Final Leo K. slot filled for next season

From Joanna Horowitz, Communications Department

I forgot to mention that the TBA we had in the upcoming season has been filled by Cheryl L. West's piece Birdie Blue, a lovely (albeit frank) look at love, marriage and the passing of time. Cheryl is a Seattle playwright, in fact her piece Addy: An American Girl Story is actually playing right now at Seattle Children's Theatre. She also penned Jar the Floor, Holiday Heart, and Before It Hits Home.

The addition of Birdie Blue has rearranged the order of the Leo K season a bit. Visit the Rep's website for all the details. By the way, if you're currently a subscriber, the renewal deadline is April 27. If you're wanting to start subscribing (AKA be totally cool), you can do it anytime (you just won't know your seats until early this summer). Just call our box office at 206-443-2222. I won't bore you with all the benefits, but I'll tell you my personal favorite is the free cocktail you get at the Rep's bar. You know me, if I can reference a martini in a blog, it's a good day.

Home stretch

From Joanna Horowitz, Communications Department

It's a weird time around here. The season is winding down, the Rachel Corrie team is in Olympia for a weekend of shows in Evergreen's Experimental Theater (FYI: April 27 & 28 at 8 pm and April 28 & 29 at 2 pm; tickets online at BuyOlympia.com or call 360-876-6651).

Anyway, it's quiet around here. I've been doing some very exciting archiving, a little myspace page updating, a little brainstorming about next season. In all this dim of activity in the admin offices, it's strange to remember that there are still two huge shows happening downstairs. I got to work today and realized there's only a week and a half left in this season. May 6 is the last day for both My Name is Rachel Corrie (which is still generating controversy—director Braden Abraham was just interviewed on Al-Jazeera) and Gem of the Ocean (which is still generating audience exclamations of, "That was fantastic!") I just heard that the Oregon Shakespeare Festival is also doing Gem of the Ocean and our production is a half an hour shorter. Phylicia Rashad knows how to keep the pace up—must be all those years on The Cosby Show.

If you haven't seen Gem of the Ocean yet, Friday would be a good time. April 27 is national August Wilson Day (it would have been Mr. Wilson's 62nd birthday). If you happen to be in New York, head down to Bryant Park at 10 a.m. for the celebration kick off with Whoopi Goldberg, Tonya Pinkins and Tamara Tunie. Radio Golf (which we did last season) is also about to open on Broadway. It's essentially our production (same set, costumes, majority of the same actors), which is pretty exciting.

Speaking of exciting, I think there might be some cinnamon rolls in our production department. It's crazy around here.

2007-08 in 10 easy steps

From Joanna Horowitz, Communications Department

I have a goal to try to write shorter blog entries. I know I can be a little long-winded, but I mean really what do you have to do on a Friday at work besides read my (brilliant) musings? Anyway, here you go, short and sweet, our recently announced 2007-08 season. For the details I am omitting for the sake of goal achievement, go here.

In the Bagley Wright Theatre
Twelfth Night by William Shakespeare (Drunks and cross-dressing!)
The Cook by Eduardo Machado (Cuba!)
The Breach by Catherine Filloux, Tarell McCraney & Joe Sutton (Hurricane Katrina...which I think should be sans exclamation point)
The Imaginary Invalid by Molière (Satire on the medical profession!)
The Cure at Troy by Seamus Heaney (Greek adventure!--I'm hoping for hot, bare-chested men)

In the Leo K. Theatre
By the Waters of Babylon by Robert Schenkkan (Cuba pt 2!)
how? how? why? why? by Kevin Kling (Hilarious!)
Murderers by Jeffrey Hatcher (Hilarious pt. 2!)
TBA (There was a scheduling mishap at the fault of the previously scheduled play's publisher)

Holiday Special Presentation
Back Home Again: A John Denver Holiday Concert (Take me home, country roads...Fire on the Mountain creator Dan Wheetman returns!)

Thinking, talking

From Joanna Horowitz, Communications Department

It's amazing how the weeks can just slip by around here. One play opens, another closes. My work days recently have been measured in free food and drinks: champagne to toast Braden and Marya on the great opening of Rachel Corrie; pizza to send off the musicians of Fire on the Mountain (no Kentucky bourbon, but it was lunch time). Now a brief reprieve before Gem of the Ocean (with the amazing Phylicia Rashad at the helm!) will open with great fanfare, capping a great, albeit exhausting, season. So, now that my very poor explanation of blog lag (excess food...ok, I've been busy with other things too) is done, let me share something with you.

The other day, I snuck into the end of a student matinee of My Name is Rachel Corrie to see the post play discussion. I was curious to see how high school students would respond to a play about someone not too much older than them. Would it resonate and ring true? They were virtually silent throughout the entire performance. The discussion was slow to start, but once Marya came back on stage and started--in her graceful, optimistic, humble way--to dialogue with the audience, the questions started rolling in.

Yes, there was the ubiquitous "How did you memorize all of those lines?" ("I'm still not sure I know them all," she said) but there were also questions about how the play has changed Marya's outlook on the controversy. Students asked if Rachel's spirit has inspired her to become more of an activist (yes, "I don't think I'll ever be the same," she said). One student from a school in Olympia shared that she played pinball at the same place Rachel mentions in the play. Marya's face lit up, "Really? You've been there?"

I've been having a hard time remembering that Rachel Corrie was a real person. Of course I know it rationally, and I've seen pictures and met her parents, but it seems impossible that these beautiful words could have come from the pen of someone just a little younger than I who lived an hour away and died in a country I pretty much know nothing about. I feel connected to her in a strange, remote way, but I feel oddly voyeuristic looking inside her head without knowing her. However, I think Annie Wagner might have been right when she wrote on the Stranger slog yesterday, "Everyone who keeps a private journal has some consciousness of a future audience, whether you’re aiming at your older self or fantasizing a public ravenous for your juvenilia."

It did seem like Rachel was writing for an audience of some kind, and I'm sure she would probably be happy to know her words were eliciting this kind of response--even outrage. The student audience asked Marya what she imagined Rachel would think about the play. Marya said she thought Rachel would be proud and happy to know her words were making people think and talk. It makes me think about what I'm doing now that would possibly impact anyone once I’m gone. I've just finished writing a country musical about heartbreak. While I'm sure someone might find it funny, entertaining, whatever, I feel really motivated now to use my passion for theater to start a spark. About something. Wow, it sounds like I'm writing a cover letter or something.

Speaking of writing, next Wednesday, April 4, Seattle Rep is presenting Teenspeak: My Name Is. Using My Name is Rachel Corrie as a jumping off point, students from three area high schools worked with Seattle Rep teaching artists to develop short theatrical pieces about their lives and the issues that are important to them. I got to sit in on their first read through. I was just stunned at the concise, insightful poetry that they've created. The performance takes place at 6 p.m. prior to the April 4 performance of Rachel Corrie. It's free, but reservations are necessary. Whether or not you're coming to Rachel Corrie that night, I would really encourage you to check out the My Name Is project. I think you'll find yourself rather inspired. To make reservations call the box office at 206-443-2222.

Breathing

From Joanna Horowitz, Communications Department

Exhale. That's sort of the general feeling around here. We opened My Name is Rachel Corrie last night after a media storm (front page of the Seattle Times anyone?), controversy, anger, elation...and that's just from the promotion side. As you can read from Marya's gorgeous blogs below, the artistic process has also been exhausting, wonderful, scary. Now the production can fly on its own. That's not to say the work is done—from our end we'll be constantly dialoguing with the audience, making sure the work remains the focus of any controversy—but the piece can really have room to breathe now.

I saw the show on Tuesday, the final preview. I felt like I was holding my breath the whole time. I was caught up in Rachel's words, in Marya's pitch-perfect, vibrant portrayal, in every nuance and turn-of-phrase that she and director Braden Abraham overturned. The play is truly a journey and by the end I was a little shell-shocked. I stood with the audience in an ovation and it was then that I started crying. I let out the breath I was holding and the play finally really seeped into my blood. Afterwards, I couldn't stop thinking about it, talking about, which seems to be common impulse. The lobby stayed packed for a quite a while afterwards as audience members shared with each other their thoughts about the story.

For me, I was most caught up in the passion that Rachel had to make a change in the world. I know I've written about it before, but it's what is the most striking to me. I talked to my friend Diane afterwards, and we both shared this sentiment that the play makes us feel so sheltered, so spoiled, so ineffective. Yes, we are working at a theatre that is producing art that is encouraging people to talk about really important things. I don't want to discount that. But both of us feel like how can we possibly ever truly understand the privilege we have without being faced with people who don't have it? Rachel Corrie talks a lot about that in the play, the idea that we must leave our comfort zone to try to understand humanity. Of course, that's really the goal of art, isn’t it? To help us understand or at least consider our place in the world? But I have to commend Rachel for leaving the comfort of a privileged life to try to figure out what she could do—as an artist and just as a human—to make a difference. Maybe it wasn't the right choice to make, but she made one.

This is one of the first pieces I've seen at the Rep where I really didn't feel like there was a wall between the art and me. This isn't a criticism of the theatre I've seen here in the past—I work here because of the caliber of plays we produce and their ability to spark dialogue. It's just a testament to the acting and direction of My Name is Rachel Corrie, to the willingness of Marya to completely open herself up to the audience and let us into her world, Rachel’s world. We are on the journey with her, in her bedroom, in her head. This play gets under your fingernails, in your mouth in a way I have only experienced in small, intimate theaters. And even though the Leo K. isn't tiny and I was sitting in the back row, I felt the immediacy. This isn't an in-your-face confrontation like Thom Pain (which I also loved, though the style was off-putting to some). This is Marya/Rachel taking your hand and saying, "Let me show you something." It's an indescribable feeling.

College, Cocktails, etc.

From Joanna Horowitz, Communications Department

Other things happening at the Rep:

Tonight is College Connections, a subscriber series for college students interested in theatre. They get to meet each other at a pre-show reception and then see the show. I only wish we had had something that cool where I went to school (but that's what you get for going to college in rural Washington). In conjunction, tonight is also our first-ever Arts Career Fair. You need to RSVP to attend, but if you're reading this and thinking, "Wow, I'm looking for an internship or entry-level job in the arts," get on the phone and call Winnie at 206-443-2210.

Some of our staff are not braving the snow, so it's a quiet day. But at least our offices aren't flooded like the INTIMAN's.

Tonight is the first preview of The Lady From Dubuque. Misha Berson previewed the show in today's arts section of the Times. You can read it here. Personally, I'm most excited about the ENORMOUS glass wall that is part of the set.

I have started brainstorming ideas for the Lady specialty cocktail. Stop by the bar during the run of the show (Jan. 11-Feb. 10) and try The Afterlife, which will probably be some delicious concoction of Grey Goose, Kahlua and other stuff. I'm going down to the bar later to "experiment."