Samip Raval

In David Henry Hwang's play "M Butterfly" there's a few things you can take away. First there's the actual historical comparison to the real relationship between French diplomat Bernard Boursicot and Shi Pei Pu, a Peking opera singer. Second there's the cultural lesson of Westerners predilection to view Easterners in a certain, subservient light. And finally, there's the love story between a man trapped in a world and profession that used him and another man who claimed he didn't know his lover was also male. All those things should add up to a fascinating evening, unfortunately the current production at ArtsWest is told to us in such a bland and static way that the evening is just plain boring.

In a revival version never before staged on the West Coast, David Henry Hwang's audacious, Tony Award-winning M. BUTTERFLY - inspired by a bizarre true story of illusion, obsession and betrayal - will open at ArtsWest on January 24. Performances will run Today through Sunday until February 17.

In a revival version never before staged on the West Coast, David Henry Hwang's audacious, Tony Award-winning M. BUTTERFLY - inspired by a bizarre true story of illusion, obsession and betrayal - will open at ArtsWest on January 24. Performances will run Thursday through Sunday until February 17.

Dear Readers, I know you've heard me talk before about taking the air out of a scene or earning your pauses or pauses you could drive a truck through. Well the latest offering from Forward Flux and Pratidhwani, Lindsay Joelle's "A Small History of Amal, Age 7", while being a sweet and sometimes touching story, suffers from a typhoon of air and a convoy of trucks driving through making the show feel forced and lacking connection.

Forward Flux Productions, with presenting partner Pratidhwani, is thrilled to present A SMALL HISTORY OF AMAL, AGE 7 by Lindsay Joelle, playing at West of Lenin (203 N 36th St Seattle, WA 98103) from September 19th - October 6th. This new play is currently being developed with the playwright after it was presented as part of The Flux Salon series last year. Joelle will be visiting Seattle several times this summer to work with the cast and creative team as this immersive production comes to life, and the production this fall will be the first time audiences will see the play fully produced. It also marks the fourth Forward Flux production in four years that started in a Salon reading, was developed with the playwright, and then presented as a fully staged production. Lindsay's play TRAYF recently played at Theater J in Washington DC, where the Washington Post said "Joelle's comedy is easygoing and confident, and her people have soul."

Pratidhwani - a Seattle area based Gregory Awards winning organization for promoting South Asian performing arts and artists - will present three plays in 2018, each a co-production with a different company.

Forward Flux Productions announces their 2018 programming which will feature three plays never before seen in Seattle, as well as their 2019 project: THREE NEW AMERICAN PLAYS. This ambitious lineup will be the company's fourth and fifth year of programming in Seattle. Forward Flux is your home for daring new plays. The company commissions, develops, workshops and premieres new plays by underrepresented voices on the American stage.

Dear Readers, it's been quite a year and, hopefully, we've come through it unscathed. God knows we've needed some shows to help us escape and others to make us think. But through it all we've had several shows that have proven to shine as some of the best of the year. Out of all the shows I was fortunate enough to see this year, I've selected a few that stood out. Here are those stand outs, a few honorable mentions and a few special mentions about which I just couldn't help myself but to mention in their own special way.

Disgraced examines the American experience from a variety of viewpoints: a Jewish-American man, an African-American woman, a white woman, and Amir, the play's tragic lead, who is from an Islamic background the child of Middle-Eastern immigrants. Disgraced is an award-winning piece of literature that delivers an intense, intelligent discourse about race and privilege, and a jarring exploration of the stratifications and compartmentalization of American culture.

Playwright Ayad Akhtar is one of the darlings of contemporary theater with his Pulitzer Prize winning play "Disgraced" as well as his acclaimed "The Invisible Hand" (my favorite of his) getting production after production around the world. He manages to take on seriously hot button topics and expose them with rich and engaging characters and his "The Who and the What", currently playing at ArtsWest and co-produced with Pratidhwani, is no exception. But his shows are by no means bulletproof. These characters need to be performed with engagement so they really connect with the issues and each other and as a result with the audience and that's where the ArtsWest production fails. They don't fail completely but enough that what could have been a searing social-political family drama comes across like a tepid sit-com.

ArtsWest will open the 2017-18 Season with THE WHO & THE WHAT, Ayad Akhtar's witty and whip-smart play about a young Muslim woman confronting her family and her faith, at the ArtsWest Playhouse and Gallery on September 7. Performances will run Thursday through Sunday until October 1.  

ArtsWest has announced three young, celebrated Seattle directors who will bring their talent and vision to the 2017-2018 I AM Season - Samip Raval will direct Ayad Akhtar's THE WHO & THE WHAT, Sara Porkalob will direct Jiehae Park's PEERLESS, and Brandon J. Simmons will direct Branden Jacobs-Jenkins' AN OCTOROON.

The most produced play in America in 2015-16, Ayad Akhtar's Pulitzer-winning drama Disgraced will tour universities and high schools in China under the direction of Timothy Douglas from April 3 to 30, produced by Ping Pong Productions with grants from the Henry Luce Foundation and the U.S. Embassy in China as well as major support from Chinese hosts and other local partners.

I do love it, Dear Readers, when a show manages to thrill without the aid of elaborate sets or gimmicks. Where you can just immerse yourself in the words and performances. Such is the case with "Guards at the Taj" currently playing at ACT. That's not to say that the minimal set design from Brandon Estrella didn't work, it did. And there is one kind of unexpected prop that beautifully took over the stage at one point. But by then, we were so riveted by the stirring performances of the two actors in the show, even an elephant could have walked on stage I would have been focused on them.

The eight new plays in development at the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center's National Playwrights Conference will feature Broadway actress Ali Stroker (Spring Awakening the Deaf West Broadway revival, The GLEE Project), Drama Desk Award-nominee Margo Seibert (ROCKY on Broadway), television's Jeremy Bobb (The Knick, House of Cards, Hostages), Luke Macfarlane (Brothers & Sisters, Mercy Street), and Melanie Nicholls King (The Wire).

Casting and directors have been announced for the eight new plays in development at the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center's National Playwrights Conference next month.

Arena Stage presents the final production of its 2015/16 season, Ayad Akhtar's Pulitzer Prize-winning drama DISGRACED. Director Timothy Douglas (Arena's King Hedley II) tackles this emotionally-charged play by Akhtar, author of the novel 'American Dervish' and currently the most produced playwright in the United States. DISGRACED runs now through May 29, 2016 in the Kreeger Theater. BroadwayWorld has photos from the opening night festivities below!

Akhtar's script is so beautifully complex yet simple, and asks some hard questions. The performances and physical production elements are first-rate. This is one of the strongest productions I've seen all season, and perhaps in recent years in the Washington, DC area.

Lest you might think careers are well-planned, organized endeavors, take a lesson from director Timothy Douglas, who is gracing Washington in a return visit to Arena Stage (last season's King Hedley II was his Arena Stage debut) with his work with Ayad Akhtar's Disgraced, a play about being Muslim or, perhaps more importantly, being perceived as Muslim, in America in current times. 'I tripped into directing,' says Timothy, 'I went to LA as an actor, but found I didn't have the skin for it, so I stepped back and thought I'd be a career teacher, but through some dumb luck, I directed a show, and some people liked what they saw, and I ended up with the Center Theatre Group in LA, as a director. When I finally stopped resisting the path, it started to work.' 'It seems every good thing,' he laughingly reflects, 'has happened as I was being dragged through the back door kicking and screaming.' So, it seems, tripping doesn't always mean falling.