This is what was going on when I rolled up around 7:45 pm.

I'd heard there was an installation that started at 7:30 pm but I assumed that it was a static installation that lasted half an hour, before the 8 pm showing of Northwest New Works. I hadn't realized the installation was a performance. There were guys coated in saw dust, women with wooden cubes entirely concealing their heads (not pictured), and other elements I only dimly perceived because I got there late and at first couldn't separate the crowd and passersby from the performers—elements including a man on a street corner across from the theater losing his mind. Also, hoods:

I'm kicking myself for not getting there earlier. And there's nothing on the On the Boards blog about it—just posts about the works that started after 8 pm. Sorry to have to crowd source this, but… what did I miss?

Is there anything Neil Patrick Harris can't do?

In this week's theater section, a world premiere at WET and Tony Kushner's Homebody at New City Theater:

• LARAE LOBDELL
• Like a marshmallow with a core of creosote.

Actor Hannah Victoria Franklin does her best work when she's playing a specific strain of human viciousness—roaring, sneering, sarcastic, intoxicated, and destructively promiscuous. (Can someone organize an all-female festival of Mamet plays for her to star in? That could be Franklin's apotheosis.) She played that kind of sexy beast in Tommy Smith's White Hot at West of Lenin in 2012 and is bringing the scary back for Tall Skinny Cruel Cruel Boys, a world premiere at Washington Ensemble Theater.

In Boys, Franklin plays Brandy, a successful children's birthday party clown whose recreational activities would drive the mothers who hire her around the bend—she drinks heavily, serially screws off-limits guys (usually entertaining fathers and teenagers after she's finished entertaining the tots), and gambles like a fiend. She lives as if the innocence of her day job is a stain that must be scrubbed away with broken glass and vomit.

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I just watched Fela! at the Paramount, and it was a pleasure for those who are familiar with his work and a must for those who want a great introduction to it. There are four more shows left this weekend. Go!

• CAROL ROSEGG

I'm watching Broadway hit Fela! tonight at the Paramount, and one of the many things I want to determine is if Sahr Ngaujah, the man who plays the Nigerian pop genius, is too masculine. True, Fela had something like 30 wives and was also the patriarch of his musical community; but in mode, in style, in body language, Fela was very effeminate...

The image is the cover of the album Various Artists Black Man's Cry: The Inspiration of Fela Kuti.

• Carol Rosegg

This week we have a preview of FELA! at the Paramount courtesy of Charles Mudede who said that, at one point in his life, Fela Kuti was a hero of his—and that Fela was politically radicalized not by Africans, but by African-Americans.

Something to listen to while you read:

In a typical encounter between a black African and a black American, the black African knows more about the black American's world than the black American knows about the black African's. This has a lot to do with the fact that most Americans (white or black) know little about what happens outside of their country. But it's also because the United States exports a massive amount of culture and imports very little. As a consequence, a person in, say, Singapore consumes his/her local culture along with the culture that Americans consume almost exclusively. The US has become the universal—the rest, a puzzle of particulars.

When we talk about American cultural dominance, the discussion instinctively turns to brands like Nike, McDonald's, and Coca-Cola, and the image industrial complex called Hollywood. But blacks in Africa and countries with large black populations cannot imagine any discussion of American cultural dominance that fails to mention black American music, the music of the world. It is heard everywhere and imitated by everyone.

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For the curious, and for the haters, a long interview with Saint Genet director Ryan Mitchell (about Paradisiacal Rites, about Shoot, about the Jackass phenomenon, about whether pulling a performance stunt like Shoot is just a cheap exercise of white-guy privilege, about Captain Ahab, about how one can love Brecht but still think he didn't get it quite right, about whether your opinion about anything matters at all, and more) is now up over here.

Here is some video documentation of Chris Burden's Shoot, with some spare commentary from the artist.

This morning, Theater Schmeater artistic director Douglas Staley sent out a press release saying the company would start looking for a new place to make theater.

Which means this run of The Twilight Zone: Live! will be your last chance one of your last chances to see a show in the subterranean venue that, in Seattle, has become synonymous with the term "basement fringe theater." (This summer's Game Show will be the final production in Schmeater's current space.)

The recent departure of the Brocklind's costume shop upstairs is the issue. In a subsequent email, Staley explained that the theater and the store had "a symbiotic relationship" because they had different business hours, so there were never noise problems. Now the upstairs space is going to house a restaurant and bar, and the theater ceiling is already so low, it can't build in sound muffling (which probably would only be marginally effective anyway).

"We are already at about 8'2" at the bottom of the cross supports," Staley wrote. "Putting in a ceiling and bringing down all of our lights means some of them will be maybe less than 7' from the floor. That precludes using any risers for the audience, or casting anyone over 5'6". Our light designers make miracles but that really is more than I could ask for."

But the future isn't all gloomy. He added:

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At dawn last Sunday morning, in a remote and wooded area of Seattle, Saint Genet director Ryan Mitchell re-created Chris Burden's notorious 1971 artwork Shoot. In the original, Burden was shot in the arm with a .22 rifle inside a gallery and called it sculpture. Mitchell was shot in the arm with a .22 rifle beneath a tree, then walked approximately 10 miles to a theater and called it performance.

The re-creation of Shoot was secret—I had to sign a nondisclosure agreement before I was even told what was happening—because the stakes were high. First, the action was probably a crime. Second, there were some serious liability issues. Third, the action happened the morning before Saint Genet's closing-night performance of Paradisiacal Rites at On the Boards, and if On the Boards artistic director Lane Czaplinski got wind of it, he might've pulled the plug on the whole show.

The shooter, who has been hunting with guns and bows since he was 8 years old, stood in the dim forest with a few other people watching. He said there wasn't enough light for him to take the shot safely...

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(A long interview with Ryan, in which he explains his rationale for all this, is coming soon. Also, apologies for forgetting to turn off the comments earlier. But if you want to talk about it, head on over to the story itself.)

• SG
• Before the shot.

At dawn yesterday morning, in a remote and wooded area of Seattle, Saint Genet company director Ryan Mitchell re-created Chris Burden's notorious 1971 artwork Shoot. In the original, Burden was shot in the arm with a .22 rifle in a gallery and called it sculpture. Ryan was shot in the arm with a .22 rifle, then walked approximately ten miles to the theater, and called it performance.

• Walking.

I walked with him. I was not exactly thrilled to be in the situation, but if it was going to happen anyway, I felt a duty to witness.

That was the beginning of Saint Genet's closing-night performance of Paradisiacal Rites at On the Boards. The top-two activities for Seattle just after dawn were jogging and homelessness.

There's a photo of the wound—for your own verification purposes—below the jump. More coming in next week's paper.

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Gothic anguish, degeneracy, nakedness, wine, and a wheat field. Also, gold leaf, honey, tar, blood, wax, flowers, leeches, pheasants, and arrows. And Jessie Smith. And Jessie Smith choreography. And Jessie Smith wearing a weird cape thing with a very long tail with egg-carton-like shapes bulging from it. And music. And weird, beautiful acts of endurance. And gay shame and bullying. And the most perfect curtain call of all: None at all.

It might be sold out. Sneak in anyway.

And it has already included cops at dawn, with rifles drawn, trying to stop one of the performances.

• bk
• Ryan Mitchell, two hours ago.

• bk
• Blood and wine.

Quick primer: Starting tonight, Saint Genet will be performing its Paradisiacal Rites at On the Boards. Saint Genet is an extraordinarily polarizing company that creates exquisite, and sometimes painful, "actions and images" instead of plays.

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Actually, this week we have a preview by Melody Datz, based on her interview with the associate ballet master at Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo:

• SASCHA VAUGHN

Raffaele Morra does not shave his chest, even though his professional wardrobe includes pointe shoes, a golden tiara, and yards of fluffy white tulle. For someone used to the traditional staging of classical ballets, it may be jolting to see a hairy, um, décolletage nestled into a frilly white Swan Lake costume, or to watch the uniquely defined musculature of male quadriceps peeking out from under a tutu while whipping through 32 fouettés. But the all-male company Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo makes it work.

The Trocks have been around since the 1970s but Morra mentioned to Datz that in the past several years, as drag aesthetics have entered mainstream culture, the company's audience has diversified. But they are not, he emphasized, drag—they keep their male personality and technique while dancing roles traditionally reserved for women.

Read the whole thing here.

This week's theater section is brought to you by the emotion Ambivalence. (Ambivalence: It is and it isn't™.)

I have mixed feelings about Mike Daisey at this awkward moment in his career:

Daisey is recalibrating. His observations seemed stale and flat-footed: Disney World is a bizarrely detailed consumerist fantasyland, Burning Man is disorienting and anarchic, Occupy revealed that power fears democracy and will break laws with impunity to suppress it. That's old news. And between the staleness of the information and the wobbliness of its presentation, American Utopias seems like the work of a performer who was publicly neutered and is still trying to find another pair of balls. They're out there, Mike. We want you to find them. Just keep looking—America is, after all, the land of reinvention.

(His upcoming show in Portland is, apparently, about how journalism works.)

• John Cornicello

Chow contributor Kim Fu has mixed feelings about Cafe Nordo's latest, Western-themed show:

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• Ian Bell and his horny posse.

Ian Bell’s crowdsourced carnival of anonymity will be going on hiatus for awhile, which is a shame, because it's one of the more regularly entertaining things at ACT Theater, and Seattle in general.

For the newcomers: Every three months, Seattle Confidential collects anonymous stories and gives them to actors to read. (Sometimes they add bells and whistles—PowerPoint presentations, charts and graphs, instant polls that the audience contributes to via text.) The confessional mode gives the writers a cloak to air their dirtiest, most hilariously awkward laundry, and everybody has a blast. It's like sneaking a peek at Seattle's diary.

And the event is also strangely comforting—we all have screwed-up stories and messed-up things we've done or had done to us. Laughing about them together feels therapeutic.

Before Seattle Confidential takes its indefinite break, Bell put together a best-of show. It plays tonight and tomorrow at ACT. Go check it out. Who knows where or when it will reappear? (Though I am confident it will—either ACT or some other venue will want it. It's too good to die.)

Now that the remodeling of King Street Station is finally completed, we can dream a little...

As therefore the sweetest rose hath his prickle, the finest velvet his brack, the fairest flower his bran, so the sharpest wit hath his wanton will, and the holiest head his wicked way. And true it is that some men write and most men believe, that in all perfect shapes, a blemish bringeth rather a liking every way to the eyes, than a loathing any way to the mind.

Welcome to a preview of this week's theater section! Christopher already posted about this one, a review of Black Watch by the National Theater of Scotland at the Paramount:

• National Theater of Scotland

It is an intimate show, and the cavernous Paramount Theater has reduced its seating capacity from 3,000 to 419 for the occasion. The audience sits on the stage, just feet away from 10 tightly wound actors who spring from a Scottish barroom to Iraqi battlefields and back again. During one transition, soldiers are birthed from the inside of a pool table, cutting its red felt open from below with a long blade and standing back-to-back on its top with long guns in hand, nervously scanning the audience.

There's also Assisted Living at ACT Theater:

• Larae Lobdell

Assisted Living, a world-premiere play by Seattle writer Katie Forgette, opens in an assisted-living facility that is actually a lightly veneered prison: bars on the windows, linoleum trim, dull gray-blue tile, cheap office furniture, and a photo of a smiling President Dick Cheney. This is the near future, where the economy is on the verge of collapse, and senior citizens have to pay for any medical treatment that might be even obliquely related to their former lifestyles (such as eating). They also have to pay for “toiletries,” including colostomy bags.

And a trailer-park Taming of the Shrew at Seattle Shakespeare Company:

• CHRIS BENNION

The only problem I had with the comedy—other than Kate's earnest "submit to your husbands" speech, which I guess can't be helped—came from its setting. I understand the allure of launching a redneck revamp of Shrew... Hey, it's a trailer park! People are wacky! But such a production has to be careful to avoid abjectly mocking the poor. There's no need to use poor people for comic relief, especially when the production is no longer launched in a park (i.e., free! Accessible!) but costs $40 a ticket in a rich city that gets the vapors at the very mention of affordable-housing aPodments, let alone trailer parks.

Brendan Kiley's review of Black Watch won't be on Slog until tomorrow, and won't be in print until Wednesday, but here's the Stranger Suggest preview for Black Watch, and I just snuck a peek at Brendan's review, and this paragraph makes me very much want to see it:

It is an intimate show, and the cavernous Paramount Theater has reduced its seating capacity from 3,000 to 419 for the occasion. The audience sits on the stage, just feet away from 10 tightly wound actors who spring from a Scottish barroom to Iraqi battlefields and back again. During one transition, soldiers are birthed from the inside of a pool table, cutting its red felt open from below with a long blade and standing back-to-back on its top with long guns in hand, nervously scanning the audience.

The two-for-the-price-of-one tickets for Tuesday's and Wednesday's shows are available online and at the box office up until showtime with no password needed, according to Seattle Theater Group public relations manager Antonio Hicks.

I'm going tomorrow night.

• Truman Buffett Photography
• TERI LAZZARA AS BARBARA One of those plays where characters with lurid secrets eat each other alive through dialogue.

OK, guys. Real talk. Truth time. I love theater when it's good, but I'm also easily bored. And theater can be… you know, boring. As hell. And long. It can be so long. Someone says "three-and-a-half-hour play" and my interest in seeing that play starts to power down. Someone says "two intermissions" and my panic trigger triggers. For these reasons, I'd never gotten around to seeing August: Osage County, even though it won the Pulitzer Prize and it's been produced in Seattle before and everyone always says it's great. In my defense, everyone is often wrong about things. Balagan Theatre's right at the end of their run of of August: Osage County, a production Goldy has raved about already, a production we told you on cover of The Stranger to go see, and last night I took our own advice and went and saw it. And holy moly with a Stoli, it's amazeballs.

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Paul just posted about this new Wall Street Journal "ranking" of jobs by some metric of "best"-ness. But I would especially like to draw theater people's attention to the bottom job rankings:

196 Oil Rig Worker
197 Actor
198 Enlisted Military Personnel
199 Lumberjack
200 Reporter (Newspaper)

So you're on notice, actors! Your license to gloat (at me, anyway, but not oil rig workers) has just been issued. Your license to whine has just been revoked.

Also, knowing that I am lowlier than a military grunt in the eyes of the WSJ gives me a strange glow of satisfaction.