Theater News

Seattle Spotlight: August 2010

The Yankee Spirit

Steven Dietz
Steven Dietz

Steven Dietz follows his critical smash of last summer, Becky’s New Car, with another new play at ACT Theatre, Yankee Tavern (August 1-29). This funny dramatic thriller is set in a New York dive bar five years after 9/11, as a young couple meets a mysterious stranger whose initially harmless conspiracy theories turn into something more surprising and dangerous. Directed by Dietz, himself, it stars top Seattle talent Charles Leggett, Jennifer Lee Taylor, Shawn Telford, and R. Hamilton Wright.

ACT Theatre is also co-hosting the 4th annual Icicle Creek Theatre Festival (August 21-24), which features Laura Jacqmin’s And When We Awoke There was Light and Light and Yussef El Guindi’s Pilgrims Musa and Sheri in the New World. Meanwhile, UMO Ensemble returns to ACT with El Dorado (August 19-29), using “buffoon theater” and acrobatics, live music and dark humor to chronicle Spanish conquistadors’ quest for the legendary “kingdom of gold” and the European settling of the Americas.

Explore the Tenth Annual Festival of New Musicals at The Village Theatre (August 12-15) where six developing musicals get workshop productions and informed, dedicated audience feedback from Village Originals members. A number of previously featured festival shows have gone on to Broadway productions, including Million Dollar Quartet and Next to Normal.

TV writer extraordinaire, Joss Whedon, created an internet sensation with Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog, about a villian who blogs about his villiany and his girl-crush. Balagan Theatre gets the freeze ray trained on stage (August 20-September 4). Also performing at Balagan, Young Americans’ Theatre Company — entirely managed by teens — presents Polaroid Stories (August 1-8), Naomi Iizuka’s cult favorite modern adaptation of Ovid’s Metamorphoses.

Annex Theatre’s Clubfoot: Tales from the Back of an Ambulance (August 10-25) is about the absurd but all too human experiences of an Emergency Medical Technician, full of manic teenage wrestling in the middle of I-5, busted wall jumpers in full-body casts, stroked out delusionals, cutters, car crash victims, flesh-eating bacteria, and more! It’s written by Stephen McCandless and Bret Fetzer and directed by Fetzer. Also, Annex Theatre Late Nite shoots out Penguins, Episode 3: The Bishop’s Bastard (August 7-27). Follow the continuing antics of machine-gun wielding nuns and bad-ass, criminal-minded priests.

Seattle Children’s Theatre delights the tiniest audience with The Green Sheep, based on Mem Fox and Judy Horacek’s book Where is the Green Sheep? (August 11-September 12) Ages 1-4 will be captivated by this interactive treat, as parent and toddler sit in the sheep pen and join in the search for the elusive green sheep. Performances are followed by a post-play workshop to help parents engage in creative play with their kids.