COItc's 2010 season, part 1 of 3

We announced to our subscribers some of the projects on tap for the coming season. After a flurry of projects in 2008-2009, the plan so far is to stick with developing just a couple of projects this year, to help focus our energies (and budget dollars).

The first piece of good news is that we'll be developing my new play, All's Fair (Six Western) over the next 13 months, culminating in a five-day workshop in November 2010 out at Centrum in Port Washington, Washington State, thanks in part to a generous space grant.

Some details on Centrum:

Located in Port Townsend, Washington, Fort Worden—a turn-of-the-century army base--offers an unmatched combination of natural beauty and historic interest. Acres of saltwater beaches, wooded hills, and open fields are framed by stunning vistas of the Olympic and Cascade ranges and the Strait of Juan de Fuca. It’s a place where the land stops, the sea begins, and the mind keeps going.

And here's a brief synopsis of the play:

Neil Patterson is a journalist being held captive by Islamic militants in Palestine. Prior to the trip during which he was kidnapped, Emily—his wife—learns that he is possibly having an affair with Cherien, his newspaper editor. During his captivity, Emily begins to have dreams of her husband that turn out to be no dreams at all: they are somehow actually communicating. After a folk-singer-turned-prophet camps out in Emily’s living room claiming to know a way to bring Neil home, and Neil himself seems to return out of thin air, she turns to her husband’s girlfriend to help her discern truth from fiction, as her wildest hopes become a nightmare.

What makes the piece a little more interesting is that it is, in fact, two plays. The combined text is divided into four segments, which are intended to be presented over the course of successive weeks.

The ultimate effect is that an audience takes a similar journey similar to that the characters themselves take, rather than an isolated, singular event that passes for commonly accepted theater; we envision creating a shifting terrain of evolving events.

It is a method that we believe fully embraces the immediacy and potential anarchy of live performance, allowing an audience to foster an ongoing investment in the story, one that develops over the course of multiple performances rather than just one.

I'll begin documenting the entire process in these parts in the coming months, but as we get started on the fund raising and casting efforts, we need ... pretty much everything. There's time before we head west, but in the meantime there are actors to hire, rehearsal studios to reserve, and tickets to book. Fun fun chaos time...