An Affair to Forget
Strong Waters, the latest offering from local playwright Claire Zaslav and director Margaret VandenBerghe at 12th Avenue Arts, treads old water in its cliched and at times unintentionally bizarre portrayal of a rekindled love affair.
“Cooking is the key ingredient in being human”
Pony World Theatre’s Hotdish opened this past Friday, November 3rd at 12th Avenue Arts Studio Theatre. Brendan Healy’s writing with Charolotte Peters’s directing combine beautifully to tell the humorous story addressing how to live with the past, the present, your family, and yourself.
What does it mean to be treated as a ghost among the living—which technology reminds us is somehow synonymous with the hearing? Sound Theatre Company sought to answer this question with its opening debut of Aimee Chou’s original play, Autocorrect Thinks I’m Dead, at 12th Avenue Arts this weekend. Chou’s play, directed by Howie Seago, did this and so much more by inviting audiences into the world of deaf culture through a witty and heartfelt subversion of the classic ghost story that painfully recognizes its own marginalized invisibility across the world and the stage.
As part of Strawjam, Strawberry Theatre Workshop’s multiweek director’s festival, two shows opened Thursday, which will run just for this weekend, at 12th Ave Arts. Both deal with different aspects of Life itself.
The Standby Lear, directed by Terry Edward Moore, is a beautiful story of a husband and wife in the acting world, providing opportunity for intense reflection on what living life on standby entails. While starting out as a lighthearted comedy based upon the Shakespearean tragedy, the show quickly transforms into an emotional examination of love and fear in an actor’s life.
Most people probably know Thornton Wilder’s Our Town, winner of a Pulitzer, a Tony, and a Drama Desk award. With thousands of productions from high school theatre to Broadway, it even has a street in New Hampshire dedicated to it. If you don’t know it, don’t worry, you can still watch Pony World Theatre’s production without a hitch, as it sets up its audience with a summary of the original Our Town before diving into their rendition. Wilder’s play takes place in the small town of New Hampshire, Grover’s Corners, where nothing really happens in the relative peacefulness of the early 1900s. As such, the play is about community and small towns and appreciating even the uneventful in life.
strong>Refugees Waiting for ….
The U.S. Premiere of David Greig’s play Europe, about xenophobia and social change will open Thursday, March 12 at 12th Ave Arts, produced by Thalia’s Umbrella and directed by Terry Edward Moore.
Our Country’s Good is a show which explores the ways in which theatre brings hope and meaning to those in
Liberté, Egalité, Sororité
Although French women were not given the vote until 1946, women played a huge role in the French Revolution of 1789, as active participants in the rioting, in the political clubs and intellectually as authors and salon hostesses. Produced by Theater22, the play The Revolutionists by Lauren Gunderson, which runs in repertory at 12th Ave Arts, deals with four women: Queen Marie Antoinette, wife of Louis XIV the king at the beginning of the revolution, assassin Charlotte Corday, playwright and pamphleteer Olympe de Gouges and a Black free woman from the Caribbean Marianne Angelle, each of whom played roles in the French Revolution, one of the most important events in Western Civilization.
Laughter and comedy are more powerful than diatribes!
Much to my joy and delight Seattle’s venerable Theatre 22 is back in action, enlightening us through humor and authenticity. WHITE, by James IJames, opened in repertory, Friday night at 12th Ave Arts, as an exposé of “the ugly reality…of being a non-white commodity, a marketing gimmick, where people, organizations, and corporations prove how woke they are, only to appeal to new generations for popularity and revenues.” said Tayo Talabi, Co-Director.
Due to the outstanding performance and talent of its star Shermona Mitchell, and the incredible dialogue by the author, it was also one of the most hilarious plays I have seen in a long time, although the topic is very serious indeed. Like Molière, it highlighted the absurdity of pretentious attitudes and people, and although highly topical, it spoke to universal themes.
