Limited Perspective

  I’m in a show right now at Annex Theatre at 11th and Pike on Capitol Hill called Leave Only Footprints. It’s an immersive show, blending elements of haunted house and escape room with an overarching vibe about a fictional state park in Washington. I play “The Camper,” who tells scary, spooky stories around a fire.  The audience is free to explore the space however they please and interact with the various characters. One recent night, when the very first pair of audience members came into the campground and sat down, I asked one of them what they are afraid of, as I am supposed to do. “Death,” they said. OK. Fair. Many of my scary stories include references to death. But then they went deep into it, talking about someone they knew, who had died recently. Maybe it was a family member. I don’t know because it really threw me. Like, this is too heavy! I’m not your therapist! I’m not your pastor.  It was so earnest and heartfelt. I didn’t think they were making it up. And it was a gift r

  Urban legends  The current show I’m in, Leave Only Footprints, at Annex Theatre , I play a character who tells stories. The other day, when I went to rehearsal, I thought I might be there a while and decided to park at the garage on Harvard Ave behind Seattle Central College. I turned off Harvard into the drive and noticed a stop sign that I couldn’t recall having seen before, and a speed bump, too. I stopped next to the booth and saw that someone was in there. It had been years since that booth had been staffed. The last several times I parked there, you had to hassle with some kind of online payment with an app or a code, and stand there fiddling with your phone, being pretty certain your credit card number was being stolen. But this time, it was a person asking for $15. I looked at the guy like, what are you doing here? I gave voice to the thoughts I just wrote in the previous paragraph. Oh no, he said, I’ve been here for years. I argued, No no, last couple times I paid by phone

HEART Repertory Theatre   delivered this this show, the point of which is: we are, all of us, alone in the dark, broken and unfixable. What they added was an interpretation of the Tom Wingfield character that I would not have expected, bringing humor and lightness, but not enough to lift everyone up and out. You can't really sit with a happy ending for a while, like you can with the ending of a show like this. It's affecting. Runs through September 13 in Kenmore. 

Strength is a unifying theme of Vietgone, a co-production of Pork Filled Players and SIS Productions now playing at Theatre Off Jackson. The setting is 1970s Vietnam, Arkansas and roads, deserts and oceans in between. The story follows the lives of four people forced to flee or evacuate to Fort Chaffee from Saigon after the military collapse there. Everyone seems caught in circumstances calling for impossible choices. Quang, a helicopter pilot in the South Vietnamese army, along with his fellow soldier Nhan has flown many, many evacuees – among them mother and daughter Huong and Tong – to the safety of a US aircraft carrier. Quang plans to refuel and immediately fly back to save his wife and two young children. He’s informed, though, that the chopper has been pushed over the side to make room for planes to take off and land. Instead of going home, he’s relocated to the refugee camp at Fort Chaffee. But Quang is determined to return to Vietnam to rescue his wife and children Tong and he

A quote you see going around lately is, “You exist in the context of all in which you live and what came before you.” Passage, a 2020 play by Christopher Chen will be on stage in September at 12th Ave Arts, produced by Yun Theatre and directed by Christie Zhao, with that exact idea at its heart.  In June, the show had a three-day run as part of Strawberry Theatre Workshop ’s Directors Festival, also at 12th Ave Arts and also directed by Zhao. I saw the earlier one and I look forward to the next. Waiting for the show to start, some friends and I made what turned out to be a discovery. Upstage, there was a platform that would have been circular but for an irregularly shaped slice cut out of the round pie. The missing portion was downstage.  We guessed it was likely that at some point those sections would come together to complete the circle. Then we joked that maybe the platforms never come together, even though they so obviously fit and that would be a physical manifestation of the tra

Here's something that was half-finished that I found on my Facebook, presented here because I think there is something to it. It was a magic weekend of theatre-going. I saw Lear(s) at the Slate, produced by the Shakesperiment. And I saw Outdoor Trek: Day of the Dove at Blanche Lavizzo Park, produced by Hello Earth. There are connections between the two. Lear(s) was a telling of King Lear, with the lead played by three different actors, one for each stage: tyrannical Lear, crazy Lear, and dying Lear. It was a genius move – a move that could only work live theater. Television nor film nor graphic novel could pull that off. Tyrannical, crazy, absent Leaderless Even the well-meaning are overwhelmed Collapse, chaos, betrayal Day of the Dove, the same thing happens. It is contrived that the crew of the Enterprise and the crew of a Klingon ship are all onboard the Enterprise. There is endless war among equally matched factions with no recognized leader over both. No recognized leader.

One of my favorite things I’ve written is a review of the show Mac Beth that was produced by ACT in 2018. The title of the play separated “Macbeth” into two words. So, in my review, I separated my own name into two, Pat and Rick, and wrote the review as a dialogue with myself. Here I go again on my own. This time, it’s about The Lehman Trilogy, no longer playing at ACT, but still on stage somewhere. Pat : We’ve seen some good stuff recently.  Rick : I’d say so, but the one I can’t get out of my mind is The Lehman Trilogy at ACT.  Pat : Why’s that? Good or bad? Rick : I still don’t know what to make of it.  Pat : Well, the acting was great. The set and all the effects were mesmerizing. I mean, one of our favorite things – Rick : Raindrops on kittens? Pat : No, not that. The economical use of the physical space, turning a problem into an opportunity, a bug into a feature as they say. Rick : And that was?  Pat : The props. How the set was raised about two-and-a-half feet off the floor o