Stage Left launches Legacy Play initiative with ‘A Walk in the Woods’

In its second season, Stage Left Theater produced Lee Blessing’s “A Walk in the Woods.”

Inspired by an event from the 1982 peace talks in Geneva, “A Walk in the Woods” follows two negotiators, one a Soviet diplomat and the other an American negotiator, over the course of a year as they step away from the negotiation table and into the woods to talk.

The production starred Stage Left founder Robert Nelson as Andrey Botvinnik and Billy Hultquist as John Honeyman. The show was directed by Janelle Frisque.

More than a decade later, “A Walk in the Woods” will once again grace the Stage Left stage as part of the theater’s Legacy Play initiative. This production, which opens Friday and runs through May 24, stars Nelson’s son Marek Nelson as Botvinnik and Lacey Olson as Jane Honeyman.

The show is directed by Pam Kingsley and stage managed by Elizabeth Lewis. It features lighting by Alana Shepherd, costumes by Patty Garegnani and scenic design by James “Moss” Landsiedel.

Stage Left Artistic Director Dahveed Bullis chose “A Walk in the Woods” because of its consistent cultural relevance, both back in the 2014-15 season and now. He knew the play pushed people during its original run and, after re-reading the script, thought it would still challenge audiences today.

When it came to building the team for “A Walk in the Woods,” Bullis worked to continue the idea of legacy. He had worked with Kingsley as a playwright and watched her as an actor many times and felt that, as a staple of the Spokane theater community, her direction would bring a lot to the play.

It was an easy “yes” for Kingsley.

“This is a play about two human beings who, over the course of a period of a year, debate, argue, cajole, all the while going from strangers to a friendship that is, to me, exquisite in how it transpires,” she said. “I think Blessing is brilliant in the way he crafted this play, because at the end, it’s not just two negotiators from two parts of the world antagonizing each other. It’s the idea that person to person, we can find a relationship forward together in a world we want to see.”

Thinking of how he could honor Robert Nelson, Bullis reached out to Marek and asked if he would be interested in taking up the role his father played. The younger Nelson had been heavily involved with the early days of Stage Left but hadn’t acted on its stage in a while, and Bullis was looking to bring the Nelson name back to the theater.

For the role of John Honeyman, Bullis chose to do as a few other directors have done for productions of “A Walk in the Woods” and change the character to Jane Honeyman, allowing for a female actor to take the role.

For that part, Bullis was thinking of an actor who was a huge standout recently, and Olson immediately came to mind, having recently appeared at Stage Left in “Ride the Cyclone.”

“I’m always thinking in terms of, ‘How can I be a part of facilitating an opportunity that pushes growth?’ ” he said. “I saw it that way, like this is the way that the legacy is also not just Stage Left’s legacy, but also the legacy that I’m trying to build, which is people come here, they level up.”

Kingsley hasn’t worked with Nelson but is familiar with him and said he’s risen to the challenge of playing the mercurial manipulator Botvinnik. She has worked with Olson previously and calls her an intuitive actress who has a real sense of presence on stage.

“When a role is written for another gender, it has to be the kind of role that is truly universal in questioning the world, in wanting to get answers, in wanting to make a difference in the world in which we live, and Lacey embodies that as a human being,” she said. “The two of them together have been marvelous.”

In regard to the look of the show, Kingsley felt that minimalism would support the work of Olson and Nelson. With that information, Landsiedel crafted a bench for the characters to sit on and a backdrop that will show images used to mark the changing of the seasons.

“The whole concept of the play is about two people debating on the future of the world,” Kingsley said. “You don’t want lots of foofoo around it. You don’t need it. What you need is the space and time. You will see a clearing in the woods where these two people come. We see them come in each season and debate what they’re working on in terms of the escalation of nuclear armament and war.”

Without giving too much away, there will be nods to the current situation in Ukraine and Russia during intermission and after the show.

In spite of the serious subject matter, Kingsley said “A Walk in the Woods” is “beautifully packed with every emotion on the human spectrum” and has a lot of humor, with Blessing often using lighter moments to break the tension.

Bullis built a bulk of the season around “A Walk in the Woods” because he sees it as a show about labels and the way we look at who we are. As we actually get to know who we are, though, things change, which he finds beautiful.

“Any piece of art that’s willing to step into the arena, in the conversation of ‘Time is happening, and I’m having to confront the fact that time has happened to me, and how do I impart what wisdom I have to those around me as that is occurring?’ I just love that,” he said.

There’s also the fact that in its early days, Stage Left had difficulty getting people to see plays they may not have heard of or didn’t want to be frustrated by. For Bullis, that means that more people should have seen “A Walk in the Woods” the first time around and are now getting a second chance.

“Let’s capitalize on the fact that people know us now,” he said. ” ‘Hey, this story was important to the man who started this theater. Let’s watch it and see why.’ ”