September Theater Feels More Like It Used To!

What The Constitution Means To Me with Cassie Beck (Joan Marcus)

As we go back to school somewhat normally, and fall weather starts to get a bit more cloudy and damp, Seattle theater companies are bringing back more and more productions! This month, we get some major plays people have been hoping to see (Choir Boy, in a co-pro of ACT Theatre and 5^th Ave, my favorite tour play by ex-local Heidi Schreck – What the Constitution Means to Me) and world premieres! And we get a gift from stalwart company, Theatre22, as they bid us adieu (maybe just for now).
 
Where We Belong, Seattle Rep, 9/8/22-10/9/22 (tour from Woolly Mammoth Theatre Co)
An indigenous theater-maker, Madeline Sayet, journeys to England in 2015 to pursue a PhD in Shakespeare. She finds a country unable to acknowledge its ongoing role in colonialism.  Madeline echoes a journey to England braved by Native ancestors in the 1700s following treatise betrayals – and forces us to consider what it means to belong in an increasingly globalized world.
www.seattlerep.org
 
The Griswolds' Broadway Vacation, 5^th Avenue Theatre, 9/9/22-10/1/22 (world premiere) (opens 9/22)
They’ve been to Wally World, they’ve been to Vegas, and now the Griswolds are going to… Broadway! Yes, the characters you know and love from the hit Warner Bros. Vacation movies are back—and they’re taking their biggest vacation yet. So, get in your family truckster and join Clark, Ellen, Audrey, and Rusty on their big New York City adventure—where of course, everything goes exactly according to plan!
www.5thavenue.org
 
Nonsense and Beauty, Theatre22, 9/9/22-10/2/22, at The Bathhouse (T22’s last show)
The play follows the eminent British novelist E.M. Forster as his romance with Bob Buckingham, a policeman 23 years his junior, falls prey to his fear of discovery. After Bob marries May, a compassionate young woman, Forster remains ensnared in a turbulent and unique love triangle until his death nearly 40 years later. Based on a true story, Nonsense and Beauty captures the wit and wisdom of one of the last century’s great writers.
www.theatre22.org
 
Choir Boy, ACT Theatre and 5^th Avenue Theatre, 9/10/22-10/23/22 (at ACT)
A riveting coming-of-age tale from Tarell Alvin McCraney, about honor, legacy, and dignity filled with electrifying gospel, spiritual, and R&B performances. Choir Boy follows a group of students at a prestigious prep school for young Black men as they struggle with issues of identity, sexuality, and manhood. When the leader of the school’s legendary gospel choir, Pharus Young’s pride is sullied by one of his fellow students, we are sent on an electrifying voyage through the growing pains of humanity.
www.acttheatre.org
 
Little Shop of Horrors, Village Theatre, 9/14/22-11/20/22
Issaquah – 9/14/22-10/23/22, Everett – 10/28/22-11/20/22
Romance! Murder! Doo-wop! Aliens! A wildly entertaining dark sci-fi musical comedy, Little Shop of Horrors follows the misadventures of a lowly floral shopkeeper who discovers a seemingly harmless new breed of plant (with a secret taste for human blood) that carries ambitions that threaten our hero’s romantic inclinations… and the world!
www.villagetheatre.org
 
The Mousetrap, Edmond’s Driftwood Players, 9/16/22-10/2/22
After a local woman is murdered, the guests and staff at Monkswell Manor find themselves stranded during a snowstorm.  It soon becomes clear that the killer is among them, and the seven strangers grow increasingly suspicious of one another.  When a second murder takes place, tensions and fears escalate. 
www.edmondsdriftwoodplayers.org
 
In The Time Of The Butterflies, Book-It Repertory Theatre, 9/21/22-10/16/22
For 30 years, President Trujillo’s iron fist of authoritarianism tightened around the throat of the Dominican Republic. But the people would not be crushed, they would not be silenced. As the revolution grew, so too did our butterflies—the Mirabal sisters. Four girls we see grow into women with deep love for their family and their country. Four revolutionaries, with only one left alive to bear witness, to speak out loud of the joy and laughter, terror and violence that shaped a nation and its people.
www.book-it.org
 
A Night With The Russells: The Legacy Of Us, Taproot Theatre, 9/21/22-10/22/22
A family performing-powerhouse, Faith Bennett Russell, Be Russell, and Sarah Russell, carry on their family’s legacy as storytellers, while celebrating their individual journeys as Black female artists. From their roots in Jamaica, to their home in Seattle, this cabaret is filled with songs both new and old.
www.taproottheatre.org
 
The Half Life of Marie Curie, SecondStory Repertory, 9/23/22-10/9/22
In 1911, Marie Curie won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for her discovery of the elements radium and polonium. By 1912, she was the object of ruthless gossip over an alleged affair with the married Frenchman Paul Langevin, all but erasing her achievements from public memory. Weakened and demoralized by the press lambasting her as a “foreign” Jewish temptress and a home-wrecking traitor, Marie agrees to join her friend and colleague Hertha Ayrton, an electromechanical engineer and suffragette. The power of female friendship is shown in the relationship between these two brilliant women, both of whom are mothers, widows, and fearless champions of scientific inquiry.
www.secondstoryrep.org
 
Cloud Tectonics. Sound Theatre Company, 9/24/22-10/15/22, at 12^th Ave Arts
It starts on a dark and stormy night. When an LAX baggage handler, Aníbal, meets a pregnant Celestina, earthy and ethereal worlds collide. Bawdy, macho GI brother, Nelson, interlopes. Under the trance of magical realism, the tale upends space and time in a Los Angeles home.
www.soundtheatre.org 

Swimming While Drowning, ArtsWest, 9/29/22-10/23/22
When teenager Angelo Mendez decides to leave his home out of fear of further disappointing his homophobic father, he encounters a world he was not prepared for at an LGBT homeless shelter in Los Angeles. He meets a fellow homeless teen who gives him a voice and unexpectedly introduces him to love. Angelo ultimately learns that all relationships, no matter how powerful, have an unfortunate time cap which he must cope with through his writing.
www.artswest.org
 
Always, Patsy Cline, Key City Public Theatre, 9/29/22-10/23/22
A musical tribute to the legendary country singer, complete with down home country humor, true emotion, and even some audience participation, includes many of Patsy's unforgettable hits such as Crazy, I Fall to Pieces, Sweet Dreams, and Walking After Midnight.
www.keycitypublictheatre.org
 
What The Constitution Means To Me, Seattle Rep, 9/30/22-10/23/22 (tour??)
Playwright (and ex-local) Heidi Schreck’s boundary-breaking play breathes new life into our Constitution and imagines how it will shape the next generation of Americans. In this hilarious, hopeful, and achingly human new play, she resurrects her teenage self in order to trace the profound relationship between four generations of women and the founding document that shaped their lives.
www.seattlerep.org

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