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Are you there theatre fans? It’s me, Dan Savage.

I’m writing to say thank you for coming out to cheer on Helen Stellar, Crystal Paine, and all the gals at the Brass Connection, and to support me as I returned to theatre-making after almost a 15-year hiatus (whew!).
Intiman took a chance on me, and I think it paid off.  My show, Miracle!, had heart, laughs, and it pulled together one of the most diverse audiences seen at a big Seattle theatre in ages. I had a blast, and Andrew Russell and I are already discussing how to collaborate together next year, and in years to come.

Intiman’s festival next summer revolves around all the topics you’re not allowed to talk about at dinner – sex, politics, money, and race.

They’ve got Stu for Silverton: A new musical about the mayor of Silverton, Oregon – America’s first transgender mayor – they describe it as Our Town meets The Rocky Horror Picture Show.  Lysistrata: Aristophanes’ story of women who withhold sex from their husbands in an effort to stop war. We Won’t Pay, We Won’t Pay – Dario Fo’s hysterical, farcical, and satirical working class romp and Trouble In Mind: African-American playwright Alice Childress’s sharply comic exploration of race in a biracial theatre company in the 1950s.

A trans-mayor? A musical? A farce? A sexy greek reboot? Non-PC talk about race? Sign me up. I’m there.

Thank you again for taking an adventure with us last summer, and I look forward to making many more offensively funny and absurdly moving pieces of theatre for you. (If you make it possible, by making a contribution to the Intiman!)
Dan Savage

Full disclosure: I am in the Artist Collective of Intiman; I am a Seattle playwright who moved to New York but still does a lot of work in Seattle, because I love the city, and I love Intiman.

I was mildly intoxicated the night I showed up for Hedda Gabler. I had had drinks with an old friend (and Seattle theater reviewer) and eaten a hash brownie. I was ready to settle into the thick language of the frigid bard’s world.

My experience was bifurcated. Having neither seen nor read Hedda, I had my ear tuned to the mechanics of the script, paying attention to the verbal cues to anticipate the turns of the narrative. But then there was the production in front of me, which operated more on modern instinct and abstracted physicalizations to deliver the import of the play. These two modes pulled against one another; by the time Hedda was literally “dancing out” her interior state, I thought my brain was going to get sucked into the ceiling.

It was frustrating, but exciting, which meant that the production was doing the right thing. Marya Sea Kaminski – a powerhouse local actor – would seem to be the correct choice for the eponymous character. But to me, her performance was rendered austere by the production that surrounding her. I continued to have discussions with countless theatregoers, many of whom totally disagreed with me. I must have spent at least ten hours analyzing the production in conversation. Andrew Russell’s staging got me thinking about my own impulses as an artist, my own vision of the same text in front of me. The production has been in my thoughts for weeks afterward.

And then I was like: Fuck, I really got a lot out of that.

Part of the joy of going to the theatre is getting pissed off at the right productions. A smart audience breeds an appreciation for exciting failures. If the subscriber base cultivates an allowance for experimentation, the range of work will be more ambitious and adventurous. Think of local house On The Boards. Book tickets there and you run the risk of seeing something you might not like, but you will never be bored. And you’ll have something to talk about Monday morning.

This same thrilling feeling coursed through me while watching Intiman’s season. As I saw the other pieces – Allison Narver’s dazzling adaptation of Romeo & Juliet, Dan Savage’s must-see drag reboot of The Miracle Worker, and Val Curtis-Newton’s expert staging of John Patrick Shanley’s problematic Dirty Story – the performances started to speak to each other. Dirty contains some terrific verbal sparring between Shawn Law and Carol Roscoe. The second act pulls out the rug – Shanley’s narrative goes for symbols when it should be searching for signs, leaving the characters (and actors) struggling against the play to find identity beyond the idea they embody. Yet seeing the versatile Law play the doomed yin-yang of Tybalt and Paris in the same festival’s R & J  – within a day of his whirlwind turn in Dirty — somehow compensated for the dramaturgical gaps in the Shanley character. As for Kaminski, she also appears as a shy stage manager in Miracle! and as the doting nurse in R & J – both magnetic performances that are standouts of their respective productions. These two roles frame Kaminski’s icy turn in Hedda – maybe for the first time, we were able to see the true talent of Seattle’s leading actress, individuated in the stark contrast between her choices in each role. Hedda, then, is an analog to the festival – an example of the furious ambition of the new Intiman to do something that no other theater in town would dare try: Create work that has the possibility to fail.

Intiman will be offering Pay What You Can performances for the first preview of each show.  PWYC tickets will be available one hour prior to the performance on the day of show at the Intiman Box Office.

• Hedda Gabler: July 5th @ 8pm
• Romeo and Juliet: July 6th @ 8pm
• Dirty Story: July 7th @ 7pm
• Miracle!: July 7th @ 8pm

Half-price rush tickets will also  be available during the Festival for students and seniors (65+) beginning one hour before curtain time at the Intiman ticket office.

• The discount is valid for Intiman Theatre Festival performance only. Next 50 events are excluded.
• Each patron requesting a ticket must be present at the time of purchase with valid ID.
• One ticket may be purchased at the discount by the qualifying person.
• Discount is subject to availability.

We look forward to seeing you at the theatre!

INTERVIEW WITH TIMOTHY PIGGEE

Roles: Lord Capulet in Romeo and Juliet, GLoria Blaze in Miracle!, and Judge Brack in Hedda Gabler.

WHEN YOU WERE FIRST APPROACHED TO BE A PART OF THIS PROJECT, WHAT WENT THROUGH YOUR HEAD?

I was terribly excited; it seemed like a very interesting prospect. It also seems terribly insane at the same time, and I’m attracted by risk.

WHAT EXCITES YOU ABOUT THIS NEW MODEL, THIS NEW WAY OF GOING FORWARD FOR INTIMAN?

I think the unpredictability of it is what makes it so fun. I’ve done rep before, but this is the first time I’ve ever seen three projects rehearsed at the same time instead of in sequence.

YOU’VE WORKED WITH INTIMAN SEVERAL TIMES IN THE PAST, DOES THE ENERGY IN ROOM FEEL DIFFERENT THIS TIME AROUND?

The energy feels very different to me. Very different. I’m trying to find the vernacular to describe an institution that had been pretty well ensconced in terms of the machinery, the day-to-day machinations of how the company operates, and essentially the factory aspect of it. And in this instance, a lot of it is figuring out things day by day.  I think the perimeters are well established, and nobody does rep like this, so obviously things are going to come up. They are going to require you to look at things from a different perspective that you are not used to. (more…)

Andrew Russell for City Arts Magazine, July Issue 2012June 12, 2012: I don’t always love going to the theatre. My mind is too busy, too fast, and unless I’m completely beguiled by the majesty in front of me, I’m wondering how I can escape without causing too much of a stir. But I love to make theatre. To bring to life the unexplained. It’s like being high, like the peak of physical endurance, as if my brain has unraveled, produced fingers and is physically and mentally molding something of significance.

Two and a half years ago I moved to Seattle to be the associate producer at the Intiman Theatre. Within a year the theatre closed and I was scraping by on unemployment.

Then last summer I pitched an idea for bringing the Intiman back to life. I wanted a collective, an army of masters—people I admired, who were angry and hungry for more, the disgruntled, the mischievous, the anxious and the energetic, a motley group of middle children. From them would come the material for an annual summer theatre festival, performed by a repertory company of actors.

The nascent idea that seemed sensible last year is about to stand and march itself right into the theatre. And I’m terrified. (more…)

This past month, we’ve embarked on an ambitious project with photographer LaRae Lobdell of Photo Sister to capture the faces of the Intiman Festival.

Follow the images to see the full photography set and interviews with the artists.

(more…)