We received the following heads-up about an upcoming show at Seattle Public Theater (SPT) at the Green Lake Bathhouse (7312 West Green Lake Dr N). SPT is also offering several free performances of Around the World in 80 Days this weekend.
(Ed. note: Seattle Public Theater is our newest advertiser. Thank you for your support, SPT! We are thrilled to have you on board here at My Green Lake.)
Seattle Public Theater (SPT) offers a gripping look at the fallout of war on our most intimate relationships with the Northwest premiere of Dying City by Christopher Shinn stationed March 19th-April 11th, 2010 at the historic Bathhouse Theater on Green Lake.
A finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, Dying City continues Seattle Public’s commitment to bringing new contemporary work to Seattle that explores the definitions, limitations, and possibilities of our community. Dying City features SPT Artistic Director Shana Bestock as Kelly and Chris Maslen in the roles of two twin brothers. John Vreeke directs, recently returned to Seattle from DC’s Wolly Mammoth Theater (Seattleites may remember his direction of Book-It’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover).
When a young man goes off to war, his death thousands of miles away has rippling effects on those he leaves behind. Kelly, his widow, is a therapist who watches Law and Order because “the mystery of a death is solved and therefore symbolically reversed.” But when her dead husband’s twin brother shows up unexpectedly, what she believes to be true is called violently into question. Is the “closure” we seek after a death just an American myth?
Nominated in 2008 for a Pulitzer Prize in drama for Dying City, Shinn explains his thoughts behind the show in a recent interview, “I think it’s become a cliché to say that “people don’t connect in our time.” …I actually think that people do connect, just not in ways that satisfy everyone. People are constantly doing things with and to one another that leave one or both (or all) of them traumatized. So for me the interesting question becomes, “Why do people do what they do?”
Director Vreeke agrees, “The big issues surrounding this world are played out in a small space and a very simple story between three very lost souls. As a director the great challenge of the piece is to understand what is unspoken, what the silences contain and how they explode.”
A professor at the New School of Drama, Shinn is the winner of an OBIE in Playwriting (2004-2005) and a Guggenheim Fellowship in Playwriting (2005), was a Pulitzer Prize finalist (2008), was short listed for the Evening Standard Theatre Award for Best Play (2008), and has also been nominated for an Olivier Award for Most Promising Playwright (2003), a TMA Award for Best New Play (2006), a Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Play (2007), and a South Bank Show Award for Theatre (2009). In 2009, his adaptation of Hedda Gabler premiered on Broadway at the Roundabout (American Airlines Theatre) and he has also written short plays for Naked Angels, the 24 Hour Plays, and the New York International Fringe Festival (2002 winner, Best Overall Production).
Following the Sunday matinee on March 28th there will be a post play discussion. This will be an opportunity to explore issues raised during the show with the artistic team and featured panelists from the veterans’ community.
Dying City first debuted at the Royal Court Theatrer in London in 2006 and then on Broadway March 4, 2007 at Lincoln Center Theater starring Pablo Schreiber and Rebecca Brookshur.
For more information or to purchase tickets to Dying City or to our final show, The 13th of Paris, call the SPT Box Office 206-524-1300, Wednesday through Saturday from 12-5pm, or visit SPT online.
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