Seattle Celebrity News!

Gong to the Theater can be a lot of fun, until tragedy strikes.

Staged Parable Ends in Tragedy!

In a horrible turn of events, actress Wanda Moats, performing as the DUCK, in a opening night scene from  “The Winter Winds of WARP”, was run over and killed onstage only feet from the audience she was performing for this past Friday evening at the Seattle Center’s Center House TPS Theatre #4.  In retrospect, the DUCK’s concern was apparent several seconds before the final impact, as evidenced by the following photos.  But, the audience, caught spellbound, offered no assistance.

The DUCK’s body was tossed a horrid distance by the impact, apparently hitting the back wall, and then rebounding to end up not a foot from where the accident occurred.  First responders reported her dying quacks, but efforts at resuscitation were futile.  A CHICKEN is currently wanted for questioning, as observers report the DUCK arguing with such a bird only moments before impact.  Fowl motives have not been eliminated.   A photo of the CHICKEN has been released, which the Seattle Celebrity News! has posted below.  The driver and/or occupants of the truck have as yet not come forward.

The DUCK was seen in a heated disagreement with this CHICKEN not moments before the accident.

WARP representatives report that the show has not closed, but continues, feeling strongly that “the DUCK wouldn’t have wanted it this way – but we have a show to get on.”  The theater being no place for airy sentiment.

Festival goers report that “you can still see the duck splatter and blood on the back wall”.

CHICKEN of interest.

Departed DUCK

Photos by Carl Nelson

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From the Editor’s Perch

At a Live Reading, the Playwright is Often a Ball of Worries.

The Fun of Live Theater

 

We had a reading of several small plays last night.  A piece was read which a friend and I had collaborated on.  Then a piece of each of ours was read.  The evening went well.   It’s fun to write.  It’s fun to imagine.  But the payoff of sitting in an audience who are clearly enjoying your theater work is hard to acquire any other way that by just putting it up there.  The warmth and the fun of it are something to bathe in quietly for at least several days.  And the memory can well be enjoyed for years.

Usually, it’s just a few select scenes which are so cherished; scenes where the acting and script seemed to speak and live so naturally, that you treasure the memory as if it were a relation, or a wife.   The play, as a whole entity, is usually cumbersomely remembered as part of the whole package of production materials: a concretion of crisis’s, breakdowns, adjustments, grit and slog, insights, fear and loathing, people who fail you, people who save you, etc. – rather like a life, out of which these special scenes surface like a State of Grace.  These are what we work for.

There’s nothing like having it breathing in front of you.  Statistical hits on the website don’t do it.  Comments are fine.  But after falling on your ass in front of people so many times, (which all playwrights do) a live success is something cherished. The whole room is happy.  The actors are happy.  The audience is happy.  You’re happy.  It’s the best sort of party.

Photo by Carl Nelson of model/playwright John Ruoff