It’s the last weekend of Seattle Shakespeare Company’s “Wooden O” park performance of “A Comedy of Errors.” You can see the show tonight, tomorrow and Sunday at 7PM in Luther Burbank Park on Mercer Island. The show is open to all and based on donation. With the way the weather is shaping up for the next few nights, you really should have no excuse. Do yourself a favor, grab some wine and cheese, stash the wine in something covered so that the authorities don’t feel the need to crack down on you artsy types in the park, and head on out to catch a little Billy Shakes. Will it help if I promise that you won’t be disappointed?

Jan and I went and saw both of the Wooden O performances this year and they were fantastic. We especially loved the performance at Luther Burbank Park since the venue has amphitheater style grass seating and it is so easy to see the action. This particular interpretation of Comedy has a vaudevillian atmosphere and is a real hoot. Even kids will appreciate the show. If you make it out, let me know how it goes!

Well it finally happened. We’d heard the news that Intiman was in danger, that they needed $1 million to complete this season (which ended up being a little too optimistic) and have enough financing to think about the next. Unfortunately, the fund raising had been falling short and the need kept growing so yesterday, the day before their current play, Arthur Miller’s “All My Sons,” was set to close, they announced that they would be laying off their entire staff and doing what they can to get a 2012 season scheduled.

I have seen some absolutely phenomenal plays at Intiman through the years and it will feel like a little black hole whenever I walk over to the Seattle Rep to take advantage of my season tickets. Titus Andronicus still resonates with me, even today.

This leads me to my big question, and perhaps some of you know the answer to this better than I do. What the hell is Intiman doing wrong? From what I can tell, they have had a huge number of critically acclaimed plays, great reviews, and incredible performances and yet they were not able to complete a season between 2003 and 2009 out of the red. If you can’t swing a profit once in 7 years, that’s some pretty poor management if you ask me. I can forgive one or two years of adapting to a new reality but 7?

Now, the situation looks a bit like a perfect storm of nastiness – the endowment cut from $3.6 million 2 years ago, to less than $1 million last fall. The cost of mounting debt from a very poor financial performance over that 7 year period weighing them down.

Here’s the thing though, directly next door, the Seattle Rep appears to be healthy and vibrant. Every show I’ve been to, regardless of whether it’s been a Wednesday night or a Friday, is full (or very close to it). As a season ticket holder, I actually look forward to hearing from my ticket reps. They’re chirpy, pleasant and accommodating. We look forward to every single play. For some reason, Intiman doesn’t give me that vibe, and they’re going to need to if they want to come back. If I were them, I’d get grass roots before the ’12 season. Get some theater folks out in the community building support and come back strong. Enlist some folks who really know how to connect with young people. Treat your customers like gold and do what it takes to bring in a more diverse audience. How about making it necessary for every single employee to dedicate 1 day a week to outreach? Use Google’s famous 20% time to get your people out doing projects to support the theater.

So as of tonight, the theater is closed for a while:

“I think the only hope is, you stop and you focus — otherwise, you just never get your head up far enough to think, and it just gets worse and worse. You start using a lot of well-intentioned money, and then you can’t get it when you really have your head clear because you’ve broken promises too many times.” – Susan Trapnell, Intiman theatre consultant

I really hope Intiman can come back strong in ’12 and wish them the best of luck navigating this difficult time. Do what you got to do…

If you’re looking for the entire story, the Seattle Times has it. If you want the highlights, check the New York Times Arts Beat.

Jan and I have “Thursday Preview” Season Tickets to the Bathhouse Theatre in Seattle. For those of you who don’t know about the Bathhouse, it’s a very small community theatre on the ever-popular Green Lake. This is our second year having season tickets for the Thursday Previews and I’d highly recommend them to anyone – they’re cheaper than standard tickets, it’s pretty easy to get good seats, and you still gain access to high-quality local theatre.

A representative will tell you up-front that Thursday Previews are a practice run before opening night and that the director may choose to stop the action at any time but it hasn’t happened on anything we’ve seen. Tonight is the preview showing of Bryony Lavery’s ” A Wedding Story.” While I’m sure there will be more hoopla for the Opening Night tomorrow, tonight you’ll get the benefit of a seeing the show with a bunch of budget conscious theater fans, along with the family and friends of the actors. This is a really enjoyable way to get your local theatre and a nice reminder of just how accessible it can be. Here is The Guardian’s quote on Lavery’s “A Wedding Story”:

“A moving story about marriage and the nature of love…with its mix of comedy, tragedy, movie culture and popular song…Lavery is riding the crest of a wave.”

This is going to be incredible.

I’m not the most well-versed theatre-goer you’ve ever met. I don’t know the major playwrights or the “can’t miss” plays that come through town. What I do know, however, is that “Three Days of Rain” (playing through February 24th) is an exquisitely written piece by Richard Greenberg and that the production is ably directed and deftly acted by the small cast.

The opening act of the play occurs in an unoccupied Manhattan loft, the long-abandoned apartment of a recently deceased architect. His two children and step-child have reunited after significant time apart to hear the reading of his will, converging on the town from various points domestic and international. They bring their vastly different psychoses and desire to reconnect to a quick simmer as memories are dredged and old wounds reopened.

Evan Whitfield, playing Walker, really shines as a remorse-filled drifter, saddened by missing the end of his father’s life while in Italy. The act is a series of sharply written familial recollections by Walker; his sister, Nan; and their semi-famous half-brother, Pip. They discover elements of the gloomy apartment that contrast sharply with what they know of their deceased patriarch and speculate on earlier times when their parents used to live there. Their father’s journal, tersely written in cryptic one-liners, fuels their curiosity.

The second act occurs in the same apartment, with the same actors playing their respective parents, 35 years prior. This act is less psychological, more philosophical, as the two men, now playing “soon-to-be well-known architects” debate the merits of various architectural icons and struggle to make their mark with their initial architectural commission while sharing an attraction for the same southern belle, Lina.

“Architecture should speak of its time and place, but yearn for timelessness.” – Frank Gehry

The time shift in the play serves as a really nice literary device allowing the actors to explore how the future will eventually be reconstructed out of the products of the past, with no more clarity than they enjoy in the present. These two stories, played out 35 years apart, weave a very compelling story that reverberates across a generational gap in a novel and enjoyable way.

Go see this play. It’s only here a couple more weeks and it’s well worth it, I promise.

Do yourself a favor and grab tickets for you and a friend to go check out this show at the Northwest Film Forum. It’s only playing this weekend so you’ve got to go tonight or tomorrow. You get “The Puget News guarantee” that you’ll leave with a warm fuzzy feeling.

The show is spearheaded by Drs. Ink and Owning (Rachel Kessler and Sierra Nelson of the Typing Explosion), two scientists exploring the collective answers to scientific questionnaires the audience has filled out on their way in to the theatre. Through the use of music, dance, film, sweets, and live science, the doctors instruct and celebrate our most intimate foibles. While the show had many rough elements, record players being bumped, missing data for one of the demonstrations, and the continuous movement of the overhead projectors, the whimsy and bubbly personalities of the cast more than make up for any temporary awkwardness. The show is disarmingly human and that’s the whole point.

I really don’t want to give away all the pleasant bits in the show, just know that you’ll be doing vocalizations and watching man-dancers. Steel yourself.

Oh, and Rachel, a bunch of us who went out drinking afterwards really wanted to hear you belt out one of those tunes. You’ve got a beautiful and strong voice. Turn it loose!

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