Seattle, WA. The Book-It Repertory Theatre has been putting on all-audio productions throughout the pandemic. Now, Book-It is preparing for an in-person 2022 season. The upcoming productions are highlighted in the graphic above.
After making an early decision to switch from a proposed traditional in-person slate of shows to all-audio productions for the 2020-21 season, Book-It was faced with the choice of how to best move forward in a post-vaccine world for 2021-22. According to Marketing and Communications Director Torrie McDonald, these decisions were made in the “heady days of pre-Delta Variant breakthroughs and rising infection rates.”
McDonald notes that the world moves quickly, and Book-It administration is doing what they can to keep up while ensuring that the health, safety, and comfort of everyone involved–artists, patrons, staff–is top of mind.
Brandon J. Simmons directed, adapted, and played the role of Ghost/Narrator in the all-audio production of Oscar Wilde’s “The Canterville Ghost.”
With the information from the CDC, Governor Inslee, and other appropriate officials, Book-It is beginning the upcoming season with two audio dramas, beginning in October. Opening in late January, Book-It will offer three in-person productions in the Center Theatre at Seattle Center.
McDonald says that the response to an all-audio season was “better than we hoped for.” While it can never replace the specific experience of seeing a show in-person, audio plays fit with Book-It’s particular niche and mission: adapting books into theatre experiences. As audiobooks are already a massive market, it was a pretty easy fit for Book-It, in “some ways.”
Of course, communicating the ways in which plays were different than strict audiobooks was important. McDonald feels that “audiences are savvy enough that they understood.” People appreciated the position Book-It, and the entire theatre industry were in. As a result, many of their patrons came “along for the ride.”
Many of Book-It’s colleagues have lost their jobs or had to shutter their organizations. “The lament that theatre is dead,” McDonald reflects, “has rung out. Again.” Book-It administration highlight that theatre is an artform that has survived for millennia; survived plagues and wars and changing climates, both political and environmental.
Theatre isn’t dead, or even dying, but it is evolving, according to Book-It. It “should” and “must” evolve–Book-It is ensuring this is the case through pandemic adaptations.
The 2021-2022 season will feature both audio and in-person productions.
As a final note, McDonald observes: “We are being forced to look at ourselves in a mirror, without our makeup on, and see who we really are, to decide who we can and should become. Hopefully, that will be more equitable, more accessible, and just as creative as ever.”
For the 32nd season of plays, Book-It will present two Audio Dramas and three In-Person Mainstage shows. See below for the list of titles and links to more information on each. For further information not detailed below, visit the 2021-2022 season page.
The first two productions are Audio Dramas this season. Zen and the Art of an Android Beatdown is a short story and will have one download available that contains the entire story start to finish. The Three Musketeers is a longer book presented in two parts, that will be released over two weeks. You will be able to stream or download each title starting on its release date and until June 30, 2022.
The Three Musketeers will be presented in two all-audio segments.
Beginning in January 2022, patrons will be welcomed back to the Center Theatre in the historic Seattle Center Armory for three in-person shows: Beowulf, Mrs. Caliban, and The Bonesetter’s Daughter.
For these in-person productions, please note that to ensure health and safety protocols are kept up to date, all seating will be General Admission this season. You will not be able to choose your specific seat in advance. However, let Book-It administration know if you have an accessibility need, and they will do their best to accommodate it.
Pricing Information:
Full Season Subscription Packages: $122-$185
Audio Only Subscription for $40
From Book-It Repertory Theatre:
Book-It Repertory Theatre has built a 30-plus year legacy of creating new, evocative plays from some of the most compelling books on the shelves. By creating theatre exclusively from literature, Book-It strives to inspire a love of reading through a live, communal experience.
Today, with over 150 original adaptations to its credit, Book-It is widely respected for the consistent artistic excellence of its work. We are proud of our interpretations of classics by authors from the Western canon of literature—Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, Bram Stoker, Miguel de Cervantes, Kate Chopin, and Herman Melville, among many. And we are thrilled to bring new, or often excluded, voices to that list of exceptional authors: N.K. Jemisin, Octavia Butler, Jamyang Norbu, Tochi Onyebuchi, and Mbolo Mbue, to name a few.
Though we produce our work primarily in the Center Theatre of Seattle Center’s historic Amory building, our work has been shown in multiple local venues including ACT, Intiman, Seattle Art Museum, Town Hall, Freehold, North Seattle Community College, Northwest Asian American Theatre, Hugo House, On the Boards, Café Nordo, and Seattle Repertory Theatre. Book-It’s national reputation continues to grow with our adaptations being performed in theatres across the country including the Hartford Stage, Center Stage Baltimore, Minnesota Children’s Theatre, Theatreworks Palo Alto, Portland Center Stage, and others.
The joy of sharing stories with our community continues to inspire us, and we look forward to the growing the list of voices we will experience together.
Our Mission: To transform great literature into great theatre, through simple and sensitive production, and to inspire our audiences to read.
Our Vision: To be a nationally-known theatre arts center where Book-It’s partnership of theatre, literature, and education nourishes the literacy and the artistic vitality of our community.
Our Land Acknowledgement: We would like to acknowledge that our company works on the traditional land of the first people of Seattle, the Duwamish people, past and present; and we honor, with gratitude, the land itself and the Duwamish Tribe.
From the foundation: “we hope to educate, inspire, and motivate people by sharing stories of work that is improving lives, from Seattle to South Africa. Through our interactive exhibits, visitors can investigate some of the world’s tough challenges and learn how to act on their own ideas and solutions.” Pictured above is Employee Occupational Health Nurse Katherine Volner, featured by the Discovery Center for serving as an essential worker. Volner is one of five featured stories in the new exhibit.
The new exhibit features five inspiring stories from the fight to end the COVID-19 pandemic.
️Bringing together stories of strength, innovation, and hope from the community in Washington State during the COVID-19 pandemic, this online experience creates a forum for connection, empathy, and healing.
The exhibit highlights people under five main themes:
Fighting and Treating COVID-19
Spreading Joy and Healing
Sharing Critical Information
Meeting the Needs of Communities
Essential Workers Meeting Everyday Needs
Lynda Stuart of the Gates Foundation COVID-19 Response Team shares her story within the interactive exhibit. Stuart discusses rising to the challenge of COVID-19: “Being a global citizen comes with a fascinating insight into the world. One person’s success is everybody’s success; one person’s failure can take us all down. It gives you a pair of eyes on problems that other people don’t necessarily see.”
Lynda Stuart says that watching her father work in health care, she realized “public health and global health were in [her] blood.”
Stuart points out that vaccine work can feel like a thankless task, regardless of how important they are. “If we’re superheroes, then vaccines are our capes. We don’t even know we have them.” Check out this clip of Stuart discussing vaccine demographics, and the inequalities the pandemic has further exposed.
Find out more about Stuart’s contributions here, including how she finds hope in community and spending time with loved ones.
In addition to highlighting those fighting and treating COVID-19 like Stuart, the new exhibition emphasizes the work of spreading joy and healing. Roxana Pardo Garcia describes herself as “a small business owner who is fortunate to be in a place to not only be creative but act on that creativity and to be of service to my community.”
Pardo Garcia recalls being “scared and overwhelmed” by the possibility of the pandemic’s long-lasting effects on the Latinx community. As a disproportionately impacted group, Pardo Garcia voiced concerns about the genetic, emotional memories that would be passed down.
Roxana Pardo Garcia found herself asking: “What is my role in facilitating healing for our communities?”
In response to this call to healing, Pardo Garcia quit her job and started Alimentando al Pueblo, “a different kind of food bank.” The intent was to provide food to people that meets their basic needs, while also ensuring food would be relevant to those receiving it. Pardo Garcia and her family felt that growing up, other food banks would offer items that didn’t get used.
All the vendors Alimentando al Pueblo works with are Latinx- and BIPOC-owned groceries and farms.
To read more about Pardo Garcia’s journey to provide food amidst the pandemic, click here. For more details about the stories mentioned, or to explore other highlights of the exhibit, explore the site.
From The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation:
Our Role
Where does our foundation fit among the other institutions trying to improve the world?
We typically hear about two sectors, the public and the private. The private sector – business – is good at developing products and services, while the public sector – government – is good at delivering solutions to all the people who need them.
In many cases, the private and public sectors, acting either separately or together, meet people’s needs. But there are gaps, spaces where some people don’t get what they need to live healthy, productive lives.
Here’s an example: A generation ago, the market for vaccines worked well in wealthy countries – if you wanted to be immunized against a whole range of diseases, you could – but the system did not work for other parts of the world. Certain vaccines just weren’t available for most people. The private sector didn’t sell them in low-income countries because it wasn’t clear there would be buyers. Governments tried to step in, but they weren’t in a position to bring all the pieces — the funding, the partnerships, the logistics – together to make it work. Tragically, millions of children were dying of preventable diseases each year.
This is the kind of problem that philanthropies can help solve, and it’s how we define our foundation’s role.
Seattle, WA. One Day Wages is a nonprofit working to fight extreme poverty around the world. Based in Seattle, the organization’s slogan involves looking toward a better future, “One Day.” The nonprofit has international branches and is working to build awareness for issues in underdeveloped areas. It helps poverty-affected communities by providing educational and professional resources and opportunities. It collaborates with other non-profit organizations. Its most recent project is ‘Project #191 Clean and Safe Hands in Nicaragua’ in a partnership with El Porvenir. The goal was to highlight how inaccessible handwashing stations were to rural Nicaraguans. With the help of One Day Wages, they distributed 1,818 handwashing stations with soap to homes, schools, health posts, and health centers in need. This simple but critical intervention cost only $10 per handwashing station, and El Porvenir’s established network in 6 regions of Nicaragua allowed for quick and widespread response. With this third partnership between ODW and El Porvenir, we were able to reach 92,220 people in total with access to handwashing stations.” Ultimately, through their collective impact, 1 Water Point was built, and there was now more accessibility to clean water and sanitation areas to help prevent illness.
One Day Wages is providing awareness for children’s education, children’s health, emergency relief, gender-based violence, girls’ empowerment, global hunger, human trafficking, jobs & skills, maternal health, preventable disease, refugee relief, water & sanitation.
Here’s a video about the organization:
Currently, One Day Wages is holding a 12th annual gala with covid-safety measures by providing 3 opportunities: in-person, limited, and virtual. Their in-person event is in Sodo Park, their limited ‘Party-Style’ is a small gathering in the comfort of your own home with packages that include a party box sent to your address, and a Zoom accessible event with DIY activities.
In response to Covid-19, One Day Wages wrote ” One Day’s Wages has launched an emergency relief fund to respond to the spread of COVID-19 within some of the most vulnerable communities around the world. While the strain from the pandemic is tangible for all of us, we’re coming alongside communities in vulnerable places such as refugee camps, remote villages, and densely populated urban areas where the spread of the virus could have severe impact.” and “Through our partnership with RSKW, 1,800 individuals were provided with relief during the pandemic through direct relief, food support, proper sanitizing kits, masks, and protocols to prevent spread of Covid-19.”
A woman who has received an emergency covid-relief aid.
From One Day Wages:
As a grassroots movement, we are impacting communities and changing lives.
Whether it’s a young girl who no longer has to walk miles to collect water, a mother who can provide for her children thanks to business training, or a school that can now grow nutritious food for their students–our impact is far reaching–community focused–and always sustainable. But we aren’t just about granting money toward issues of poverty, we also want to inspire people to care about justice, and to take action through simple generosity. Because together, we truly believe we can alleviate extreme global poverty in our lifetime.
Seattle, WA. Things are getting closer to normal at The Henry Art Gallery. Visitors no longer have to register in advance, they can walk-up and buy tickets. Mask and social distancing requirements remain in place regardless of vaccination status. Here’s a link to visitor guidelines.
The Henry Art Gallery is part of the University of Washington and is currently showcasing Will Rawls: Everlasting Stranger which is featured in the image above. The exhibit, in collaboration with Velocity Dance Center, runs through August 15th.
In Everlasting Stranger, New York-based choreographer and writer Will Rawls (b. 1978, Boston, MA) activates relationships between language, dance, and image through the fragmentary medium of stop-motion animation. In his installation, time and movement slow as a live, automated camera photographs the frame-by-frame actions of four dancers. While the performers occupy the labor of becoming images, visual capture is staged as an obsessive process that is constant yet compromised by the movement it aims to fix.
Here, as in previous works, Rawls develops strategies of evasion and engagement within systems that mediate, distort, and abstract the body.
Rawls’s exhibition takes inspiration from the work of Guyanese writer Wilson Harris and his surrealist novel The Infinite Rehearsal (1987). In the book, the constrictive projections of the colonial gaze manifest as a child’s fever dream where ghosts reinterpret time, genealogy, and identity as unstable matter. Harris’s novel serves as a conduit through which Rawls addresses the misrepresentation that haunts all forms of capture, including photography and choreography. Within the temporal delirium that marks existence in quarantine, Rawls animates the life that appears between frames.
PERFORMANCE SCHEDULE:
Saturdays: July 17 – August 14, 12 – 3 PM
Will Rawls: Everlasting Stranger is a collaboration between Henry Art Gallery and Velocity Dance Center and is organized by Nina Bozicnik, Henry Curator, and Erin Johnson, Velocity Interim Artistic and Managing Director. It is presented in conjunction with the Seattle Festival of Dance + Improvisation, with project support from the National Endowment for the Arts. Additional support provided by UW Department of Dance, and by John Robinson and Maya Sonenberg. Costumes complements of womxn’s rites.
The exhibition is presented in conjunction with Murmurations, a Seattle-wide arts collaboration featuring a series of exhibitions, performances, screenings, community conversations, artist talks, and other programs co-developed between cultural organizations.
Other exhibitions are continually available this summer. For an online opportunity, Henry Art Gallery is hosting Sonolocations: A Sounds Works Series from June – August 2021.
Partnered with the Jack Straw Cultural Center, The Henry has commissioned a three-part series of audio artworks, to be released free and online throughout the summer of 2021. The participating artists were invited to consider the theme of place, and its unique resonance throughout the pandemic, to offer directed sonic experiences for listeners wherever they might find themselves. Participating artists are Byron Au Yong (b. 1971, Pittsburgh, PA), Chenoa Egawa (b. 1964, Ellensburg, WA), and Bill Lowe (b. 1946, Pittsburgh, PA) and Naima Lowe (b. 1979, Middletown, CT).
To get a preview of Sonolocations, listen to Byron Au Yong’s “Pomelo” here:
Audio artworks will be available on SoundCloud, and on the Jack Straw website. You can also subscribe to Sonolocations as a podcast to receive each piece when it launches.
The Henry is also hosting Gary Simmons: The Engine Room through August 22, 2021. The work of Gary Simmons (b. 1964, New York, NY) explores racial, social, and cultural politics, interrogating the ways in which we attempt to reconstruct the past via personal and collective memory. For this commissioned exhibition at the Henry, the artist created a large-scale wall drawing, a suite of new paintings and sculptures, and a sculptural installation, drawing together disparate components to create space for new interaction and invention.
This piece has been utilized in Jambalaya Jam at the Henry, a night of music celebrating Seattle’s recent musical past.
The installation will function as an interactive space, riffing off traditional American suburban garage architecture and referencing the garage as a site for invention, creativity, and experimentation, particularly for music/bands. As both a private laboratory and a public stage, the garage sculpture will be activated by a series of musician residencies, drawing on unique areas of the Seattle music scene, both historical and present, and tapping into the lesser-known, yet equally influential, genres and practices.
Simmons researched and archived band and concert posters from around the world to create this piece.
From Henry Art Gallery:
The Henry is internationally recognized for bold and challenging exhibitions, for pushing the boundaries of contemporary art and culture, and for being the first to premiere new works by established and emerging artists. Through individual experiences with art, we inspire visitors to upend their expectations and discover surprising connections.
Seattle, WA. The Borgen Project is hosting its first virtual summer event on July 31st, 2021: BORGENFEST. It is both a festival and a call to action to end global poverty; with music, celebration, and guest appearances. The festival features musical performances by Kitty Coen and 99 Neighbors, and includes guest appearances by Congressman Adam Smith, representative of Washington’s 9th congressional district; Natalie Gill-Mensah, an infectious disease expert and member on The Borgen Project’s Board of Directors; and Clint Borgen, President, and Founder of The Borgen Project. Proceeds from the BORGENFEST will benefit the organization’s poverty reduction efforts. To attend the event, you can find more information and register here.
This event is meant to build awareness about poverty reduction legislation and aid programs, while also celebrating the many obstacles overcome this past year in the international community. From the COVID-19 pandemic to an increase in violence against women, 2020 and 2021 have been particularly difficult for everyone. Yet amidst these tumultuous times comes a potential for unity: and that is cause for celebration.
Here’s a video about the organization:
Amy Pettigrew, Senior Program Manager at The Borgen Project and BORGENFEST Committee Chair, outlined the importance of this event: “The negative impacts of COVID-19 have caused a significant setback in hunger and poverty reduction efforts. Now is the time to ramp up our efforts and amplify voices who continue to struggle with the effects of the pandemic, in tandem with the fight to end global poverty. That’s what this event is for.”
More about The Borgen Project:
The Borgen Project is a bipartisan nonprofit campaign working at the political level towards the goal of eradicating global poverty. The organization was founded in 2003 by Clint Borgen, and has since then met with 87 percent of the U.S. Senate regarding key poverty-reduction legislation and other relevant bills. The Borgen Project continually mobilizes people worldwide to join their cause. With the advocacy help of this campaign, bills have been passed that improve women’s access to education, implement global health programs, reform global food aid, and more.
You are invited to celebrate with The Borgen Project on July 31st at 7pm EST, and you are welcome to register for the event here.
Seattle, WA. Vadis has been providing services to people with disabilities since 1979, and had to creatively adapt to the pandemic. The nonprofit provides services to adults with disabilities and to youth and young adults experiencing homelessness and recently, Vadis administrators had to learn how to support people in new and virtual ways. This included helping the people Vadis supports in employment to understand the ramifications of COVID and in particular, all the safety protocols now in place, like masking in the photo above. According to CEO Christopher Christian, “this was not a swift and easy transition for many of the people we support in jobs in the community.”
Many of the people Vadis supports were deemed essential workers due to the nature of their jobs. They needed to keep working or rapidly return to work when many others in their lives were not, or had the option to work from home whereas they did not. In some cases, the people Vadis supports do not have control of their home environment and decisions are made for them. Some of those decisions included not being supported to go back to work for fear they would bring COVID back home with them from the work environment. Staff deployment and roles had to immediately change and morph with ever-evolving social restrictions and rules.
Many of the people supported by Vadis were deemed essential workers from the start of the pandemic.
Vadis administrators say they were in a “continual state of flux and adjustment, like everyone else, on a daily basis for a long time.” Alongside new employee-based working conditions and parameters, Vadis also “simply lost employees, or employees availability due to fear or the need to stay home with their school-aged children.” This stretched already strained staffing resources and ultimately affected how Vadis could support people in their jobs, or pursuit of jobs.
Team members at Vadis “learned by necessity” how to maximize the ability to support people in the best way possible through virtual means. This lead to the discovery of new and virtual ways for people with disabilities to engage in their communities, even during a pandemic. Virtual participation included online classes, clubs, support groups, educational events, and learning engagements.
New opportunities for employment arose when many were seeking assistance from Vadis during the ebb and flow of the pandemic.
There are additional positive developments for Vadis amidst COVID-19. Many of the people supported were designated as essential workers right from the start of the pandemic. As jobs became increasingly unfilled with employers, this created additional employment opportunities for people seeking employment, who did indeed want to work.
Christian says, “Like everyone else, we have helped people cope with the unknown, chronic change, sense of powerlessness in their lives and the uncertainty of knowing if their employer would be needing them back.” As safety protocols continued to shift and vary, and the frequency with which they changed, many people supported by Vadis faced consternation and adjustment challenges.
From Vadis:
Vadis has been providing services to people with disabilities since 1979.
From a small agency serving 25 people, we have evolved, expanded and now serve over 1,000 people per month in King, Pierce, Snohomish, Kitsap, Thurston and Mason Counties.
What hasn’t changed is our commitment to the people we serve. We strive to provide people with disabilities, and those who experience homelessness, opportunities and experiences to fulfill their economic and human potential.
Vadis is dedicated to assisting businesses in finding great employees and be a more inclusive employer. Our focus on customer service is your assurance of excellence!
If you have questions or need to talk with staff, please call (253) 863-5173.
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