14/48: Nordo to Present FOOD THEATER THUNDERDOME Next Month

Café Nordo teams up with The 14/48 Projects, creators of The World's Quickest Theater Festival, and adds chefs and bartenders to their mix of playwrights and actors. Think Iron Chef meets Theater Thunderdome, when theater artists and kitchen artists collaborate on short plays and dynamic plates.

Sunday, August 16 we gather local chefs, bartenders, playwrights and performers to a Destiny Party where we will draw the theme, a primary ingredient for the chefs, and the names of each team. (Attend the Destiny Party on either Sunday and enjoy an endless cup of beer while the teams learn their fate!) They will then have four days to write, rehearse, prepare recipes for, and serve our audience the fruits of their labors on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday nights. As an added bonus there's a late-night version where playwrights are paired with mixologists and cocktails replace the food components. And Sunday August 23, we'll start it all over again.

Four days. Four Playwrights. Four Chefs. Four delectable and unexpected bites of theater not to be missed.

IF YOU GO:

14/48: Nordo

Food Theater Thunderdome

A collaboration between The 14/48 Projects and Café Nordo, pairing chefs and bartenders up with playwrights, directors, designers, and actors.

WHERE: Nordo's Culinarium, Pioneer Square, 109 S Main St

WHEN: Destiny Party Sunday August 16th and the 23rd at 6pm; Dinner Shows August 20, 21, 22 and 27, 28, 29 at 8pm; Cocktail Shows August 21, 22 and 28, 29 at 11pm

HOW MUCH: Destiny Party: $5, no reservation necessary; Dinner Show - 4 plays and 4 courses: $55; Cocktail Show - 3 plays and 3 cocktails: $20

HOW: Tickets available 1448nordo.bpt.me or www.brownpapertickets.com

INFO: www.the1448projects.org or www.cafenordo.com

Since 2009, Café Nordo has served up modern cuisine while thrilling audiences with the history, myth, science and politics of food. The Nordo experience has won five Footlight Awards from the Seattle Times, who have called it "A fricassee of satire, zany antics and enlightened food consciousness," while Culture Mob says that it's "a world where flavors sing and dance, and stories get served like artwork on plates." Relying on relationships with local farmers, ranchers, fishermen and artists, their extended runs almost invariably sell out. Nordo's audiences have enjoyed a 1960's spy farce in a 737 headed for the Seattle World's Fair (To Savor Tomorrow), learned the history of the cocktail in a jazzy 1930's speakeasy (Sauced), and taken a tour around a timeless museum of food (Café Nordo's Cabinet of Curiosities). In April 2015 Café Nordo opened "A Seattle institution" (Huffington Post), the permanent venue Nordo's Culinarium, in the former home of the Elliott Bay Book Company in Pioneer Square's Globe Building. The first theater to return to this beloved neighborhood in over a decade, Nordo's Culinarium offers unique, year-round live entertainment integrating food and drink.

The 14/48 Projects produces all iterations of 14/48: The World's Quickest Theater Festival, Theater Anonymous, and many more social theatrical events in Seattle. The 14/48 Projects is developing an international network of 14/48 Festivals, most recently Austin, TX and London, UK. The 14/48 Projects Partner Program offers producing support to independent artists, recently helping send Jennifer Jasper's Etymology to compete in the finals of (and win!) The Samuel French Off Off Broadway Short Play Festival and launching Rachel Atkins Voyage for Madmen in early 2015. They have also begun developing an education program through a residency at North Seattle College, and mentoring 14/48: HS, the first-ever festival exclusively for local high school students.

14/48: The World's Quickest Theater Festival was the brainchild of Michael Neff and Jodi-Paul Wooster. The very first iteration of the festival took place in the tiny Chamber Theatre. By the third festival, 14/48 moved to a two-weekend, twice-yearly format. Since then, the Seattle festival has packed houses at Broadway Performance Hall, Capitol Hill Arts Center, Theatre Off Jackson, Theatre Puget Sound, On the Boards, the Erickson Theatre, ACT Theatre, and Seattle Repertory Theatre. In 2008, 14/48: The World's Quickest Theater Festival was honored with the Seattle Mayor's Arts Award.