Her Mother Was Imagination is a bold new culture-bending play about a future ‘right-thinking’ America written by local playwright Elizabeth Heffron, directed by Ellie McKay. This edgy satire dares to envision a post-constitutional society who have embraced Glenn Beck as their leader and submit their lives to the will of the Elders yet find themselves confined to a massive sky-scraping tower, stratified by floor levels, living safely above a treacherous earth terrain below, where only the basest of creatures survive. This almost Orwellian life in the tower is both savage and decadent and at times an opulent spectacle in this fantastical new world order.
Featuring David Gassner, Sann Hall, Jesse Keeter, Conner Marx, Carrie McIntyre, Beth Peterson, Erin Pike, Peter Richards, Michael Stock and Sarah Warren.
Her Mother Was Imagination is the culmination of a generative multi-disciplinary arts project exploring our future as individuals and as a culture, created by Elizabeth Heffron, Ellie McKay, Max Reichlin and Daniel Worthington. This new play is entirely lit by human-charged batteries in effort to minimize its own environmental footprint as well as champion the practical applications of alternative renewable energy.
written by Scotto Moore | directed by Kristina Sutherland
Apr 23 – May 22, 2010 | Fri-Sat at 8 pm
Industry Night: May 10 at 8pm
$15 gen | $5 stu
“When I Come To My Senses, I’m Alive!” is a near-future sci-fi story about a technological provocateur who invents a method for capturing emotions as digital information, as part of a project to “chart the emotional genome.” She develops a cult following of fans who download her very addictive “emoticlips” – each delivered with cryptic, poetic file names like “the surprise of an unfamiliar memory” – and play them back in hobby-built receiver helmets. The experience is not full blown virtual reality; instead, emotional responses & sensations are triggered, and each fan experiences something unique. A seedy television executive tries to coopt her technology to syndicate the emotions of TV stars, hiring an elite P.I. to figure out what her weaknesses are when she refuses to sell out… but in the meantime, publishing digital versions of her emotions to the internet has unexpected consequences amongst the botnets of the world.
Scotto Moore‘s new play, “When I Come to My Senses, I’m Alive!” is the best kind of science fiction, the kind where speculation about the future feels like something you could wake up to tomorrow morning. In this World Premiere production, director Kristina Sutherland has kept the ideas fresh and intriguing and the performances finely finished and compelling. The acting is brisk and, at least for the enthusiastic opening night audience, it’s premise and articulation is easily embraced by a generation for whom the globalization of information, media and personal experience meld into our shared online identities…. [The play] is a lot of fun, at least in part because it is so confident and thoroughly considered in its ideas and equally finished in its theatrical savvy for putting them on stage.
It’s not hard to be captivated by Moore’s provocative premise about a leap in information technology that makes human emotions a downloadable, vicarious experience. The story’s late turn toward suspense — with the spectral rise of freethinking, artificial intelligence on the Internet — certainly ups the ante in unexpected, spooky ways…. Director Kristina Sutherland keeps the action brisk and crisp, and knows how to nudge the audience’s imagination.
written & directed by Jim Bovino
Oct. 23 – Nov. 21, 2009 | Fri-Sat 8pm
The Believers is set in an unidentified city where life has become transformed into a series of fragmented and privatized events where the cameras are always rolling, the lights are always on, and the hero could be you.
The play examines the manufacturing of reality and questions the ability of individuals to distinguish between autonomous and enforced behavior and the possibility for original thought in a mediated world.
The play does not have a traditional plot or narrative, but is structured as a series of vignettes loosely connected by theme.
CAST
Sarah E Budge
Joe Feeney
Maggie Ferguson-Wagstaffe
Caleb Joslin
Erin Pike
Nick Poling
Jennifer Pratt
CREW
Stage Manager
Meaghan Darling
Set Design
Zack Bent
Light Design
Melinda Short
Costume Design
Julia Evanovich
Props Design
Julia Welch
Sound Engineering
Kevin Heard
Original Music
Take Acre
Technical Director
Max Reichlin
Production Manager
Ellie McKay
Build Team
Jillian Vashro
David Roby
Ron Darling
SPECIAL THANKS
Seattle Children’s Theatre, John Deshazo, Michael Hayes, Jillia Pessenda, Theatre Schmeater, Clint Fisher, Gala
written by Charles Ludlam | directed by Ed Hawkins
April 17 – May 16, 2009 | Fri-Sat, 8pm
CAST
Raeanne Avery
Adria LaMorticella
Bram Taylor
Daniel Wood
Eve Woodville
Laurie Utterback
Bertie Woodville
Patrick Walrath
Sylvia Woodville
Kate Parker
Pastor Fenwick Bates
Gerald B. Browning
CREW
Stage Manager
Angel Welter
Set Design/Master Carpenter
Kit Newman
Light Design/Photographer
Ian Johnston
Costume Design
Erik Andor
Costume Design
Brian Norton
Props Mistress/Set Dresser
Fiori Cippoletti
Sound Design
Kevin Heard
Sound Design
Ed Hawkins
Technical Director
Max Reichlin
Production Manager
Ellie McKay
Assistant Technical Director
David Roby
Hair Consultant
Sibyl Darling
Wardrobe Assistant
Jen Moon
Graphic Designer/Illustrator
Chris Zappala
SPECIAL THANKS
Robert Aguilar, Susannah Anderson, Jillian Armenante, Sibyl Darling, Darren Davis, Josie Gardner & Deborah Skorstadt at Washington School of Drama, Chris Jeffries, Jen Moon, Brian Norton, Seattle Opera, Seattle Repertory Theatre, Laurie Utterback, West Seattle Senior Center/Stop ‘n Shop Thrift, Christopher Zinovitch at ArtsWest