Seattle Celebrity News!

Champagne and Duck (well… chicken) Were Served

SAVE THE DUCK! BENEFIT IS A BIG SUCCESS!!

Warp Productions has done it again, with a big save for the Odd Duck.  Hundreds of dollars  were reportedly made.  Culture (and duck) was served.  And all sorts of luminaries were there, both onstage and off.  Here are a few of the highlights:

Champagne and Duck (well… chicken) Were Served

Scot Bastian read a poem written specially for the Duck.

Scot Bastian emceed.

Photos by Carl Nelson

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Seattle Celebrity News!

Editor’s Note:  Here’s the latest backstage conversation in the ongoing business of running/saving small theater.  This one continues the saga of Rik Deskin and the Odd Duck.

Save the Duck From the Soup!

“Well, since you won’t be around Ellen, I’ll fill you in a little on my idea. I thought we might have a sort of mini-fundraiser WARP night where we could do rehearsed staged-readings of plays and sketches involving ducks. I thought we might charge each participant (i.e. writer or actor five bucks and any interested audience non-participants eight bucks and pass along all the cash to Rik. we could possibly even have Rik introduce it. I thought that we could do Donna’s “Devil Ducks” sketch, my little play “Quack You!” end with your song about ducks that you had Natalya and Mari do there silly dance to a few shows ago. This isn’t enough for a whole show yet, so we’d need more material.

The way I have it envisioned, is not as a full production, but similar to a bumper contest. We could even make a party out of it. The idea is to BOTH stimulate interest in WARP and give a little help to the Odd Duck.

 

I kind of like my suggestion for a title:

 

“Save the Duck From the Soup!”

 

These are just my thoughts, subject to revision by group-think, of course.” – group e mail from Scot Bastian

Here’s What YOU Do!

Just a little shout-out to old WARPers to show up at the WARP workshop, which meets nearly every week, but attendance has been a little thin this summer–probably because the very nice weather (many are out of town for vacation.)  This Tuesday is particularly important because we want to discuss a yet-to-be-scheduled fund raiser for the Odd Duck Theater.  Come on out, bring your plays and your acting talent.  For more info about the group, check our website at warptheater.org.

 Location: Odd Duck Theater, 1214 10th Avenue, Seattle WA 98122

 Time:  7PM Tuesdays–particularly this Tuesday July 31st.

Photo by Carl Nelson

 

 

Seattle Celebrity News!

WARP Show Sells Out!

 

Years careening forward without any quality control whatsoever is finally paying off for WARP (Writers and Actors Performing Now).  Sold out shows are becoming the rule as WARP touted up another win, finishing this past Sunday with their matinee Halloween extravaganza, “Products of a WARPed Imagination”.  Especially successful were  John Ruoff’s Seahorse Moon, Scot Bastian’s Missing the Boat, Donna Van Norman’s The Visitor, and Multiple Vocationalities by Dale Kazdan.  A surprise cameo by our own favorite actor/playwright/columnist, Jorj Savage certainly didn’t hurt attendance.   

Especially fun was this suicide on stage via Drano, in a play written by our own Rita Andreeva.  Watch it, complete with creepy music, on this well-done video.  (My favorite part, where Rose Kinne tosses her cookies, is a couple minutes in.)  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nwgJ6dgKlsU&feature=player_embedded

To see a fuller range pictures of the event, got to: Carl Nelson Photography (link on the right) 

Photos by Carl Nelson

From the Editor’s Perch

FRYING SAUCERS

 

In case you’ve been wondering, ‘what’s the hold-up on the postings’?  Your editor, besides becoming a proud father, is also directing/shooting/editing a short movie written by Scot Bastian called Frying Saucers.  …It’s the deep South on a hot day.  BOB comes by to have a talk with his friend SLIM regarding some thoughts he’s been having, concerning, “Patterns.  Patterns which explain a few things.” …Mystery seems to have enveloped the small Southern town of Colby Junction.  We had a good response to both stage productions.  So we thought we’d try our chances with this short movie.

Scot Bastain plays BOB and Jorj Savage plays SLIM. 

P. S.  Rita is still plugging along.

Slim struggles to get his mind around what Bob is saying.

"I've come across a few patterns. Patterns which explain a few things."

 

 

 

 

 

Mysteries Abound in this Short Movie

Photos by Carl Nelson

 

Seattle Celebrity News!

Editor’s Note:  Theater is about Everybody.  And no theater group in this town is as open to ‘everybody’ as WARP.  You walk in the door, and you’re a member.  You bring something in to read, and it’s read.  You want to act – or may not intend to act – and you very well may end up on stage anyway because WARP probably hosts more productions of original work that any other theater group in Seattle. You can present anything you want and say anything you want.  And it’s all accomplished without any officers, board, special member classifications, budget, fundraisers, or government grants.  They’re just a collection of any odd person who likes the idea of doing theater. 

Here’s an Upcoming Show, Now!

 

Personal Testimonial for WARP Experience

“I was very impressed by the tale of a 1000 and one nights, and, feeling rather insecure about my appearance, I decided subconsciously at some point that I liked Sheherezade, and I chose her path. I figured, it didn’t matter what I looked like, it didn’t matter if I had money, if I could tell a story after story until those stories became wanted, important, indispensable, until people or a person wanted to hear what I have to say, then I was home free.
I choose writing as a primary art, with visual art, painting, drawing, as a back up. Writing has more power, I think. I have spent many nights curled in bed with a book, I couldn’t have gotten the same enjoyment if I had Mona Lisa on my bedroom wall. The comfort of words goes way beyond an image. Perhaps that was why worshiping the idols was a no-no. When you read a story you subconsciously embellish it with your own personal visions, and a picture – so desired by a 4 y. o. is not at all when you are over 13.
Of course, my big problem with that choice was that I couldn’t write worth a damn.
So, about the year 2000 I started writing a completely made up and a fictional book called The Asylum Of The Gods. I went about it by getting a bottle of Burgundy wine and writing whatever, and then talked about it to my current boyfriend. Worked great for him: by the time we broke up he wrote two books (never occurred to him before).
All I know is I kept getting better. I got a job at a hotel in Kent and became friends with Vira there. She wanted a boyfriend, so I suggested Craigslist. Guess what happened – she met Eric. Since he was a member of DAMN he invited her there, and she invited me. And we stuck with it.
Having one’s plays read is an awesome experience. Being able to see something I wrote on the stage broke some sort of a wall of resistance I had nurtured for a very long time. I started writing like possessed. I had my first short play performed in the fall of 2005. And I was in it too! It was such a rush! I fell in love with the theater. Everything about it: the adrenaline rush when being up on the stage, the writing, working a piece, hearing real feedback. All of it. I calmed down a bit with time, but I still can think of nothing better than making my dream come true. And that is what DAMN/WARP was/is for me. Just because there were people who would get up on a stage and read my play made me believe in myself and made me realize that I could write. Something I wasn’t so sure about. DAMN/WARP made it happen. Even though I finished my first novel by the time I got there, I needed an audience. All artists do. Having a place to go to have something read is an answer to my prayer. No matter what the world does, no matter what stupid things I have to do to pay rent, nothing compares to what WARP does, graciously allowing people from all walks of life to come in and present their labors of love.”  – Rita Andreeva

 

Scot Bastian, Roving Pundit

 

   

This Critic, For the Next Couple of Months, Does not Want to see any Plays with Women Speaking About Their Vaginas

The Saint Valentine’s Day Push-Back

Editor:  After all this lovey-dovey it’s only natural that the System must re-boot; re-callibrate; and realize where it lives.  Here’s the first in a flurry of broadsides this awakening World has sent us:

 

 

How I Learned to Rant

 

reviewed by Scot Bastian

“Let me state at the outset that I’m in a particularly curmudgeonly mood today. It must be hard for a professional critic (which I definitely and emphatically am not) to objectively separate out the value of a work of art from their mindset when they experience it. Anyhow, with that caveat, here goes. Last night I saw the play “How I Learned to Drive” by Paula Vogel, which was capably staged by the folks at Stone Soup Theatre. They did a fine job. Good acting, staging, directing and, based on the short talk-back after the the play (which I did not participate in) a real audience-pleaser. I hated it. The play is about Uncle Peck who, over the course of his relationship with his niece, “Li’l Bit,” tries to seduce her, beginning at the age of 11 right on through to the age of 18. The uncle provides emotional support and a “haven” for Li’l Bit from her weird highly-sexualized family. Uncle Peck never changes. He’s a manipulative scumbag in the beginning, going through various deviant behaviors throughout, and he ends as a scumbag. The tone of Uncle Peck’s character is sympathetic, but he seems closer to pathetic to me, and Li’l Bit does change—but she seems more like a survivor than a hero. Perhaps many in the audience thought this play “insightful,” but I found it as inspiring as “The Jerry Springer Show.” I’m just a little sick of seeing theater that, in an attempt to be “edgy” or clever and sophisticated, ends up as pseudo-intellectual clap-trap. (See note above about bad mood.) For the record, for at least the next couple of months I don’t want to see any plays about: 1) Women talking about their vaginas, 2) People screwing goats, or, 3) Priest pedophiles. Maybe I’ll go and see “The Misanthrope” at the Odd Duck Theater again—if it’s still playing—I can relate to the main character.
Rant mode off.
I feel better now.”

– Scot 

Photo by Carl Nelson

Poet’s Microphone

Editor’s Note:  One book editor famously compared poets to roaches.   And I have to say I’ve found this to be true – that you see one, there’s probably others.  Here’s the latest, (and a big one!), I found crawling around in my inbox when I turned on my monitor this morning.

"I feel I have really progressed artistically." Scot Bastian / Poet

MARY
(c)2010 by Scot Bastian
 
Mary had a little lamb
    the doctors were surprised.
 
Then Mary had a litle cow
    that one hurt, and how.
 
Next Mary had a little hippopotamous
    though that seems preposterous.
 
Finally, Poor Mary had her fill
    and she took a little pill.
 
The End

Poem by Scot Bastian / Photo by Carl Nelson

Seattle Celebrity News!

BREAKING NEWS!

Playwright Pulls Play – Dumps Seattle Actors!

 

🙂

 

 

 

 

 

Playwright Miryam Gordon pulled her play, Kiss the Girls Goodbye, Monday night from the upcoming line-up of short plays featured in The Seattle Playwrights’ Collective Page to Stage/Short Play Festival which opens this Friday evening at TPS4 in the Seattle Centerhouse.  After several weeks of rehearsal, Miryam together with Artistic Director Daniel Tarker decided to pull the plug after seeing its most recent performance at a ‘dry tech rehearsal’ Monday evening.  Miryam was reportedly upset because the actors had fumbled their lines, getting lost or repeating themselves at times.  Artistic Director Daniel Tarker characterized the performance as “lumpy”.    

😦 !

 

 

 

 

Director Bill Selig summarized with this comment made by e mail:   “No comment.” 

 Reached at his summer home in Carnation, actor Carl Nelson said, “When they dump a play, it’s always for reasons of production levels… quality of production.  It’s blamed on bungled lines, or the fact that we went over a couple pages of the script a couple times.  Big deal!  It only clarified what was basically a pretty ugly stew of unsatisfied sexual desire.  I don’t mind being kissed on stage, but I’ve got to say, it  felt pretty alone out there.  It was pretty quiet.  But, …if the audience had applauded loudly, trust me, our production readiness would have been found to be – if not, just fine – at least adequate.  And the theater would have accepted this play with open arms.”

Carl Nelson (KILLER) Is Firing Back at Scot Bastian (SARGE) in this 'dry-run' and only run of the play "Kiss the Girls Goodbye"

Finally, the Seattle Celebrity News will have to paraphrase what Scot Bastian had to say, as I’ve lost my notes.  But basically Scot had to say:

Look!  I played him as an angry guy, because that’s basically as he is written.  So did I yell and scream a lot?  Well, sure!  Maybe it’s not a comedy.  Maybe there’s nothing here to laugh about.  Anyway, I’ve still got my cat.

Photos by Carl Nelson (except the one of Carl Nelson/Scot Bastian which is by Ellen Covey)