Limited Perspective

A Ritual If I had written about Letters from Max, a Ritual , now on stage at Seattle Public Theater last night, I might have said I didn’t like it. I would have said there were missing pieces that made it a mere nice story, but not a complete play. You might have been surprised, because from my writing about theater, it seems that I like everything. The show is about words in various forms: letters, poems, inquiries, challenges, pleas, laments and more. On the website of the playwright, Sara Ruhl, it says, “This play shares letters and poems passed between Sarah Ruhl and her former student Max Ritvo, as he candidly discusses terminal illness and tests poetry's capacity to put to words what otherwise feels ineffable.” This morning, it came unlocked. The most important words are the last two of the title, “a ritual.” Sarah Ruhl really means it. Writing, sending, receiving and reading of letters is Sarah and Max’s life-sustaining ritual. The show is staged to show the ritual nature o...

A few years ago, I took a class at Freehold Theater called Solo Performance. The final session was a showcase, which we invited friends and others to attend. After it was over, I posted the script from my performance. Recently, I took another class at Freehold, Standup Comedy. Here is my set, as written, from the final session of that class last night.  Money is hard to come by, right  So when you get money, you want to make sure to save some of it.  Our government is trying to save money too  We have DOGE The Department of Government Efficiency  Trying to save all our money  We see how that’s going.  Because cheaper is not always better right? You skip the gas station sushi Maybe you don’t go to the cut-rate chiropractor You’re not looking for a good deal on a vasectomy  It’s always two for one, though  Let’s take an example from ancient history The Trojan Horse You remember that, right? The Greeks beat the Trojans by hiding inside a gian...

If you are an actor, or if you have ever taken an acting class, I am certain you will be hooked by literally the first word spoken in Circle Mirror Transformation, by Annie Baker, now playing at 12th Avenue Arts and produced by Strawberry Theatre Workshop . I know I was. It cracked me up, too. The play is a comedy constructed around a six-session summer acting class. It’s led by fifty-something Marty. The students are Schultz, a carpenter, recently divorced; Theresa, a former actor, also recently split with her boyfriend and moved to Vermont to create a new future; Lauren, a high-school student with dreams; and James, Marty’s husband, also previously married. The play is funny the way life is funny. When we put ourselves in corners and try to work our way out. When we don’t know what to say. When we say too much. When we learn something about ourselves only in the moment when we say it. I laughed a lot. You learn about the characters' pasts, and possible futures, as they participat...

Facebook told me I wrote about the show Come From Away nine years ago today. Here (with some editing) is what I wrote, Regarding Come from Away, at Seattle Repertory Theater, there is something missing from the reviews. There has not been enough written about what the show is about. I hope to start some talking about that. Nick and Diane sing Stop the World while standing literally on the edge of a fault line between shifting tectonic plates, taking photos. They look into each other’s eyes and out over the divide. In the context of them building a relationship in the middle of a tragedy, they beg the world to stop spinning. In one sense you hear them saying, stop the world we want to get off, it’s too much pain to bear. In another sense, they are saying the world is so transcendingly beautiful in that moment, so precious and perfect that they want to stop time so they can experience the moment forever. That really hit me. This number was, to me the perfect summary of the show’s theme ...

There is a Kurt Vonnegut quote that goes, “We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.” It’s from the book, Mother Night where the lead character takes on a false identity to go undercover as a spy in Nazi Germany. Eventually, the false identity becomes the real one.  Pony World Theatre’s Edgar and Annabel, which just closed, turned that on its head.  The play takes place in a country on the threshold of dystopia. The government is eliminating all opposition. Among their tools is surveillance. They are listening, always listening. When their A.I. hears anomalies in conversation, they move in.  To thwart this, the opposition has set up safe houses to conduct their activities. They avoid suspicion by scripting everything the occupants say, literally. The most ordinary conversations are written out, from ‘Hi, honey, I’m home,” to, “I’m going to bed.” This allows them to pass secret messages, and to cover for subversive activities, all wh...

I've been acting since 1990. (I took a long break from 1991 to 2011.) I've played many, many characters. Here are three of those roles I would jump at, if offered again. Caden in The Thanksgiving Play (Woodinville Rep., 2024) I understudied and had two performances on the final weekend. I could see so much more that I could do. This happens with almost every show. You do something new in the final performance then smack yourself in the forehead and think, you should have been doing that all along. In TTP, with just the two shows, and less than normal rehearsal and stage time to grow the character, I really felt that. Plus, so many of the lines and bits were just so fun to do. Regis in Ghost Party (Dacha, 2018 and 2019) In this immersive, interactive show, Regis (and all of the other characters) were doomed to relive the same ten minutes of a fateful party over and over again, on a loop. But it never got old and it was never really the same because the guests could intervene a...

The Stupidest Scariest Time calls itself, “a new work of interactive theater parodying the joyless productivity of modern life.” It is that. And it’s more than that. I found a heart in it. The show is both beyond immersive and somehow also prior to it. If you have ever been to an office retreat, a Landmark Forum session, an Amway meeting, or seen a Tony Robbins talk – or done all of those things, as I have, you will know exactly what is going on from the very start, when you are directed to your seat. I found myself at a table with a neat, professional-looking folder in front of me. A branded pen was next to it. A bowl of branded stress balls was in the center of the table. I looked at the table-mate across from me and said, “I feel like I’m at a staff retreat.” “I just came from a conference this morning,” they said. We smiled. I won’t say too much about the content but there are timed exercises where you write your life goals and prioritize them. There is “you can do it!” -style che...