Theater As Literature Highlighted In Interplayers’ Concert Readings
One of the most exciting developments in Spokane theater kicks off Sunday night at the Interplayers Ensemble.
It’s the theater’s Concert Readings series, inaugurated after several successful experiments last season. In a concert reading, actors sit on stools on a bare stage and read from a script. It’s an excellent way to explore work by new or unknown playwrights, and it is also an excellent way to concentrate on theater as pure literature.
Sunday’s script will be “Portrait,” by Hollywood playwright Joel Gross. According to Jerry Kraft, who took on the job of reading and selecting the scripts for this series, this play is a “lyric, elegantly written drama of the court of Marie Antoinette, as seen through the eyes of a woman known as one of the finest portrait painters of the time.”
A passionate young revolutionary completes the play’s triumvirate of characters. The actors are from the Interplayers’ current production of “Twelfth Night.”
The reading begins at 7:30 p.m. Sunday. Tickets are $5, available at the door.
“The Love Course”/”Second Chance”
The Cast Adrift Players will stage a double feature on Saturday, 7:30 p.m., at the Cutter Theatre in Metaline Falls.
“The Love Course,” by A.R. Gurney, and “Second Chance” are two one-act plays that will be presented together.
The first play is about a woman professor who falls in love with a colleague who has been teaching a course in the “literature of love.”
“Second Chance” is about a widow who decides to begin a new life, despite her married neighbor’s disapproval. It’s a powerful play about following your own aspirations.
Tickets for this double bill are $5, and may be purchased at the door or reserved by calling (509) 446-4108.
“Quilters”
The moving musical drama “Quilters” will open on Thursday and continue through Nov. 18 at the Sixth Street Melodrama, 212 Sixth St., in Wallace.
This marvelous musical by Molly Newman and Barbara Damashek tells the story of pioneer women and the trials they endured as they helped settle the West. The central image is of their quilts, which are like tapestries telling of the joyful times and the tragic times.
The cast includes Joy Persoon Ackerman, Mary Ann Babin, Carol Belknap, Kelley Cook, Amy Hall, Shelley Hodgdon and Colleen Pettis. The director is Sherrill Grounds.
The show runs Nov. 2-18, on Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights. All shows are at 8 p.m. Tickets are $9 and $11, available by calling (208) 752-3081 or (208) 752-8871.
, DataTimes