Steven Dietz’s Last of the Boys opened at the Seattle Rep last week while our nation was in the midst of an historically lengthy government shutdown. In the early days of 2019 we seem to be embroiled in an endless battle of conflicting ideologies with no end in sight. How we will finally emerge from this predicament and the cumulative effect it will have on our country will doubtlessly be the study of many a future writer. In Last of the Boys, Dietz explores the effects of another era in which the U.S. was faced with what Seattle Rep Artistic Director Braden Abraham refers to as a “paradigm shift.” The Viet Nam War challenged our nation to intently reexamine what our country really stood for. Dietz sets his play’s action at the end of the 20th century and has his four characters come to terms with some of the devastating consequences of that much debated war. While the play does not succeed as a complete artistic vision, it does provide a number of moving and thought provoking moments in which the four Americans come to a greater understanding of themselves and the parts they played in the tumultuous 1960’s Viet Nam War conflict.

I am not a cafeteria

Was one of the funniest and most pertinent lines in the solo performance Dandyland: Queering Motherhood One Day @ a Time written and performed by Laurie Lynch, as part of the Intiman Festival of Emerging Artists. As the name implies, it was about a queer woman’s experience with artificial insemination, pregnancy and all its secondary effects- such as the avalanche of advice as one’s body and condition seems to become public property.