The Erickson is a Community Asset - Why is it empty of theater?

Update:
For unknown reasons, I can't reply to comments. A lot of people are talking about this topic but will not publicly comment. I think there are problems. I think the SC administration has some reasons, though it's hard to determine exactly who is making decisions so that a direct conversation or negotiation can take place. It is my hope that by beginning a more public conversation, people can get involved and change can become possible.

The Ethnic Cultural Center is UW's facility, but I have seen plays and readings there, so I know it is possible to rent (though not for how much). I perceive that the Erickson is in a different situation, and in an area where people are begging for locations to mount their productions.
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Space to perform in Seattle is at a premium already and seems to be getting worse. While there is are two new spaces being built (one for Theater Schmeater that is an example of what I see as the future avenue we must find a way to advocate for with new development, and the 12th Avenue Arts building), each of those spaces will not actually enlarge the pool of available spaces for rentals in any meaningful way. (I am not going to lay out my rationale for that statement here.)

Rentals, theater spaces where people can rent space for performance purposes, are few and full, and vary in their ability to house the requirements of productions. Some of them are uncomfortable to sit in as audience members, and most of them are simply too small for any but productions with four or five people and a single set, maximum.

"Lollyville" creators celebrate 15 years of writing partnership

Juliet Waller Pruzan and Bret Fetzer (photo Eli Pruzan)

 (via Capitol Hill Seattle)

A long, long time ago, Juliet Waller Pruzan was a dancer and choreographer and had a cool idea she wanted to make into a dance/theater piece. She had a vision about people’s secrets flying out of them and getting caught in the branches of a particular tree. She knew that Bret Fetzer wrote original fairytales and performed them. She had seen him perform at On the Boards 12 Minutes Max and decided maybe he would be the guy who could help her create a performance.

There was magic in that request, apparently, because not only did they create a ten minute piece and successfully apply to On the Boards Northwest New Works festival (and entitle it The Gossip Tree), but they went on to create multiple more plays.

Their latest creation actually is a revision of their first ten minute play, now entitled Lollyville and produced by Macha Monkey, a ”fearless, funny, female” theater company on stage May 2-24 (8pm) at RichardHugo House.Through the years, they have revisited that initial concept and revised and revised and now have a new concept.

Both Bret and Juliet have a history with the building the theater is in. Juliet says, “I really love the theater and have a long history of performing there when it was New City and danced there in the ‘90s.”

Seattle’s amazing – ambiguous – history in intricate detail, now at Book-It Rep

Kevin McKeon, Jennifer Lee Taylor, Chris Ensweiler (photo Chris Bennion)

Truth Like the Sun

Book-It Repertory Theatre

Through May 18

Jim Lynch’s meticulously detailed book, Truth Like the Sun, is no straightforward history lesson. It weaves back and forth in time with major mysteries to explore and perhaps unfold. Creating a fictitious “Mr. Seattle” who becomes the face of the 1962 World’s Fair, he explores and exposes the seamy underbelly of graft and corruption that others have mined similarly. He creates a tenacious and overly cynical journalist out to get the “real” story any way she can, in 2001, and has her dig hard into Mr. Seattle’s possible corruption.

Book-It Repertory Theatre has chosen, for the third time!, to adapt a Jim Lynch novel, and Truth Like the Sun is riveting, ambitious, ambiguous, and challenging, all at once. This is not the kind of play to allow you to sit and let it wash over you. Sometimes there are evenings like that, like last month’s excellent Seattle Shakespeare Company production of The Importance of Being Earnest. Oscar Wilde’s skewering trifle is fun but not terribly taxing to watch. This production calls upon you to sit up, fasten your seat belt, and PAY ATTENTION!

Kevin McKeon’s adaptation and Jane Jones’ direction creates a cacophony of voices from time to time, from the beginning bustle of World’s Fair Seattle hubbub forward. It’s a bit cinematic in style, and it does make it a bit hard for those who can’t decipher the speaker or the short sentences, at times. There is also a well-done theatrical technique to throw us back and forth in time (without using sign titling) that takes two or three iterations to get used to so we know the “when” we’re looking at.

Classic Albee takes stage for first time at Seattle Rep

(l to r) Amy Hill, Aaron Blakely, Pamela Reed and R. Hamilton Wright in Seattle Repertory Theatre’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Photo: Alabastro Photography

Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf

Seattle Repertory Theatre

Through May 18

The explosive, immersive, three hour drama, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, by Edward Albee is on stage now at Seattle Rep. If you thought August: Osage County was caustic, you ain’t seen nuthin’ yet, sister. This play will blister your paint and warp your wood. The games played by George and Martha make Russian roulette look silly.

This is an American classic that practically became classic the minute Albee stopped writing it in 1962. It won the 1963 Tony Award for Best Play. You may know it best from the 1966 movie starring Richard Burton, Elizabeth Taylor, George Segal and Sandy Dennis. Here, the four dynamic talents are R. Hamilton Wright, Pamela Reed, Aaron Blakely and Amy Hill.

This production is lovingly mounted by director Braden Abraham, with delightful set by Matthew Smucker with massive help from the Seattle Rep scene techs. During the two intermissions, you might take time to look at the academic flotsam and jetsam collected on multiple floor to ceiling bookshelves, as if jammed in there over years. Lighting by L.B. Morse and sound by Matt Starritt perfectly accompany the evening.

eSe Teatro hard at work promoting and educating Latino actors

Charise Castro Smith

On April 13th, on a relatively balmy afternoon at ACT Theatre, eSe Teatro artistic director Rose Cano managed a new effort to introduce Latino actors to the Seattle theaters for consideration in near-future productions.

For the first ever NW Regional Latino Auditions, approximately 45 mostly local actors, but also from as far away as Chicago and Los Angeles, strutted their stuff before a powerhouse list of regional companies: Seattle Repertory, Book-It Repertory, ACT Theatre (host company), Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Miracle (Milagro) Theatre Group, Latino Theatre Projects, Washington Ensemble Theatre and a few more. Washington Ensemble is mounting Charise Castro Smith’s play, The Hunchback of Seville, opening June 5th.

Each actor was given the standard three minutes to perform and many presented two short pieces. The mix of pieces ranged from very contemporary to classic Shakespearian and Spanish plays. Many of the performers chose to perform pieces that mixed Spanish and English to show their ability to perform in both languages. A number of performers were young men and women who are studying at Cornish or UW.

Acting up a (financial) storm in "Bethany"

Emily Chisholm in Bethany (photo Chris Bennion)

Bethany
by Laura Marks
ACT Theatre
through May 4

The new play, Bethany, at ACT Theatre moves so quickly and with such power that by the end, you may well feel a bit punched in the gut. Playwright Laura Marks likely does not expect you to like the characters in this play, but you can identify with them.

Director John Langs takes a spare script and amplifies moments with quiet scene play that illuminates the inner life of these characters, caught in 2009 in the devastation of the Great Recession. The play might be realistic and it might not. It teeters on the edge of the fantastical or allegorical with a (typically beautifully wrought) modern kitchen set design by Carey Wong, sometimes-haunting lighting by Andrew Smith and kickass sound design by Brendan Patrick Hogan.

(Side note: BPH's sound designs are things of beauty. It's not that the sound design is so well done that it does not fit the production, but that they fit the production so aptly and amplify it so deliciously that I just have to bust out and say so every once in a while!)