TeenTix Blog

An interview with Eurydice's Trick Danneker by Bianca G, age 18Trick is a lanky hunk, more commonly known as a lunk, from Minnesota. He has a small hint of an accent and a knack for throwing out statistics. In this interview, he discusses what it’s like to be a member of your own fan club, how he joined facebook, and his thinking about being a nerdy gay alcoholic.BG Your name is Trick. Are you for real?TD It’s short for Patrick. I love the name Patrick, it’s not a rebellion against my parents, but what I hate is the name Pat. And my parents hate the name Pat too. People would call up on the phone and they would say “Is Pat there?” and my dad would say “Nope.” He wouldn’t hang up though. I went by Patrick all through grade school and high school and then one day I was talking to my friends and they said why don’t you go by Trick and I said yyyyyyeeeaaahhhh, that’s a good idea.BG What about Patty?TD Nobody ever calls me Patty. Patty is my aunt’s name.BG In your play you play Orpheus. Do you have to sing?TD Sort of. I open my mouth and the music exudes from me. Because Orpheus is the son of a muse, music flows out of him, and he can pluck music out of the air. He can raise his hand and play you a symphony. I think that’s a really neat idea.BG Do you have to do a lot of research?TD I did a little.BG Like Wikipedia?TD There’s a dramaturg named Anita, and she did a lot of research. And then there’s your imagination.Trick as Orpheus and Renata Friedman as Eurydice in Eurydice at ACT TheatrePhoto by Chris BennionBG How does getting in a play work?TD You find out a theatre is doing something, you get a call or make a call, and you prepare something to audition. In order to be a working actor you have to have your fingers to the pulse all the time.BG Sometimes you can’t even get an audition?TD Oh yeah. Sometimes you don’t even know quite who to call. I’ve made phone calls that haven’t been returned. You send out resumes and headshots and things like that. I’ve been here for three years, and the casting director back in April asked me if I was new to town.BG I think I saw you in The Sweetest Swing in Baseball [at ArtsWest].TD Yeah, we did that for 2 months. That was good because it was a good cast, and you could be stuck with worse people for 2 months, almost 3 after rehearsals.BG You were kind of like the nerdy guy, right?TD Yeah, sure. The character Michael was a computer programmer, and computer programmers are usually nerds. But he had a lot of other quirks: nerdy gay alcoholic.BG So how do you prepare to be a nerdy gay alcoholic?TD Sometimes you take characters and you base them on people you know. Not that I necessarily know any nerdy gay alcoholics. I tried to think, there’s a gesture my friend does, and you try to make it your own. I try to change my physicality, vocal patterns and tones. How is this person like me, and how are they different from me? I try never to recycle things. The 3 years I’ve been out of college, I haven’t done enough to get to that end point where I’ve used everything.BG Are you scared you’ll run out?TD Yeah. I’m gonna have to recycle or have to stop acting.BG Do you think you’ll be an actor forever?TD I hope. My father builds sets, and was designing a set for A Christmas Carol. I was the 7 year old that played Tiny Tim, and I was doomed from there. Doomed to be an actor. My older brother is also a technical director. Until I was a junior in high school, I thought that I was going to be a professional baseball player. When I realized that wasn’t going to happen, it was the first time I ever thought I could do theatre more. I was very lucky to have supportive parents. I certainly went to college with people whose parents said if you want to study theatre, we’re not paying for it. Because at least 75% of people who graduate with a threatre degree never act again. I would say 90% go to the Twin Cities or Chicago to act. I had visited seattle before my senior year of college, and I had picked up The Stranger, and I went to the arts section and there were 7 reviews of different shows that had opened within four weeks.BG Are film and theatre acting completely different?TD I’ve done a little film that nobody would have ever seen unless they went to college with me. I would love to explore that side of acting. On stage, they don’t see the little things that you do. And maybe they’re not even looking at you. Film directors tell the audience where they’re looking.BG Do you find yourself exaggerating in real life they way you would in a play?TD No. I think I’m a pretty private person. I like to spend a lot of time at home. But when I’m out with a group of people I’m not a storyteller, I like to listen to people talk. There’s certainly actors / actresses that can be overdramatic. Everybody knows one.BG The one little piece of research I did was your fan club on Facebook.TD Oh, for cryin out loud! Ben will be happy to hear that you’ve seen this. The group was started by Ben, a gentleman that I knew in college. He just decided one day to start a Trick Danneker Fan Club. And it was kind of hot for awhile and a lot of people were joining up and sharing info about Trick Danneker and telling Trick Danneker stories and writing fan fiction. I’m a member because you can’t look at the stuff unless you’re a member, so I am a member of my own fan club. But I don’t contribute, I’m not trying to feed it and say look how great I am. But if they want to know what I’m up to I’ll certainly tell them. It’s flattering, and fun, because I know that it was done by a friend who just wanted to make me smile. And it does make me smile every time I look at it because it can be so ridiculous, to have a fan club.Trick with his girlfriend, Ellen Page. This is totally real.BG There's 130 members.TD They’re all friends, ex-girlfriends, which is a good sign, means theres no hard feelings. And 130, it’s gonna stick at that for awhile. I pretty much have no more friends. Because Ben lives in South Dakota, or somewhere in Nebraska, he needed an insider so he tapped into my roommate Jason. He’d get information like what did Trick have for breakfast today?BG How often do you check it?TD Its been a long time, it really has. I joined facebook to keep in touch with a friend of mine who moved to Australia and then it all blew up from there. It’s been so many years since that’s been in existence. Apparently I’ve got some sort of running feud with Adrian Brody because we’re both tall and lanky.BG Lunks?TD Yeah, lanky hunks.BG Whose your favorite actor?TD Kevin Spacey, and I really like Matt Damon’s work as well. But I also think that some of the most talented people I know are those I decided to hang around with in college and in Seattle. I wanted to be around them and talk about theatre and talk about acting with them or just sit and go to Perkins at 2 in the morning on a Saturday after a party and eat pancakes and talk about girls.BG What do they have you do in acting school anyway? Four years seems like a really long time.TD Sometimes, you just walk around like a dog. You become an eagle, or become a tree. Then they’ll say what if the tree were an animal. Now you’re a tree and a polar bear at the same time. And you don’t know what any of it means. But it’s also about picking the words, techniques, and vocabulary that meant something to me and using it in my own process.BG Do you hae any pre-show rituals or superstitions?TD Nope. I try to buy into the ones that are pretty serious, like saying “break a leg” or saying the name of the Scottish play in the theatre, or whistling in the threatre.BG If you did that, would other actors get actually angry?TD Sometimes they do. Angry, or anxious, or they’ll let you know that upset them. Sometimes someone will accidentally say the M- word, and I’ll say ok and spin around in circles and silently swear under my breath to ward off the whatever.BG Whats the craziest thing that’s ever happened to you onstage?TD When I was a junior in high school.BG Is this a vomit story?TD No, nerves stopped affecting me when I was a sophomore about 16. I was playing Prince Dauntless in a production of Once Upon a Mattress, and Princess Lark or Larkin is supposed to come interrupt the scene where I’m telling the history of our country. I had to make up things about slavery, and princes being executed. When I got offstage everyone’s patting me on the back for getting through those tough 30 seconds of life.BG Any parting advice for the theatre wannabes?TD If you can see yourself doing something else, go do that. If you can’t live without it, keep going.- Bianca GSeptember 4th, 2008__________________________________________________You can see Trick exude music and perform other feats this month in Eurydice at ACT Theatre, September 10th - October 5th. Teen Tix tickets are always $5 on the day of show. For more info and showtimes, visit acttheatre.org. For more Trick, check out The Official Trick Danneker Fan Club / E-Zine.

Eurydice @ ACT TheatreOne minute you’re madly in love, as only a couple of kids can be. The next minute, you’re – well, dead. Cross the River of Forgetting on a one-way cruise to the Underworld in this fantastic and original retelling of a classic Greek myth. With its express elevator to Hades, a chorus of snarky talking stones, and the Lord of the Underworld holding court from the seat of his red tricycle, Eurydice is as achingly vivid as your best dreams – and just as surreal.Previews September 5th – 9thRegular Performances September 10th – October 5thMore information and show times: www.acttheatre.orgACT's Ticket Office: 206-292-7676Ticket office hours: Tuesday - Sunday noon - show timeACT Theatre is located at 7th & Union in downtown Seattle. It is served by a whole bunch of buses. For bus routes and schedules, visit tripplanner.metrokc.gov. MAP

Hey there Teen Tixers, I’ve got some news: I’m running off to join the circus. And, by “running off” I mean “going to France” and by “join the circus” I mean “teach English.” Here’s a little public service announcement, from me to you: Studying abroad is a really good thing to do, especially when you are young and poor anyway and you don’t have a lot of obligations. Trust me, I’m speaking from experience here: I never got around to studying abroad when I was in college, so I have to do it now, when I’m old and, um…obligated. And I’m going to be teaching, not studying (unless cheese counts as a research subject, in which case, I’m going to be doing some HEAVY studying). Anyway, my point is, if you’re getting this newsletter you probably haven’t gotten to college yet, and so there’s still hope for you. Study abroad. Go somewhere weird and foreign and eat weird foreign food and meet weird foreign people and see weird foreign art and when you get back you can do the annoying things that people who study abroad always do, like affecting an accent (even though you were only there for 3 months) and constantly saying “Well, when I was living in such and such…”. It’ll be awesome. I do plan on seeing a bunch of art while I’m over there, and I’ll be blogging my adventures right here on the tt blog, so be sure to check in from time to time (and leave comments! I’m going to be lonely!) And I’ll be back in May. In the meantime, I am leaving you in the capable care of Pete, who is going to be the Interim Teen Tix Program Manager, and Montana, The Duchess of Teen Tix. So, never fear. Teen Tix will go on without me, and, hopefully, I will return from my time abroad a more interesting, well-rounded individual (with a fake accent and an obnoxious tendency to say “Well, when I was living in France…” YES! I’m so excited.) Have a great year. See lots of art, and, y’know, do your homework and stuff, and dream about where in the world you might want to someday live. Do it for me. À bientôt! Holly

Remember kids, it's good to laugh at yourself. Also, I, like, invented high school theatre nerdery, so I'm laughing with you, not at you. But I am laughing. Hard.Thanks, as usual, to Dan on Slog.

There's an interesting conversation going on over on the Slog right now between our own Professor Kiley, a sad letter writer, and a bunch of commenters with varying levels of actual interest in the topic at hand. They're talking about arts criticism (what is it good for?) and the "Stranger style" (if such a thing exists). Anyway, over here on the teen tix blog this is the kind of thing we get up for, so I'm reposting the entirety of the Slog post, edited very (very very) slightly for content. If you'd like to see the original post and follow along with the comments, go here, but please be forewarned that the comments may contain coarse language.

Arts Letter of the Dayposted by Brendan Kiley on August 28 at 11:56 AM

What with school looming on the horizon, I thought today would be a good day to share my new favorite thing: yearboookyourself.com, where you can paste yourself into yearbook photos from bygone eras.Since my true identity is a closely-guarded secret, and since I'm trying to find some way to construe this as arts news, I'm going to post the yearbooked photos of of local playwright, actor, director, all around talented gal, Darian Lindle:Darian is one of the playwrights whose work is being performed in September as part of the June Carter Cash Project at Live Girls! Theater in Ballard. The show features three short plays inspired by the legendary singer, and it runs at LG! September 12th - October 4th. Live Girls! is a theater company dedicated to developing and producing new work by women, and their tickets, incidentally, are always free at the door for people 18 and under. See how I made that about art? I'm awesome.

REVELING IN THE ANGST OF LIFE WITH MS. LEDA review of Seattle Center's KEXP Summer Concerts at the Mural by Michelle K., age 17Ms. Led is a band composed of characters that your mom wouldn’t approve of on first glance. With an intimidating image, the foursome of musicians may purvey a message that doesn’t exactly speak “relatable.” Lesli, the lead singer and talented strummer of a cherry sunburst Les Paul guitar, has short black hair with an elongated dyed piece splaying across her face. Peg, the crazy-good guitarist whom backed up each song with astronomical rifts, managed to sport fire red dreads in pigtails. Steph, with cropped black hair and blondish/grey highlights, mightily banged her drum with not only skill, but passion. And, the surprisingly coiffed Matt, picking his bass, wore a slick black suit with a red tie. I wasn’t sure what to believe of these musicians before they took center stage, so I waited to judge what they had to give the crowd musically. To say the least, their music was not only relatable… it was deep.Ms. Led at the Mural Amphitheatre, August 23rd, 2008Originally uploaded by Zee GregaSeattle Center presented KEXP 90.3 Concerts at The Mural on August 23rd, starring Ms. Led, for one core purpose. Promote and support independent radio and local artists! On the grass devoted fans of Ms. Led sat and many sung every word off her new album, “Shake Yourself Awake” and some oldies off previous albums. Ms. Led’s sound offered some innovations that are hardly experienced in the current music world. Their genre was concrete, and their infusion of harmonious varieties is definitely a rare jewel. Their act was like an onion, without the crying. I had to peel the layers off of their music to hear everything in its simple essence, which when blended made a delightful concoction. There seemed to be influences from metal, latin music, and even pop. Lesli Wood, the lovely songstress, ripped her vocals to shred with ease by embellishing every word that came out of her mouth in a unique technique. I would not have predicted that her sugar-sweet voice could mesh well with their hard-core sound, however it added to the unexpected yet delightful irony of the show. Wood sometimes employed whispering, she sometimes screamed. It was a little like she was living her emotion while singing; a monotonous tone wasn’t always kept, but whatever was in sync with the emotion of the song. This made the words feel real, not just past recollections. The scintillating lyrics made you want to grab them and eat them they were so delicious, “You’re asking all these questions to sort out my intentions I can’t even sort out myself.” I was literally reveling in the angst of life while listening, but hey: it was okay because we were angsting together. Michelle K.August 23rd, 2008

KEXP Summer Concerts at the MuralSEATTLE CENTERFREE. All Ages. Outside. Awesome.FRIDAY, August 22nd:SPECIAL KEXP VOLUME IV CD RELEASE PARTY5 pm: DJ El Toro6:15 pm: Carter Tanton7 pm: PelaSATURDAY, August 23rd:5 pm: DJ Lisa Wood6 pm: Ms. Led7 pm: GoodnessThese concerts take place at the Mural Amphitheatre at Seattle Center

Pacific Northwest Ballet Artistic Director (and all around cool dude) Peter Boal has a blog up about the legendary Twyla Tharp, who is at PNB right now, like, as we speak working on two new commissions for their All Tharp season opener, which opens September 25th. Here's a bit:Twyla was not afraid of jumping up to further articulate a movement. Later in the week, she would leap onto Charlie and clutch like a koala as Charlie maneuvered her around his body like a baton. We tensed as Twyla’s head swung inches from the floor―an introduction to the thrill and potential peril of contact improv.Photo by Marc Von BorstelFollow along on Boal's blog and get psyched for what will surely be one of the more exciting dance performances of the year.

Langston Hughes Performing Arts Center PresentsSnow White and the 7 At the Moore TheatreInspired by the re-telling of Snow White by Marilyn Joshua Shearer, Snow White and the 7; Each One Teach One, is set in both America and Africa and follows the journey of discovery experienced by young people who are strengthened by their re-connection to the African culture and African American traditions. As Snow White discovers her roots, her self-confidence and capability to share this rich culture is enhanced by her trusty companions, The 7, inspired by the 7 principles of Kwanzaa. An original piece written and directed by Isiah Anderson, Jr., Snow White and the 7 , is filled with original music, contemporary story lines and traditional rhythms.Performed by 60 youth ages 8-18, the Summer Musical program is a full theatre experience including personal and professional development, culminating in a series of public performances in a downtown venue.Performance Schedule:Thursday, August 14 | 7 PMFriday, August 15 | 7 PMSaturday, August 16 | 7 PMSunday, August 17 | 3 PMThe Moore Theatre is located at 1932 Second Avenue in downtown Seattle.

I'm glad you liked the show! We had a lot of fun preforming for you.~Emma

Review of Women and Wallace by Michelle K., age 17It’s hard for me to talk about something I love because I’m afraid I won’t do it justice. That’s why I’m a little hesitant to write about this play. I would never be able to describe the emotions and sense of familiarity the production gave me. However, I will say, understatedly so, Women and Wallace astounded me. I wasn’t expecting something so remarkable; I was expecting an amateur performance by a bunch of riled up teen actors, not an experience that would actually alter my opinion of theatre. I wanted to jump up during the duration of the play and shout, “That’s me.” I wanted to hug the characters, they mirrored everyone I loved and everyone I wish I knew. They were endearing, they were poignant. I wanted to put the play on film and distribute it to every high school in America; it was that mind-blowing.Sydney Tucker, Olivia Zech, Sarah Youssefi and Sam Tilles in YATC's Women and Wallace. Photo by Johnny Valencia.This play, aside from being particularly relatable to a teen, offered up bounties of wisdom that seemed astounding to even the most intelligible adults in the room. The actors felt like people, not like characters for the sake of having characters. Wallace Kirkman (Sam Tilles) felt so real in his performance. He wasn’t a two dimensional creation of Jonathan Kare Sherman, the author of this play, but a real person who happened to be living his life on stage in front of fifty people. Wallace, at the mere age of six, found his mother lying dead on the kitchen floor: she had committed suicide. From then on, the audience observed Wallace grow into a young man of eighteen, with intervals of age thirteen and sixteen. Each age was introduced by Wallace with the vocalization of his name, age and a poem that essentially summed up his feelings at that moment in life. Throughout his adolescence, most of his issues were stemmed back to his mother’s death: every problem he seemed to have with women, even from age six, was extraneously blamed on his mother. Although the play revolved around some obviously heavy topics, it was mixed with an amount of light-hearted humor that perfectly suited the mood. Grandmother, played by Annie Loggins, allowed the audience to laugh at her quirky character: she had the habit of collecting the most recent photograph of her deceased friends. She also was what every grandmother should be-offer love for a confused teenage grandchild, or cookies when love isn’t enough. The dialogue further enhanced my appreciation for the performance. It was endearing, and it was what teenagers would actually say in real life, swearing and all. Wallace, when asked to clarify what he meant about a statement, replied, “I don’t know what I mean, I’m sixteen.” This truly struck a chord with me; it’s difficult for teenagers to know what they mean in general when they hardly know where they stand in the force field of life. Of all the women Wallace encountered: Sarah (Olivia Zech), Lili (Sydney Tucker), Wendy (Rebecca Mostow), and Victoria (Sarah Youssefi), only one truly caught Wallace’s heart: Nina (Chelsea Taylor).Sarah Youssefi and Sam Tilles in YATC's Women and Wallace.Photo by Johnny Valencia.However, during Wallace and Nina’s relationship, he was faced with the cruel effects and consequences of infidelity. Through these tribulations, he grew and learned that women don’t always abandon and leave when living becomes hard, and that true love is difficult to come by. But even when true love does arise between those two people, Wallace discovers that the willingness to take the blows that inevitably come with any relationship is fundamental to a successful love life. He learns to accept that he will be hurt while involved with a woman, but you must love despite that knowledge.Women and WallaceYoung Americans' Theatre Company at the Little TheatreThrough Sunday, August 17thYATC's facebook

Reviews of Medieval Farces and High School Hamlet by Nur L.MEDIEVAL FARCES A lighthearted romp that seemed to channel Monty Python, Medieval Farces was an Olde English Pleasure. The play featured three skits, set up by thesps playing thesps dying to put up their productions at a theater with a very anxious house manager. The skits, “The Very Good and Extremely Merry Joke of the Washtub,” “The Second Tale of the Shepherd,” and “The Troublesome Olive,” were performed by very skilled upcoming youth actors and highlighted their adeptness at physical comedy and perfect comedic timing. As the play begins, the house manager is very hesitant to allow this seemingly troublesome troupe perform at his theater. Soon, however, the persuasive actors finally manage to sway him; he allows each skit until finally, in Olive, he joins in the fun. Farces, a part of the Seattle Drama School productions, was composed entirely of exceptional young actors who worked tirelessly over the summer to put up the play. While the actors were clearly enjoying themselves in the breezy comedy—which, really, can never a bad thing—the audience, too, was in stitches as the three shepherds searched high and low for a sheep disguised as a new born baby in “Shepherd,” and as family members paraded around the room arguing about a not-yet-existent olive tree in “Olive.” Every moment of the play seemed to up the laughs as the actors frolicked around the stage, decked up in medieval costumes. It was a phenomenal display of their physical comedy skills and their knack for comedic timing. I’m sure we’ll see these promising young actors going on to do great things in the very near future. HIGH SCHOOL HAMLET“To be or not to be, that is the question,” Prompts self-appointed director Claudia. “I think you mean that is the line.” Quips an aspiring Hamlet actor. Thus begins one of the opening scenes of The Seattle Children’s Theater’s production of High School Hamlet. The premise seemed to guarantee an instant success, featuring a flavoring from Disney’s cult phenomenon High School Musical and a dash of what is arguably Shakespeare’s greatest work, Hamlet. The play did not disappoint. The perfect blend of Hamlet’s gravity, and High School Musical’s brevity created a truly delectable and extremely watchable concoction. A high school production of Hamlet is underway when, suddenly, the then director Helen disappears to parts unknown. Enter Claudia, Helen’s “best-friend” who takes over the post and determines that a re-casting is in order. Then, by way of an apparition, an almost ghost-like Helen appears and informs her sister Haley, who was to play Hamlet in Helen’s version of the production, of the wrongs Claudia has done by her. Claudia, it seems, has stolen Helen’s boyfriend and gotten her suspended from school. It’s up to Haley now to get Claudia to confess. The play reads like a real-life Hamlet story as Haley must pretend her sanity is in question in her quest to catch Claudia. All the while, a lovelorn Zack frequents the stage, warbling some of High School Musical's popular songs in a hilariously off-pitched fashion. High School Hamlet was a true enjoyment to watch. The actors were extremely talented and played off their roles seamlessly. And, this production one-upped Shakespeare’s Hamlet: It had a happy ending. - Nur L.August 9th, 2008Medieval Farces and High School Hamlet are closed, but you can still catch the last show in SCT's Summer Season:Urinetown, The Musical | August 15th - 23rdwww.sct.orgDid you see one of these shows? Leave a comment and tell everybody what you thought!

So, there's this website ("So there's this website" is the "once-upon-a-time" of blogging, btw). So, there's this website where you can plug in your blog's URL and it tells you what level of education is required to read your blog. Here's what we got:

Pretty good, I'd say, for a blog written almost entirely by high school students. Heh.

Hey kids!New blog feature - we'll be posting each week's pick here every Thursday morning. And, if we get really ambitious, maybe we'll even start doing picks of the day. So, check back regularly to see what we're lovin' on.This week's pick of the week is (drumroll please):WOMEN AND WALLACE, presented by the Young Americans Theatre Company at the Little Theatre on Capitol Hill.Women and Wallace is the premiere show by The Young Americans’ Theatre Company, a completely youth-run outfit. It is the darkly funny story of a boy’s journey to adulthood as he copes with his mother’s suicide and her impact on his relationship with women. The Young Americans’ Theatre Company provides opportunities for young artists to be involved with theatre outside the influence of traditional educational environments. Its goal is to create theatre that will speak to, inspire, and authentically provoke discussion within the young Seattle community. So, get out there and support your fellows! Women and Wallace only runs for two weeks!August 7 - 17Thursdays - Sundays at 8:00 pmFind out more about YATC here.Read YATC ensemble member Zoey B’s blog posts about the trials and triumphs of starting your own theatre company on the teen tix blog.

Buy advance tickets here

We've come a long way from sitting in Tommy's basement joking about how fun it would be to be in a theatre company run only by teens. We've gotten grants, rented spaces, rehearsed a main stage show, and spent countless hours calling everyone we could think of to come and see us perform. The most exciting part of all this is that, finally, we open Thursday night.All this is not to say that we don't still have things to do. Chelsea and I spent the better part of tech rehearsal yesterday (when we weren't on stage, of course) making lists of things we still needed to get. Costumes, props, box office paperwork, and rotten tomatoes all made the list. It's getting down to the wire and, although we're more than confident that we will present a complete and polished show on Thursday, it is amazing how many things you take for granted when someone else controls your production.This has been such a great learning experience for all of us, and we're so proud of the work that we've done so far, even if we still have some work left to do. Keep checking back to the blog, i promise to let you know how opening goes.much love,Zoey and the whole YATC crewCome check it out yourself! Buy tickets at www.brownpapertickets.com or show up and use your teen tix, but make sure to get there early because we're only selling 12 teen tix per night.Tommy Fleming, Sarah Youssefi, Samuel Tilles and some blurry girls rehearse Women and Wallace.

There's a lovely article by Misha Berson in the Times today about The Young Americans' Theatre Company. Congratulations guys!

Yesterday, I stumbled across this interview with Marianne Owen and R. Hamilton Wright, two of our most accomplished and revered local actors. I loved this part, from Marianne, about her first experience at a professional theatre production:

MARIANNE: Mine — well, I went to — how old was I — 14. I think 13 or 14; I can't recall which — anyway, my high school class went to Beverly Music Theatre in Beverly, Massachusetts for a matinee performance of The Tempest. This theatre was sort of under a tent in the round, and I happened to have a seat on the aisle. I'd seen a few shows before, but that was the first professional show I'd seen. I had no idea what the play was I about, I just knew it was Shakespeare and we were studying it in Sister Mary Amadeus's Shakespeare class. Ariel was wearing a leotard — probably a cheesy sort of green-mauve leotard with sort of, not fairy wings, but diaphanous fabric coming off her — and she had a whole handful of sparkles. And every time her hand moved, the sparkles would go into the air. And she was about two feet away from me, in the aisle, and she was talking down to Prospero on the stage, who was in white robes, old — he looked like Charlton Heston in Moses— and I looked at her, and I think some of the sprinkles hit my hand, and I looked there, and I thought "What is that — they're in a bubble! What is that air? What is that? I want to know what that is!" I can still see it in my mind's eye.

Hey you young people out there! This is just a little hello from the Young Americans' Theatre Company: Seattle's newest and only completely student run theatre company. We just want to start off by giving a big shout out to Teen Tix for all the support they've given us as we make our way into the community. We're just getting off the ground, but we've definately hit the ground running since forming back in march. For those of you who haven't heard anything about us, we are a group made up of young men and women from the ages of 16-18. Our board consists of Tommy Fleming, Chelsea Taylor, Zoey Belyea (that's me), Hattie Andres, Emma Kelley, and Sam Tilles. You may recognize those names from shows you've seen lately at the Intiman, Seattle Children's Theatre, and The Rep, but now we've come together to start a completely new project. We are in the proses of mounting a complete and professional level main stage show entirely on our own and without the supervision of parents, teachers or adults of any kind.Zoey Belyea wields in a knife in rehearsals for YATC's Women and Wallace. Photo by Johnny Valencia.With this company we hope to give talented and committed students of acting a space to explore themselves as artists without having to answer to any authority figure and, most importantly, without having to pay for an expensive program. We want to give young people in the Seattle community a place where they can work and grow as actors in the company of their peers, and we want to produce work that is relevant and true to the lives we lead. There is such a shortage of material for people our age because so many adults cannot come to terms with the things we actually encounter in our every day lives. Things we can't put on stage at school such as sex, drugs, swearing, and violence can sometimes be a part of our lives (and a part of our first show Women and Wallace) and we want a space outside of a scholastic setting where we can portray these aspects of our lives. Our goal, however, is not to be shocking or scandalous. Our goal is to be real and to be taken seriously.We're so excited with all the progress we've made so far and we can't wait to update you. Look for an article on us in the Ticket section of the Seattle Times this Friday!! And please come support our show; a show produced, directed and performed by teenagers just like you. Women and Wallace by Jonathan Marc Sherman. August 7-17, Thursday-Sunday, 8pm. Performances will be held at the Little Theatre, 608 19th Ave E, Seattle, WA 98112. Buy tickets here.P.S. Become our fan on facebook!

First of all I would like to point out that the SCT Summer Season Productions are real productions. Not just "summer camps". You have to audition, sometimes you’re called back, and then, if you're good, you get to be in one of the shows. Hundreds of kids audition, some international kids too, and only a handful get to be in a production. It's not just a, if you pay we'll put you in the play, set up like Broadway Bound is. Secondly, I don’t really understand your comments about the lack of boys in the plays. Not many boys are into live theatre. At least in age group. It really is girl dominated. Like in my play, High School Hamlet, it's written so that all the genders in Hamlet are reversed. So there are only two boys in my play. And if you count all the other roles in Hamlet that boys normally would have to fill... it makes more sense not to fight the reality of the situation.And these plays do have directors. If you liked the show the production should be attributed to them, not to Seattle Children’s Theatre. I saw the plays too and I don’t think you gave the kids, or the staff, the credit they deserve. They only had four weeks to pull together a one hour play. In the theatre world that’s not very long at all. They do a good job for their age and the amount of time they are given. But, it is still a real production!~Emma