Braden Abraham News

Seattle Repertory Theatre's 2014 New Play Festival opens today Oct. 17 and runs through October 26, 2014.

Seattle Repertory Theatre announced today the programming and schedule for the 2014 New Play Festival, running Oct. 17-26, 2014.

Seattle Repertory Theatre announced today the appointment of Marya Sea Kaminski as Associate Artistic Director, effective Sept.16, 2014. Kaminski, who most recently taught acting at Cornish College of the Arts, has appeared as an actor and solo performer throughout Seattle and beyond, including roles at the Rep in My Name is Rachel Corrie (2007) and Clybourne Park (2012).

Seattle Repertory Theatre's Board of Trustees announced today Braden Abraham's appointment as Acting Artistic Director, effective immediately. Abraham formerly served as Associate Artistic Director and has been on the artistic staff of Seattle Rep since 2003. The appointment, extending through June 30, 2016, comes on the heels of the death of Artistic Director Jerry Manning, who passed away suddenly in April.

As Americans we tend to love to witness a good familial car wreck. That's why dysfunctional family dramas are so popular (not to mention the hoards of people behaving badly on reality TV). But long before the Weston's of Osage County hurled their first insult or popped their first pill, George and Martha of Edward Albee's classic dark comedy “Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?”, currently playing at the Seattle Rep, were knocking back two or three or 15 stiff ones and letting the secrets and venom fly. And Albee's play feels just as fresh today as it ever has, due in no small part to this pitch perfect production. So I guess bad manners never go out of style.

Seattle Repertory Theatre's full 2014-2015 season was announced today by Artistic Director Jerry Manning. The season is headlined by the first-ever presentation of Seattle writer Robert Schenkkan's striking meditation on power and morality in his two-part Lyndon B. Johnson plays, All the Way and The Great Society, in repertory format.

F*It Club, the New York Innovative Award-winning film and theatre company, continues its annual series of short, commissioned world-premiere plays at the brand new Sheen Center in lower Manhattan with The Spring Fling: First Love, six new short plays by Halley Feiffer (How to Make Friends and Then Kill Them), Kate Gersten (Benefit of the Doubt), Jason Grote (Mad Men, Smash, Hannibal, 1001), Mark Sitko (Rocky Philly, Tube), Tommy Smith (White Hot, Pigeon), and Lauren Yee (The Hatmaker's Wife). Performances will be Thursday, May 1st through Sunday, May 11th with Wednesday through Saturday night performances at 8pm and Sunday matinees at 2p. Tickets are $18 and available at ovationtx.com and at the door.

Seattle Repertory Theatre announced today six commissions that are in development as part of the New Play Program, including an adaptation of Kirsten Grind's bestseller The Lost Bank: The Story of Washington Mutual - The Biggest Bank Failure in American History.

The absolutely stirring performances would have been enough. Even if the script for Seattle Rep's world premiere of "A Great Wilderness" were just so-so the ensemble cast knocking ball after ball out of the park would have been enough to make for an amazing evening. But when you add in the fact that this new script from one of the theater world's up and comers, Samuel D. Hunter, amounts to a subtle and gripping thing of beauty, you have an experience at the theater that you won't soon forget.

The discussion on conversion or reparative therapies seems to be growing fast, especially with many states enacting bans on conversion therapy practices on gays. And now the Seattle Rep has commissioned a play on the topic from rising star playwright Samuel D Hunter with his "A Great Wilderness". I got to sit down and discuss the show with Hunter as well as director Braden Abraham to get their in depth look at this upcoming work.

The Civilians, the award-winning New York-based theatre company, announces the members of its 2013-14 R & D Group. The group's emerging and established artists were selected from over one hundred applicants. The R & D Group is comprised of artists from multiple theatrical disciplines. Each artist or creative team will develop an original work over the season. The artists and projects were selected to represent a range of different strategies for making new work from creative inquiry and research. This diversity of approach helps feed a culture of innovation in the group, making the R & D Group an effective lab of experimentation for the field of investigative theater.

Wendy C. Goldberg, Artistic Director of the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center's National Playwrights Conference, announced today directors of the eight projects selected for development at the 2013 Conference.

Downtown artist Tommy Smith's WHITE HOT had its New York Premiere at The Flea Theater in April. Now, The Vagrancy is honored to bring you the raw, intimate and emotionally-invasive Los Angeles Premiere helmed by Director Caitlin Hart at the Hollywood Fringe Festival 2013. This dark, psychological thriller is encased in a tight love triangle between a troubled woman, her sexy sister and opportunistic husband. The play opens at Theatre Asylum Lab and plays June 7th-June 28th.

Seattle Repertory Theatre's full 2013-2014 season was announced today by Artistic Director Jerry Manning. The new season features three world premieres by Northwest writers, two Broadway hits, and the addition of an American classic into the theatre's repertoire. The season will run from September 2013-June 2014.

A stellar cast of veteran actors, with Dakin Matthews in the lead role, supported by Emmy and Tony winner Shirley Knight, perform a new play by Samuel D. Hunter at the 32nd annual William Inge Theatre Festival, at Independence, Kansas.

The 32nd annual William Inge Theatre Festival takes place May 1-4, and celebrates the Centennial year of the birth of the Pulitzer Prize and Oscar-winning writer. The Inge Festival-the official Theatre Festival of the State of Kansas-takes place in Inge's hometown of Independence, and is sponsored by the William Inge Center for the Arts at Independence Community College.

The Eugene O'Neill Theater Center announced today eight plays to be developed at the 2013 National Playwrights Conference (NPC).

Seattle Repertory Theatre announced the line-up for its first New Play Festival in Winter 2013, including four plays-in-progress from three Seattle playwrights and a native Idahoan. From tonight, Jan. 5 to Feb. 3, Seattle Rep will present workshops and readings of new works by Robert Schenkkan (By the Waters of Babylon, The Kentucky Cycle), Samuel D. Hunter (A Bright New Boise, The Whale), and Elizabeth Heffron (New Patagonia, Mitzi's Abortion). Newcomer Justin Huertas rounds out the group with an innovative debut. Established Northwest directors Sheila Daniels (Dancing at Lughnasa, Seattle Rep; Ramayana, ACT) and Artistic Director Jerry Manning (I Am My Own Wife, Of Mice and Men) will direct.

It's been a helluva year for theater in the Seattle area. From the triumphant return of the Intiman with their summer festival to the hugely popular run of "Spring Awakening" from Balagan Theatre Seattle audiences were treated with some amazing shows and performances this past year. And so, allow me to shine the spotlight on some of my favorite outstanding moments from the past year with my 2012 BWW Seattle Critic's Choice Awards.

The problem I've always faced in the past with productions of Tennessee Williams' "The Glass Menagerie" is no matter how engaging the story is I just don't find myself invested in the characters. The show is a memory play and with that most productions fall into the trap of over accentuating the obvious flaws and guilt of the characters within Tom's memory. But what director Braden Abraham and the cast of the current production at the Rep have done is to keep those flaws but still present real and honest characters which allow the audience to care about their mistakes and well being. And that's what makes this production a complete success.