Next Thursday (April 30th) there’s a pretty great event going on at SODO Park. I’ll be down there with Lauren, Adrienne, and Caitlin.
If you’re free come join us at FACE SEATTLE.
The night will include a runway show of apparel from Barneys, visual art from regional artists, and a wine tasting courtesy of Young’s Columbia.
The whole thing is presented by Caffe Vita, and proceeds benefit the Sunflower Children Foundation.
Fashion, Art, Compassion, Wine . . . Ok. They really had to stretch it to make the acronym spell ‘FACE.’ But it sounds like an amazing way to spend a Thursday.
You can register or buy tickets at: www.faceseattle.com
Oh – and to anyone reading this from 181, HOUSE.
The following review, Get Out Today: Tragedy, a tragedy @ the Little Theatre, appeared on the Seattlest.com on Sunday April 5
About halfway in to Will Eno’s Tragedy, a tragedy (2 p.m. April 5, $12), we began to suspect the playwright was suffering from insomnia. There’s a dark, plastic, wandering nature to the play that signals a mind on the edge of–but kept from–sleep. Depending on how recently you’ve been afraid of the dark, you’ll be right back there, hearing your breath, your heartbeat, and strange noises, and the night will seem like a suffocating cold, black ocean, everything and everyone you know a small flicker that is guttering out.
The play doles out bits of biting comedy to keep you on the path: a character says as a child he was given a dictionary and made his way through it thinking it was the “sad, confusing story of everything.” If the story has nowhere all that surprising to go, it’s not fatal–its power is like a ghost story’s. It chills in order to warn, and to warm.
Eno drops a local TV news team into a brooding abyss when the sun sets one evening, and everyone somehow realizes it’s never coming back up. It’s a terrific concept because while it’s easy to chortle at their attempts to “cover” unending night–yes, dogs are still barking, the governor has a statement, and a family may or may not be returning home–the news team is us, our daylight selves, freshly scrubbed and full of can-do optimism, professionals ready to make sense of things.
The Satori Group’s production is anchored by Frank in the Studio (Alex Matthews, visibly shouldering the weight of his concerned gravitas), John in the Field (Anthony Darnell, playing the Action Jim Forman role), Constance at the Home (a stay-pressed, brittle Lindsey Valitchka), and Michael, the Legal Advisor (Spike Friedman, offering bearded analysis, occasionally en espanol).
Set design by Andrew Lazarow and Clare Strasser evokes a Dick van Dyke-era TV studio, and in Monty Taylor’s busy lighting design, spotlights fly about the stage like a restless mind, as the team gradually loses their shit on camera.
Adam Standley and Caitlin Sullivan co-direct the play, and we applaud their work–the whole play is the news team reporting and kicking it back to the studio, and Eno worrying away with linguistic legerdemain and pratfalls, and yet the play walks its attention-holding tightrope. Even when the Witness (a surprising mousy-to-radiant turn by Adrienne Clark) steps forth with an earnest Moral, it isn’t tedious, but simply a reassuring sign that the lights are about to come back up.
The following review, The End of the World - on the Nightly Newscast, by Misha Berson, appeared on the Seattle Times Online on Thursday, April 3 and in the Print Edition on Friday, April 4
“And now, reporting live from the existential abyss … ”
You don’t hear those words in “Tragedy, a tragedy,” a recent Will Eno play that meshes the media satire of TV’s “The Daily Show” with the sci-fi scare of “War of the Worlds.” But you might as well.
Eno (also author of the more pretentious “Thom Pain”) may go on a bit long, but in a vein that’s quite funny, and oddly moving. It blends the utter vacuity of typical TV news dispatches, with the metaphysical whammy of environmental apocalypse.
What’s going down at the end of the world as we know it? News at 11!
Though the piece outruns its concept, the Satori Group has chosen well for their Seattle debut. The young fringe troupe moved here recently from Cincinnati, Ohio, and if this is what they’re capable of, they’re very welcome to hang around.
Eno’s premise: One day the sun simply disappears from the sky, an event earnestly but cluelessly covered by a local TV news anchor (played by Alex Matthews) and his field reporters (Lindsey Valitchka, Spike Friedman and Anthony Darnell).
They start out in cheerily pompous mode, covering the story as if it was the opening of a new mall or a highway traffic jam — but with a lot fewer details
“I’ve just received word that we don’t know anything more yet,” is about the level of reportage they muster, while babbling on brightly.
But the hilariously banal news-speak gives way to fear and awe, as reality sinks in: the Earth has been plunged into eternal darkness.
As an addled newsman opines, this may just be the end of “the long, sad, confusing history of everything.”
Smartly staged by Adam Standley and Caitlin Sullivan, the show also incorporates some aptly hazy video, shot live by Adrienne Clark — who also plays a local denizen unrattled by the encroaching existential void.
