HugePoker

I’ve been cutting back on the poker a bit recently for the sake of another romp on the boards (translation for the theatre-impaired: I’ve been rehearsing a play). The show is called “Durang7”, which I guess is officially spoken as “Durang to the 7th power”, but I refuse to call it that because it sounds totally gay (apologies to my gay readers – you know what I mean – actually one brief scene in the show is, in fact, literally gay, and it’s pretty funny, and I’m in it, so I am at least for a brief moment getting back to my Seattle theatre roots of 15 years ago when I could only ever get cast as a gay man … but I digress). So the Huge-approved title “Durang7” denotes seven one-act plays by quintessentially clever playwright Christopher Durang, and it opens tonight and runs through November 22, at Stone Soup Theatre.

Here’s the website and yes that’s me in a toga.

Reviews have been pretty good, if a bit odd/bland:

The Seattle Times says we’re “very game actors”. Thanks, Misha!!!!

The Seattle Weekly, calls us “generally palatable”! YES!

The Seattle Gay News, who always seem to love me, calls us “bouncy” and a “solid ensemble” (I don’t often think of bouncy and solid as complimentary adjectives, but OK) and refers to “a pregnant [?] sense that [the] Father, played by Laurence Hughes, is really a batterer and maybe even an incestuous pervert”. AWESOME!

Tickets are $20, $16 for seniors, and $13 for anyone UNDER THIRTY(!?). You can also get 4 tickets for $60, so bring your friends. Thursdays are pay-what-you-will, and there are “talk-backs” after the show each Thursday.

As is often the pattern with me when I do a show, I’ve been hesitant to broadcast about it in the last week or two of rehearsal for fear that it would suck, but last night we had our preview in front of an actual audience, two or three of whom might have actually paid to get in, and it went pretty well and the audience seemed to enjoy it quite a bit. So maybe it doesn’t suck.

We actually had a camera crew record one of our recent rehearsals, and there will be some sort of segment on the show on “Art Zone with Nancy Guppy”, which will have its first airing, oddly enough, at the exact moment we open the curtain on our opening night, 8PM tonight on “the Seattle Channel”, which is channel 21 on Seattle cable systems. There will be lots of other airings as well, or you can watch it streaming on the web. I have no idea what the segment will look like or how much of the show footage they’ll put on the air, or if it will suck, but hey, I’m sure as hell not getting on TV for playing poker lately, so at least maybe I can get a little exposure in the theatre.

[edit: by clicking on the link above and then clicking "watch" you'll play the show on your screen. The segment about our show starts around 11 minutes in]

If you’re in or around Seattle, come see it. If you’re coming to see it, let me know beforehand and stick around afterwords to say hi or go out for a drink or a snack.

Broken-leggedly,
-huge