New to Seattle Tom Stoppard play - worth your time!

Betty Campbell and Scott Ward Abernethy in Indian Ink (Ken Holmes) 

Indian Ink

Sound Theatre Company and Pratidhwani

(at Armory Theatre)

Through August 30, 2015

The great British playwright, Tom Stoppard, can be both exhilarating and inscrutable, in turns. So, if you don’t know one of his plays, yet, you might not be quite sure what you’re getting. Sound Theatre Company and Pratidhwani are presenting Indian Ink in a Seattle area premiere. This is a lovely, accessible piece!

This is mostly a story about an unconventional woman in the 1920s and her relationship with painters. Flora Crewe (Caitlin Frances) is a poet and free spirit, though when we meet her, she is quite ill. She travels to India for her health, though it is not the best fit for health reasons.

She meets Nirad Das (Dhiraj Khanna), a painter, and becomes his model, and maybe something more, as she flouts conventions of the time. She lives only a short time longer, but long enough to provoke academics to become hooked on her writing.

A biographer, Eldon Pike (Scott Ward Abernethy), visits her now-elderly sister, Eleanor (Betty Campbell) to try to gain insight and find treasure. So, does Das’ son, Anish (Monish Gangwani). Das ends up gaining more insight than Pike, since Eleanor feels like Das is more “family.”

Dog Days of August still have plenty of theatrical openings

The Passion As Told by Antigona Perez,  (photo by Marquicia Domingue)

Here's a list of theater productions opening in August.

RASHOMON: Reloaded, Recession Era Broke-Ass Theatre  (REBATE)nsemble Theatre Group, 8/1-9/2015

(at 3320 Fuhrman Ave E, 98102, on the south side of University Bridge off Eastlake)

An original theater adaptation of Akira Kurosawa's legendary film, Rashomon. Re-imagined in Kabuki style, set in present day, the show is site specific in South Passage Point Park.

http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/1877492

Love Song, Porcupine and Poet Productions, 8/1-8/2015 (at Stone Soup)

Oddball Beane gets burgled and his well-meaning sister, Joan, is baffled to find her brother blissfully happy. John Kolvenbach's offbeat comedy is a rhapsody to the power of love in all its forms. (Adult content)

http://lovesong.brownpapertickets.com/

Zig Zag Festival, Annex Theatre, 8/4-19/15 (Tuesday/Wednesday nights)

6 female playwrights write a play, direct a play and advise a play. Shorts in a range of topics.

http://www.annextheatre.org/2015-season/off-night/the-zig-zag-festival/

Paper Angels, SiS Productions, 8/20-31/15 (at INScape)

In 1915, eager and hopeful Chinese immigrants await permission to enter the United States at the West Coast immigration center located at Angel Island in San Francisco Bay.

http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/1789709

Brilliant “Dance Like a Man” gives us a real taste of India

Dance Like a Man (Agastya Kohli)

Dance Like a Man

Pratidhwani

(at ACT Theatre)

Through August 9, 2015

Pratidhwani is giving us a unique opportunity to experience an Indian play by an Indian playwright, Mahesh Dattani, based in India. And it’s a brilliant one, exceptionally well produced and directed by Agastya Kohli. Dance Like a Man, presented at ACT Theatre in their ACTLab partnership, is a family comedy-drama set in one room, a rather conventional set-up for an unfolding theme of much larger scope.

The play appears to be a familiar older generation versus younger generation piece about traditions and the always-changing pressures of modernity. But it’s not two generations, it’s three. We meet a young woman, Lata (Tanvee Kale) who brings home her intended Viswas (Jay Athalye) to meet her parents (Abhijeet Rane and Meenakshi Rishi).

Poetry saves and sinks "...And Jesus Moonwalks the Mississippi" but production might be worth the visit

...And Jesus Moonwalks the Mississippi (Ken Holmes)

…And Jesus Moonwalks the Mississippi

Sound Theatre Company/Brownbox Theatre

(at the Armory)

Through August 2, 2015

Thick Louisiana poetry covers the course of the Civil War with a story of one family and its slaves. Marcus Gardley’s play …And Jesus Moonwalks the Mississippi, performed by a terrific cast in a co-production of Sound Theatre Company and Brownbox Theatre, takes a long way ‘round to tell a simple tale.

This 2 3/4 hour piece has a lot of beautiful imagery and words. Some of the multiple ensemble characters speak in verse, as well. The production is well-presented with gorgeous settings by Burton Yuen, costumes of patchwork by Candace Frank, mood lighting by Richard Schaefer, and haunting sounds by Dana Amromin. Original music and well-known spirituals are included by composer/music director Jesse Smith.

With hints of Greek mythology, a character, Demeter (Santiago) comes looking for her lost daughter, Po-em. Po-em was the slave of Cadence and Jean Verse (Danielle Daggerty and Nick Rempel), but she’s now missing. When Demeter comes to their house, she meets two children, a white child, Blanche Verse (Sunam Ellis) and a black child who powders her face white, Free (Lindsay Zae Summers). They think they are twins.

Seattle Playwrights Circle’s “Short Shorts” and other playwriting groups

There are a number of playwriting groups around town that toil together in support of new work. Some of them are kind of class-based, like Freehold Studios and a spin-off of a group called Parley (led by Freehold instructor Rebecca Tourino Collingsworth). Some of them are newer iterations where one applies to be part of a small group supported by a theater (SeattleRepertory’s Writers Group, and a musical writing group at 5th AvenueTheatre).

There are three main large-group play writing entities in town. Seattle Playwrights Studio meets a couple of Mondays per month at BurienActors Theatre. They are presenting some shorts in a weekend there, from July 24-26. Information about joining them is sketchy after a bit of a reorg, but Scot Bastian reports that there is no longer a monthly contribution (it had been about $5) and the group is open to new members.

WARP (Writers and Actors Reading and Performing) claims the title of longest running playwright support group in town. They create three shorts festivals a year and meet almost every Tuesday night at Stone Soup Theatre. They ask for donations for space rental.

They also invite anyone who is at all interested and do not require any prior experience, either to come and be a reader for plays presented that evening, or for being established in any way as a playwright. So, they are clearly the most inclusive, and a great place to start, if you’re looking for a welcoming place to get your feet wet. More information at: http://warptheatre.org/about-warp.html

Seattle Playwrights Circle, which I am a member of, is open to people who have a certain (fairly minimal) amount of play writing experience and have had a play or two presented on stage somewhere. We generally have two “table reads” a month at a local library on Sunday afternoons during the “school year” and also in fall/winter, monthly public readings at Elliott Bay Bookstore.

Two plays by Tennessee Williams: "The Two-Character Play" and "Orpheus Descending"

The Two-Character Play

Civic Rep

(at New City Theater)

Through August 1, 2015

Orpheus Descending

The Williams Project/Intiman Theatre

(at 12th Avenue Arts)

Through August 2, 2015

Tennessee Williams’ most successful and well-known plays were written earlier in his life in an about fifteen year period from 1943 to 1958. The Glass Menagerie was the first hit, but others included A Streetcar Named Desire, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Orpheus Descending and Sweet Bird of Youth.

Always plays of despair and anguish, Williams’ plays and other writings were said to reflect aspects of his own experiences with an alcoholic father, a mentally unstable sister who spent years in asylums, and his own struggle with homosexuality that was dangerous to acknowledge for most of his life.