Interview with Samm Murphy and Julia Nardin

Over the weekend, director Beau Prichard sat down with playwrights Samm Murphy and Julia Nardin to discuss the process of writing Starling: Confrontational's next full production, scheduled to open this June at theLAB@INScape. First I’ll give you a question by proxy. Several times when I’ve told people what the show is about, I’ve been asked if you have a personal connection to the subject material. If not, what drew you to the subject matter? Julia: World War II and the years leading up to it are a pivotal period in human history, and it holds...

Welcome to the Cast of Starling

It is official, we had our first script reading on Sunday night with the complete cast of Starling. Please join us in welcoming these talented, intelligent performers. Starling is a drama set during the Warsaw Uprising of 1944. It follows a Polish nurse, Halina, who has the war brought to her doorstep in an urgent and immediate fashion, pushing her out of the protective shell she has built for herself and bringing her face to face with the cost of war and the price of freedom. Although it is, believe it or not, entirely coincidental that all...

Why We Act

We're still recovering after a very active weekend of casting, with two days of auditions for Starling. As food for thought, we'll have some meditations on that and more info on the show coming up soon, but in the mean time, we went to the source and asked some actor friends of ours why they put themselves through the potential rejection of auditions, the strenuous time commitments, and all the other hard work that goes into acting. In short, why do they do it and why do they keep at it? Katherine Kuntz I act because it keeps me active. Every...

Getting the Ball Rolling

We've had plenty of unofficial meetings for Starling, considering that Confrontational has been committed to doing the play since March of last year. But last week marked our first official pre-production meeting, and the week we posted our audition notice and so things are really real now. Accordingly, this morning was the first time I started doing math on rehearsals: Auditions are the beginning of March, if callbacks are the week after, then we won't have a cast until almost halfway through the month, and then we'll have to run all the logistics...

On Writing

“It’s just as hard to write a terrible play as it is to write a good one.” I’m paraphrasing, but that was a very wise comment from John Longenbaugh, a Seattle playwright who recently published Sherlock Holmes and the Case of the Christmas Carol, as well as a collection of short plays, Arcana. It doesn't summarize everything we talked about, but it certainly offers a nice, shiny example of the level of discourse we enjoyed at our playwright's Q&A last night. Don't forget, we have an event with managing and artistic directors of Seattle...

Looking Back and Choosing Scripts

First thing's first, join us for a free event next Wednesday. We'll be doing a panel discussion and Q&A with some local playwrights: https://www.facebook.com/events/469168343168988/ As our Seattle stand of Two Rooms wound down, and as we prepped our Lakewood performance, I couldn’t help but reflect on the show, mulling things over, what worked, what could have worked better, what I wanted that we didn’t get, and so on.  There’s a truism that says a large percentage of the director’s work can be done with good casting. It seems...

Interview with Brett Love

Brett Love is easy to recognize. He has a badass beard and carries his motorcycle helmet with him when he attends performances. He also self identifies as "giant," in reference to his definitely above-average height, so he's hard to miss. He's also an astoundingly regular feature in Seattle audiences. I knew he saw a lot of shows, but I had no idea just how many. After we both attended the first Blood Ensemble theatre salon discussion group, I learned that he's also well-spoken and opinionated, so I thought it would be fun to pick the brain of...