Arts Artistic Director for Theater Schmeater Stepping Down
Rob West, who has been the executive artistic director of Capitol Hill’s Theater Schmeater for almost six years, is moving on. While he held the job, Schmeater produced some popular late-night shows (Twilight Zone, Money and Run by Wayne S. Rawley) and several local world premieres (including Back of the Throat by Yussef El Guindi, which won the Schmeater playwrighting competition in 2004 and, after its Schmeater run, went to New York where the New Yorker called it “brilliant and sinewy”).
He says he’s leaving to get married and film a movie he’s always wanted to make. No replacement has been selected.
A nice note to exit on: Theater Schmeater is currently running Soul of a Whore, the last in a three-part play cycle by Denis Johnson (who wrote Jesus’ Son), which was published four years ago in McSweeney’s, volume nine, and summarized in the magazine’s table of contents like this:
Eugene O’Neill meets Greek drama meets, of course, Denis Johnson. The characters are blurred in mystery and seem suspiciously connected through fate or destiny. This is a play you read and cannot wait to see performed on stage.
Now’s your chance.
Don't let the door hit your ass on the way out. Seattle will be a better place when this asshole leaves. My girlfriend dragged me to one of his plays once and that stole two hours of my life I'll never get back.