Where to See College Theatre This Winter in Seattle

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by UW School of Drama (@uwdrama)

To paraphrase a theatre tweet I like, “What if we did Glengarry Glen Ross, but instead of conniving salesmen it’s about high school girls, and they’re playing soccer, and it’s great, and it’s Sarah DeLappe’s The Wolves.” DeLappe’s Pulitzer finalist is one of seven shows hitting UW stages over the next few months, and it’s an emotionally open, hilarious, and ultimately crushing choice, perfect for emerging actresses ready to do some real work on a solid script. Also in the mainstage mix are the MFA thesis project The Oresteia (Ellen McLaughlin’s adaptation of Aeschylus’ bloody trilogy about the doomed House of Atreus) and UW’s annual Producing Artists Lab, courtesy of graduate directing students Kate Drummond and Nick O’Leary. 

Meanwhile, the UW Undergraduate Theatre Society will split their time between preexisting and new works. In the former camp, it’s Lauren Yee’s Hookman, a darkly humorous “existential slasher comedy” about a college freshman investigating the death of a high school friend, and Savage in Limbo, John Patrick Shanley’s 1984 play about sad sack classmates reuniting as adults at a Bronx bar. In the world of the new, there’s Dejuan James’ Break a Leg, a parody of some of the world’s most well-known plays (Othello, Antigone, Of Mice and Men), while the second show has yet to be announced as of publication date. 

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by Cornish Dance Department (@cornishcollege_dance)

Cornish College of the Arts has four separate shows for you to be in awe of, as the city’s main arts conservatory shows off their future stars of stage and screen. 

Up first in March is a 10-Minute Play Festival, which is a great way for writers, performers, and the creative team to cut their teeth with brand-new works. 

 In April, two shows playing in rep cover the play/musical dichotomy that all theatre schools must contend with. (“You get your singin’ away from my monologuin’!” and so forth.) In the world of “straight drama,” enter Pericles by George Wilkins and some dude named Willy Shakespeare. This wild play is a decades-spanning tale about the Prince of Tyre’s perilous adventures (…perilous Pericles…) of riddles, shipwrecks, princesses, and assassins. 

The musical half is represented by Head Over Heels, one of the more popular recent musicals for regional, community, and school theatre. Based on Philip Sidney’s 16th-century play The Countess of Pembroke’s Astoria (stay with me on this), it’s a bright, glittery, queer retelling from Jeff Whitty (Avenue Q) and James Magruder (Triumph of Love) that features the music of the Go-Go’s. The show achieved landmark status by featuring the first transgender woman to originate a role on Broadway (Peppermint from Drag Race season 9) and boasts many opportunities for trans and non-binary performers. 

Finally, the end of April sees the return of Cornish’s LORE Project, a chance for first-year students to devise a play based on lore from around the world. This year, the theme is “Part-Time Hero.” 

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by Seattle Pacific University (@spu_seattlepacific)

Over at Seattle Pacific University, three shows are on deck for the remainder of the school year.

Top of February has The 39 Steps, a popular choice for regional and college theatres alike. The 2005 Patrick Barlow play, adapted from both John Buchan’s 1915 novel and Alfred Hitchcock’s 1935 film version, is both a parody of and homage to suspense thrillers, and it reshapes the tale for laughs and an intentionally small cast; for this all-female production, five actresses portray the cavalcade of characters (and even objects), making this a great show for them to show off the skills they’ve learned in their character development classes. 

Up next in March is a one-week limited run called An Evening of One-Acts: Queer Stories, featuring short plays by Scott C. Sickles (who also wrote last fall’s Nonsense and Beauty at Theatre22), Grace Everett, and Alison Cummins, and directed by SPU Theatre students. 

In May, the department goes all-in on Everybody, the 2018 Pulitzer finalist by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins (An Octoroon). An adaptation of the 1510 play Everyman, it concerns one performer, “Everybody,” confronted with allegorical characters such as Friendship, Kinship, Evil, and Love as death approaches. Jacobs-Jenkins’ biggest invention is a top-of-show lottery drawing, and the actors don’t know who they will be playing until right as the play starts. Local company Strawberry Theatre Workshop did a version in 2019 that blew the roof off 12th Avenue Arts, and I expect SPU to do the same. 

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by Performing Arts, Shoreline CC (@shorelinetheater)

After killing it last fall with The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, the Shoreline Community College Theater presents A Kitchen in the World. Directed by Duygu Monson, this is a fascinating-sounding new work about kitchens around the world. According to the synopsis, the play “explores the differences in how people eat, drink, talk, fight, make peace, get married, work, miss each other, and how they come together,” and that even if we’re on literal opposite sides of the globe, we’re not as different as we’d like to believe.