October 2021

Lady Day not only Sings the Blues but Makes us Laugh…and Cry.

A fabulous show, Lady Day at the Emerson’s Bar and Grill, depicting one of the last “performances” of Billie Holiday, the great Jazz singer, opened this past week, at Harlequin Productions in Olympia. Interspersed with some of her greatest hits, such as “Somebody’s on my Mind,” “What a Little Moonlight can do,” “When a Woman Loves a Man,” “Ain’t nobody’s Business” etc, were monologues about her childhood, her musical influences: Louis Armstrong and Bessie Smith, touring the South with Artie Shaw (a white band leader) her unfulfilling love life, and skirmishes with the law.

Since premiering in Italy in 1896, Giacomo Puccini’s La bohème has become one of the most produced operas in the

The World is a Stage and the Play is Badly Cast.-Oscar Wilde

What shapes your identity? How do you express who you are in public versus private spheres? What if who you are doesn’t align with society’s expectations? These are some of the ideas that Kelly Kitchens, stage director for The Importance of Being Earnest at the UW School of Drama, is exploring with glee. Kitchens and her team of student artists and designers present this cheeky Oscar Wilde comedy.

The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde, UW School of Drama, The Floyd and Delores Jones Playhouse Theatre 4045 University Way NE, Seattle Nov. 12 – 21, 2021 Tickets and info: https://drama.washington.edu/events

Denial ain’t just a river in Egypt

Blake Hackler’s play What We Were, seems to refute Tolstoy’s famous quote “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way,” in that the play exposes, in almost textbook fashion, the standard pattern of family system dynamics in dysfunctional abusive families. Undoubtedly, the play is not for the faint-hearted, as it is a very clear coherent statement about the different reactions towards incest and how it both divides and unites siblings.

Aposiopesis: An abrupt halt in the middle of …as if one is unable or hesitant to… One of the most

Trauma in Crazy Woke Asian is Real They say that comedy is trauma plus time. The comedy show, Crazy Woke

A flexible path back to live theater The ghost light is dimming: Sound Theatre is returning to the stage after