Hello
Friends,
Thank you so much for
joining us in our inaugural year. One year ago we set out to bring new
theatre to Tacoma that is more accessible and relevant to the working
class. We have been working diligently on this new company
with measurable success. We have produced two shows, a month of readings and
were commissioned by the Tacoma Arts Council to present several pieces for Art
at Work Month in October 2014. We made it into the Volcano’s Best of
Tacoma as “the best new inexpensive theatre experience.”
Last November, we had full readings of six shows that culminated in
an evening of selected scenes from those readings, video interviews from some
of our founding members and a silent auction. In May, we produced a short run of our first show A Life
in the Theatre by David Mamet. Admission was free. This preview
was a trial run of our mission and ability to build a small base
audience. Managing Director, Christina Hughes, used this experiment as the
driving force of her Masters Degree project. In September, we produced our first full run play The
School for Lies by David Ives. This show was a smash hit with close
to 5,000 people in attendance over ten performances. This was a huge
undertaking- balancing a small
budget while maintain the high production values that the script
demanded. By closing weekend we were sold out every night. Thank
you for that!
We are now rounding out our first year. Although we intended
to produce all six of our original shows this year, we are spreading them out
instead. We have faced many challenges in finding space to perform, which
has slowed things down. However, we are still going to produce the rest
of our original season this coming year. The founding members of WCTNW have full time jobs, which
puts us right in the middle of the Working Class and alongside the majority of
Tacoma. Just because we work hard all week does not mean that we don’t have the
time to experience life through theatre. In fact, the working class deserves to
be rewarded with live artistic experiences. And that is our goal!
Theatre is not like any other art form. Theatre’s sole
purpose is to be experienced by an audience. Theatre is a shared experience
that is unique to a moment in time and is only shared by those who are there at
that moment sharing in the experience. Theatre cannot be duplicated. This
season you are guaranteed a unique experience, in which you are the largest
character- the audience!
Thank
you for being a part of Working Class Theater NW.
Sincerely,
Tim Samland
Artistic Director
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