Tag: locally grown plays

Saturday Morning Cartoons LIVE!

October 20, 2014
Death of an Institution
You may not have noticed, but just a few weeks ago a beloved American institution died the death of a ragdoll; and no less of an American institution itself than The Washington Post announced the passing in its recent article “Saturday Morning Cartoons are No More.” The Post lamented the last holdout:

This past Saturday, the CW became the last broadcast television network to cut Saturday morning cartoons. The CW is replacing its Saturday cartoon programming, called “The Vortexx,” with “One Magnificent Morning,” a five-hour bloc of non-animated TV geared towards teens and their families.

Those of us who remember the age of three and only three networks, also recall fondly that, once upon a time the only way you could watch animated cartoons was to wake up on Saturday morning and catch what ABC, NBC or CBS had on offer. Here is what a typical Saturday line up looked like when I was my son Keelans’ age. It includes classics like Bugs Bunny and Woody Woodpecker mixed in with more circa 70’s fair, like The Scooby Doo/Dynamutt Hour, and a personal favorite, Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids, which came on so late, 12 noon, that my mom was usually hectoring me by that time to get outside because I had already wasted too much of “perfectly nice day” watching that “idiot box.”
“But Mom! It’s Fat Albert!”
Birth of an Institution
Happily, theatre—as specifically embodied by director/producer Jim Jewell— did not let the tradition of Saturday morning cartoons go gently into the good night. Instead, Jewell saw the demise coming, and made a plan to fill the gap with short plays written by teams of local Northwest playwrights and their kids. “Saturday mornings used to belong to kids,” says Jewell. “I remember waiting all week for that one day I could binge on cartoons for hours. So, we wanted to try and create that same feeling with some fun live theater, and what better way to understand what kind of art kids want to see than engaging them in the creation of it?”
The results of Jewell’s brainstorm will be making their world premiere over three Saturdays this November, at the Pocket Theatre [http://thepocket.org/] on Phinney Ridge in Seattle.
My sons, Declan and Keelan, and I teamed up to write “Magical Man and the Space Needle of Hideousness”, just one episode in the continuing adventures of Magical Man and his million-plus year sojourn in our paltry four palpable dimensions.

MAGICAL MAN: I call myself Magical Man. Yeah, I know it sounds stupid, but I can’t say my actual name in your universe. There aren’t enough dimensions.

I’ve been in your world for one million very, VERY boring years.

Today I will do what I have waited all those years to accomplish. Confront Roger Wickersham, bring him to justice for his transgressions. . . .

It certainly doesn’t hurt that Cody Smith and Samuel Hagen will be staring as Magical Man and Roger Wickersham, Evil PhD, respectively.
Other playwright/kid combinations include:
- “Don’t Touch That Dial!” by Penelope Venturini and Marcy Rodenborn
- “Roderick Saves the World (or at least the Day)” by Finn Judd and Maria Glanz
- “Feline Fitness” by Olivia and Jim Jewell
- “The Family Jynx” by Jack and Joe Zavadil
The plays will be brought to life by a talented ensemble, including Val Brunetto, Sam Hagen, D’Arcy Harrison, Cole Hornaday, Kacey Shiflet, and Cody Smith, with a special guest appearance by Paul Shipp. Co-directed by Shawn Belyea and Jim Jewell.
Here are the details broken out real simple like:
What?     Saturday Morning Cartoons – Live!
Who?     B-Sides & Rarities, a Partner Project of The 14/48 Projects, in association with Pocket Theater
Where?    The Pocket Theater, 8312 Greenwood Ave N
When?     November 8, 15, 22 @ 10:30am
How?     Tickets for Saturday Morning Cartoons are available at The Pocket Theater website (http://thepocket.org/see/) and are $10 adults/$5 kids online (or $14/$7 at the door). Seating is general admission and all children MUST be accompanied by an adult
Parents, I promise you a good time will be had by all!
Posted at 1:40 PM in 14/48, Locally Grown Plays, Seattle, Television, Theatre, Theatre News, Towards a World Class Theatre, Whole Theatre | Comments (0)

Tags: children's theatre, Cody Smith, Cole Hornaday, D’Arcy Harrison, Don’t Touch That Dial!, Fat Albert, Feline Fitness, Jim Jewell, Joe Zavadil Val Brunetto, Kacey Shiflet, locally grown plays, Marcy Rodenborn, Paul Shipp, Penelope Venturini, Roderick Saves the World (or at least the Day) Maria Glanz, Sam Hagen, Saturday Morning Cartoons, Shawn Belyea, The Family Jynx, Theatre
Off Written

July 16, 2013

But you can’t write off a writer much
as you’d like. We do as we seek, please
as we might: trees, ideas, people!
When we fail you breathe, and watch, you’ll see:
love-lighted, we’re always coming
for you, though — true — benighted we be.
I feel you though: be nice to have some quiet.
Plenty of that though, fear nought, where we’re headed,
always together, writers each, off and oft, you and we.

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Tags: children's theatre, Cody Smith, Cole Hornaday, D’Arcy Harrison, Don’t Touch That Dial!, Fat Albert, Feline Fitness, Jim Jewell, Joe Zavadil Val Brunetto, Kacey Shiflet, locally grown plays, Marcy Rodenborn, Paul Shipp, Penelope Venturini, Roderick Saves the World (or at least the Day) Maria Glanz, Sam Hagen, Saturday Morning Cartoons, Shawn Belyea, The Family Jynx, Theatre
A Bountiful Fall Harvest for Seattle’s Locally Grown

September 7, 2012
Seattle’s scene for locally grown plays has always been stronger than your average mid-sized city’s, but anything good is worth fighting to make better. That’s why I mouthed off over two and a half years ago with an essay titled “Theatre takes Place: Why Locally Grown Plays Matter”. I listed some bullet points explaining why the development of new plays is so crucial to the health of any great theatre scene:
- “Local actors evolve a better understanding of how their contribution … can be generative as well as interpretive.
- “Local audiences evolve a better understanding of how plays get made and how they can participate in the process….
- “Local funders evolve a better understanding of their roles as patrons of the arts…
- “Local funders, artists, and administrators …[can see] the development of plays as actual investments, with the potential to pump profits back to Seattle in several ways.”
- I even complained that the then recently introduced TPS Gregory Awards had a category for “outstanding director” but none for playwright, a blunder since rectified.
Mouthing off is fun, but theatre is a collaborative art form. Unless others join the fray it isn’t much more than meaningless monologue. Happily, the last few years have shown just how much a modest city can grow as a theatre town when a group of motivated professionals put their collective mind to it. For instance, last year A Contemporary Theatre finally took another chance on a local playwright by producing Yussef El Guindi’s Pilgrims Musa and Sheri in the New World. The gamble paid off big-time: El Guindi won The Harold and Mimi Steinberg/ATCA New Play Award (plus the $25,000 that comes with it), and American Theatre Magazine just published the script in its current September 2012 issue.
Keri Healey’s new play Torso, produced by Printer’s Devil Theater, mesmerized everyone I know who saw it. I suspect it is no coincidence that Keri has been short-listed for a Stranger Genius Award this year. Torso recently doubled down on local impact with its currently running second production on Orcas Island.
These are just two stand-out success stories from many. And this fall promises another bountiful harvest of locally grown new theatre. Again, just to name and explain a few (with a promise to blog separately on some as they come closer):
14/48 outdoors for the first time ever
A few weeks ago I raved about the glorious gamble the 14/48 steering committee was then making by staging their first “Kamikaze” festival, but this weekend they are amping up their Summer of Risk by staging the instant theatre festival outdoors for the first time in their 15 year history. Tickets are free (also a new twist) so it’s hard to see how you could afford to miss it. (More info here.)
The Betty Plays
Beloved local actor Betty Campbell doesn’t get around as easily as she used to, so five local playwrights, myself included, wrote four short plays tailored to her unique and extraordinary talents. This special Theater Schmeater offering is the sort of one-of-a-kind live experience that only happens in Seattle. (Click here for more information and here for reservations.)
NCTC’s Foreclosure by Vince Delaney
One of Seattle’s hottest acting ensembles workshops one of Seattle’s hottest playwrights, as he tackles an issue facing Americans nationwide There aren’t many performances scheduled for this pre-world premiere, so you better reserve early.
Sandbox Radio Live!
1. The podcast from Episode 5: “An Unexpected Twist” recently dropped. (A blog on that to come.)
2. A “Best Of” show kicked ass at Bumbershoot! (Check out this review.)
3. And Episode 6: “Something Wicked This Way” is coming very soon: October 1 at West of Lenin.
Why is Sandbox Radio Live! so important to Seattle’s locally grown theatre movement? Because it happens every quarter and every quarter it gets better. Because nearly every play, poem or commercial is written by top local playwrights and performed by top local actors. Because it is fresh local “produce” at its best and most consistent.
Custom Made Plays
In my opinion this may just be the most exciting new wrinkle in Seattle’s locally grown scene, and not just because I have the good fortune of being the inaugural playwright. Brainchild of local actress Rebecca Olson, the Custom Made Play Project is dedicated to matching Pacific Northwest playwrights with local actors to develop and produce new plays of regional significance. In my case, after interviewing my collaborating actors, Ms. Olson and Hana Lass, I tailor-made the soon-to-world- premiere Ballard House Duet to their unique talents and qualities. Because of that, I am painting with colors I have never used before, and I’m loving it. The resulting script simply would not exist were it not for these unique one-on-one collaborations. That fact excites me.
Here’s another fact: Seattle is the best city in the country—maybe even the world— for locally grown theatre. And we are only getting better and better at growing it. As you can see from the small sampling above, it’s going to be an awesome autumn harvest. It makes you wonder what next winter, spring and summer will bring.
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Tags: children's theatre, Cody Smith, Cole Hornaday, D’Arcy Harrison, Don’t Touch That Dial!, Fat Albert, Feline Fitness, Jim Jewell, Joe Zavadil Val Brunetto, Kacey Shiflet, locally grown plays, Marcy Rodenborn, Paul Shipp, Penelope Venturini, Roderick Saves the World (or at least the Day) Maria Glanz, Sam Hagen, Saturday Morning Cartoons, Shawn Belyea, The Family Jynx, Theatre
Two Names of Perfect Proof

April 2, 2012

I have six words for the Seattle Big House Artistic Director that stood up two years ago at the Outrageous Fortune discussion and said about local playwrights, “We are looking for excellence and just not finding it.”
Keri Healey and Yussef El Guindi
(Of course, I have many many more words than that, but those are all I need for my perfect proof.)
Congratulations Keri and Yussef! You inspire us. And congratulations Seattle, for having undeniably World Class playwrights in your midst.

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Tags: children's theatre, Cody Smith, Cole Hornaday, D’Arcy Harrison, Don’t Touch That Dial!, Fat Albert, Feline Fitness, Jim Jewell, Joe Zavadil Val Brunetto, Kacey Shiflet, locally grown plays, Marcy Rodenborn, Paul Shipp, Penelope Venturini, Roderick Saves the World (or at least the Day) Maria Glanz, Sam Hagen, Saturday Morning Cartoons, Shawn Belyea, The Family Jynx, Theatre
Long Live Living Newspapers!

February 3, 2012

When The Stranger asked me at the end of the year what my biggest regret of 2011 was, I said:

I regret that due to limited resources, we had to mothball NewsWrights United prior to the Occupy movement blowing up, because I would have really liked to cover that in a living newspaper. Adjacent to that is my regret that none of the big houses in Seattle (or small, for that matter) saw fit to include making topical theatre, based on events happening right here right now, as part of their regular programming this year.

Well, shade my regret mitigated by the news from across the pond that my former playwriting student German Munoz has organized a living newspaper about the Occupy movement called The Occupied Times. After spending a month researching and visiting the Occupy sites in London, emerging playwrights will present a night of short plays in the format of a living newspaper. They will act as reporters and cast a critical eye on the Occupy movement, its supporters and detractors, all under the Arcola Tent.
And color me even more vividly gratified when I saw that the project gave Seattle a shout-out in their press release: “This project was inspired by It’s not in the P-I: A living Newspaper about a Dying Newspaper presented in Seattle in 2009 as a response to the closing of The Seattle Post-Intelligencer newspaper by Newswrights United.”
Not surprisingly, The Occupied Times seems to be garnering the same sort of media excitement that the two living newspapers NewsWrights United produced in 2009 and 2011. The London Evening Standard ran a preview of the piece and quoted my friend German thusly:

We want the show to explore sides of the movement that have not been heard. We’re hoping to reach people of all ages who feel they’ve made up their minds about the Occupy movement. People who either think of the protesters as a bunch of lazy hippies who don’t want to get a job, or see them as martyrs fighting the good fight against a system that is unbearably corrupt. Of course neither of these are completely true, and we want to show audiences our responses as artists and help them make up their own minds.

I heartily encourage my friends in London to check out this fresh, locally grown theatre inspired in the crucible of the right here and the right now. Here’s the show info:

Six Degrees Productions presents . . .

The Occupied Times: A living newspaper
about the Occupy movement

Venue: Arcola Tent, 2-8 Ashwin Street, London, E8 3DL

Date: Sunday 19 February, 2012

Time: 3:00pm and 7:00pm

Ticket prices: £12 (£10)

Venue Box Office: 020 7503 1646 or http://www.arcolatheatre.com

For all enquiries and ticket requests, please contact: German Munoz of Six Degrees Productions on 07854 231 085 or g@germanmunoz.com

And as for my friends in Seattle, do you ever wonder why the Big Houses haven’t picked up such a wildly popular and media magnetizing idea? Well, in fairness, maybe they will now that it is being done in London, one of the two officially approved cities for sourcing new plays.

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Tags: children's theatre, Cody Smith, Cole Hornaday, D’Arcy Harrison, Don’t Touch That Dial!, Fat Albert, Feline Fitness, Jim Jewell, Joe Zavadil Val Brunetto, Kacey Shiflet, locally grown plays, Marcy Rodenborn, Paul Shipp, Penelope Venturini, Roderick Saves the World (or at least the Day) Maria Glanz, Sam Hagen, Saturday Morning Cartoons, Shawn Belyea, The Family Jynx, Theatre
Sandbox Radio Live: Episode Two- "Horror Show"

November 22, 2011

Episode Two of Sandbox Radio is now available on iTunes chocked full of Halloween offerings for your listening delight and convenience. Here’s what you’ll find.
Act 1
@1:50 “The Hands of a Girl” by Ki Gottberg
@21:15 “The Back of the 358 #1” by Paul Mullin
@22:35 “Markheim: Episode 2” by Paul Mullin
@37:40 “The Back of the 358 #2” by Paul Mullin
@39:10 “The Black Cat” adapted from the story by Edgar Allen Poe.

Act 2
@0:37 “PSA: Hanford Challenge” by Elizabeth Heffron
@3:45 “Madame Flora” by K. Brian Neel
@9:32 “The Request” by Vincent Delaney
@21:50 “The Back of the 358 #3” by Paul Mullin
@23:25 “Pipe Play” by Elizabeth Heffron
@43:02 Finale/Credits. Music Director: Jose Gonzales

(Sandbox Radio Live: Horror Show, was recorded at West of Lenin on October 10, 2011. The show was engineered by Christopher Stewart, mixed by Dave Pascal and Rob Witmer, and directed by Leslie Law.)

For you true Markheim geeks I’m including the script of Episode Two below the fold. Enjoy it while you can, ‘cuz “Things can always get uglier, right?”
(more…)

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Tags: children's theatre, Cody Smith, Cole Hornaday, D’Arcy Harrison, Don’t Touch That Dial!, Fat Albert, Feline Fitness, Jim Jewell, Joe Zavadil Val Brunetto, Kacey Shiflet, locally grown plays, Marcy Rodenborn, Paul Shipp, Penelope Venturini, Roderick Saves the World (or at least the Day) Maria Glanz, Sam Hagen, Saturday Morning Cartoons, Shawn Belyea, The Family Jynx, Theatre
Hawking Whole Theatre at “What’s Next?”

October 24, 2011

Last night I joined a small but extremely energized group of theatre professionals at the second iteration of “Seattle Theatre: What’s Next?” hosted by Jim Jewell and Peggy Gannon. I want to talk more about what was discussed and what action items came out of that discussion, but I think I will wait until Jim publishes the official minutes. Until then, here’s a transcript of the three minute spiel that I was asked to give on what’s currently exciting me about Seattle Theatre:
Whole Theatre
Be careful what you wish for, sure. But when it comes to Seattle Theater, it’s also wise to be specific what you wish for. For a good while now Seattle’s Big House theatres have been gradually increasing the percentage of local actors they hire. And rightfully they have then touted this change as a noble step in the direction of locally grown theatre. But let’s be honest. We all know one of two things happened. Either the artistic administrators of Seattle’s Big Houses all got together in a room and decided, “Hey, we should do the right thing and hire more local actors.” Or… they all independently realized that in the current depression it was becoming cost prohibitive to fly in every actor from New York or LA. I’ll leave it to you to decide which scenario seems more plausible. But look, when a good thing happens it’s churlish to over-analyze the reasons for it.
The problem is that using local actors isn’t enough. And so when we advocate for locally grown theatre, we need to be more specific… Whole Theatre. Theatre that is soup to nuts local: written by local talent in collaboration with local talent. Zero degrees of separation among everyone from the playwright to the director to the designers to the actors to the audiences.
Zero degrees of separation.
If what I am proposing sounds radical or overly ambitious, consider this: we do it all the time. In fact, if I can brag a little, as a playwright and an actor, I have done very little in the last five years that hasn’t been Whole Theatre. Going back to 2006, there was the Empty Space production of Louis Slotin Sonata. When the floor needed final painting, Allison Narver was there in jeans, helping designer Gary Smoot to finish it. I’m trying to picture one of Seattle’s Big House artistic directors doing that. To be fair, I’m sure there are union rules against it.
Then there was The Ten Thousand Things, which Washington Ensemble Theatre produced. I sat in a room with the director and the designer Etta Lilienthal talking through her sketches. Later, I sat in the theatre while audience members rewrote my play one word each performance.
And most recently there was Newswrights United producing two living newspapers, researched, written and produced by Seattleites, about Seattleites, for Seattleites.
And of course it’s not just stuff I’m working on. There’s the incomparable 14/48, perhaps the most consistently exciting weekend of theatre in town. All local actors, directors, designers and crew mixing it up on plays written by local playwrights in the space of maybe ten hours, tops.
There’s Printer’s Devil, opening yet another Scot Augustson world premiere, Shadow Odyssey in their unique committed relationship with him.
There’s Sandbox Radio which just staged its second all original slate of short pieces, combining some of Seattle’s best actors with the best playwrights and musicians.
And right on the horizon is Rebecca Olson’s new project Custom Made Plays, commissioning local playwrights to write for specific local actors. I’m happy to be the playwright on the pilot play, writing for Rebecca herself and Hana Lass.
Whole Theatre. Theatre that hasn’t had the yummy good-for-you stuff processed out of it. Non-corporate theatre that ain’t stale from being packaged three years ago in a theatre scene 2,700 miles away by MFA’s who have never stepped foot in your town. Whole Theatre. Seattle’s crawling with it. And surely it gives us the most solid shot at World Class.
(I want to do a version of the poster that says Enjoy Whole Theatre! Or as Shakespeare, Molière and Chekhov called it, “Theatre.”)

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Tags: children's theatre, Cody Smith, Cole Hornaday, D’Arcy Harrison, Don’t Touch That Dial!, Fat Albert, Feline Fitness, Jim Jewell, Joe Zavadil Val Brunetto, Kacey Shiflet, locally grown plays, Marcy Rodenborn, Paul Shipp, Penelope Venturini, Roderick Saves the World (or at least the Day) Maria Glanz, Sam Hagen, Saturday Morning Cartoons, Shawn Belyea, The Family Jynx, Theatre
Sandbox Radio – Worth the Wait

July 27, 2011

A bunch of us founded the Sandbox Artists Collective a few years ago “as a place for mid-career artists to explore their craft in the company of their peers.” Unlike most assemblages of show folk, the Sandboxers weren’t in any hurry to produce publicly as a group. Most of us were already performing, writing and/or producing professionally elsewhere. We were not, however, completely quiet in our first years, hosting salons, like “Playground” in which four Sandbox playwrights wrote specifically for Sandbox actors. Finally, however— and fully to the credit of Leslie Law’s leadership— the membership felt the urge to share what happens when we put our collective mind into putting on a show. The result was last month’s Sandbox Radio Live, Episode 1, available now in podcast here.
On an individual artist’s note, Sandbox Radio Live has given me the opportunity and motivation to finally flesh out a project I have been percolating since high school. For all that time, all I knew was that I wanted to wright a nasty noir angel detective saga. Now you can listen to the first chapter of Markheim on the podcast, with the incomparable Charles Leggett starring in the title role of the reluctant semi-heavenly gumshoe. Below the fold I am posting the script in case you want to follow along.
And be sure to attend the next episode of Sandbox Radio Live on Monday, October 10th at West of Lenin, the fabulous new theatre space in Fremont, when Markheim adjusts to life in the strange city of Seattle, and begins his search for the reasons that brought him here. Special appearance by the fellow that Jesus Christ Himself once called “the Prince of the World.”
(more…)

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Tags: children's theatre, Cody Smith, Cole Hornaday, D’Arcy Harrison, Don’t Touch That Dial!, Fat Albert, Feline Fitness, Jim Jewell, Joe Zavadil Val Brunetto, Kacey Shiflet, locally grown plays, Marcy Rodenborn, Paul Shipp, Penelope Venturini, Roderick Saves the World (or at least the Day) Maria Glanz, Sam Hagen, Saturday Morning Cartoons, Shawn Belyea, The Family Jynx, Theatre
Curtain Speech for FourPlay – June 11, 2010

June 14, 2010

So often the direction of my words is page to stage that when I had this opportunity to go the other way, I could not pass it up. So without further introduction, here, transcribed, is the curtain speech I gave for last Friday night’s performance of FourPlay: original works penned by four of Seattle’s emerging playwrights. (I am also including a link to the sound file at the end of this post, so that you listen to the actual speech if you care to.)

Hi everybody. My name is Paul Mullin and I’m a playwright here in Seattle. And I asked permission to record my little speech to you here tonight. I hope that’s okay with you guys. (I’ll set that right there. I hope I don’t walk on it. … I better pull out my notes.)

First of all, if you have a cell phone please turn it off. Especially in a place this small we can even hear like the little bleeps and bloops. It’s just distracting to everybody involved. So thanks for that.

So Jesse Putnam—and I think he’s here—there he is—is the producer of this piece, and about, I don’t know how many months ago (he’s a former student of mine) he wrote me an email and said, “You know, Paul, I want to produce some theatre. I got the itch. I’m thinking about some Pinter plays, or I’m thinking about maybe producing just all new work by emerging playwrights. What do you think I should do?” And before I could even get back to him he wrote me and said, “I decided I’m going to go with doing the four new playwrights.” Which was what I was going to tell him to do. So good choice.

And with that in mind, thank you for being here. You are on the right side of what is right now a very important and pretty avidly fought struggle for the heart and soul of theatre here in Seattle. Basically there [are] two camps. One camp thinks that theatre is so precious that it needs to be preserved at any cost. And then there’s another camp that thinks that theatre doesn’t need any preservation at all. It just needs perpetration. Because theatre will always survive. It’ll even survive these humiliating, soul-sucking, debilitating attempts of the first camp to preserve it. It’ll survive productions of Glengarry Glen Ross dressed up as a cogent response to the recent mortgage meltdown when the play’s not about that at all and the ironic fact is the recent mortgage meltdown that so drastically affected our country had its epicenter about a mile that way [pointing west] at the WaMu Tower in downtown Seattle. It’ll survive productions of plays called Rock and Roll set in London and Czechoslovakia, when rock and roll was born in America and the most recent, most important wave of rock and roll had its epicenter in… Seattle.

So theatre doesn’t need preservation. Trying to preserve theatre is like yelling at a bunch of kids to “Have Fun!” We just have to produce theatre, because theatre is produce. And you can freeze it, and you can can it, and you can genetically modify it so that it has a really long shelf life and can survive distant trips from places like New York and London but we all know that produce is best when it’s fresh and it’s local and it’s organic, like the theatre you’re going to see tonight.

So if you think what you’re about to see is precious, I would say you should probably just go home, because they just made it. It’s straight out of the still. It hasn’t aged in an oak cask. Okay? And if you’re here because you think what you’re about to see is important, I gotta ask you, how would you know that? They just made it. In fact … no one will know if what you see tonight is important for so long that by the time they know, it won’t be important anymore. So it’s a lot like life like that. Was today important to you? How do you know? What you know is that you lived through it. And it was important in that, right? And you’re going to live through this… hopefully.

And I hope you enjoy it.

FourPlay Curtain Speech – June 11, 2010 by Paul Mullin

Posted at 1:40 PM in 14/48, Locally Grown Plays, Seattle, Television, Theatre, Theatre News, Towards a World Class Theatre, Whole Theatre | Comments (0)

Tags: children's theatre, Cody Smith, Cole Hornaday, D’Arcy Harrison, Don’t Touch That Dial!, Fat Albert, Feline Fitness, Jim Jewell, Joe Zavadil Val Brunetto, Kacey Shiflet, locally grown plays, Marcy Rodenborn, Paul Shipp, Penelope Venturini, Roderick Saves the World (or at least the Day) Maria Glanz, Sam Hagen, Saturday Morning Cartoons, Shawn Belyea, The Family Jynx, Theatre
Notes from a Pure Success

May 13, 2010
This past Monday night the Sandbox Artists Collective held its Spring Salon, An Ensemble Playground, with member actors reading short plays that member playwrights had written specifically for them, with an added twist that each playwright had to use seven of ten words assigned by another participating playwright. I know that the trope “honor and pleasure” gets thrown around a lot, but in this case, my experience of being the member sponsor for this salon was unequivocally both, and you can add “thrill” and a “joy” to the mix, since the whole process reminded me a bit of childhood Christmases, when making presents ran a close second to the fun of opening them.
I jotted some notes which I share with you here, mostly roughhewn:
Preshow
- People are wandering in, enjoying the food, wine and cookies. Some Sandboxers, but other folks too, including– god help us all!– young people interested in fresh and locally grown plays.
- 7:10, everyone is still eating, drinking, chatting, playing pinball machines and getting to know one another, which was the primary intent of this salon so I’m reluctant to get things started.
Play One
- Anita Montgomery’s “The Ties that Bind”
- Early it dawns that Leslie Law and Peter Dylan O’Connor are playing sister and brother, and it’s perfect. Not only do they convincingly look the parts but their interaction is laced with that particular pain that only a brother and sister grown apart suffer.
- Is this great acting, great writing, great casting? Well, the writing essentially is the casting, so . . .
- Fold in Dave Natale as the palpably estranged step-brother, again pitch perfect, and the brilliance builds, blissfully untraceable to any single artist in the process, the way great theatre should be?
Play Two
- Ki Gottberg’s “Felt”
- Leaps straightaway from the precipice of “qualia” one of Ki’s ten assigned words (by me: full disclosure).
- Richard Ziman, gamely filling in for Shawn Belyea, plays a lovable pompous philandering pendant, bookended by his wife (Tracy Hyland) and his young lover (Renata Friedman).
- Again the voices are pitch perfect. Even the silences with which both Tracey and Renata charge the beginning of the piece seem written particularly for them.
- Ki writes four roles actually, gamely making full thematic use of the yet-to-be born Hyland baby Tracy so gracefully carries.
- The arc of the piece, launching in absurdist comic verbosity gently lofts into a bitter-sweeter, clearer atmosphere and touches down so gently in shared humanity. Maybe we can share our experiences, our “qualia”.
- So exciting to see another playwright attack a subject I have longed to approach and do it so differently and successfully.
Play Three
- “The Eulogy” by Elizabeth Heffron
- Immediately we know that Mik Kuhlman, Lori Larsen and Seanjohn Walsh are siblings. Siblings again! and also death, as they’re at a funeral: Anita’s characters were at a viewing.
- Elizabeth clearly knows each of her actors so well that she can trust them with just enough dialogue to nail the moment without overdrawing it.
- The local references to a Ballard and a sex besotted Scandinavian parking lot king has the audience eating out of the palm of Elizabeth hands. They can taste freshness, like eating a salmon they just watched being pulled out of the locks.
Play Four
- “Satsuma” by me, featuring Rik Deskin and Gin Hammond.
- Again the performers find their characters’ voices like virtuoso’s picking up their favorite fiddle
- And again, it’s siblings. What’s with the synchronicity? Is it that many of us in the Sandbox have known each other for so long that we see each other as brothers and sisters? Or is it, like Lori Larsen suggests in the talkback, just some Jungian archetype that happens to be floating for the moment in the collective ether. Either way, it seems like a phenomenon uniquely connected to the immediacy of the work.
Afterwards, we all agree we have to do something like this again. The theatrical potentialities unleashed in the fusion of local playwrights with local actors with local audiences are just too powerful to ignore or leave untapped. I know the Big Houses are busy staying alive, but they need to ask themselves why they are not more actively engaged in this uniquely fertile process. There’s surviving and then there’s thriving, and Monday night felt like the latter to me.
And not just me. Every person in that room felt it. That’s the singular beauty of theatre. At its best, there’s nothing singular about it.
Posted at 1:40 PM in 14/48, Locally Grown Plays, Seattle, Television, Theatre, Theatre News, Towards a World Class Theatre, Whole Theatre | Comments (0)

Tags: children's theatre, Cody Smith, Cole Hornaday, D’Arcy Harrison, Don’t Touch That Dial!, Fat Albert, Feline Fitness, Jim Jewell, Joe Zavadil Val Brunetto, Kacey Shiflet, locally grown plays, Marcy Rodenborn, Paul Shipp, Penelope Venturini, Roderick Saves the World (or at least the Day) Maria Glanz, Sam Hagen, Saturday Morning Cartoons, Shawn Belyea, The Family Jynx, Theatre