UP for Arts opener features short works by Northwest playwrights

Maybe it’s the rain, or the trees, or even just being a long way from the theater hubs of New York and Los Angeles, but Northwest playwrights have a certain sense of humor that unites them.

That humor will be on the stage Friday (Sept. 25) at the University Place Civic Building in a four-play reading that kicks off this year’s UP for Arts performance season. Directed by actor Tim Hoban, the performance will feature local playwrights from the Northwest Playwrights Alliance, and also include a display of jewelry art by Claudia Wild.

“We have a certain special sense of humor in the Northwest,” said Tim Hoban, who will read stage directions while four other actors read four local short-play scripts. “It’s deprecating, but also positive in a way.”

The Northwest Playwrights Alliance, which is organizing the event, is a nonprofit that promotes the works of writers from Washington to Northern California, Alaska to Idaho and British Columbia, and even those who live further afield but have Northwest roots. But “Tales from the Great Northwest” features work of mostly Puget Sound playwrights. “A Wild River” by Seattle’s John Longenbaugh, for example, is about the first female pope, Hoban said.

“It’s a nice point of view, especially with Pope (Francis) in there — he’s a bit looser and more based in reality than the others,” Hoban said.

Dan Erickson, originally from Olympia, writes about a woman chasing her dreams with the help of Billy Joel in “A Second Wind,” and Olympia’s Bryan Willis has adapted stream-of-consciousness poem “The Temperature of Mercury” into a four-voice dialogue.

“Sometimes you get stuck in your own head, and this is what it’s all about,” Hoban says.

The fourth play, “Moving Sale,” is by Hoban himself, an actor-playwright based in Seattle. And he said it’s just what it sounds like: “What you’d see in your neighborhood every Saturday.”

All of the plays have been performed before at alliance events, such as the Tacoma Double Shot Theater Festival and the organization’s annual exchange hosting Japanese high school students. None of them will be longer than 15 minutes; and there will be a break between the first and last two to allow the audience to look at jewelry by Wild, a member of the Proctor Art Gallery in Tacoma.

Unlike some readings, “Tales of the Great Northwest” will have no props or over-the-top movements, Hoban said.

“The NPA model is to let the words do the work,” he said.

This story was originally published September 17, 2015 at 1:46 AM with the headline "UP for Arts opener features short works by Northwest playwrights."