Want to start out by talking about the play I am currently directing: “Love Song” By John Kolvenback

Over the past fifteen years, my taste in plays has changed. I’m the first one to tell you that making money is important. Art is great but without money, there is no theater and without theater, there can be no art.

I have always been good at picking plays to produce and direct. Early on they were comedies and farces – playwrights like: Neil Simon, Milmore and VanZandt and Michael Parker – people loved them and our attendance grew rapidly. I soon branched out into well known dramas: “Wait Until Dark”, “Enchanted April” and “Arsenic and Old Lace” to name a few. Again, popular pieces that have withstood the test of time. Our theater has become very successful (far beyond my greatest expectations) with plenty of money in the bank and great support from the community. (Our success is also a burden but that is a story for another day.)

Things began to change in 2006 when I saw the play “Arthur: The Hunt” by Seattle playwright Jeff Berryman. I was very impressed with the play which was the second play in a series of seven plays which tell the story of King Arthur. I tracked down the playwright and got a copy of the first play in the series: “Arthur: The Begetting”. It read far better than the second play was on stage. “Arthur: The Begetting” follows the story of Arthur’s mother, Igraine, from her early life until the birth of Arthur. What excited me about the play was the approach: A strong female lead wrapped around a three way love story. The two Arthur plays we have done to date are not the Camelot we have all come to expect. They have sex, violence, mysticism and difficult themes (like incest). The play broke attendance records.

Somewhere between presenting the two Arthur plays, I saw a play the play “Torso” in Seattle. “Torso” was also written by a Seattle playwright, Keri Healey. I attended it because I knew the Director and one of the actors. Had I known what the play was about I probably would not have gone: Two different stories loosely joined together. In one story, a brother and sister (Margo and Dominick) plan and carry out the murder of their other brother (Anson). Late in the play, Dominick returns from killing his brother, covered in blood. While we watch in horror, he is stripped naked and the blood washed off him as he graphically describes beating his brother to death with a baseball bat. WOW!!! Audiences stayed away in droves but those who came were enthusiastic and the play made money. There was not a single complaint about the nudity.

Shortly after “Torso” came “Tracers” a blood and guts story of soldiers in Viet Nam.

What we learned from these plays was that they appealed to a totally new audience: Younger people.

Today, the under 35 age group is the fastest growing segment of our audience.

I will get to “Love Song” soon. I need to present some background on how I came to select this play but that’s it for today.Photo from TORSO: