A couple years ago I participated in the American premiere of a 400 year old play. This Sunday, I’m working with Outsiders Inn Collective once more as they continue the mission to clear the dust away from the little produced Jacobean and (non-Shakespeare) Elizabethan playwrights.

This time, we have an all female cast (plus one little boy), in a staged reading of A Yorkshire Tragedy by Thomas Middleton.

This short early Jacobean domestic tragedy is based on a biographical account of Walter Calverley of Yorkshire, who murdered his children and stabbed his wife.

I will be playing the wife.

As I mentioned up top, it’s a one shot deal, so if you’re free you should pop on over. (But,as you may surmise, it’s not a cheery tale and may not be for the kiddies.)

Elliott Bay Book Company
1521 Tenth Avenue, Seattle
Sunday the 19th, @ 2pm

The Fremont Players do panto. A.K.A. British pantomime. It’s not the ‘mime’ you’re thinking of. There’s nothing quiet about it, in fact. Imagine, if you will, the most ridiculous, madcap nonsensical bit of fun wrapped up in a musical that you can. Now throw in stock characters, stock subjects, and stock dialogue, along with some slapstick comedy and inventive topical humour to keep things fresh. That might just get you close enough to what’s in store.

Happily, I wasn’t coming into this unawares, as I discovered the existence of panto in college and even did a bunch of research for a term paper on the matter. Which is why I can be the lazy writer and just throw this quote at you from a book called Pantomime: A Story in Pictures.

It takes its name from classical times and changes the meaning, its characters from Italian comedy and changes their names, its stories from continental fairy tales and mixes historical figures, then adds every conceivable trick and resource of the theatre, opera, ballet, music hall, and musical comedy.

And this one from The Story of Pantomime.

There must be songs, there must be a ballet; there should be some sufficient reproduction of a fairy-tale to be recognisable by the children; there should be scope for the impossible, the absurd and the grotesque and there should be a full stage and plenty of spectacle. […] Above all, the drollery should be droll and the fun should be funny.

Panto is always done with a familiar story. Cinderella, Aladdin, Dick Whittington are all regulars on the panto stage. And the stock characters often mix it up with cross-dressing. Well, the “principal boy” is often played by a girl. But there is also “the Dame” and she is always played by a man. And preferably by one who completely fails at passing for female. And she’s usually a bit… *ahem* …libidinous.

The good guys are good and the bad guys are bad. The romantic couples fall in love and have a happy ending. Oh, and there’s usually a person or two in an animal costume – even if for no apparent reason at all. (That two person horse suit that isn’t fooling anyone? Yeah. That’s panto.)

But what’s better than stock characters and familiar stories? Stock dialogue! Well, stock dialogue in the sense that panto loves audience participation. So, of course, we have to include the bits the audience knows. If a panto player says “something isn’t” the audience is free to shout back “Oh, yes it is!” The player responds “Oh, no it isn’t!” “Oh yes it is!” And so on until the player drops it and moves on. There’s also the obligatory ghost scene. Also often for no apparent reason. The player may ask the audience where the ghost is. To which the audience can reply (because it will be so) “IT’S BEHIND YOU!”

Yes, indeed, we are talking about a form of theatre that is perhaps closest to what it was in the days of Commedia del’Arte, and we are talking about a form of theatre that will grab at every cheap joke and – very importantly – bad pun that it can find. All for the sake of showing the audience a good time.

Which ought to be enough of a summation to bring you up to speed.

And so, back to my new adventure. The Freemont Players develop their own story line and script, and we’ve been developing it by doing improv with the various characters, switching them off and just having at it. But now we’ve been cast and our roles have been solidified.

So without further ado:

This year’s panto will be Peter Pan! And I will be playing Tinkerbell!

Now, I know you’re excited to see me do something like this. But I’m afraid you’ll just have to get comfortable sitting on those pins and needles. Because unless you venture out to Oregon Country Fair in July, you won’t get to see it until Christmas. That’s right, didn’t I tell you? This is a British Boxing Day tradition, not a year round affair. Still, I’ll try not to leave you in the dark.

Listen to my scene:

And check out the whole thing at the MMIP.

The Magnetick Lady; or Humors Reconciled
by Ben Jonson
27  – 30 August 2009 @ Trinity Lutheran Church

Come see the American premiere of a 400 year old play! In which I’ll be playing two men! And using funny/bad accents!

p.s. Wear comfortable shoes: you’ll be following us around the building (sorry no seats).

(Was that enough belated excitement for you?)

An anti-romantic comedy in two acts, Diary of A Superfluous Man concerns the misadventures of Chulkaturin, a tax official of late Imperial Russia, who, in chasing an improbable romance with a young lady of good family, battles against both a Russian prince and a fate that decreed him at birth to be “an extraneous bolt in the machinery of eternity.”

Enjoy the show!

(Or if you’re really impatient to hear me, here’s a clip: )

Two Misfits Tell Stories That Reveal and Conceal

There is a scrappy, ragged appeal to this fringe production, executed with the kind of energy and raw talent that tends to outshine our city’s bigger, richer, more cautious theater companies.

Lindsay Erika Crain and Brandon Ryan give themselves completely to the rough-hewn give-and-take of Nigro’s dialogue, which is painfully attuned to the sticky games of revelation and concealment people can play with each other. Crain is fantastic as Tracy, the world-weary orphan with a forked tongue and a dark past. She plays the role just right, part nymph and part demon, avoiding the temptation to overdo the Girl, Interrupted act. As the play progresses, she just becomes stronger, depicting Tracy’s slow-burn disintegration with an edgy subtlety as immediate as it is haunting. Equally good is Ryan as the long-suffering, infinitely understanding Ben, the writer whose life is turned upside down and inside out by the appearance of this (to him) fascinatingly bent woman.

Read the rest at Seattle Weekly

Also see:

Seattle P-I (one of three shows in the review – scroll down)

An audience member review at Seattle Performs

In Don Nigro’s tale about love and creation, the actors of ART take on a modern day love story for a generation Tracy, a 20 year old antagonist of her own life. She finds herself torn between her need for safety and her certainty that all human relationships eventually turn into nightmares. Ben is simplistic in his unfaltering acceptance of Tracy and the world around him. They’ve got all the words in the world, but can they find the right ones to communicate? Seascape is a story of people who promise according to their hopes and perform according to their fears. It questions whether any really functional relationship between a man and a woman is possible, and yet ensures us dysfunction is okay, even desirable.

You can click here for more info.

At the time I write this they have not yet updated their website, but for future reference this is where you can visit ART.