Arkansas university bans Sondheim musical.

A student production of Assassins, the award-winning musical, was to have premiered Thursday night at Arkansas Tech University, but the administration banned it — and permitted a final dress rehearsal Wednesday night (so the cast could experience the play on which students have worked long hours) only on the condition that wooden stage guns were cut in half prior to the event and not used.

The local newspaper reported that the administration was so concerned about the production that reporters were barred from the dress rehearsal. Adding to the anger of many on the campus is that the film American Gangster, featuring plenty of blood and violence — and none from singing historical figures — was screened on campus this week.

(Via ArtsJournal.)

We saw it coming, though we hoped it wouldn't—Velocity Dance Center has been priced out of Oddfellows Hall. They'll move out July 31st, 2008.

This is a tragedy, not so much for dance (I am confident Velocity, which won one of The Stranger's first Genius Awards, will find a new home), but for architecture: Velocity is one of the prettiest theaters—one of the prettiest anythings—in Seattle, with its gleaming blonde wood floorboards, frieze of roaring lions, ceilings so high they make a person dizzy, and, in the foyer, dark wood tables and benches that look like they were carved and pieced together by someone long ago, maybe on the beach of a tropical island, and floated over to Seattle in the hold of a tall ship.

(The furniture's nice, but the hardwood floors are my favorite. You can't tell unless you look closely, but the wood—that, from any normal distance, glows like skin—is beautifully scarred with thousands of tiny pockmarks. "Somebody went crazy with a staple gun," former director KT Niehoff told me two years ago, for this column about Velocity's tenth birthday. "A handful of us spent a week, all day and all night, just pulling up staples.")

You should drop by Velocity soon, just to admire its insides.

Kara O'Toole (dancer, choreographer, and current Velocity director) says the dance center needs a temporary residence for about three years and hopes to eventually move into Washington Hall, the dilapidated building with a dignified history on the corner of 14th and Fir:

The building used to be home to On the Boards and its stage has been graced by W. E. B. Du Bois, MLK, Count Basie, Jimi Hendrix, Ray Charles, Duke Ellington, and so on.

The Sons of Haiti currently own Washington Hall, but Historic Seattle is trying to buy it in the hopes that CD Forum and, now, Velocity can move in.

Back in November, Ted Schroth, the new owner of Oddfellows, wrote: "Paying retail for a building and not tearing it down creates the economic reality of having to raise rents to market levels in order to make retaining the building feasible from an investment standpoint."

Two months later, he said, more directly: "I don’t want to sound like a victim, because I’m not, but I can’t afford to subsidize the arts.”

Don't be mad at Mr. Schroth. He is as good as his word.

Still—July 31, 2008 will be a dismal day.

This show—which I saw in LA last week before its final tweaks and big unveiling in NYC—is going to be huge:

Sadly, the youtube clips are sub-par and make the musical (by Alex Timbers, of NYC's Les Freres Corbusier) seem amateurish. Yes, it's an emo-rock/sketch-comedy musical about Andrew Jackson, but Bloody Bloody both deploys and mocks the emo-rock/sketch-comedy aesthetic. Like if Jon Stewart and Green Day got together to write a show—it rocks and it winks at the same time.

It's all about populism, you see. You can hear the show's flagship number, "Populism Yea Yea!" (which, on the recording, also sounds more bloodless and amateurish than it was live) here.

The show posits Jackson as a sexy, petulant, rock-star president. The conceit fits—Jackson was the drunkest, fightingest president we've ever had, and a contradictory, emotional basket case: He married his wife while she was married to another guy, fought 13 duels (mostly over her honor), and waged brutal Indian Wars while his adopted Creek son was running around the White House.

And Bloody Bloody creates its own universe of rock-star sexiness eerily well. During one of Jackson's rallies, actresses playing teenage girls squealed "We want to fuck you, Andrew Jackson!" and held placards reading "emocracy now!" Then actual teenage girls, in the the actual audience, started squealing about wanting to fuck the actor playing Jackson.

That actor, Benjamin Walker, is a dynamo and the set is fantastic—it begins as a saloon-bordello (piano, chandelier, taxidermied deer, squirrels, and alligator) and turns into this:

Imagine that, but blindingly bright, the music roaring, the teenage girls onstage and offstage screaming, Jackson wailing "life sucks, and my life sucks in particular" while the ensemble sings behind him:

Sometimes you have to take the initiative.
Sometimes your whole family dies of cholera.
Sometimes you have to make your own story.
Sometimes you have to shoot the storyteller in the neck.
Sometimes you have to take back the country.
Sometimes you have to kill everyone, everyone.


Populism, yeah yeah!

Until the interweb deigns to give us more and better clips of the show, you'll have to take my word for it—start asking your favorite theater to bring Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson to Seattle now. You will love it, they will make piles of cash, and the world will be a better place.

You know a form of culture is here for good (and beginning the process of ossification) when they start doing kids' versions: theater for kids, rock shows for kids and now—burlesque for kids?

The Von Foxies are putting on a kids' cabaret. There won't be any stripping, but someone who calls herself "the Naked Folksinger" is scheduled to perform.

Did you hear that rumor that was going around about artistic director Bart Sher leaving Intiman for points east? It wasn't too outlandish, since Sher spends a lot of time gadding about in New York and DC, directing Il Barbiere di Siviglia (apparently a "winsome new staging") and suchlike.

Anyway, it ain't so—not yet.

From Intiman central command:

Bartlett Sher has extended his contract through the end of the 2009 production season. Sher is currently in New York directing the first Broadway revival of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s South Pacific, which opens on April 3 at Lincoln Center Theater. He will direct the world premiere of Namaste Man, a play written and performed by Andrew Weems, at Intiman in the spring.

Somehow, I don't imagine we'll be seeing much of old Bart after 2009. And soon longtime managing director Laura Penn will be gone, off to run the Society of Stage Directors and Choreographers.

Anyone looking to take over Intiman? Start plotting now.

Last September, Brendan Kiley reported on the rampant jackassery of Randy Quaid, whose odd and unprofessional behavior helped sink the $6.5 million would-be Broadway musical Lone Star Love during its pre-Broadway run in Seattle.

Today the New York Post has an update on the Quaid saga:

All 26 members of the Lone Star Love cast brought Randy up on charges with Actors' Equity Association, claiming he physically and verbally abused his fellow performers and that his oddball behavior onstage and off forced the show to close, thus depriving them of their jobs.

On Friday, Equity handed down its decision. According to documents obtained exclusively by The Post, the union has banned Randy for life - life! - and fined him $81,572.

Full story (including the high-octane drama involving Quaid's wife) here

(Thanks to Slog tipstress Beth.).

The 5th Avenue has announced its 2008-2009 season, with another dubious pre-Broadway premiere (Shrek: the Musical) and The Drowsy Chaperone which Dan despaired of back in November:

The national tour of Drowsy Chaperone isn’t coming to Seattle, which is a damn shame. The show—which won the Best Musical Tony in 2006—is absolutely brilliant.

It's not the tour that's coming to the 5th Ave, but it's something.

(Also, congratulations to Nick Garrison, who will star as the emcee in the 5th Ave's upcoming production of Cabaret—it's the role he was born for.)

The Stranger's own Thadius Van Landingham III happened upon the opportunity to make pasta with the Italian theater company Socìetas Raffaello Sanzio the other night. Not being a fool, he seized it and shot some video. If Hey Girl!—their show at On the Boards from tonight through Sunday—is anywhere near as hot as their pasta-making, well, hell's bells. And it seems likely: There will be nudity.

Here they are strangling priests (the translation of strozzapreti, the name of these hand-rolled noodles):

...and moving gnocchi over forks in ways that make a person feel funny—watch the hands of the man on the right:

That's the title of Mike Daisey's new monologue. Listen to the first six minutes here, in which he makes fun of TCG conferences ("everyone has their oat bran muffin in one hand and their free bagel in the other hand... and they're dialoguing with each other like if there's enough dialogue, something will happen") and people who equate arts funding with good art ("in Sweden, the government just shits money into your mouth, all day long!"), and the title How Theater Failed America ("it's a sensationalist, graceless, bombastic title—it's bullshit").

It's infuriating, how consistently good Mike Daisey is. Buy HTFA tickets here.

You wouldn't think Seattle needed another theater company, but the New Century Theater Company, despite its eminently forgettable name, looks promising—just because of the people involved. In fact, I think The Stranger has written enthusiastic sentences about all of them. There's...

• Stranger Genius Award winner Amy Thone: "Her directness, her lack of artifice, is what makes her a great actor. When Thone walks onto a stage, she sucks all the frivolity out of the room, makes you lean forward to listen. Her presence is regal, never clownish. She is the opposite of coy."

• Hans Altweis: "without a doubt, the best Shakespeare actor in the city."

• Playwright Stephanie Timm, who wrote Crumbs Are Also Bread, performed last year by WET. From a review of Timm's W(h)acked by Lindy West: "This play did not cure my hangover. It did, however, captivate my attention and make me laugh, despite my insides' persistent mad dashes for freedom. And in that, W(h)acked is a miracle."

• Paul Morgan Stetler, an actor we've liked, particularly as the star of Louis Slotin Sonata.

• MJ Sieber, a local actor we've praised over and over again. My favorite sentence about him: "MJ Sieber, as the Creature, with his massive, sweaty (and most of the time, nude) body, is exceptionally intimidating..."

The praise becomes slightly less effusive with the rest of the company members. But still, praise is praise:

• Annie Wagner opined that Michael Patten was "competent" in Taming of the Shrew in 2005. (He was also excellent in Accidental Death of an Anarchist and The Water Engine with the Genius Award winning company Strawberry Theater Workshop.)

• Jen Taylor was last praised as "effective" in 2000 for her performance in Fairy Tales of New York. (And check out the reviews on that page by Stranger freelancer cum Weekly staffer cum Seattle Metropolitan arts editor Steve Wiecking.)

• And we've never mentioned Ray Gonzalez by name. But he's the one on the right:

Anyway: a new theater company! Whose name I've already forgotten! But with an uncommonly well-liked (by us) team of actors, directors, and playwrights!

The company's inaugural event is next Monday, January 28, at Seattle Rep at 7:30 pm. There will be drinks, snacks, and a reading of Phyllis Nagy's Disappeared by company members and guests Darragh Kennan (we've praised him), Lori Larsen (and her), and Chelsea Rives (but not her).

I've always regretted the first sentence of my review of Ariel Dorfman's Purgatario, which played at the Seattle Rep two years ago:

There's no nice way to say it—Purgatorio stinks.

Today—specifically, the first sentence of this NYT review—taught me why:

Ariel Dorfman’s “Widows,” having its New York premiere at 59E59 Theaters, is the kind of play that makes you feel bad for being bored.

That's what was so irritating about Purgatorio too, why writing a bad review of that bad play felt so terrible: not just because Dorfman is an allegedly nice man who suffered under Latin American tyranny—but because his work slyly abusive, like one of those traps that gets tighter and more uncomfortable the more you try to wiggle out of it.

Purgatorio stinks, but that's only half of its damage—the other half is its tricky way of making you feel bad for its flaws. It way of making you feel bad for being bored.

That's what I meant to write.

Interim number one: Vivian Phillips, a former Paul Schell spokesperson and co-director of the Hansberry Project ("a professional black theatre company dedicated to the artistic exploration of African American life, history and culture"), has been appointed interim director at Langston Hughes Performing Arts Center.

Jackie Moscou, the former (maybe former?) director of LHPAC is still on administrative leave (as she has been for months) and is still the subject of a mysterious investigation (as she has been for months). Still, nobody seems to know anything about anything.

Interim number two: Kevin Maifeld, former managing director at Seattle Children's Theater, has been appointed interim managing director at Intiman Theatre while its board looks for someone to replace Laura Penn, the outgoing managing director. The search for Penn's replacement is led by Greg Kandel, the man who led the national search that resulted in the hiring of Bart Sher—and whose name is an anagram for "darn keg leg."

Moby Dick is too big to be a play. It is as America is: huge, multivalent, funny, pseudoscientific, bombastic, tragic, and not terribly interested in women. Its 135 chapters are like citizens or waves—each a small, independent thing that's part of a whole so enormous, you can't hold it all in your mind.

Fluke, an adaptation of Moby Dick by a New York company called Radiohole, is not a play. It is, as company member Maggie Hoffman wrote in an e-mail, "a collage that's barely a show."

It begins with Eric Dyer, an actor who seems like a sailor—bald and tough looking with a five-o'clock shadow and a blustery voice. He distills the first, funniest chapter of Moby Dick (I would like to resist quoting it; I cannot): "...whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people's hats off—then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can. This is my substitute for pistol and ball."

Which Dyer growls out as: "I go fishing because I get so fucking fed up and depressed with this shit that I just have to get out of here." That's as literal as this adaptation gets. The rest is a jumble: two women sharing a joint in a tiny boat, actors painting their eyelids, a song by Rammstein, Ahab playing golf.

Fluke started as a tenuous metaphor Dyer found in an essay by Gregory Whitehead, something about Ahab being, as Dyer wrote in an e-mail, "a cosmic peg-legged receiver/transmitter picking up a nameless death rattle and rebroadcasting it to his crew." The metaphor was a good excuse to buy a new gadget that beams sound directly into your skull. (The device, called the Audio Spotlight®, was invented by soud prodigy Dr. F. Joseph Pompei, who was hired as an acoustic engineer at Bose when he was 16 years old.)

"This technology," wrote Hoffman, "is used mainly by the military to hurt people or freak them out." The Audio Spotlight®, Dyer appended, is a civilian version, "not capable of keeping America safe."

Dyer also built boats for Fluke, small dories that wheel around onstage, based on the design of a rocking boat he saw at a cousin's house. One of the cofounders of Radiohole happened to be working in a plant that built NYC subway cars. Dyer and his friend snuck in one weekend to steal some time with the tools, building tiny boats for a tiny play in the corner of an enormous factory.

It is hard to get anyone to go with you to see standup and improv in the University District at midnight-thirty on a weekend night; no, not hard, it’s impossible. A friend who’s usually game for theater stuff declined in favor of going to see Blazing Saddles at midnight at the Egyptian; another friend, one who’s had a career in improv, so you think he'd be at least inclined, declined too, in favor of going to see Blazing Saddles with the first guy. A couple other friends said no too. I took the bus, which got from Capitol Hill to the University District so rapidly I had almost an hour to kill, and I spent it getting as drunk as possible.

Which isn’t really necessary, it turns out, because there’s a bar in the Historic University Theater, and not just in the lobby or something, but in among the seats, so you can drink and drink without missing a thing (although you couldn’t get a vodka soda on Saturday night, because the bar was out of club soda, as well as vodka). Dartanion London is the MC of Dart-Mondo (Saturdays through March 15; $8) and its curator of sorts. He introduces a standup comedian, the standup comedian comes to the stage and does a couple minutes, and then four actually funny improv actors come out and do actually funny improv based on the subjects that the standup was just discussing. Then someone else comes out and does some standup, followed again by improv. It is different every night, but the standup comedians on Saturday were Ted Tremper from Chicago and Bengt Washburn from California. Some of the subjects raised: John Wilkes Booth, Jamie Foxx, and the retarded. Tremper said he thinks Hillary Clinton is going to be out of the race soon, and added, “The only thing sad about that is I really want to see her pick up a baby and devour it.” Washburn was even funnier. He opened with the guy-eaten-by-a-tiger story. “I thought that was neat,” he said. “For the tiger. Looking all those years. Wondering.” I'd recount more of it for you, but I took bad notes because I was laughing. The standout among the improv crew was Amanda Williams--incidentally, the only woman onstage.

From the glories of Craigslist:

Theatre director needed

Date: 2008-01-06, 5:38PM

There is no theatre category on Craig's list, so I am posting here.

I am a nutritionist/performer, and I am mounting a show in April, '08, at the Museum of History and Industry (MOHAI) in Seattle. My show is unique. No one has ever performed nutrition before. I have written the script for a series of characters through which I speak about food, politics, illness, extreme health, and more. I need a director to help me realize these characters at their most entertaining and educational pinnacle. (That may not be grammatically correct, but you get my meaning.)

I have a Bachelor's degree in Drama from the UW, and a Master's degree in Nutrition from Bastyr University. I perform and speak on a semi-regular basis. I work well with directors.

Your pay will be based on a percentage of the 'door' at the McEachern Auditorium at MOHAI, a 300 seat venue. The exact percentage is negotiable.

I believe you will love this show. I do. Please email me and we can get together to see if we can work well together.

Thank you.

Thanks to Jake for the tip, thanks to commentor Comte for the title.

One of the actors in The Neverending Story at Seattle Children's Theater suggested eating a pot cookie before seeing the show—and who are we to contradict an artist's request?

SCT has always been a pleasant haven for small children and stoned adults\, with its sparkly star-patterned carpeting and abundant water fountains. The not-stoned adults at the Children's Theatre always seem even more tightly wound than their offspring, shouting in high, panicked voices: "Kendra! Come here! Don't tease Mommy!" Or: "Oh my God, where's my credit card?!" Or: "DON'T PRETEND TO JUMP OFF THAT!"

Anyway—The Neverending Story is an adaptation of a children's novel written in the late 1970s by a German named Michael Ende. (In 1945, at 16 years old, Ende was drafted into the German army, but he threw away his rifle and deserted, by some accounts joining an anti-Nazi underground movement. Take that, Günter Grass.)

Seattle actor (and Stranger Genius) Gabriel Baron plays a dreamy, nerdy boy with a recently deceased mother.

One morning, he hides from bullies in a bookshop, where the gruff proprietor sort of gives him (and sort of lets him steal) the perfect book—a book about a fantasy world our dreamy nerd eventually falls into, where he finds his courage and becomes its hero.

The action is chopped into appropriately short episodes with monsters, trolls, people who are born old and grow young, a talking horse, and a giant grumpy turtle.

The puppets, designed by Douglas N. Paasch, are simple and great, and the actors are among Seattle's finest: Baron, Hans Altwies, Sarah Hartlett, Michael Place (of Washington Ensemble Theatre), Tim Hyland (often of Strawberry Theatre Workshop), and so on.

The story is an allegory about depression—a great Nothing is negating the fantasyland, its Childlike Empress has a mysterious wasting disease, one character dies in the Swamps of Sadness because he can't cheer up, and the Luck Dragon (Altwies) saves people by being endlessly relaxed and optimistic.

High-strung grown-ups take note.

(You're on your own for pot brownies, but you can get your tickets here.)

Maybe a funny model. Print only, no runway.

Meet Nick Thune, my current and former obsession of this nature:

Hey, you!

Nick's playing tonight at Laff Hole, in their "Home for the Holidays" special. He's originally from 'round here. Also playing is Reggie Watts, Jimes, Fahim Anwar, Oedipus Complex, Jake Dill, and Joe Larson. It's at Chop Suey, $5 gets you in, and it starts at 9.

Here's a vid:
hometown heroes

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I'm gonna wear a pretty dress.

... the children we bed.

Keylin, 57, who has been fired as executive director of Youth Theatre Northwest [on Mercer Island], was arrested and charged earlier this month with third-degree rape and communication with a minor for immoral purposes.

According to the court documents, Keylin, who became Youth Theatre Northwest's executive director in 2003, had been arrested in a 1991 rape investigation but was eventually convicted of assault.

In announcing Keylin's termination, the theater management said a background check had revealed nothing questionable in his history.

Really. You hired a man to lead a youth theater and his background check didn't reveal an arrest for rape that resulted in a conviction? Isn't that the kind of thing background checks are specifically designed for?

I'm afraid you've got some explaining to do, YTN.

Jersey Boys is a buffed and shiny thing, an entertainment machine greased with pomade whose engine hums in four-part harmony. Every component of this jukebox musical about the Four Seasons—from the mechanized set changes to the 34 musical numbers—is engineered to make time disappear.

It begins with some poor Italian toughs—including the fresh-faced Frankie Valli (Christopher Kale Jones)—who divide their time between burglary and singing under streetlamps. They're romantic artist-thugs, blithely drifting in and out of jail and breaking into churches just to accompany themselves on the organ and teach young Valli to sing.

Then the inevitable walk around the jukebox-musical Stations of the Cross: the struggle, the rise, the plateau, the fall. (It's a soft fall. Most of the Four Seasons are still alive and some are still working in the music business.) And, in between, street-corner pop with Valli's space-age falsetto: "Sherry," "Big Girls Don't Cry," "Walk Like a Man," and so on.

Predictability has never been so relentlessly entertaining—and Jersey Boys is canny enough to congratulates its audience on their just-folks good taste:

"We weren't a social movement like the Beatles," one of the Seasons explains. "Our fans didn't put flowers in their hair and try to levitate the Pentagon. Our people were the guys who were shipped overseas, and their sweethearts. They were the factory workers, the truck drivers. The kids pumping gas, flipping burgers. The pretty girl with circles under her eyes behind the counter at the diner. They're the ones who really got us, who pushed us over the top."

Jersey Boys isn't cheap (tickets run between $30 to $90), but the gas pumpers and burger flippers of today can do the musical one better—drive out to the bluff, put the Four Seasons in the car stereo, and neck.

As has been discussed before, every time Washington Ensemble Theatre does anything, all of us--Brendan, Annie, and I, at least--fight about who gets to go see it/review it. But since Hedda Gabler only plays for one weekend, there's not really much sense reviewing it in next week's paper, so Kiley went to some rehearsals and wrote a big preview of it in the issue that's out now.

Hedda Tesman, née Hedda Gabler, is a frustrated prize bride, recently wedded to--and, to her horror, pregnant by--a dorky academic named George. She used to be the belle of every ball but, she explains, "I had danced myself tired; my day was done." She is a distillation of disgust--bored by her husband, revolted by his doting aunt, both repelled by and attracted to the randy neighbor, enthralled with her husband's professional rival, and contemptuous of the rival's sweet and innocent mistress. (Naturally, Hedda also despises the play's only other character, a serving girl.) A mess of resentment, Hedda is a woman with brains and balls--her favorite pastime is shooting her pistols--trapped in a Victorian cage. She's a victim and she's in charge. She wants to be an artist, a writer, a creator. Instead she destroys.

So, how was it? I am probably not the person to ask because, embarrassingly, I haven't seen the play before, whereas on the way out of the theater Kiley and Wagner were talking about what was cut and what wasn't, about what these decisions said about director Jennifer Zeyl's interpretation, about whether Hedda Gabler is a feminist work--and I was thinking about Radiohead and David Bowie and the Beatles. The show is saturated with music. Lots of Radiohead's Amnesiac, some of Radiohead's In Rainbows, a little of Bowie's Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars, all of Bowie's "Space Oddity," all of Radiohead's "Exit Music for a Film," a certain song by the Beatles about happiness and warm guns...

The set Zeyl designed is a thing to behold--this is a lady who won a Stranger Genius Award for her set designs--consisting of a room with two chandeliers and slanted walls (so the characters can literally climb the walls) and abstract bric-a-brac (garish blue, frames on the walls without things in them, said chandeliers carved from wood with energy-saving corkscrew fluorescent bulbs). This is a brightly painted, chopped up, subtext-exploding re-imagining of a play in which what we know about plays is fed back into the work to create a kind of maniacally knowing, self-aware spectacle. This is psychology turned into furniture. The set is where Zeyl puts all of her ideas. She is a master at conveying what she means in visual terms.

Conveying what she means through actors, not so much.

Specifically, the relationships between the characters seem indistinct, which is a problem, because the play's tension is built around what they think of each other. Mannerisms are specific to each character but in a lot of cases seem to come from nowhere. All of the actors (except one) have their moment, or lots of moments, that startle you into believing them, but the most successful moments in the show aren't the fine, sharp psychological entanglements but the overstated gestures--the moment when Marya Sea Kaminski (as Hedda) tears all the fluffy white frills off her blouse, or when Colin Byrne (as Lovbourg) does aerial acrobatics on red tissu in the sequence where Hedda is imagining his death. But these are so constructed they're essentially set pieces, these scenes.

In any case, using Radiohead throughout the show is brilliant, because Radiohead's songs--the Amnesiac and In Rainbows ones, anyway--are melodies made of moans, feedback, bleeps, hissing, static, in other words, the sounds of the digital age, and are about what the digital age is doing to people. It is music that's a critique of the digital age and yet, as the writer Mark Greif has pointed out, you need the tools of the digital age (the speakers in your iPod) to hear Radiohead's music. And Hedda Gabler is built on such paradoxes of dependence.

That said, I have no idea what "Space Oddity" had to do with anything.

She has been Intiman's managing director for 14 years. She's leaving to run the Society of Stage Directors and Choreographers, a directors' and choreographers' union.

WET's blahblahblahBANG (a pistol fit in one act), an adaptation of Ibsen's Hedda Gabler, opened last night. Kiley's preview anticipated an exciting production. Anyone go last night? How was it? Should I take my parents?

Back in mid-October, Jacqueline Moscou, the artistic director of Langston Hughes Performing Arts Center (and perennial director of Black Nativity at Intiman) was removed from her post at Langston Hughes and placed under investigation by the city. Nobody would say why—not city officials, not Langston Hughes employees, not Ms. Moscou, nobody.

Reporters weren't the only people frustrated by the silence—this week's theater section has a story about 80 irritated Central District residents who hijacked a city parks meeting, demanding answers.

The climax of the meeting was an announcement by Vonda Sargent, Moscou's attorney, that her African-American client is being investigated for charges of racism.

"She's been accused of being too pro-black," Sargent said. Then her microphone went dead.

The crowd started shouting.

"Let her speak! We need to hear this!" yelled Pastor Carl Livingston.

Sargent's microphone came back to life.

(The rest of the story is here.)

The city still isn't saying much (officials argue, rightly, that it would be a violation of Ms. Moscou's privacy to say anything before the have finished their investigation), but the community is still pissed. Prized from this morning's bale of email:

Communities Unite for Langston Hughes Performing Arts Center
Candelight Vigil and Peaceful Protest
Tuesday, Dec. 11, 5:00 p.m.
Langston Hughes Performing Arts Center, 104 17th Ave. S, 98144

In recent weeks, the community voiced its concern surrounding the mission, management and artistic direction of the Langston Hughes Performing Arts Center.

...it is important for supporters to continue to make their voices heard in support of the vision of Langston as a space to celebrate and showcase Black arts in Seattle and to provide opportunities for Black artists the thrive...

It is time for the voices of the community to speak truth to power and demand that Langston remain true to its vision as an African American artist-centered space!

The city maintains that its investigation of Ms. Moscou has nothing to do with "de-blacking" Langston Hughes. The attorneys and activists disagree.

Nobody will persist in knowing anything until the city releases the results of the investigation.

Nobody knows when that will happen.

Reviews of Sweeney Todd are embargoed until the movie opens on December 21, but critics are leaking their enthusiasm all over the internet.

Terry Teachout of the Wall Street Journal (and one of my favorite theater critics) says it's the best thing in the history of ever.

Stephen Sondheim came to the theater to introduce the film, looking like a cat who'd just dined on canary under glass. "For those of you who know the show... forget it," he said. "This is not a film of a musical, it's a movie based on a musical." Then the lights went down and the blood began to flow--or, rather, spurt.

What I can say is that it is--without exception, and by a considerable margin--the best film ever to have been made from a Broadway musical. The only other one to which it can possibly be compared is Bob Fosse's 1972 screen version of Cabaret, and Sweeney is, aside from everything else, a better show. (It is, in my opinion, the best musical to have opened on Broadway since the end of World War II.) I also think it might actually do well at the box office, not to mention the next Oscar night.

Read the rest of his tease here.

We are all anticipation.

How will they keep us warm up there on the roof in the middle of the night? Will there be a rooftop campfire, a la the campfire in the motel room with the hole cut out of the ceiling at Motel #1? God I hope so.

It will be 31 degrees up on that roof tonight, Christopher. Thirty-one icy, icy degrees. Wear a sleeping bag. Bring a thermos of Spanish coffee. Grow feathers. Do whatever it takes—but be prepared.

Heeding the instructions Brendan Kiley reported earlier this week--

On the night of the eviction, the Belmont will become The Belmont, with murals on every wall (outside and inside), installations in every apartment, and a performance by Implied Violence on the roof. Nobody will be able to get into The Belmont without tickets, which can be procured on the day of the event at a downtown crepe stand. (See Theater Calendar for details.)... The Belmont is trying to avoid some of the overcrowding that happened at Motel #1....The artists only gave hints about what, exactly, they’ll be doing. Implied Violence’s rooftop performance involves local Balkan brass band Orkestar Zirkonium and samples from Triumph of the Will and The Chronic...

--I got up at 7:30 this morning, showered, had some tea, and marched down to La Creperie Voila to get tickets. According to the instructions, tickets are on sale today between 8 am and 8 pm, but I was made to understand from those in the know that there were a very limited number of them, so I figured, well, I don't wanna fuck this up. Usually when you work at The Stranger, you get tickets to things without having to go out of your way, but the good people of Implied Violence could give a fuck if you work at The Stranger. I salute them for this.

I was at the crepe place by 8:38 am. There were a couple people in line with me. "I'd like a crepe with prosciutto and spinach and tickets to the Implied Violence thing," I said when I got to the counter. The guy behind the counter said my options were "show" tickets, for the rooftop show that starts at 1:30 am, which cost $5-$15 (my choice how much to pay); or "house" tickets, which are free. I got show tickets (paid $10) and house tickets.

I asked him if a lot of people had shown up to buy tickets.

"It's been pretty crazy," he said. He showed me how many tickets he had left for the rooftop show--under a dozen. Handing me mine, he smiled and said, "Have a good night. I think it's gonna be a late show."

I sat there and ate my crepe and intended to read the newspaper I'd brought with me but it was so cold I could barely move, so the newspaper went unopened. While I sat there, Pol Rosenthal--who's been living in and managing the Belmont and was in the Infernal Noise Brigade--showed up to get a ticket. "Even I have to get a ticket," he said. He would never have gotten up this early if not for wanting a ticket. He waited in line and by the time he got to the counter, they were out of tickets. "That's the last time I get out of bed," he said.

As Pol was walking away, dejected, the guy behind the crepe counter ran after him. He'd found one last show ticket. "I got a golden ticket!" Pol said. He might not have said golden--my imagination might have filled that in.

I just now got an email blast from someone in Implied Violence that said:

It is 9:12 a.m. [and] people have been working all night. I am taking a break...to remind everyone to GET A FUCKING TICKET FOR THIS EVENT. Don't whine don't moan just go get a crepe and PICK UP A TICKET.

How will they keep us warm up there on the roof in the middle of the night? Will there be a rooftop campfire, a la the campfire in the motel room with the hole cut out of the ceiling at Motel #1? God I hope so.

The Belmont is a small old apartment building on Capitol Hill, redolent of a squat. Across the street is Press, a tall shiny condominium building, already redolent of the future. The two have been in a kind of staring match since 2002: the Belmont all squinty and weathered, the kind of building you would like to feed some soup; Press all unflinching, obnoxious pride.

As of November 30, the condos will have officially won. The low-rent residents of the Belmont, many of them artists, will be evicted to make way for a new condo development, as will the rest of the residents of the 500 block of Pine Street (a center of gravity for Seattle music, culture, and sleaze). But not before they have their final say. On the night of the eviction, the Belmont will become The Belmont, with murals on every wall (outside and inside), installations in every apartment, and a performance by Implied Violence on the roof.

Last Sunday night, the inside of the Belmont already looked like a Barcelona squat, with paintings and photo collages covering the walls and ceilings. Some were by local graffiti heroes like Specs (two green faces at the top of a flight of stairs), some by cartoonist Ellen Forney (hers wasn't done yet), and dozens of others.

The unofficial leader of the Belmont, named Nko ("knee-ko") was cooking squash and potato soup in one of the apartments while other people painted on the walls, drank beer, and smoked. Someone, somewhere was playing an accordion.

"We're dressing up this corpse for a second," Nko said, leaning on a crutch. (He shattered his heel in a biking accident a few months ago.) "Then this space will be demolished. Our memories will be unanchored from architectural space." Nko said The Belmont will feel more like a funeral than a party; all the music will be dour.

From the press release for The Belmont:

"We look at Press every day and cannot remember what saw there before; this is our fate."

Nobody will be able to get into The Belmont without tickets, which can be procured on the day of the event at a downtown crepe stand. (See Theater Calendar for details.) Nko said The Belmont is trying to avoid some of the overcrowding that happened at Motel #1.

The artists only gave hints about what, exactly, they'll be doing. Implied Violence's rooftop performance involves local Balkan brass band Orkestar Zirkonium and samples from Triumph of the Will and The Chronic.

Nko said one of the apartments will have "some serious nature shit." His installation involves sentences from Derrida's The Truth in Painting and an old oil-painting manual that belonged to his dead grandmother. "The combination is sort of interesting," he says, holding a hot bowl of soup. "The nostalgic and formal along with the deconstructionist. But nobody'll notice. They'll just be drunk and walking through."

Her new title is associate director. She will direct A Streetcar Named Desire there in 2008.

Sheila's a skilled, well-loved director, who has done some shows we loved: Waiting for Lefty at CHAC, The Last State (Sarah Rudinoff at On the Boards), Crime and Punishment at CHAC (she was the best thing that ever happened to CHAC), and Bridge of San Luis Rey with Strawberry Theater Workshop (which helped both STW and actor Amy Thone on their way to last year's Genius Awards).

Congratulations, Sheila.

(And congratulations, Intiman. Sheila was bound to ascend—getting her first was a smart move. Plus, with Bart spending so much time chasing his directorial career out east—Broadway, the Met, the Goodman, etc.—it's a neat gesture towards hometown credibility.)

But that doesn't detract from Sheila's achievement. Mostly, it's good news for her and for the rest of us.

Imagine a musical about a small town in Louisiana in 1959—depressed farmers, sweet kids, ill-treated African Americans, a restless boy with a pompadour and a motorcycle, sinister evangelicals, and so on. Now imagine that musical written by Jim Steinman, the man who wrote and produced Bat out of Hell for Meat Loaf, and a past-his-prime Andrew Lloyd Webber.

Whistle Down the Wind (playing at 5th Avenue Theatre until Dec 2; see Get Out) is precisely what you're imagining—technically accomplished but overwrought, nostalgic, and cloying. The band is dominated by a synth drum kit and four synthesizers, one of which, at intermission, was set to "timp/tbns/tbns & trpts." Which is what Whistle Down the Wind sounds like: tbns and trpts. (The singers are better. Eric Kunze and Andrea Ross—as the fugitive and the oldest sister—have strong, dulcet voices.)

Based on a 1961 movie that was based on a 1958 novel, Whistle Down the Wind concerns three motherless children who find a wounded fugitive hiding in a barn. They think he's Jesus; and he, looking for help wherever he can get it, doesn't disabuse them of their fantasy. The kids in town come flocking to the tattooed Christ, the adults in town are looking for the fugitive, and everybody learns a little something about love and redemption and stuff.

Apparently, Whistle Down the Wind has been a hit in England in the last few years, where the Oxford Mail called it "a cracking feel-good family show" and the Wolverhampton AdNews ominously wrote, "No matter what they tell you, go and see this Andrew Lloyd Webber and Jim Steinman musical." In 1998, one of its songs was recorded by an Irish quintet called Boyzone and went platinum. Some kinds of success are more damning than failure.

... and his name is Bret Fetzer—playwright, director, fabulist, movie critic for Amazon, sometime Stranger theater critic, and artistic director of Annex Theater from 2000 to 2004.

It's a happy, bloodless coup—Gillian Jorgensen (also a playwright and director) was artistic director from 2004 to 2007, and is stepping down after leading the company through its tumultuous itinerant phase and helping it find a home in the old Northwest Actors Studio space on Capitol Hill. (She's also fixing to have a baby.)

Congratulations Annex, congratulations Gillian, and congratulations Bret.

It's not official yet, but the good folks at Implied Violence have sent us advance word of a new "huge and extremely guerilla" show called the status of the name you miss, love, and search for has now become ambigious and remote.

It will begin at "promptly at 1:30 am" on December first on the roof of a building near the soon-to-be-demolished Kincora/Pony/Bus Stop block:

There will be 333 free tickets that will get you into the building and 66 tickets costing 10 bells that will allow you on the roof.

I think it will be a really cool really beautiful event, considering most of the people participating were/are still actual residents of the building.

Implied Violence, which claims Gertrude Stein and Wu Tang Clan as its primary influences, makes spectacular work. They're threatening to move to Berlin sometime in the near future, so your chances to see them are dwindling.

Some photos from their recent performance in the barns and fields at Smoke Farm:

Getting the 66 rooftop tickets will be a slightly cloak and dagger affair that involves going to a certain crepe stand at a certain time on a certain day—IV says it's "trying to avoid the problems of the Bridge Motel"—but more about that when the show is official.

First error in the theater section this week: the woman who played the nurse and gave one of the few notable performances in The Women? It wasn't Suzy Hunt; it was Marianne Owen. Mea culpa.

Second error in the theater section this week: I neglected to include this item in the calendar.

Mahogany
The next in the Brown Derby series, wherein Ian Bell and his minions stage fucked-up readings of movie scripts. This time, it's Mahogany, the 1975 Diana Ross vehicle about a poor woman who becomes a fêted fashion designer in Rome. Starring Ade as Diana Ross and Nick Garrison as Anthony Perkins. Re-bar, 1114 Howell St, 233-9873. $10. Mon–Wed at 8 pm. Through Oct 24.

Mea maxima culpa.

I was lucky enough to be invited to a rehearsal of Dracula: A Case Study, opening today at Theatre Off Jackson. Director Brian Kooser and Monkey Wrench Puppet Lab are the same team responsible for the wondrously creepy and creative Frankenocchio, which played at the Empty Space in 2005, and the same group behind the ever-popular Drunk Puppet Nite at Re-Bar. According to Kooser, "We've been making this show for three years. It was supposed to be part of the Empty Space calendar last year, but we all know how that went…It's the most complex puppet show I've ever been part of. We tried our damnedest to be faithful to Bram Stoker's story, with wild, weird, violent and schizophrenic results. It's a hell of a ride."

Here, puppeteer Holly Chernobyl rehearses with "Lucy," Dracula's first victim.

The instrument which resembles a cello is actually a Transylvanian percussion instrument called "uto-gardon." According to Marchette DuBois, who is playing it here, Hungarian folk musicians came in contact with their first cellos in the 1500's. With a very rudimentary knowledge of stringed instruments, they did their best to re-create
the magical device. The result was this cello-shaped drum which is beat with a club shaped roughly like a bow. Here, it is being used to accompany the violin, giving a very sinister rhythmic thud.

This is a mad spectacle of a puppet show. Shows Thursday-Saturday at 8 pm with an added show on Halloween. Tickets on sale now at brownpapertickets.

MIKE DAISEY

Seattle ex-pat and raconteur Mike Daisey, who has developed a (deserved) reputation as "the Spaulding Gray of his generation" for his witty, erudite monologues, returns to town for a one-night-only tryout of his newest work, "Lost In Translation" (featuring novelist Randall Keenan and historian Lesley Hazelton), in which he describes his recent experiences visiting "Trinity Site, NM," location of the first atomic bomb detonation.
(Richard Hugo House 7:00 p.m.)

(Shameless Plug) I FEEL FINE

Annex Theatre, the scrappy little fringe company started by a fistful of Bainbridge H.S. grads back in 1986, opens its 21st season of production with a new collaborative performance-collage conceived by Mike Pham and Rachel Hynes of art-duo Helsinki Syndrom and members of the Annex Company. (Annex Theatre, 1100 E Pike St. 8:00 p.m. $12)

LIVE THEATRE WEEK

As part of Theatre Communication Group's 3rd Annual national theatre promotion event kicks off Monday with a whole slew of local companies offering special programs, including A Free Night of Theatre, Thursday the 18th.
(Various Locations - Visit Seattle Performs for details)

A New York theater company is threatening to sue Washington Ensemble Theatre over its name.

Since 2006, attorneys representing Women’s Expressive Theater, Inc. have sent WET four cease and desist letters, demanding it abandon its acronym. In the most recent letter (sent Sept 6), the attorneys included a copy of the 16-page legal complaint Women’s Expressive Theater will file with the U.S. District court, should Washington Ensemble Theatre not want to change its initials.

There can be, they argue, only one WET—despite counterexamples in the theater world, including the coexistence of ACT in San Francisco and ACT in Seattle, both significant regional theaters, both on the West Coast.

Since its founding in 1999, Women’s Expressive Theatre has produced seven plays, 11 fundraisers, and an outreach program for young girls. In 2006, it had an income of $124,971. Its largest expense was the salaries of founding directors Victoria Pettibone and Sasha Eden, at over $40,000 each. Women’s Expressive Theater was awarded U.S. trademark registration number 3,125,889 for the name “WET” in August 2006.

Since its founding in 2004, Washington Ensemble Theatre has produced 12 plays, three fundraisers, and an outreach program for queer youth. In 2006, it had an income of $61,000. No ensemble members have ever drawn a salary from the company.

The letters say confusion between the two companies is “deeply upsetting to WET” and that the acronym for the Women’s Expressive Theatre “was deliberately chosen in response to stereotypes of women, in particular those involving sexuality.” The letters threaten litigation against Washington Ensemble Theatre and against individual members.

“This is a bullying tactic,” said Gina Driscoll, an attorney and a member of the advisory board at Washington Ensemble Theatre. “If somebody files a federal complaint, you have to answer—and if somebody’s not in a position to fight it, they have to lie down and comply. They’ve put us between a rock and a hard place.”

"What is the state of nonprofit theater in America today,” asked Washington Ensemble Theatre member Marya Sea Kaminski, “when one theater across the country doesn't believe we can co-exist in a national marketplace, and would rather tie up both their artists and ours in lawsuits and going to court instead of making art?”

Women’s Expressive Theater did not respond to requests for comment.

No word whether Women’s Expressive Theater is threatening legal action against Women’s Entertainment Troupe (Los Angeles), the four different Women’s Ensemble Theatres (Chicago, Santa Cruz, Philadelphia, Poughkeepsie), Women’s Ensemble Theatre Troupe (Santa Barbara, slogan: “vagin-o-mite!”), WET City Productions (Chicago), Women’s Experimental Theatre (the Yukon), or the West End Theater (Gloucester, MA).

In the Stranger Suggests I wrote this week about the Comedians of Comedy, I woefully did not have enough room to wax melodic about my absolute favorite female comedienne, Maria Bamford. My favorite bits of hers always have her performing characters--she's also a professional voice actress and her impressions are superb. Here's a video, and don't miss her tomorrow night at the Showbox.

A photo of Randy Quaid's codpiece which, allegedly, was one of the articles of war between Quaid and the NY producers who cancelled Lone Star Love's Broadway run.

Randy stopped showing up to work at the 5th Avenue about a week ago and let his understudy take over. But did said understudy have to wear Quaid's briefs? Perish the thought.

Also allegedly: 5th Avenue director David Armstrong got up before yesterday's closing performance and gave a ballsy curtain speech to the effect: Usually in the pre-show process we learn about changes that need to be made to the script, score, and staging. This time we learned that we needed a different star.

(More on Quaids behaving badly here.)

Now that Lone Star Love's Broadway run has been canned, it seems that Mssr. Quaid has been ditching shows and letting his understudy do the acting.

Allegedly, last night and the night before, Quaid bagged out. (The 5th Ave hasn't returned my calls—did anybody out there see the show those nights? Can we find out where Mr. Quaid was during the shows? Any help, Adrian Ryan?)

The rumor is that star Randy Quaid and his wife/manager Evi have been waging war with the NYC producers—and that the latter were so desperate to get Quaid's star power, they foolishly wrote some kind of "creative control" into his contract. "They kinda rushed into the Randy thing," a source said.

Evi Quiad seems to want to sex things up in LSL (a western remake of The Merry Wives of Windsor) in which Quaid already wears a big codpiece. Her (Evi's, not the codpiece's) quote in yesterday's New York Post:

"Quite frankly, we did want to take it in a more surreal direction," Evi Quaid told The Post yesterday. "This is Shakespeare. It's not supposed to be whitewashed. It's not supposed to be 'The Little Mermaid,' which is where Broadway seems to be going."

and

"I don't understand why they would object to what we've done when audiences and critics are clearly responding to it," Evi says.

Um, they're responding all right. They're saying it's crap.

(That last link, a Mukilteo Beacon review, is confused—"the dance numbers are well done, but the choreography leaves a lot to be desired"—but you can feel old Pat Ratliff trying to work his criticism muscles, so I'm counting it in the Against category. See this week's issue for Eli Sanders's pan.)

So what gives, Evi? Why are the producers mad, the critics railing, and the cast and crew gossiping? Again from the Post article:

"Having a competent person on this show is very disturbing to them, I guess."

Hoo momma. Sounds like a peach, doesn't she?

AND she and Quaid are apparently all lawyered up and threatening legal action against everyone from the producers to the writers (with whom they've allegedly been wrestling for "creative control"). It sounds of a piece—remember when Quaid tried to sue Brokeback Mountain because he retroactively regretted the fee he agreed to in the original contract?

Anyway: Rampant jackassery.

(The ones who are really getting screwed? The Red Clay Ramblers, a band nobody hates, who play the music and whose leader Jack Herrick wrote the songs. This trip to Broadway was going to be a good break for them... )

From the 5th Avenue Theatre, as of a few minutes ago:

The production of LONE STAR LOVE, currently playing an engagement at Seattle’s 5th Avenue Theatre, has canceled its Broadway engagement this fall.

Lone Star Love is a musical adaptation of The Merry Wives of Windsor starring Randy "Hubba-Hubba" Quaid as Colonel John Falstaff.

Why isn't the production going to Broadway?

"I can't go into it," says 5th Ave p.r. person Molly Fortin. And she really, really wouldn't go into it, not even a little bit. Financial problems? Fighting? Rehab? "I can't go into it."

But Broadway.com speculates:

... recent news reports portrayed Quaid's wife and manager, Evie, as being at odds with the show's producers, which include Avenue A Productions, Roger Berlind, Robert Boyett Theatricals, Edmund and Eleanor Burke, Rusty and Susan Carter, Daisy Theatricals and Michael Speyer/Berard Abrams.

If Eli Sanders's review, which will run in next week's paper, is any indication, LSL isn't going to Broadway because it stinks.

There's an article over in England that says this:

The head of the Royal Shakespeare Company gave warning that contemporary theatre would not thrive unless it addressed the most challenging political and social issues of the day, with “big plays in big spaces”.

You are totally correct, Head-of-the-Royal-Shakespeare-Company. We've been thinking in that direction over here, too.

It had to happen. Years ago, when the arts money dried up, theaters went broke or had to shrink by orders of magnitude in order to survive. They stopped doing big, spectacular plays. Moon for the Misbegotten and other two-to-four-person scripts were all over the place.

That wincing, wounded strategy could only work for a little while. Quiet, small work can be great, but one will starve on a steady diet of small studio plays. We need spectacle.

So it's no coincidence that the theater we've been most excited about lately has concerned people who've figured out how to make spectacles. This year's Genius Award winner for organization, Strawberry Theater Workshop, does everything it can—including managing its debt—to pay big casts of actors and build complicated sets that aren't modular and throwaway but tailored to their spaces.

In an interview with me a couple of months ago, STW director Greg Carter said, in effect: Pulling punches in the beginning of our career while we chase grants is stupid. Let's show them what we can do and, if the world likes it, it'll give us money.

Which is admirably gutsy—they'd rather flame out with big shows than limp along with anemic ones.

And then there's Implied Violence, who are all about spectacle.

And the seven members of "Awesome" who have been fooling around with the rock show/theater show divide for a few years now.

It's why we liked Dorky Park at On the Boards.

It's why we're excited by Motel #1 this weekend.

Spectacle: It's the future.