Mike Daisey

Master storyteller Mike Daisey is in town Aug. 6 & 7 to test out brand-new material for his latest monologue, The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs, the fascinating story of Apple CEO Steve Jobs—a real-life Willy Wonka whose deep obsessions have shaped our modern age.

And you can be among the first to hear it, for free.

After this workshop the monologue travels around the world, including to India, the Sydney Opera House, and Berkeley Rep, before coming back to Seattle where it will be on the Bagley Wright stage as part of our season, April 22-May 22, 2011.

But it all starts here. Hope you can join us.

The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs
created and performed by Mike Daisey, directed by Jean-Michele Gregory
Aug. 6 & 7, 8 p.m. (doors at 7:30), Seattle Rep PONCHO Forum
Free
Seating is limited—first come, first served (arriving early is highly recommended)

More info about the monologue and Mike.

Read Mike’s blog.

It was recently brought to my attention by a number of Seattle Rep-ers that my previous blog post left off on the Tuesday of our week of new play development at Western Washington University. Thusly all were left wondering the answer to The Burning Question. But don’t worry, friends, I am back to provide the highly sought after answer:

No, sadly, Sarah Petty and I did not get to indulge in Pie Happy Hour. But who needs to when you have Chef Jerry Manning preparing ribs for your enjoyment at the company dinner?? (ok, I’m a vegetarian so I personally did not partake in said ribs, but I was happy for the carnivores of the group).

Anyway—more discussion of food later, but here’s a recap of the artistic side of things:

Greetings from Bellingham! Here’s a recap of what we’ve been up to:

Sunday: We all showed up. And that is half the battle, right?

By 9:25pm, all 16 members of the Seattle Rep company had made it to Bellingham and settled into their rooms at the on-campus Birnam Woods apartments. Oh, yes, that’s right….we’re living the dorm life. The complex that we’re staying in is more “suite” than “dorm” though—we each get our own room, a shared living room/kitchen, and a cute balcony. We all live in the same little cluster, and with the walls being so thin I have to resist the urge to yell good night to everyone Waltons style.

That evening, Jerry Manning led the first seminar for the Western Washington students who will be observing us all week. Jerry’s seminar focused on a critical response technique developed by Liz Lerman, and by all accounts Jerry dazzled both students and the SRT actors who attended.

Yeah, yeah, yeah the season is over. We’ve already moved on to other exciting projects to help us fill our dark months at the Rep. And where better to start than new play development?

Our artistic team has scooped up two playwrights, ten equity actors and a whole lot of schwag to be whisked off to Western Washington University to do an intensive six-day residency.

Seattle Rep Artistic Director Jerry Manning will direct Brian Willis’ Bootleg, a love story about (you guessed it) bootleggers during Prohibition, set in 1927 Olympia. We love Brian Willis–his plays have been workshopped and produced all over including Off-Broadway, London and theatre across the U.S. and Canada. This guy is legit.

We’ve also got Associate Artistic Director Braden Abraham directing Stephanie Timm on her new piece Asleep in the Mouth of a Crocodile which follows the comedic, epic journey of Joe, a middle-aged narcoleptic bartender with no direction in life.  Stephanie Timm is also pretty phenomenal. You might have seen her play On the Nature of Dust performed by New Century Theatre Co a few months ago at ACT. That show was fantastic.

But what might you ask is the best part of this residency? A group of select Western Washington U students will get to observe the whole thing, as well as shadow members of our artistic team and participate in workshops with the directors and playwrights. We couldn’t be more excited about making this a truly unique learning experience for those students.

If you want to see performances of the pieces you can come on June 26 at 2 pm or 7:30. Just email boxoffice@wwu.edu or call (360) 650-6146. Admission is free.

We’ll be posting updates on how it’s going so be sure to check back in the next few days!

It’s been about nine months (although sometimes it felt longer!) since Seattle Center broke ground on the Theater Commons, a new entrance, garden, and walkway located between the Rep and the Intiman in the northern part of the Seattle Center campus. Now the Theater Commons is done, and we’re ready to celebrate…join us?

Seattle Center, along with the Rep and Intiman, is hosting an opening celebration next Tuesday, June 15 from 4-6 p.m. at the Theater Commons. Musicians and street performers will be performing all across the new grounds, and light bites and refreshments (strawberry shortcake…) will be served under the Rep’s new entrance canopy, located off of Mercer Street.

A formal ceremony will take place from 4:30-5pm in the new amphitheatre area (the stairs right outside of the Rotunda). The ceremony will include a dedication of the Peter Donnelly gardens by Rep Managing Director Ben Moore. The small gardens located in the Theater Commons will be a lasting tribute to Donnelly, a Seattle arts activist and former Seattle Rep managing director.

Guided tours will be given after the ceremony. Take one of the tours and hear all about the conception and construction of the Theater Commons, as well as learn about the native plants and the art installations used.

The event is free and open to the public. Hope to see you there!

Juliette Carrillo, director of The Brothers Size

Our director line-up for next season is complete!

We’re so excited to announce that Juliette Carrillo will direct The Brothers Size by Tarell McCraney. Juliette was last here in 2007 for Eduardo Machado’s The Cook. She has directed all over the U.S., including the West Coast premiere of the 2003 Pulitzer Prize winner Anna in the Tropics by Nilo Cruz at South Coast Repertory, the world premiere of References to Salvador Dali Make Me Hot by Jose Rivera, also at South Coast Repertory, and the West Coast premiere of Sam Shepard’s Eyes For Consuela at the Magic in San Francisco.

She has directed for the Alliance Theatre, TheatreWorks, Laguna Playhouse, New Jersey Shakespeare Festival, Actor’s Theatre of Louisville and for the Mark Taper Forum’s New Work Festival, as well workshops in NY theatres such as New York Theatre Workshop, The Public, INTAR and The Women’s Project.

And in case you missed it, the first time, here are the rest of the directors, announced earlier…

Playwright/director Adam Rapp is at Seattle Rep RIGHT NOW working on his new play, Welcome Home, Dean Charbonneau. There are three staged (very staged, according to Artistic Director Jerry Manning who just stopped by the give us the scoop) readings happening tonight (June 4), tomorrow, and Sunday in our black box space, the PONCHO.

Playwright/Director Adam Rapp

This is part of our New Play Program, the same program that also brought you Radiance by the one and only Alan Alda back in March. We’re excited about Dean Charbonneau for lots of reasons. Here are a few.

1. Adam just got a write-up in the New York Times.

2. The cast is ridiculously awesome. And it being an intimate workshop performance means you’re THIS close to them. Actors are Eric Ray Anderson, Christopher Bange, Shawn Belyea, Susan Corzatte, Michael Cullen, Christopher Denham, Mari Nelson, Bradford Farwell, Halley Feiffer, Justin Huertas, Gretchen Krich, Todd Licea, and R. Hamilton Wright.

3. The play is mesmerizing. It’s dark, creepy, funny, and heartbreaking about a Wisconsin family sitting down to watch football and plan a party for their son who’s just come back from Iraq. But when the celebration starts, it’s clear he’s not too excited about being back. Tickets are only $15. Give the Box Office a call at 206-443-2222, there are a few seats left. (Tonight and tomorrow shows are at at 7:30, Sunday at 2 p.m.).

We’ve announced seven of our eight directors for the coming season. We’re pumped.

Wilson Milam directs God of Carnage. The master of sharp, dark comedies, Wilson directed Glengarry Glen Ross this last season and The Seafarer the season before (he was also nominated for a Tony for Best Director for The Lietenant of Inishmore, which he helmed from London to Off-Broadway to Broadway).

Allison Narver directs Three Tall Women. Allison’s beautiful work was last seen here for Memory House in 2006, and around town with Seven Brides for Seven Brothers at the 5th Avenue, Eurydice and The Clean House at ACT, and Orange Flower Water at New Century Theatre.

Sheila Daniels takes the reigns for Dancing at Lughnasa. This is Sheila’s first time at the Rep, but we’ve been wanting to get her here, especially after seeing the masterful Electra at Seattle Shakes and A Streetcar Named Desire at Intiman.

Braden Abraham directs The K of D, an urban legend and This. Braden is the Rep’s own Associate Artistic Director, and he last directed Opus and Betrayal. He’s been working on The K of D through a couple of development incarnations, including taking it to the New York Fringe Festival last year.

Our own Artistic Director Jerry Manning re-imagines the contemporary classic Of Mice and Men. Jerry loves this piece, and is excited to work with some great local actors on it. You might have seen Jerry’s most recent work at the Rep, boom, in 2008.

Mike Daisey’s regular collaborator Jean-Michelle Gregory directs Mike’s new work The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs. If anyone knows how to make Mike’s amazingly funny, insightful works shine even more, it’s her.

Starting March 31, the opening night of An Iliad, through closing week (THIS WEEK), we at Seattle Rep have invited theatre makers, writers, and artists of different kinds to respond to the question you see in the title of this post: What responsibility do artists have to respond to war? Our final post is from playwright Bryan Willis.

Certainly some of the most influential writers in my life told stories that were tempered in dangerous times. Think of all the great works that preceded and followed WWI & WWII.

Brecht comes to mind. Or look at Kipling’s rah-rah work before he lost his son and discovered the true cost of war. Unfortunately, he was too broken to contribute much to the literary world.

Many of the best writers are essentially anti-war because the heart of the work illuminates a larger world. That’s one of my on-going goals: to help the Audience see beyond their usual and accustomed world.

This is why I’m bored by plays that feature cats on roller-skates. We can do better.

Yesterday at 5:30 p.m. an announcement came over the Seattle Rep PA: Come to the board room and hear who the next artistic director will be. There was massive breath-holding and palm sweating as we all trooped down to where our board’s executive committee was meeting.

Seattle Rep's new artistic director, Jerry Manning.

Brent Johnson, the co-chair of the Artistic Director Search Committee, stepped forward. “I’d like to introduce you to your new artistic director, Jerry Manning.” As Jerry joined Brent, we all stood, clapped, hooted, hollered. Some of us cried (Kiki). We felt relieved and so excited to know that the man who has been so successfully leading the theatre for the last year and a half is now officially our artistic director, on a five-year contract.

Why didn’t we just hand Jerry the title? Our board felt a real responsibility to make sure we found the best candidate, not just for now, but for the long-term. Jerry has a great track record (this last season was one of the most critically and commercially successful season in the theatre’s history), but both he and the Rep wanted to make sure the fit was right. We engaged a management consulting firm, Management Consultants for the Arts, to help us with the effort. We looked at 50 potential candidates and met with five finalists. Members of the staff were involved on an advisory council, as well as local artists and community leaders.

The final word was one us on the staff were hoping to hear: Yes, Jerry was indeed the right fit.