Dec. 9, 2014
OutCast Productions looks forward to another season of great theater at the Black Box Theater at the Whidbey Island Fairgrounds in Langley.
Are you looking forward to seeing all those fans of great American theater? Here’s what’s on for 2015:
March 6 to 21, “Nickel and Dimed”
by Joan Holden, directed by K. Sandy O’Brien. Based on the non-fiction book “Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America” by Barbara Ehrenreich
Can a middle-aged, middle-class woman survive when she suddenly has to make beds all day in a hotel and live on $7 an hour? Maybe. But one $7-an-hour job won’t pay the rent: she’ll have to do back-to-back shifts as a chambermaid and a waitress. This isn’t the first surprise for acclaimed author Barbara, who set out to research low-wage life firsthand, confident she was prepared for the worst. Barbara Ehrenreich’s best-seller about her odyssey is vivid and witty, yet always deeply sobering.
Joan Holden’s stage adaptation is a focused comic epic shadowed with tragedy. Barbara is prepared for hard work but not, at 55, for double shifts and nonstop aches and pains; for having to share tiny rooms, live on fast food because she has no place to cook, beg from food pantries, gulp handfuls of Ibuprofen because she can’t afford a doctor; for failing, after all that, to make ends meet; or for constantly having to swallow humiliation. The worst, she learns, is not what happens to the back or the knees: it’s the damage to the heart.
The bright glimpses of Barbara’s co-workers that enliven the book become indelible portraits: Gail, the star waitress pushing fifty who can no longer outrun her troubles; Carlie, the hotel maid whose rage has burned down to disgust; Pete, the nursing home cook who retreats into fantasy; Holly, terrified her pregnancy will end her job as Team Leader at Magic Maids and, with it, her 50-cent/hour raise. These characters wage their life struggles with a gallantry that humbles Barbara, and the audience.
The play shows us the life that a third of working Americans now lead, and makes us angry that anyone should have to live it.
May 8 to 23, “In the Next Room, or the Vibrator Play”
by Sarah Ruhl, directed by Ned Farley.
In a seemingly perfect, well-to-do Victorian home, proper gentleman and scientist Dr. Givings has innocently invented an extraordinary new device for treating “hysteria” in women (and occasionally men): the vibrator. Adjacent to the doctor’s laboratory, his young and energetic wife tries to tend to their newborn daughter—and wonders exactly what is going on in the next room. When a new “hysterical” patient and her husband bring a wet nurse and their own complicated relationship into the doctor’s home, Dr. and Mrs. Givings must examine the nature of their own marriage, and what it truly means to love someone.
July 10 to 25, “The Pillowman”
by Martin McDonagh, directed by Katie Woodzick.
With echoes of Stoppard, Kafka and the Brothers Grimm, “The Pillowman” centers on a writer in an unnamed totalitarian state who is being interrogated about the gruesome content of his short stories and their similarities to a series of child murders. The result is an urgent work of theatrical bravura and an unflinching examination of the very nature and purpose of art.
Sept. 18 to Oct. 3, “Looped”
by Matthew Lombardo – in the Northwest premiere, directed by Sean Brennan.
“Looped” tells the story of internationally celebrated actress Tallulah Bankhead as she is called into a sound studio in 1965 to re-record (or “loop”) one line of dialogue for what would be her last film, the dreadful “Die, Die My Darling.” Southern, but by no means a belle, Bankhead was known for her wild partying and convention-defying exploits that outshone even today’s celebrity bad girls. Given her inebriated state (and inability to loop the line perfectly), what ensues is a hilarious showdown between an uptight and conservative sound editor, Danny Miller, and the outrageous star.
For more information about OutCast and its upcoming season, visit www.outcastproductions.net.
Auditions for several roles for women and men in the 2015 season will run from 5:30-7:30 p.m. on Monday, Dec. 15 at the Black Box Theater at the Whidbey Island Fairgrounds. This is an open call so no appointment is necessary. Just show up between the posted hours and expect to do cold reads from the scripts.