Category: Audio Play

I’m watching the first act of Sandbox Radio LIVE!: “Swing Time”, which we will be performing live tomorrow at ACT in downtown Seattle, but will also be broadcasting via podcast as soon as we sweeten the sound.

I can relax a little for the moment because my two bits aren’t until act two.  As per usual, I’m Sam in episode 12 of Markheim, but I also got drafted as a concessions vendor in our staging of the classic baseball balladry, “Casey at the Bat”.

There’s an intense ambient confusion to late process rehearsals—cue-to-cues and dress runs, etc.—that I find deeply unnerving, even though as a playwright I usually had absolutely zero responsibilities. Amidst the tumult, I am grateful for directors in a way I usually don’t admit to. I recall, at these times, my deep admiration for anyone who can handle chaos—indeed choreograph it— with expertise and élan. Two names leap to mind, Leslie Law, the director and producer of Sandbox Radio, and John Langs, who directed the Seattle premiere of my play Louis Slotin Sonata and the world premiere of The Sequence, my staging of the real-life race to decode the human genome. I offer you this memory of John, utterly out of context to protect the innocent and guilty alike, after having sat through 10 hours of tech as cool as a cucumber, then suddenly shouting: “Would someone please muzzle that fucking dog!”  The show’s mascot Jack Russell Terrier had apparently rubbed John’s last nerve raw.

For now, I get to sit and blog to you, gentle reader, about how much I love Juliette Pruzan’s particular whimsy, which you’ll be able to witness yourself in her original piece, “Swing Time Swing Set” written especially for this show, and performed with delight by Seanjohn Walsh, Kathryn Van Meter, Amy Bush and others. I pride myself on knowing where the laughs will come in a new work.  I’m not always right, but I can assure you there are plenty in this one. Probably some you’ll surprise us with when you come see tomorrow.

If you haven’t already, get your tix here.