May 2018 at Meany Center Encore Arts Seattle
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APRIL/MAY 2018 IN THIS ISSUE CALIDORE STRING COMPLEXIONS QUARTET CONTEMPORARY April 24 BALLET May 17-19 April 2018 Volume 14, No. 6 Paul Heppner Publisher SPRING 2018 Susan Peterson Design & Production Director Ana Alvira, Robin Kessler, Stevie VanBronkhorst Production Artists and Graphic Design Contents Mike Hathaway Feature Sales Director 3 Three female playwrights Brieanna Bright, Joey Chapman, tackle sport on stage Ann Manning Seattle Area Account Executives Dialogue Amelia Heppner, Marilyn Kallins, Terri Reed San Francisco/Bay Area Account Executives 9 Trina Gadsden sheds light on Youth in Focus Carol Yip Sales Coordinator Intermission Brain Transmission 15 Test yourself with our trivia quiz! Leah Baltus Editor-in-Chief Andy Fife Encore Stages is an Encore Arts Publisher Program that features stories about Dan Paulus our local arts community alongside Art Director information about performances. Gemma Wilson, Jonathan Zwickel Encore Arts Programs are publications Senior Editors of Encore Media Group. We also publish City Arts, a monthly arts & culture Amanda Manitach Visual Arts Editor magazine, and specialty publications, including the Offical Seattle Pride Guide and the SIFF Guide and Catalog. Learn more at encoremediagroup.com Encore Stages features the following organizations: Paul Heppner President Mike Hathaway Vice President Genay Genereux Accounting & Office Manager Shaun Swick Senior Designer & Digital Lead Barry Johnson 35 Digital Engagement Specialist Ciara Caya Customer Service Representative & Administrative Assistant Corporate Office 425 North 85th Street Seattle, WA 98103 p 206.443.0445 f 206.443.1246 [email protected] 800.308.2898 x105 www.encoremediagroup.com Encore Arts Programs is published monthly by Encore Media Group to serve musical and theatrical events in the Puget Sound and San Francisco Bay Areas. All rights reserved. frans.com ©2018 Encore Media Group. Reproduction without written permission is prohibited. 2 ENCORE STAGES Throwing Like a Girl and Writing Like One Too The cast of the upcoming production of The Wolves at ACT. Photo by Dawn Schaefer. Danielle Mohlman My dad was a star athlete in high My parents met in high school. She school. Letterman jacket, full page in was a cheerleader, full of school spirit examines the women the yearbook, the whole nine yards. He and there for every water polo game laying claim to sports was a water polo goalie and to this day and swim meet. Pom poms in hand, via the theatre, and their the number he wore on his swim cap she watched him pull through the – 22 – is significant for both him and water, breaking records in freestyle and inspiration for doing so. my mom. Every “22” they’ve ever seen backstroke. in the wild has been photographed and framed. It’s the date of their wedding As a teenager, I lived for the hours anniversary. And it was etched into between the end of school and the the pin cushion my mom used in beginning of sunset. I’d flash my home economics, silver-headed pins completed homework at my mom forming the curves of each number. and then run down the street to my encoremediagroup.com/programs 3 Danielle Mohlman's father, Mitch Mohlman, on the far left. (He’s wearing number 22, but the angle doesn’t show it.) neighbor Gilbert’s house. If we could jealousy-fueled competition these about a “sweet old lady” with only assemble a team of neighborhood kids, young soccer players seem to thrive on. one breast, claiming that the winter we’d play touch football in the street, Their drug instead, is frantic whispers air is “colder than a witch’s” – well, yelling “Car!” every time someone’s about a sheltered teammate who you can finish the rest. As the Wolves parent got home from work. We had chooses pads over tampons. And jokes warm up for their games, they name- more timeouts than any regulation game about pregnancy that quickly become check each other by jersey number and, it seemed, just as many injuries. unchecked abortion rumors. These If we couldn’t get a team together, I’d girls are sixteen and it shows. strap on my roller blades and speed up “As the Wolves and down the sidewalk, jumping off our Interspersed in this dialogue about homemade ramp. If he was patient and uterine lining and inefficient feminine warm up for their I was calm, Gilbert would continue his products is a discussion about former games, they name- lifelong quest – teaching me how to ollie Prime Minister of Cambodia, Nuon on his skateboard. I was never any good, Chea, who at 90 years old is giving check each other but I was relentless. Still am. I’d fall and testimony about the Khmer Rouge get back up again, bloody palms and all. genocide. The audience is momentarily by jersey number Despite everything, I’m the furthest thing faced with an odd juxtaposition: the from an athlete. But sports are starting to murder of hundreds of thousands of and masculine creep their way into my plays – and I’m Cambodian citizens and the torture of not the only one. a particularly heavy period. Offstage, epithets like another soccer team warms up – a team just as driven, just as talented, “man” and “dude,” just as vicious. Spend enough time on the field and as though their you’ll come away with blood. But the Sarah DeLappe’s dialogue in The blood that opens Sarah DeLappe’s The Wolves perfectly intones a teenage and feminine first Wolves isn’t skinned knees or thousands athletic vocabulary. These girls turn names betray the of burst blood vessels congealing into around crude language as though they a purple bruise. It’s menstrual blood – just learned how to form the syllables very nature of their in all its coagulated glory. The Wolves’ with their mouths. They litter their thirst for blood isn’t quenched by the sentences with expletives, gossiping competitive spirit.” 4 ENCORE STAGES My legacy. My partner. You have dreams. Goals you want to achieve during your lifetime and a legacy you want to leave behind. The Private Bank can help. Our highly specialized and experienced wealth strategists can help you navigate the complexities of estate planning and deliver the customized solutions you need to ensure your wealth is transferred according to your wishes. Take the first step in ensuring the preservation of your wealth for your lifetime and future generations. To learn more, please visit unionbank.com/theprivatebank or contact: Lisa Roberts Managing Director, Private Wealth Management [email protected] 415-705-7159 Wills, trusts, foundations, and wealth planning strategies have legal, tax, accounting, and other implications. Clients should consult a legal or tax advisor. ©2018 MUFG Union Bank, N.A. All rights reserved. Member FDIC. Union Bank is a registered trademark and brand name of MUFG Union Bank, N.A. EAP full-page template.indd 1 12/12/17 9:49 AM and masculine epithets like “man” and grace. It’s like my body has forgotten writing The Great Leap. In her author’s “dude,” as though their feminine first how to move. But as a teenager, I’d show note, Yee writes that her father played names betray the very nature of their up at my community center on Tuesday basketball all day and all night growing competitive spirit. It’s reminiscent of nights, poised to learn another thirty up. As a 6’1” Chinatown kid from San every male dominated sport out there. seconds of choreography. I wanted so Francisco’s projects, he dominated They don’t want to be weak, so instead badly to dance to Tchaikovsky. Instead, asphalt courts and recreation center they’re “man” and “dude.” It’s easier my teacher brought in the Runaway floors. He was never going to go pro that way. It’s armor. Bride soundtrack. To this day I can’t – he knew that even then. But he was hear Shawn Colvin without thinking good. He was really good. In my own play, Dust, I also dive about those long mirrors, the ballet into the ferocity of teenage girls. My barre, and the smell of high school girls Lauren Yee’s father first visited China in athletes are a high school swim team, learning to dance. As I raised my hands the 1980s, playing a series of exhibition condemned to an unfinished life – the high above my head, blood dried on my games against China’s best teams. entire play lives in the memory of the palms. My mind was on the asphalt road Yee says that The Great Leap isn’t her young man who killed every one of of our makeshift football field. father’s story – his American team was them, but even in his distorted lens defeated too many times to count. But they’re magnificent. The swim team’s All those years of dance make their it’s a story like her father’s. In The Great captain, Wendy, is the queer object of way into Dust as well. In an effort to Leap, Manford, a rec center-trained this vicious man’s attention. Everyone communicate with the audience that teenager from Chinatown, busts else was just in the wrong place at something is very wrong, the play never into a basketball practice uninvited, the wrong time. Even in death, they stops moving. Dance is an integral part barreling at the team’s point guard, work together as a team, shifting the of the play’s vocabulary, conveying twisting his ankle in the process. perspective memory by memory. everything from an overactive With a newly injured player and a life imagination to a mass murder. This changing exhibition game against When I told my parents about this play lives in a zone where words are Beijing University on the horizon, the play they were surprised I’d chosen an not sufficient on their own.