Piece of You

February 2007 |A Sponsored Production | Playwright: Sue Peters  | Directed and produced by Brooke Cochran

This re-imagining of the night that James Dean and Barbara Hutton spent together follows their reckless evening as they unravel the seductions of fame and fortune. The story invites you to be a fly on the wall in 1955 and get to know these revered rebels as real people at their most vulnerable. Dean, 23, is between films; Hutton, 42, is between marriages. The passionate actor and the Woolworth heiress cross paths in a Hollywood diner, and lust and loneliness lead them back to Barbaras Beverly Hills Hotel bungalow. The result is a riveting drama of wordplay, foreplay and wit.

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The Bakery – Spring Reading Series

April 2007

 

Your chance to be a part of the development process and discuss new works! Five of the plays chosen for past festivals have been slated for production by Live Girls! and other local companies. Our audience truly sees it first! See the schedule below for the complete line-up.

Young Love by Alexa Jarvis Directed by Keira McDonald

The Devil’s Chord by Elena Hartwell Directed by Erin Fortier

Fake Names, Big Problems by Sha’ray Gainer Directed by Adrienne Green

Pussy Boy by Christine Evans Directed by Gretchen Drew

Letting Go of Something That Never Was by Bethany Greer Directed by Kate Jaeger

Save Love Canal by Molly Best Tinsley Directed by John Farrage

Young Love is a Live Girls! pick from ACTâ?s Young Playwrights Program 2006/2007. Alexa Jarvis is a Junior at Seattle Academy.

The Devil?s Chord is set outside Boise City, Oklahoma on Black Sunday (April 1935) the worst recorded storm of the dust bowl. The dust storm remains one of the worst environmental disasters in American History. It is the second play in a trilogy dedicated to our impact on the environment. Elena Hartwell is the director of the drama department at Seattle Central Community College. Her work has been seen in Seattle, Tacoma, Olympia, Athens (Georgia), San Diego, Detroit, and Edinburgh Scotland.

Fake Names, Big Problems is Live Girls! pick from Rainier Valley Youth Theatreâ?s Young Playwrights Program 2006/2007. Shaâ?ray Gainer is a student at Rainer Beach High School.

Pussy Boy is is a blackly comic urban fable, set under a freeway overpass. Bill is teaching young son Algy to “hammer straight and think useful”. But when Bill evicts their bag-lady tenant, the Dog Lady, and the police remove her 14 dogs, Algy runs away. A singing police chorus appear as unreliable angels to the dreamy Algy, trapped between Bill’s violent world and the animal comfort of the Dog world. A native of Australia, Christine Evans recently moved to the US to complete an MFA (Playwriting) and PhD (Theatre and Performance Studies) at Brown University. Christine’s plays have been developed and produced in Australia, Providence, New York, Washington DC, Seattle, Texas, Santa Rosa and San Francisco where her play ‘Slow Falling Bird’ was showcased at the 2003 Bay Area Playwrights’ Festival and premiered with Crowded Fire. Christine’s plays won Perishable  Theater’?s 10th and 9th Annual International Women?s Playwriting Competitions.

Letting Go of Something That Never Was is a Live Girls! pick from ACTâ?s Young Playwrights Program 2006/2007. Bethany Greer is a student at Garfield High School.

Save Love Canal opens when a phone call from nowhere informs Mariah that her estranged twin Tommy has killed himself.Is the man she resuscitates, wrestles with, and rejects over the next dark hours a saint or a madman, or the embodim April 2007

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Quickies 8

June 2007

Quickies is Live Girls! trademark event and longest running program. Created with the devilishly simple idea of exposing you to as many new works as possible in one night, Quickies delivers exciting new plays from all over the country, exposure to up and coming local writers and lots of gratuitous entertainment in between. Short, smart and sassy, the Quickies always leave you begging for more!
The Volume 8 line-up includes-
Desperate Measures by Erin Stewart, Directed by Peggy Gannon
Teen Love by Holly Arsenault, Directed by Shawn Belyea
Cell Mates by Molly Best Tinsley, Directed by Colin Connors
Hum of the Artic by Sarah Hammond, Directed by Jaime Roberts
Alone Together by Kim Carney, Directed by Jess Smith
Barbed Wire Minute by Krista Knight, Directed by Elena Hartwell
Quickies 8 will also feature the acting talents of Joseâ?? Amodar, Maggie DiGiovanni, Kate Parker, Erin Kraft, Lou Olsen, Megan Ahiers, Nik Perleros, Sylvie Davidson, and Erika Godwin.

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MUD ANGEL (World Premiere)

July/August 2007  | Written by Joy McCullough-Carranza | Directed by Darian Lindle

“The village is small but memories are long.” When Pablo left his tiny Guatemalan village of Chinautla to move to the United States, he was only twelve years old. Now twenty-nine, he and his wife will return to Chinautla as part of the publicity for his new novel. In Chinautla, the people he left behind prepare for his return. His childhood love Ana has never stopped waiting for him. How will his success in his adopted land be received by the community of birth? When guilt taints your ability to reconnect with the people and places that made you, a homecoming is anything but simple.

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GIRLS (World Premiere)

August 2007 | Written by: Zoe Fitzgerald  | Directed by: Meghan Arnette

“Paint what you see. Paint what you feel. Paint what is real to you” Robert Henri. Who teaches us to be who we are? Does art have the power to transform ? Tina is a young painter searching for affirmation of her choice to be an artist. Remembering a series of portraits that inspired her in college, she offers to paint the portraits of four girls living in a local foster home. Tina plans to give the paintings as a gift in the hope that they will help the girls see themselves in a new way, with choices and options that might not seem possible given their limited resources. For the girls adolescence is a time when growing is scary, being in the moment is almost unbearable, and going back is an impossible wish. Do Tinas portraits assist the girls in facing their own fears? Who will be transformed the painter or the subject?

Originally commissioned for Live Girls! reading series The Bakery, the story of Girls was inspired by the work of Northwest painter Kathleen Houlahan. A collection of her paintings were displayed at MOHAI in 2005 including a series of portraits of young women living at the Ruth School for Wayward Girls. in the 1930s Kathleen visited the home for girls that had become wards of the state to paint portraits of them as a gift to boost their self esteem. Kathleen Houlahan was a student of Robert Henri the leader of the American realist art movement known as the Ashcan school and a nationally recognized painter in her time.

GIRLS was written by Seattle playwright Zoe Fitzgerald, directed by Meghan Arnette and features: Kitty Barkley, Ciana Calos-Nakano, Maddy Carroll-Novack, Amy Conant, Caroline Kangas, and Rachel Sydney Keylin. The production team includes: Jason Franklin as Dramaturg, Meggan Davis as Stage Manager, Laura Lindle as Asst. Stage Manager and Props,, Amanda Neitze as Lighting Designer, and Brian Stricklan as portrait painter.

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800 Words: The Transmigration of Phillip K. Dick (World Premiere)

October 2007| Written by: Victoria Stewart | Directed by:Jess Smith

“Insanity is sometimes an appropriate response to reality.” – Philip K. Dick. Whose reality, or fantasy, are we watching onstage? Whose reality are we living? Was Philip K Dick a visionary or madman? Blurring the lines between reality and perception, 800 Words: The Transmigration of Philip K. Dick is a reinvention of the last days of this legendary writer. Based on a true story, the play begins just as Philips novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep is to be released as the Hollywood film Blade Runner. If you like a firm line between art and entertainment, reality and fantasy, us versus them, prepare to have your mind blown by the darkly funny and absurd journey that is Victoria Stewarts 800 Words: The Transmigration of Philip K Dick.

800 Words was written by up and coming playwright Victoria Stewart and directed by Jess Smith. It features an exciting cast of Seattle actors including Shawn Belyea as Philip K. Dick, Megan Ahiers, Erin Kraft, Holly Arsenault, Colin Connors, Nik Perleros, and Darian Lindle. The production team includes stage manager Laura Lindle, dramaturg Erin Culbertson, set design by Grant Laine, props by Gretchen Drew, lighting by Dave Hastings, sound design from Jason Miller, puppets by Brian Stricklan with additional crew assistance from Collin Fredinburg.

Playwright Victoria Stewart has received the Francesca Primus Award, the Helen Merrill Award, the Norman Felton and Jerome Fellowships as well as residencies at Ucross/Sundance, Hedgebrook and the Donmar Warehouse. Before graduating from the Playwrights Workshop at the University of Iowa, Victoria was a professional stage-manager, working with David Rabe, Anne Bogart and Peter Sellars among others. Her work has been performed and developed at the Joseph Papp Public Theater, South Coast Rep, SPF, Urban Stages, Seattle Repertory Theater, Hourglass Group, Circle X, Vineyard Theatre, Wellfleet Harbor Actors Theatre, Jungle Theater, Commonweal Theater Company, Actors Theatre of Louisville, Eternal Spiral Project, Overlap Productions, Guthrie Theater, Stage Left and Page 73. Her plays include Hardball, Leitmotif, Nightwatches, LIVE GIRLS, and The Last Scene. She is a core member of the Playwrights Center and a member of the Vinegar Tom Players and the Workhaus Collective. Director Jess Smith a Seattle director, actor and teaching artist. Recent directing credits include Alone Together (LG! Theater), Into the Woods, Jr. (Second Story Rep), Lights Up on a Waiting Room (Seattle Rep), The Trestle at Popelick Creek, Love Poem #98, and Wild Goose Circus (Puget Sound). This summer Jess studied with Anne Bogart and the SITI company in their month-long summer intensive training program in New York.