Author name: Marie Bonfils

Like the BBC’s Book at Bedtime- A short story read aloud

As part of The Seagull Project’s Great Souls: An Evening of Short Stories and Performance, Claudine Mboligikpelan Nako read Langston Hughes’ One Friday Morning. Written in 1941, it recounts the experience of disappointed hopes, due to the rising expectations, caused by the Great Migration. In many ways the experience of the high school student in the story, is a metaphor for the Great Migration.

Spring Awakening, The winner of eight Tony Awards, including Best Musical, will be livestreamed until Nov. 7 by Capitol City Theatre Company. The landmark musical, with lyrics by Duncan Sheik and music by Steven Sater, is an electrifying fusion of morality, sexuality and rock and roll that has been exhilarating audiences across the nation like no other musical in years.

Spring Awakening (Frühlings Erwachen in German) was originally written in 1890-91 but not performed until 1906, when the famous avant garde director Max Reinhardt directed it at the Deutsches Theater in Berlin. As a result of its controversial subject matter: the devastating effects of adolescent sexual ignorance and repression, teen-age suicide, child abuse, and other taboo subjects in the early 20th Century, it was often banned and censored. It was also a harbinger of Expressionism and modernism in theater.

Wedekind was writing at a time when Freud was writing about psychoanalysis, infantile sexuality, the role of sexual repression in mental health, the interpretation of dreams and other taboo theories, which threatened the social order of 19th Century bourgeois society. Other visionaries such as Oscar Wilde and the French symbolist poets were undermining cultural norms as well.
Spring Awakening’s exposition is swift, a 14 school-girl Wendla, is trying on a short skirt, when her mother tells her that the “stork” has brought another baby for the older married sister, and then forbids Wendla from wearing a short skirt.

Well into puberty, Wendla begs her mother to tell her where babies come from, but the mother says they just come from loving one’s husband a lot, leaving Wendla extremely vulnerable for sexual exploitation.
The plot weaves a web around the theme of sexual repression and ignorance, as both boys and girls in the provincial town try to deal with sexuality, without any concrete knowledge of what is happening to them or their bodies. The adults around them are generally nasty, repressed, frightened and authoritarian. There is an unwanted pregnancy, a botched abortion, suicide, domestic violence, as well as parental and school abuse.

All performances take place at the Capitol City Theater Companies Studio Located at 1742 N 48th Street in Lincoln, Nebraska and Streamed Nationwide through a partnership with Music Theater International, but will be livestreamed.

Spring Awakening, Until Nov. 7 at 7:30 pm Ticketshttps://www.capitolcity.live/tickets

“Men in this town were born with mouths that can right wrongs with a few words. Why are you too timid to speak?”

Executed for a murder she did not commit, young widow Dou Yi vows that if she is innocent, snow will fall in midsummer and a catastrophic drought will strike. Three years later, a businesswoman visits the parched, locust-plagued town to take over an ailing factory. When her young daughter is tormented by an angry ghost, the new factory owner must expose the injustices Dou Yi suffered before the curse destroys every living thing.

In the foreword to the play’s 2018 edition, Jo Palazuelos-Krukowski writes, “Snow in Midsummer’s Dou Yi…refuses false peace, and she obviates easy forgetting. In a society where the powerful use the weak to their own ends, she unmasks realities her community is too blind and too afraid to acknowledge.”

Based on the classical Chinese drama by Guan Hanqing, Frances Ya-Chu Cowhig’s modern adaptation, directed by Desdemona Chiang with a stellar cast including Richard Nguyen Sloniker and one of Seattle’s most beloved actresses, Kathy Hsieh, is a performance you will not soon forget.

Snow in Midsummer, Harlequin Productions. Tonight, Sunday October 18.7:30 PST Tues, Wed, Thurs, Fri. 7:30 PST thru Oct. 23

Tickets: https://harlequinproductions.org/show/snow-in-midsummer/

Seattle Shakespeare hosts a free livestream Richard III on Thursday, October 29 at 7:30 PM (Pacific). This brand-new audio-only encore presentation revisits the upstart crow collective 2018 production of Richard III and features most of the original cast. A brief Q & A session will follow the event.

In Shakespeare’s Richard III, everyone underestimated the last son of the mighty royal York family. Richard is as charming as he is cunning. Through scheming and seducing (and a few murders along the way), Richard secures the crown for himself…but can he hold it? Attempting to thwart his ill-gotten rise to power are some potent women who envision hope for their country in a new generation of leaders. This gripping portrait of a cunning villain’s rise and fall from power features a diverse female and non-binary cast.

Richard III by William Shakespeare. Seattle Shakespeare Company. Audio-only production. Thurs. Oct. 29 7:30 Free. Info: www.seattleshakespearecompany.org

Postponed til Sat. Oct. 24. The Eastside’s foremost professional theatre, Woodville Repertory Theatre, will present a virtual performance of Shakespeare’s

Directed by Lauren Love, Harlequin Productions will present a free radio play, This Flat Earth by Lindsey Ferrentino tonight. At a middle school in a seaside town, the unthinkable has happened, placing a bewildered community in the national spotlight. Stuck at home in a state of shocked limbo, Julie and Zander, two twelve-year-olds, try to make sense of the chaos they witnessed, their awkward crushes, and an infinitely more complicated future — but the grown-ups are no help at all. An urgent response to our times, This Flat Earth is a startling and deeply felt story of growing up in our confounding world.

This Flat Earth by Lindsey Ferrentino opens tonight at 7:30pm PST ( Sun. Oct. 11) and runs through October 17.Tues, Wed, Thu, Fri, Sat 7:30 PST. https://harlequinproductions.org/show/this-flat-earth/
(reservations necessary for this free show)

KHQP RADIO THEATRE

ESTIMATED RUN TIME1 HR 34 MINS
• House Opens- on the air 15 minutes prior to show time.
• Act 1 (94 mins)
• Show Ends

The Pandemic Plays

What happens when playwrights are quarantined due to a worldwide pandemic? They write plays, of course!! The Pandemic Plays is a series of world premiere one-act plays that react to the COVID-19 world we all share. Portraying coping mechanisms ranging from ill-advised scientific experiments to paper bag puppets to hip hop and more, these plays tell stories about how we’re navigating a world that suddenly feels smaller and less certain.
Each Pandemic Play will be performed live at 18th & Union and broadcast on a live stream via Zoom. And if we have to lock down again? No problem, performers will stream from their homes. But no matter what, these shows are going on!

Shelter in Place
(Oct. 11,24 )

Greetings
(Oct. 15, 16,17,22, 25)

Duplicate
(Oct. 8,9,10,18,23)

COVID Dreams
(Oct. 8,9,10,18,23)

407C’s Puppet Theatre
(Oct. 15, 16, 17, 22, 25)

TICKETS : 18thandunion.org/pandemic-plays Discount for 3 play series.

Details about the individual shows are on the next page

The Pandemic Plays

What happens when playwrights are quarantined due to a worldwide pandemic? They write plays, of course!! The Pandemic Plays is a series of world premiere one-act plays that react to the COVID-19 world we all share. Portraying coping mechanisms ranging from ill-advised scientific experiments to paper bag puppets to hip hop and more, these plays tell stories about how we’re navigating a world that suddenly feels smaller and less certain.
Each Pandemic Play will be performed live at 18th & Union and broadcast on a live stream via Zoom. And if we have to lock down again? No problem, performers will stream from their homes. But no matter what, these shows are going on!

Shelter in Place
(Oct. 11,24 )

Greetings
(Oct. 15, 16,17,22, 25)

Duplicate
(Oct. 8,9,10,18,23)

COVID Dreams
(Oct. 8,9,10,18,23)

407C’s Puppet Theatre
(Oct. 15, 16, 17, 22, 25)

TICKETS : 18thandunion.org/pandemic-plays Discount for 3 play series.

Details about the individual shows are on the next page

Radio Play about the Demise of a Fragile Democracy. From the Pulitzer-winning playwright behind Angels in America comes a dramatic

An original show about turning stumbling blocks into bridging materials premieres online

“The Driftwood Bridge: An Offering of Story and Song” is a two-person theatrical and musical memoir about taking experiences that wash up on the existential beaches of our lives and using them to build a bridge to carry us forward. The show explores life after loss, intergenerational forgiveness, and the ways mentors and friends help us feel ready to say yes to love—gay, straight, or otherwise.

The show started as something David Mielke and Thomas Hitoshi wrote and performed for their wedding guests in 2018 at Vashon’s Open Space For Arts and Community. After a performance on Vashon Island, it’s Seattle run was cancelled due to Covid, so now it is online for free.

The Driftwood Bridge. Until Nov. http://www.driftwoodbridge.com. Free