boom! theater company, New Works Festival, Phase II
The offerings of the New Works Festival, varying drastically in tone and form, are matched in a number of combinations throughout it, making for continuously-changing playbills. So that while Mountain of Dreams, for example, goes up one evening alongside Vitruvius and Fight, it’ll share a bill the next week with Over: exposed. As a result, performances compliment and/or clash with one another to varying degrees from night to night, and each evening is by design unique.
Wing-it Productions brings us GAUNTLET: There’s jousting.
There is often a fine line between video games and reality. Some of us pour over a controller or mouse for hours at a time, tailoring our gaming experience to be exactly the fantastic reality we wished we could live in. Being able to escape from the sometimes harsh, sometimes monotonous minutia of our existence is in part the reason video games exist and have become so widely popular amongst people of all ages. So what happens when two people are given the opportunity to literally act out their real life experiences through a fantasy world in a video game? You won’t know until you witness the onstage interactive video game improvised show, GAUNTLET.
The Show Must Go On, Part 4: Off the Page
My plan was to write a draft of the story, and then cut and adapt the scenes. But all things work together for good, at least in this case. Before I spiral much further into angst or research or other forms of writerly avoidance and overthink-age, my producer asked if we could meet to run through the story and workshop it.
Annex Theatre’s Team of Heroes: Behind Closed Doors: Biff! Klertch! Sigh.
Team of Heroes: Behind Closed Doors, now in production at Annex Theatre, is the second part of a proposed trilogy that aims to bring the excitement of comic books on stage with a mix of humor and pathos. Unfortunately, the plays have so far leaned toward zany and wacky comedy, while paying lip service to pathos and drama.
Apology
I apologize for finding this dog to shadow
you even as you pace the attic from desk
to window, you and he, a pair now, contemplating
those tough computer programming issues
at which dogs notoriously shine.
Those “make-em-ups”: 20 years of emerging art from Wing-It Productions
“The spirit of improv itself is the inventive spirit.” —Andrew McMasters
The Working Artist Series with The Cabiri: Educating the audience
How does one get into aerial arts, anyway? It is no secret that one of the great problems of the performing arts is creating continuity. Not only continuity of style, and not only continuity of tradition, but also continuity of knowledge among practitioners as well as among audiences. For quite sometime in Seattle it has been fashionable among theater artists to talk about educating their audiences. The goal is noble but difficult.
The Show Must Go On, Part 3: The Structure and The Stakes
One piece of my self-assigned homework last week was to look at more storytelling guidelines, so I did. This set of storytelling tips on The Moth, hit me hard, especially this part: the stakes of the story need to be clear to you, and to the audience. Good news, then. Just by writing last week’s post, I figured out another piece of of why this story’s been tricky. I hadn’t identified the stakes of the story yet. Bad news: I didn’t know what the stakes were yet.
Tell Me the Hurt Thing
Push number four because the stairs are murder: a crooked rattle-
snake spine, windows painted shut, walls twice papered over,
built into catacombs you’re sure they know by heart: busted hall
lights & pitch dark landings, cul-de-sacs colored a murderous
blood-red.
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