As the weekend approaches with so much music and performance to get to around town, many are reflecting on (and maybe still recovering from) Bumbershoot. Reviews on last weekend’s festival have been appearing in local websites, with the feedback being quite mixed. Here’s a look at what some are saying about the state of the city’s largest arts fest. more ›

In the latest edition of her quarterly-ish email newsletter, Marya Sea Kaminksi--actress, writer, director, Genius, and WET co-founder, just to name a few--shared some info on one of her upcoming projects. She's developing a monologue on a timely topic: Seattle's rampant condo abuse, in a work titled Condomillennium: A New Play About Fantasy and Real Estate. more ›

About halfway through the first act of Athold Fugard's (at Seattle Rep, playing Tues.-Sun. 7:30 p.m., Sat. & Sun., 2 p.m. through Feb. 14; tix $15-$59) we were dozing off, and the woman sitting next to us bumped our arm, which more or less woke us back up. We're not sure if it was on purpose or not, but we do appreciate the help, even if we can't help but feel that dozing was the appropriate response to the first act. Come on, a snoozer's a snoozer, and the first act was definitely a snoozer. Not so much the second act, featuring a phenomenally explosive performance, which is, we suppose, a way of saying to readers to just stick with it--it gets good. more ›

Seattlest Jeremy already reviewed Next Stage's Nexus Project--"A dozen original plays by some of our most talented writers is definitely worth your time, and your money"--but we caught a 3-play sampler down at Bumbershoot and had to chime in. Theater at the festival can be hit-or-miss but this year Next Stage and the Unicycle Collective nailed it (both featuring the terrific Marya Sea Kaminski) with 10-minute bits that fit the setting perfectly. The Nexus Project wraps up September 4-7, so make tracks. Or buy tickets. more ›

The Ten Thousand Things is a play by Seattle playwright Paul Mullin, showing at WET through June 16. Tickets are $15 general, $10 students/seniors. Shows are Thursdays through Mondays. more ›

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Besides being in the running for Owner of the World's Most Glamorous Name, Katjana Vadeboncoeur plays the maternal hen Aunt Julia in blahblahblahBANG at On the Boards. To make a point of it, she sips then spits up her tea into a cup, complete with birdlike neck spasms, and hands it to her beloved, coddled nephew Yorgen Tesman -- who drinks it, onstage, to an audience of wrinkled noses. If you're an Ibsen fan (blahblahblahBANG is WET's precocious interpretation of Hedda Gabler) this subtextual underlining may just elicit a desire to see the original. The difference here is that it's not a matter of moral fiber or willfulness. WET's cast reacts to their socially caged life with the stereotyped behavior of unhappy parrots, literally climbing the walls. Again and again, WET reminds you that they are real people doing real things, disgusting, sexy, risky things. If it's not "perfect," it's compelling as a high-wire act. more ›

Writing on The New Republic Online in November, 2006, James Kirchick snarkily commented, "Of all the subjects for a 90-minute, one-woman show, Rachel Corrie ought to have been at the bottom of the list." Rachel Corrie was an Olympia native and Evergreen State College student who, in March 2003, while working with the International Solidarity Movement, was killed by an Israeli bulldozer destroying Palestinian homes. And frankly, before seeing Seattle Rep's production of My Name is Rachel Corrie, we tended to agree with Kirchick, albeit for completely different reasons. more ›

We didn’t see In DisDress, Marya Sea Kaminski’s one-woman show, when it was part of On the Boards' Northwest New Works Festival last June, but from what we gather, it involved a huge red dress, a television set, and porn. The Washington Ensemble Theatre restaging of that show, In DisDress Now Redux, doesn’t involve any of those things (though porn does get a shout out), and the title primarily exists to allow for the Apocalypse Now reference. Though originally intended to be an expansion of last year’s show, this performance is completely different. As the playwright explains, “I am not capable of and am absolutely not interested in being the person I was seven months ago, even in performance.” Fair enough. more ›

THEATER: You have only five more chances to catch WET’s latest offering, In Disdress Now: Redux. Marya Sea Kaminski’s one-woman show was originally developed as as part of On the Boards' Northwest New Works Festival in June 2006. Now the “story of a girl wrestling meaning out of love, porn, and the folds of an enormous red hoop dress” has been expanded into a full-fledged tour de force. more ›

Saturday we went to go see The Museum Play at WET. We've been musing over what to tell you about it since then. It's a world premiere, see, and why give the story away? So few things these days have the opportunity to surprise us. If you don't care about that then by all means, read this Weekly review, or this bizarre, what-was-he-drinking? one in the P-I. [UPDATE: Here's the Stranger's AW! with a response within shouting distance of ours, and the Times' Misha Berson, with whose review we also find ourselves nodding agreeably.] more ›

On Friday night Seattlest caught the Washington Ensemble Theatre's production of Crave. Not to be confused with one of our favorite restaurants in town, this play is the handicraft of Sarah Kane, a brilliant, troubled artist who spat out five intense and violent works before hanging herself at age 28. The marketing we've seen for the play would like you to think that the play is "sexy and brutal." Make no mistake---this play is definitely brutal, but focusing on the topic of sex does not automatically make something sexy. Crave is certainly anything but. more ›