Oh, the titles we have heard

Every year, the Ticket Office shares some of their favorite mangled season titles they hear from patrons.

Some are pretty natural, especially given our location. So, The Brementown Musicians becomes quite naturally The Bremerton Musicians (which actually might make an interesting regional piece).

In the Northern Lands: Nordic Myths slides easily to Northern Lights and Getting Near to Baby produces Getting Ready for Baby (a stage in life most our patrons are familiar with).

But, by far the best yet have been for If You Give a Mouse a Cookie. They include:
Mouse as a Cookie
The Moose... something
The Mouse and the Cookie
Mouse Cookie

And our hands-down, overall, all-time favorite: If You Take a Party Cat to School

Priceless, folks - keep 'em coming!

Take a tour of SCT!

A few days ago, a (potential) new patron called our Ticket Office to inquire about tickets. She then asked if she could schedule a tour to see the theatre before her show to make sure we weren’t “some flea-bag outfit.”

Photo by Sternstein Photography.

I’m sure she meant no harm, and it gave the Ticket Office staff a good laugh. Because, in fact, we are very lucky to work in this beautiful building.

And, as it happens, the answer to her question about tours was – yes! We do in fact offer guided tours of the building, taking guests through our two theatres, technical pavilion and administrative offices. We accept groups anywhere from a single person to 40 at a time.

Tours have to be worked around our production schedule. After all, we don’t want folks walking through our dressing room area while actors are doing quick changes. But, other than that, we’re flexible and will do what we can to fit accommodate you.

We have one scheduled tour you can join as well. On Saturday October 17th, as part of Theatre Puget Sound’s Live Theatre Week Family Day, we’ll be offering one huge guided tour. We’ll be meeting in the SCT lobby starting at noon, and the tour will go from 12:15 to 1:00. We’ll be able to see the set for If You Give a Mouse a Cookie, and maybe even some set construction for Peter Pan, in addition to the usual tour stops.

If you’d like to RSVP for the Family Day tour, or to schedule a tour for your group, contact SCT Marketing & PR Manager Jim Jewell.

"Peter Pan" Set Model by Carey Wong

One of the many privileges of life at SCT is having the opportunity to work with artists like scenic designer Carey Wong. Not only is he an incredibly talented designer, but he's also a genuinely kind human being.

Carey designed the sets for SCT's upcoming production of Peter Pan, and once again they are both beautiful and functionally elegant.










Additional reading: International Examiner profile of Carey when he was designing The Neverending Story at SCT.

Maddow's passionate plea for arts education

From SCT's Literary Manager, by way of a colleague from the Kennedy Center, by way of the Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival, some really great quotes from AirAmerica and MSNBC's Rachel Maddow on arts and education:

Sometimes we choose to serve our country in uniform, in war, Sometimes in elected office. And those are the ways of serving our country that I think we are trained to easily call heroic. It's also a service to your country, I think, to teach poetry in the prisons, to be an incredibly dedicated student of dance, to fight for funding music and arts education in the schools.

A country without an expectation of minimal artistic literacy, without a basic structure by which the artists among us can be awakened and given the choice of following their talents and a way to get to be great at what they do, is a country that is not actually as a great as it could be. And a country without the capacity to nurture artistic greatness is not being a great country. It is a service to our country, and sometimes it is heroic service to our country, to fight for the United States of America to have the capacity to nurture artistic greatness.

Not just in wartime but especially in wartime, and not just in hard economic times but especially in hard economic times, the arts get dismissed as 'sissy.' Dance gets dismissed as craft, creativity gets dismissed as inessential, to the detriment of our country. And so when we fight for dance, when we buy art that's made by living American artists, when we say that even when you cut education to the bone, you do not cut arts and music education, because arts and music education IS bone, it is structural, it is essential; you are, in [Jacob's Pillow founder] Ted Shawn's words, you are preserving the way of life that we are supposedly fighting for and it's worth being proud of.

Last Chance!

Join us for a fantastic conclusion to SCT's Summer Season 2009! This weekend we have our final Summer Season production, featuring students performing in Once On This Island, Jr. and Romeo and Juliet.

Good luck to all of our hard working cast!

Productions will take place Charlotte Martin Theatre @ 7pm, August 6-8.

Teentix Review of RENT: School Edition

The reviews for SCT Drama School's production of RENT: School Edition keep rolling in!

Check out the TeenTix's review here!

Review of RENT: School Edition

This weekend, SCT's Drama School presented the musical "RENT: School Edition", and they rocked the house. Maybe you saw them last week on KING 5 Morning News or Evening Magazine, or maybe you even made it in to see the show, but for the rest of you, SCT Teen Reviewer Kathryn L. tells you what you missed:

It was a hot summer day, and I was dying in the heat. We had just come back from a trip in the South were it was just about as hot, they only difference there was air conditioning. We had been eating out and going to movies just for the privilege of spending maybe an hour to two hours in a blessed building that had air con. Then, my mom shows me the email; I get to review RENT: School Edition at Seattle Childrens Theatre. More air conditioning! I was estatic.

However, when I got there, and saw quite a few people from my school's drama program had come to watch, it became clear to me that this wasn’t just an air conditioning paradise, this was an air conditioning paradise with entertainment! And despite the young age of the actors, the play definitely had a professional feel.

About the acting, Zane Cimino made a very effective drag queen who probably was the favorite character of the audience considering how loud they clapped each time Angel came on. Jon Llarenas? His solo at the memorial most definitely brought tears to the audience’s eyes. Matt Lang did a good job at being the voice from the outside in as well as Mark, and Camden Morris as Roger along with Kelsey Schergen as Mimi made a very sweet picture and a lot of extra dynamic. Maddie Polyak (Joanne) and Natalee Merrill-Boyet (Maureen) did a good job at playing a falling-apart couple who still are trying to make it work (on one part at least). Then, Frazier Willman did an amazing portrayal of a man outcast from his friends because he became uppity. As for the rest of the cast, they were just as suburb and amazing as the eight lead roles, especially the Season of Love soloists - great job. I loved the Christmas Bells Are Ringing song, and the answering machine bits.

All in all, exquisite acting and phenomenal singing made The Seattle Children’s Theatre version of the Broadway Musical turned movie, RENT all the more enjoyable.