June 2019

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The Last World Octopus Wrestling Champion Has World Premiere

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Let’s make one thing very clear from the get-go: Seattle’s very own Justin Huertas is one of the most imaginative and original playwrights currently living on this planet! The Last World Octopus Wrestling Champion, now in its world premiere at Arts West, is filled with enough wildly creative ideas to fill four or five scripts. Here, Huertas employs sci-fi/fantasy ideas to work as a vehicle to present very real human dilemmas involving maternal love, gay and lesbian relationships and just general youthful angst. “Octopus”’ is enacted by a highly talented five member cast and director Mathew Wright has packaged a fast moving, spirited and often heading spinning one act. Though the work feels a bit cluttered in certain spots, Huertas continually provides thought provoking and insightful takes on a whole range of modern concerns.

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Mae West’s The Drag is anything but!

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I believe in censorship. I made a fortune out of it.”

Was one of Mae West’s less famous quotes probably because it was NOT a sexual double entendre. It does, however, refer to her 1926 play The Drag, which never opened on Broadway due to censorship as it deals with the reality of Gay life in 1920’s New York The Drag has been revived by Play Your Part productions at the Calamus Auditorium at Gay City in lower Capitol Hill, much to my delight.

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Crimes of the Heart-Hidden away in Woodinville

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Three sisters staying in Hazelhurt, Mississippi.

Hidden away among the vineyards and the beautiful scenery is one of Woodinville’s treasures; the Woodinville Repertory Theatre, a professional theatre, which has mounted a stellar and I do mean stellar production of Directed by Jane Ryan, with an outstanding cast including Gemma Quackenbush, Megan Becker, Lori Hunt, Niki Flynn, Connor Kinzer and Rob Girffin, it was one of the most entertaining plays I have seen in a long time.

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Pass Over: Can Young Black Men Escape the Block?

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It’s traumatizing being a brother on the block. Playwright Antoinette Nwandu and Director Tim Bond skillfully blur this into a block more like a cell block in prison than a city block one passes through between home and anywhere else one wants to go. Our protagonists in this show at ACT: Moses played by Treavor Lovelle, and Kitch, played by Preston Butler III, are prisoners on this block, kept there by their lack of means to get free.

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PREVIEW Booger Red-Growing up a Preacher’s Kid

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Southern storyteller and solo performer Jim Loucks
brings Booger Red to Theatre Off Jackson

Solo performer and playwright Jim Loucks brings his Southern storytelling style to Theatre Off Jackson with his one-man show Booger Red June 27-29, 2019 (Theatre Off Jackson, 409 7th Ave S., Seattle, WA 98104). Booger Red is directed by Lisa Chess.

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