SEQUIM — Olympic Theatre Arts Center’s inaugural annual New Works Showcase opens Friday for just one weekend.
Six short plays by local authors writing on the theme of Resilience will be presented at the theater at 414 N. Sequim Ave.
Performance times are 7:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday and 2 p.m. Sunday.
Tickets are $15 for the general public, $13 for OTA members, and $10 for students with school identification card. They are available at the theatre box office from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m., Tuesday through Friday or online at www.OlympicTheatreArts.org. For more information, call 360-683-7326.
This is the community theatre’s first ever New Works Showcase. A team of both established and new directors to OTA are working with a cast of local actors, also ranging from veterans to beginners, to bring these stories to the stage for the first time.
“OTA’s first annual New Works Showcase is all about highlighting the written voices of our community,” OTA said in a press release.
Brand new, never seen before plays by Suzanne Bailie, Aurora Lagattuta, Gabriel Mills and Sarah Brabant, Susan Noyes, John Painter and the late Jim Guthrie will take the stage.
This year’s showcase is dedicated to long time OTA actor and director Jim Guthrie.
The plays are a collection of comedies, dramas with musical undertones.
“My play came to be out of my deepened appreciation for the powers of imagination and music that I rediscovered during COVID,” said Aurora Lagattuta, author of “I Dance For Purple,” a story of a woman in isolation finding freedom and connection through imagination, music and dance.
“Often I thought I turned to sound and story to escape reality but I found that songs and dreams also helped my mind and body remember another equally true reality, one that lives in the pulse of our blood and the joy of our expression.”
Susan Noyes, author of “Goodbye Cruel World,” said that, given the theme, frustrated seniors sparked her interest.
The play is about two woman making a suicide pact with fate intervening.
“I write comedy because I believe we need it,” Noyes said. Laughter is so necessary right now.”
Said John Painter — who wrote “Dance Your Dance,” a poignant comedy about five souls whose conversations in death reveal their perseverance in life — “I think it’s easy to fixate on what we perceive as our failures, while often we fail to recognize our successes.
“Dance Your Dance grew out of a desire to celebrate the spirit of resilience we discover in our darkest moments.”
