Artswest

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Temporary Occupancy-Online thru Artswest

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On August 25th in collaboration with Artswest, Die Cast, a Philadelphia immersive theatre company presents a digital performance piece that explores personal isolation during a time of societal isolation-inventing new modes of performance in the process. Using a single hotel room as the location for a series of nine short pieces, Temporary Occupancy explores how our lives are connected by more than the physical rooms we share.

Founded in 2017, by Brenna Geffers and Thom Weaver, Die-Cast’s work as a company explores new relationships between the visitor and space. Die-Cast incubates work within spaces that are often inaccessible to audiences or are not thought of as performace spaces – ballrooms, historical mansions, and even schooner ships – looking to fill those spaces with the work and have the work shaped by the space in turn. Recently, they have begun creating work for digital spaces, allowing audiences to choose their own adventures using chatbots, Buzzfeed quizzes, embedded videos and other digital wizardry – hence, digital immersive theater.

Temporary Occupancy was created by Die-Cast Co-founders Brenna Geffers and Thom Weaver as well as Anthony Crosby, Colleen Corcoran, Jahzeer Terrell, Keith Conallen, Steven Wright

Temporary Occupancy, Aug. 25th. Die Cast Immersive Theatre in Collaboration with Artwest.

Tickets will be available for purchase beginning August 25th at $12 each. You will receive a link in the purchase email receipt. The piece will continue to be hosted online for the foreseeable future for your enjoyment Tickets $12https://www.artswest.org/temporary-occupancy/”>

Past

The Revolutionists Make Their Stand at ArtsWest

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The play begins in darkness; suddenly the sound of a swishing guillotine shatters the theater’s silence. A miffed actress protests, “That’s no way to start a comedy!” And we’re off into the wonderful world of a Lauren Gunderson play. It is not surprising that Gunderson is currently the most produced playwright in America. With works like “The Book of Will” and “I and You” she has pushed the boundaries of conventional theater, exploring big and little ideas with a charming, imaginative wit that seems to continually ask “What if?” In “The Revolutionists”, published in 2018, Gunderson imagines a series of surrealistic encounters among four key women figures that played roles in and were finally victims of the bloody French Reign of Terror in the early 1790’s.

Past

Annie Baker’s Mysterious “John” Premieres at ArtsWest

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Something quite different is going on at the ArtsWest Playhouse this spring. The award-winning playwright Annie Baker’s play John is having its Seattle premiere here and it’s a very strange trip indeed. The Playhouse’s welcoming staff reminds incoming audiences that the show runs three hours with two intermissions. When so many new works seem intent on compacting their production into one fast paced act, Baker wants the time to provide the needed space for her four fascinating characters and us to explore the otherworldly bed and breakfast in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, the eerie and unsettling setting for her play. Baker’s plot that unfolds like a troubling dream performed by a cast that director Erin Murray describes as “out of this world talented” make for a very memorable night of theater.

Past

Ayad Akhtar’s “The Who and the What” at ArtsWest

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At ArtsWest Playhouse and Gallery, ArtsWest and Pratidhwani present The Who and the What, Pulitzer Prize-winner Ayad Akhtar’s play about a Muslim Pakistani-American writer whose controversial manuscript forces she and her family to confront issues of faith and identity. This well-written and well-produced play is funny, touching, and sure to prompt discussion about some contentious subjects.

The Who and the What kicks off ArtsWest’s 2017-2018 season, which is called “I Am,” and features plays that focus on struggles for identity. Ayad Akhtar’s follow-up to his 2013 Pulitzer Prize for Drama-winning Disgraced has no shortage of this type of conflict. The Who and the What is the story of Zarina, a writer struggling to complete her first novel, the daughter of immigrants from Pakistan, and a practicing Muslim. Zarina is finally inspired to finish her novel when she finds love with Eli, a white Muslim convert, ending months of writer’s block. However, the book’s depiction of the Prophet Mohammed and controversial take on women and gender politics in Islam causes conflict with Zarina’s family, especially her more conservative father and sister. They confront issues of religion, identity, and gender relations, as well as the conflicts within their own family.

Past

REVIEW-FROZEN-HOW HARD IT IS FOR HUMANS TO CHIP THROUGH ICE.

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Searing acting, tense and thought provoking lines and the powerful energies of fear and deep sadness. Frozen is an arresting play. Delving into outrightly difficult territory- exploring a serial killer and those affected by him, this play asks hard questions. The play asks us to explore the difference “between a crime of evil and a crime of illness.” We’re asked to grapple with the idea that people are perhaps not born evil but act evil due to circumstances beyond their control.

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