wanted to go to college for musical theater, so I applied and was accepted to The Boston Conservatory. I just graduated this past May with a BFA in Musical Theater. My plan was to go straight to New York, but I am staying locally for a while to do a production at 5th Avenue and hopefully many more!

2. Which performance, song, play, movie, painting, or other work of art had the biggest influence on you and why? I had to opportunity to play the leading role in a Village Theatre Originals show when I was 18 called Terezin, and it was about a working camp during the Holocaust. It was the first professional production I had ever done, and I was taking on a character that was extremely demanding vocally and emotionally. I think this production had the biggest influence on me, because it was the first show that I felt I really grew up in and came into my own as a performer. I dreamed about the show every single night, and though the show did have its lighter moments, it made for some interesting dreams.

3. What skill, talent, or attribute do you most wish you had and why? I don't know exactly what skill or talent I wish I had, but one thing that I wish I had in my life would be softball... I used to play softball seven days a week year-round, but that clearly became difficult with my theatre schedule. If I could, I would play softball all day long and then go to rehearsals every night. That would be a perfect world.... (more)

Alright, so generally speaking, I'm not much of a musical person. I did the entire song-and-dance-number back in high school (the last time I sang and danced in front of an audience, it was "I Sing the Body Electric" from Fame, and frankly, I'd rather hoped to forget the entire experience), but as a writer, musicals just aren't my bailiwick.

That said, it'd be a tragedy if I let July close without calling out Contemporary Classics, who've rocked the month of July with three shows (one co-produced) back-to-back-to-back: Zanna Don't, The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee (currently running in Ballard), and The Yellow Wood (at the Center House Theatre). Plus next week, their semi-annual revue of songs from new and in-development musicals, New Voices, returns to ACT Theatre, where it's played to sold-out houses in the past.

This is all pretty damn good news for a company whose website wasn't even working the last time I briefly previewed New Voices. That's not an insult, mind you, but a sign they're going good places. They were recently profiled in The Stranger, where Brendan Kiley managed only to take issue with how the company's musicals remain in the traditional mode of upbeat Broadway standards.

For my money, that's half the fun of musicals: for all the buzz of fringe-to-mainstream hits like Urinetown or Hedwig, or the much ballyhooed Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson, which sold out the Public in New York this spring and is supposedly headed to Broadway in the near future, I've never been convinced that these shows offer an actual new model for moving forward. Like classical musicals, those all borrow from popular musical styles and incorporate them into a more traditional story. Real innovation in musical theatre has stagnated since Sondheim.

But that said, they're a hell of a lot of fun, and Contemporary Classics, whose tickets are affordable to the non-Broadway ticket-buying crowd are bringing awesome evenings of entertainment to broader audiences. So take advantage of the closing weekend of The Yellow Wood, or the next two weeks of Putnam, and definitely grab your tix to New Voices next week, which is a serious audience fave, and experience musical theatre outside your weekly installment of Glee.

Conductor Asher Fisch

What makes Wagner's opera rise above its origins in the legendary is, of course, the music. It's not that Wagner improved upon the story of a love triangle gone sideways, so much as he put some bass behind it, metaphorically speaking.

Seeking to capture the emotional transport of total infatuation, Wagner spun out a score that's a kind of alternate bubbleverse: The norms of time and space don't apply, and neither does concern for the ethics of who's married to whom.

Director Peter Kazaras

Seattle Opera's site includes videos of conductor Fisch, director Kazaras, and Speight Jenkins, as well as a look at the new set from Robert Israel. UWTV is rerunning a video introduction to the opera I helped create, back in the day, starring the Opera's late education director Perry Lorenzo. "Inside Opera: Tristan and Isolde" is showing ten times from July 30 to August 14, or you can also watch it online.

It was a one-night-only show, so I brought my camera in case you didn't make it. "L'Edition Française," for Bastille Day at the Triple Door, presented new work by Lily Verlaine (The Burlesque Nutcracker), Kitten LaRue (The Atomic Bombshells), and Olivier Wevers (Whim W’Him).

The three choreographers dug into the catalogues of artists such as Serge Gainsbourg, Francoise Hardy, France Gall, Brigitte Bardot, and others, to create an evening of burlesque that ranged in tone from the campy music video, to something like "forgotten" orgy scenes from An American in Paris, to sweaty, oiled-up erotica. That, in conjunction with the Triple Door barman conjuring up a Fernet Branca Negroni (out with the Campari, in with the Fernet!) made for a satisfactorily full-figured evening.

Actor and raconteur Carter Rodriquez goes under the gun with five questions this week, not all of which (I hope) have been answered with complete honesty. Rodriquez has appeared recently in Cafe Nordo, will appear in BASH Theatre's fall show, and is a long-time Freehold Theatre collaborator (including work with the Engaged Theatre Project, which brings shows to Washington State correctional facilities, as well as sponsoring workshops inside). Monday, July 19, his experimental comedy group Le Frenchword performs a pair of shows at the Rendezvous Jewelbox Theatre at 7 and 8:30 p.m.

1. Where did you grow up, and how did you end up where you are now?  I was raised in Fountain, Colorado, a small farming/military stronghold 20 miles south of Colorado Springs. Waaay back in the eighteenhundrend-and-somethings it was going to be the capital of Colorado, but somehow it was blown to smithereens by a dubious railroad-dynamite accident. Literally blew the place off the map. Some say jealous Denverites did it. In 1989 I was a two-time college dropout living in Colorado Springs. I was a small angry fish in a dumb, medium-sized pond. I knew I had to leave, and I had a couple of friends living in Seattle who just couldn't shut the fuck up about how great it is.  I moved here and applied to Cornish but decided to play in rock bands instead.

2. Which performance, song, play, movie, painting, or other work of art had the biggest influence on you and why?  I was probably five or six years old when I first heard "Voodoo Chile (Slight Return)" by Jimi Hendrix. Up until that time, I had only ever heard country and western, ranchera, Lawrence Welk, Christmas carols, and children's music. It blasted my mind into some otherworldly dream zone. The impression it left was so deep that I still have a lingering five-year-old's fever dream feeling when I hear anything from Electric Ladyland.

3. What skill, talent, or attribute do you most wish you had and why? More self-discipline, the lack of which feeds the Demon of Unrealized Potential.... (more)

How unexpected, after all the build-up--the Pulitzer Prize, the Drama Desk award, the Obie, the nine extensions of the run in New York, the first extension here before it had even opened--to find that a play set in Congo's civil war, with Brecht's Mother Courage as an antecedent, directed by the Whoriskey dynamo, meant mainly to deal with the intimate dramas of the heart.

You hear the rewind in the critical responses to Intiman's co-production (with the Geffen Playhouse) of Ruined: when Misha Berson calls it "a throwback to the 'well-made play'" or Brendan Kiley notes the "result is more Tennessee Williams than Brecht, a drama of emotions and relationships." You walk in prepared for sociopolitical outrage, steeled against theatres of cruelty, but are met instead by a story about the deeply, daily human hunger for an understanding touch.

That's not to say that what I expected to see wasn't there--insane brutality, rape and murder, prostitution, hunger, military gamesmanship, larcenies across the scale--but that the horror did not become a horror show. Playwright Lynn Nottage remains in constant step with her characters, living with their concerns. There is no grand scheme into which this all fits, for them. They don't live in History, or in tragic CNN clips: it's just life, and what you do to live.

Secondly, I was surprised by the workaday lyricism of Nottage's people. Removed in time and space, they're kin to Sean O'Casey's inventive Irish, caught up in Troubles beyond anyone's control, but speaking of it (whether with an almost-musical phrase or in anguished rant) with the faith that surely another human being would listen, would care to hear.... (more)

Ezra Dickinson of The Offshore Project, choreographed by Rainbow Fletcher, one of the participants in to 2010-2011 A.W.A.R.D. Show at OtB in January. Photo by Sean Johnson.

This morning, the list of 12 companies performing in the second Seattle A.W.A.R.D Show at On the Boards in January 2011 were announced, and it's, well, interesting. The backstory of the A.W.A.R.D. Show (which stands for "Artists with Audiences Responding to Dance") is that it was founded in NYC in 2005 by choreographer Neta Pulvermacher to have a new sort of dance laboratory and a new way of engaging audiences. The Joyce Theatre eventually partnered with them and a big cash grant ($10,000) was thrown on top, which is awarded (in part) by audience vote. Last year, the program expanded nationally to include about a half dozen cities including Seattle, where Boeing underwrote the prize grant.

Critics have long held that it's degrading to the artists to engage in a reality TV-style competition that risks encouraging them to appeal to the lowest common denominator to win, while supporters have pointed out that really, it's not so different from the normal process of giving out artistic development grants, but just makes it more public.

This year, the stakes have been increased in a very interesting way. While the 12 entries include a number of prominent contemporary dance artists--Zoe Scofield, Marissa Rae Niederhauser, Ellie Sandstrom, and Olivier Wevers' Whim W'Him returning for a second go--the line-up also include at least two artists/companies working in the cabaret vein: Cherdonna and Lou (dancers Ricki Mason and Jody Kuehner) and the real wildcard, boylesque star Waxie Moon (Marc Kenison).... (more)

Photos: Erik Stuhaug

Where were you when you heard about Matthew Shepard? It's haunting to watch The Laramie Project, over a decade after the play was "ripped from the headlines."

It's haunting because it doesn't feel like ten years ago--the play parachutes you right back into the aftermath. The half-alive body has been found. People are shocked by the brutality, outraged by insinuations, struggling to make sense of the attackers' motivations...and some are trying to appropriate the attack for their own ends. It's as timeless as any Greek play.

Strawberry Workshop Theatre's production of The Laramie Project (through August 7) takes a rugged, spare approach that suits the play's spirit. The set is plain: a desk, a couch, some chairs. Against the back wall is a strip of aging newspapers that video projections play against. John Osebold delivers a lonesome, chiming score that seems to have vast Wyoming nights hidden between notes. The rest is funny, harrowing, thoughtful, and stirring.

Just five weeks after Matthew Shepard was beaten and left to die, tied to a ranch fence outside Laramie, Wyoming, Moisés Kaufmann and the Tectonic Theater Project traveled to the town of 27,000 and interviewed residents. They'd eventually spend a year collecting interviews. At the end, those  conversations, diaries of Tectonic Theater members, and court records were pieced together to form a mosaic of Laramie.... (more)

Actress Gina Marie Russell, who recently won praise as part of the ensemble cast of Marya Sea Kaminski's Condo Millennium, appears in Greenstage's Shakespeare in the Park production of As You Like It, at multiple locations around the region including this weekend's Seattle Outdoor Theatre Festival on Saturday and Sunday.

1. Where did you grow up,and how did you end up where you are now? I grew up here in Seattle, but honestly never thought I would still be living here at this point in my life. I had big plans to go away for college...but those fell through. And then I was going to move away right after graduation...but that didn't happen either. Once I graduated from college I very quickly started getting cast in fringe theatres around Seattle and so far, it just hasn't seemed like the right time to move. I do plan on heading to New York in about a year, but even that is subject to change dependent on the theatre world.

2. Which performance, song, play, movie, painting, or other work of art had the biggest influence on you and why? Seriously, the hardest question ever. I honestly have no idea. I remember seeing Les Miserables at the 5th Avenue Theatre when I was a kid and falling in love with it, but I don't really think that was super formative....  If I had to choose, I would probably say it was the very first play I ever did that had the most influence on me. But don't ask me what that was (something at Studio East in Kirkland during spring break when I was in fourth grade--so that's 1994, people who are trying to do the math). I finished that week-long process telling everyone that asked "I'm going to be an actress when I grow up" and legitimately meaning it. That sounds so stupid though....... (more)

Actress and writer Kenna M. Kettrick, a graduate of Seattle University, works at Seattle Public Theatre and co-runs theatre review site The Broadway Hour, in addition to performing with groups like The Sugerplum Elves. Starting this weekend, she will be appearing in the Balagan Theatre's Greetings from Styx, a collection of six original shorts that's playing the theatre in the park circuit.

1. Where did you grow up, and how did you end up where you are now? I'm a Seattle native--right now I'm back living in the same house I spent my childhood in, actually. Artistically, I really grew up at Seattle Public Theater through the youth drama program; during high school I did several shows a year at that little theater on Greenlake, and honestly all the basics of my theatrical knowledge were gained there. I went to Seattle University fully intending to not major in theater...I actually tried, but I couldn't get away from it. When I was cast in my first show there, I realized that this was what I wanted to do more than anything else, and it was only hindering me to pretend otherwise--so I happily gave in! Where I am now is an extension of that: I graduated last year, and have been auditioning and working all over Seattle--a bloody and historical puppet show last fall, stage managing a musical this spring, Balagan's Greetings from Styx for the summer.

2. Which performance, song, play, movie, painting, or other work of art had the biggest influence on you and why? If I have to pick just one influence that started me on this life, it would be Shakespeare. My first full performance was as Phoebe in As You Like It when I was eleven, and I completely fell in love with Shakespeare during middle school--performing plays, studying them, anything. Although I could count many things that influence me now--specific poems, two or three stunning theater pieces I've seen, Doctor Who--Shakespeare is still really important to me. Few productions get me more artistically and academically enraged than Shakespeare productions I don't like, and Shakespeare done beautifully and truly will always make me beyond thrilled. It's like going back to geek childhood, in a way.

3. What skill, talent, or attribute do you most wish you had and why? Nearly every day I wish I were a better musician--I love music and playing music and jamming with people, but I never stuck with the instruments I learned in grade school, and I'm not that good at playing anything (besides my voice, and some percussive stuff, which I like). I'm slowly working on changing that, though! I also want to collect as many circus skills as possible so that I can run away and join a circus someday (this is my not-so-secret dream). I'm becoming moderately competent at aerial acrobatics, which I started last year and adore; next on my list to learn are juggling and playing with fire....

4. What do you do to make a living? Describe a normal day. A normal day depends on which day of the week you pick--I have two jobs and am starting an internship at ACT this August. I work at Seattle Public Theater as the registrar for the youth drama program, and general administrative assistant. A normal day there during the summer is waking up early to register kids for the first day of class (if the normal day is a Monday), then back to the office for processing registrations, talking to parents, coordinating various aspects of the youth program, prepping for SPT season callbacks, and reading/answering/writing lots and lots of email. It's a job of coordinating many things, and I love it (especially when I watch the students' productions, which are, quite honestly, consistently awesome). I also work part-time on the waterfront checking people in at a cruise line; a normal day there is insanely hectic, but once in a while highly entertaining, and it helps pay off student loans.

5. Have you ever had to make a choice between work and art? What did you choose, why, and what was the outcome? I think my life is going to always be a choice between work and art, though I hope that sometimes they can be the same choice. My overall life choice is art, because that's the choice I have to make for myself. But I'm also well aware that very few people can make a living on the stage, and that I am always going to have to supplement theatrical work with other work that can pay the bills. I'm lucky right now in that one of my paying jobs is related to theater, and that I am able to make the time to perform in shows and continue my artistic career. The goal is to keep making the choices that lead to more theater and art--always!... (more)