Seattle Spotlight: March 2010

There’s no doubt that March brings something for every theatrical taste. Seattle Public Theater debuts the Northwest premiere of Dying City, by Christopher Shinn (March 19-April 11). A finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, the play is about a young man who dies in war and the effect his death has on those he leaves behind. Seattle Repertory Theatre presents August Wilson’s Pulitzer and Tony Award winner, Fences (March 26-April 18), about a garbage collector who was forced to abandon his dream of becoming a professional baseball player. Intiman goes classic with Paradise Lost (March 19-April 25), focusing on a middle-class family trying to survive the hardscrabble time of the Great Depression. Dámaso Rodriguez directs.

The Village Theatre world premieres The Gypsy King (March 17-May 23) by Randy Rogel, an award-winning actor and recipient of a Peabody Award and two Annie Awards for animation. The story follows Leo and Frederick, a father-son acting duo who find themselves in the middle of a royal assassination plot. Seattle Shakespeare Company romps with The Two Gentlemen of Verona by William Shakespeare (March 18-April 11). Experience the Solo Performance Festival (#4) at Theatre Off Jackson (March 3-April 3) and choose among 30 different solo performers over four weekends, providing storytelling, music, dance, fiction, memoirs, and whatever else they dream up.

Brooklyn Boy is a regional premiere at Taproot Theatre (March 17-April 17), where Eric Weiss finally has a shot at a Hollywood film but an inconvenient phone call brings him back to the Brooklyn neighborhood he grew up in and happily left behind. ArtsWest presents a National New Play Network play, Sunlight by Sharr White (March 10-April 3), as a retiring college president combats scandal and its effect on his family. Peggy Gannon, Karen Nelsen, John Ulman, and John Wray star. Balagan Theatre turns into the roller derby with The Jammer by Rolin Jones (March 11-April 3).

Ching Chong Chinaman (SiS Productions, March 26-April 24) is Lauren Yee’s award-winning play about an Asian American family that doesn’t realize they’re Asian. Our American Theater Company mounts a reading of Another Part of the Forest by Lillian Hellman (March 15-16). Macha Monkey challenges with The Adventures of Herculina (March 4 – March 27), a gender-bending tale about a person raised as a girl in a convent school, only to be suddenly redefined as a male after a doctor’s examination at age 18.

Centerstage goes to Italy for Enchanted April (March 26-April 11). Tacoma Musical Playhouse time travels to the 1980s for The Wedding Singer (March 5-28). Theater Schmeater brings The Twilight Zone: Live! (March 19-April 17) to life with three new episodes from the long running television series.

Open Circle shows the West Coast premiere of The Private Lives Of Eskimos (Or 16 Words For Snow) by Ken Urban (March 19-April 10). When a man loses the cell phone bearing his sister’s dying words, events snowball into strange women, secret police and spam-spouting Eskimos. James Dean fans will appreciate Woman Seeking’s presentation of Come Back to the 5 & Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean (March 4-March 14), a cult classic reunion play about friends who gather in a dusty Texas town on the anniversary of James Dean’s death.

As for kid shows, Goldilocks and the Three Bears find things “just right” at SecondStory Repertory (March 12-27). Y. York adapts a novel by Audrey Couloumbis as Seattle Children’s Theatre presents Getting Near to Baby (March 12-April 18). Little Sister and Willa Jo have to spend a summer with an aunt who gets along better with her garden gnomes than little girls. Bunraku puppets and more adorn Thistle Theatre’s production of The Tiger and the Dried Persimmon (March 6-21), in which a young tiger, thinking he is the fiercest in all Korea, ventures down a mountainside in search of food.