Limited Perspective

Bandages on my legs and my arms from you Bandages, bandages, bandages Up and down on my legs and my arms from you Bandages, bandages, bandages - Hot Hot Heat Shakespeare Dice: As You Like It is a feat of theatrical storytelling that just might propel Dacha Theatre Company to international acclaim. The troupe has wrapped Seattle-area previews and are on their way (perhaps even as I type this) to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. It’s the same comedy we’ve known for 400 years: cousins Rosalind and Celia flee to the forest to escape dueling dukes and brawling brothers, and in this hopeless place manage not only to find love but to spread some as well, resulting in reconciliation and a round of weddings. In Dacha’s telling, the show starts, as many risky things do, with a roll of the dice. The idea is, the entire cast memorizes the entire play. Then, at the top of each performance, an audience member is invited to roll the dice (actually a single “die,” for you sticklers) to decide which a...

Everybody, the play by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins didn’t work for me when I saw it produced by Strawberry Theatre Workshop in 2019. I saw it again recently, this time produced by UW School of Drama. That one didn't work for me either. I’m not sure this is the fault of either production. Maybe it’s the script, or maybe I am just missing the point. The show has a theme worth exploring and a message worth heeding but I am not sure if there is a way to make it land. Read the rest on The Sound on Stage here . 

Disappearance at the Rocky Mountain Leatherdyke Snowpicnic, a new play written by Monty Rozema and directed by Adrian Prendergast follows a group of partygoers into the wilderness, anticipating a weekend of fun and debauchery. They get that, along with maybe some things they didn’t expect. What the audience gets is a fun, ensemble comedy. The show is about two hours and ten minutes with intermission and plays June 5 to June 20, 2026  at Annex Theatre in (as they dub it) the relative safety of Capitol Hill, Seattle.  That's the blurb. Read the rest on The Sound on Stage here . Photo by Sayed Alamy, courtesy of Annex

I had the chance to participate, as a guest, in a Japanese tea ceremony. Attention was called to a banner with Japanese script reading “ichigo ichie,” literally, one time, one meeting. In the larger context, we were told, it means every moment is once-in-a-lifetime. Therefore, hold it close. In the context of the tea ceremony, it meant the tea would be “prepared with sincerity and served with respect.” And it was. No surprise, I related it to theater. That’s what theater is, I think. In preparing, and in serving a performance, the artist honors the moment, creates the moment, even, just as the ones leading the tea ceremony did. It happens once. The moment is over. But it also remains.

 ... now appears in the Sound On Stage blog. Read it here . 

My 2025 in Theatre Speaking of gifts, as we do in the holiday season, I received some special ones in my 2025 year in theatre. Among others, I directed again (twice) and I had a review published. Neither of those things had happened for about a decade. Directing I put my name in to direct a short play for As If Theatre Company's Kenmore Quickies. Surprisingly, they said yes. It was surprising because my experience with directing included one show and one show only. I had produced and directed a short play for the Pocket Theater’s Fringe Explosion in 2015. Their risk and mine paid off. Our show was a success and won the vote for audience favorite. That never would have happened, though, without the excellent script by Vincent Kovar and wonderful actors assigned to the show. It all melded. That led me to the second directing gig. Vincent asked me to direct a staged reading of his play, The Iron Whore for Driftwood Theatre’s First Draft program. Also a success! At the talkback afterwa...

I have a review on the Sound on Stage blog. Here is the link: https://www.thesoundonstage.org/stage-reviews/stage-review-life-on-the-moon-baked-theatre-workshop   Photo credit: Cat Brooks