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Repertoire
The Feast doesn’t do traditional theatre seasons where you do a set number of plays each year and then never do them again: Making plays just to leave them behind is economically inefficient, ecologically irresponsible, and artistically insufficient. We can’t make big plays with big paychecks under those conditions.
Rather than making our process cheaper, The Feast wants to make our offerings less disposable. In our project-based producing model, we work on ideas repeatedly until they’re finished, and then find opportunities to share these projects with audiences repeatedly.
This means that instead of listing our “history,” we’re listing our “repertoire.” We want to do these plays again; they’ve got more to give our artists and audiences.
Orpheus Descending
2014
The Berwind Purcell House, 808 Lone Oak Road, Longview WA
2015
Co-produced with Intiman Theater, 12th Avenue Arts
Photo Credit: Joe Carpenter
Orpheus Descending
By Tennessee Williams
Williams’ rarely-done work asks how a town becomes a lynch mob. In his riff on the Orpheus myth, a charismatic musician stumbles into a conservative southern town and begins an affair with the wife of a shopkeeper. Our 2014 workshop and 2015 production used an ensemble of eight, working across racial and gender lines, to confront Williams’ own unexamined prejudices and those of this “nice southern town.” Finally, we experimented with the audience and actors constantly shifting relationship in each of the play’s three acts.
Having further developed our design process and aesthetic since 2015, our vision for a future iteration is to heighten the theatricality and aesthetic language employed by the eight person ensemble, creating a bracingly alive approach to a “familiar” playwright.
Creative Team:
Director: Ryan Guzzo Purcell
Designer (2015 only): Ryan Dunn
Stage Manager (2015 only): Adrienne Mendoza
2014 Cast:
Chinasa Ogbuagu, Charlie Thurston, Rebecca Gibel, Max Rosenak, Richard Prioleau, Tangela Large, Grant Chapman, Lee LeBreton
2015 Cast:
Kemiyondo Coutinho, Charlie Thurston, Rebecca Gibel, Max Rosenak, Richard Prioleau, Tiffany Nichole Greene, Grant Chapman, Lee LeBreton
Photo Credit: Truman Buffett
Gross Indecency
By Moisés Kaufman
Why do we love queer art but hate queer artists? In 1895 Oscar Wilde went, in a day, from being the most celebrated artist in London to public enemy number one. He was put on trial for sodomy, costing him everything: his fame, his fortune, his family, the love of his life, his freedom, and ultimately his life. Moisés Kaufman’s docuplay—pulled from trial transcripts, contemporary media, and first-hand accounts—tells the story of Wilde’s fall from grace.
Our 2023 workshop used five actors, five cameras, and projections, creating a media circus in the language of social media, TV, theatre, and a courtroom drama. It’s aesthetics are queer, sensational, and digital, presenting this gay icon and the violence he faced within a 21st-century gaze.
Our vision is to create a traveling media circus that can present this work to audiences all over the country. Our audiences for this show were queer, multigenerational, and deeply engaged. In a moment when theatre is splitting between existing audiences (who are often older and more familiar with classics) and new, younger audiences. This project bridges the divide.
Creative Team:
Director: Ryan Guzzo Purcell
Production Designer: An-lin Dauber
Video and Projection Designer: Nick O’Leary
Stage Manager: Tori Thompson
Cast:
Grant Chapman, Ricky Spaulding, Nicholas Japaul Bernard, Jomar Tagatac, Rebecca Gibel
Photo Credit: Jeff Carpenter
Blood Wedding
By Federico Garcia Lorca, Translated by Langston Hughes
Our 2018 production of Blood Wedding (by Frederico Garcia Lorca and translated by Langston Hughes) was staged site-specificlally in an industrial art space, creating a festival atmosphere that immersed audiences in different realities.
The first act asks the audience to travel between rotating dioramas, each one telling a portion of the domestic story of the characters.
The second act brought the entire audience together for a music-, dance-, and poetry-filled wedding.
The final act brought audiences into a gravel pit filled with shipping containers and trashcan fires. The actors came from everywhere in the chaos of the wilderness.
Our vision for this work is to commission a new translation and produce it as a major site-specific public art project in Seattle.
Creative Team:
Director: Ryan Guzzo Purcell
Production Designer: An-lin Dauber
Composer: Shenandoah Davis
Musicians: The Thoughts
Stage Manager: Juliana Brei-Crawley
Cast:
Reggie D. White, Brittain Ashford, David Samuel, Mia Ellis, Rebecca Gibel, Tangela Large, Leicester Landon
Photo Credit: Marcia Davis
The Time of Your Life
By William Saroyan
Why do certain characters show up again and again in “classic American stories?” The Feast used William Saroyan’s slice-of-life comedy to explore what these archetypes (or stereotypes) say about American identity. William Saroyan’s slice-of-life comedy explored that question by placing as many classic tropes as possible inside one bar: Nick’s waterfront saloon in San Francisco. In 2019 The Feast explored what happens when classic “American” characters like the cowboy, the slumming society dame, the Horatio Alger, and more than 20 others are explored through the prism of multiple actors. With eight actors each playing all the parts at different times, The Feast destroys, explores, rebuilds stereotypes that have shaped the way we talk and think about Americanness.
Initially performed site-specifically in a bar, our goal in future iterations is to build upon that workshop experiment by turning a theater into a functioning bar for audiences to get up close and personal with the stories Americans tell themselves.
Creative Team:
Director: Ryan Guzzo Purcell
Associate Director: Reggie D. White
Designer: An-lin Dauber
Stage Manager: Maria J. Gray
Cast:
Kemiyondo Coutinho, Max Rosenak, Grant Chapman, Lamar Legend, Madeleine Lambert, Lee LeBreton, Richard Prioleau, Dedra D. Woods
The Baldwin Canon: Blues for Mister Charlie and The Amen Corner
2016 & 2017
Photo Credit: Bruce Clayton Tom
The Baldwin Canon: Blues for Mister Charlie and The Amen Corner
By James Baldwin
James Baldwin, in addition to being one of America’s moral and literary masters, might also be our most underappreciated playwright. In his two plays, The Amen Corner and Blues for Mister Charlie, Baldwin uses his singular poetic understanding and intellectual rigor to illuminate major American questions. In Blues for Mister Charlie, he uses the tragedy of Emmett Till as a template for excavating the roots of American racism. In The Amen Corner, he uses the church of his youth to create an allegory for the struggle to create a liberated spirituality.
In 2016 and 2017 with Blues for Mister Charlie, and in 2022 with The Amen Corner, The Feast proudly introduced the first professional production of both of these masterpieces to Seattle audiences. We toured Blues for Mister Charlie to both a church and a high school, bringing together audiences of students, theatre patrons, and congregants. We also facilitated in-depth post show discussions, making the conversations between community members part the art itself. In 2022, we co-produced The Amen Corner with LANGSTON.
Our goal is to bring these incredible but rarely-produced works to as wide an audience as possible.
Blues for Mister Charlie (2016 & 2017)
Director: Ryan Guzzo Purcell
Production Designer: Pete Rush
Stage Manager (2017 only): Tori Thompson
Music: Roebuck (2016), Aaron M.D. Norman (2017)
Cast:
Nancy Moricette, Max Rosenak, Grant Chapman, Ryan Williams French, Lee LeBreton (both years), Jude Sandy, Rebecca Gibel, Charlie Thurston, Lateefah Holder, Lorenzo Roberts (2016), Rafael Jordan, Brenda Joyner, Leicester Landon, Alexis Aisha Green, Reggie D. White (2017)
The Amen Corner (2022)
Co-Produced with LANGSTON
Director: Reggie D. White
Set and Costume Design: An-lin Dauber
Lighting Design: Robert Aguilar
Music: Aaron M.D. Norman
Stage Manager: Alyda Sorm
Cast:
Maiya Reaves, Adrian Roberts, Cathleen Ridley, Anthony Holiday, Dimitri Woods, Amaya Zhané, Anjelica McMillan, Felicia Loud, Malcolm J. West
History
Projects whose life cycle is complete:
Glass Menagerie
By Tennessee Williams
You’re invited to a dinner party, hosted by Amanda Wingfield. This reimagining of Tennessee Williams’ haunting family drama put you inside the small, St. Louis apartment where one family struggles to survive the depression and each other.
Location, co-producers:
2017: Co-Produced with Cafe Nordo
Creative Team:
Director: Ryan Guzzo Purcell
Designer: Ryan Guzzo Purcell
Cast:
Grant Chaman, Lee LeBreton, Leicester Landon, Nancy Moricette
The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window
By Lorraine Hansberry
Why do so many “progressive” communities fail to live up to their ideals? Is solidarity truly possible? Lorraine Hansberry followed her masterpiece A Raisin in the Sun with this scathing, hilarious, and uncompromising look at the failings, compromises, and possibilities of white liberals. The Feast partnered with Intiman Theatre to produce this play about a progressive idealist in 1964 Greenwich Village who is forced to confront how much he’s willing to sacrifice to stand by what he believes in.
Location, co-producers:
2023: Erickson Theatre, Seattle
Co-produced with Intiman Theater
Creative Team:
Directed by Ryan Guzzo Purcell
Scenic and Costume Design: An-lin Dauber
Lighting Design: Geoff Korf
Sound Design: M.L. Dogg
Stage Manager: Laurel Nichols
Cast:
Max Rosenak, Caitlin Duffy, Chip Sherman, Anthony Holiday, Alexandra Tavares, Lee LeBreton, Francesca Root-Dodson
A Bright Room Called Day
By Tony Kushner
A new president has just come to power by the slimmest of margins. Though his rhetoric is alarming, democratic institutions are strong and the opposition is looking good heading into the next election. This is Berlin, in 1932. In Agnes Eggling’s apartment, a group of artists and activists struggle between their conscience and their comfort, trying to decide how much they are willing to sacrifice for their beliefs.
In 2018, the Feast revisited this prophetic play from 1985 as a provocation for Trump’s America, posing timely questions about citizenship, resistance, and complicity.
Location, co-producers:
The Hillman City Collaboratory, Seattle
Creative Team:
Director: Ryan Guzzo Purcell
Designer: An-lin Dauber
Stage Manager: Maria J. Gray
Cast:
Lateefah Holder, Brandon J. Simmons, Alexandria Chipman, Nick Edwards, Claudine Mboligikpelani Nako, Dedra D. Woods, Grant Chapman, Lee LeBreton
Campfire Festival
At the height of the pandemic, we were struggling to figure out how to create theatre and support artists at a time when we couldn’t be within six feet of each other. The Campfire Festival was an effort to strip theater down to its very basics: one person outside telling a story. We commissioned five artists to create outdoor, socially-distanced theater pieces that they could rehearse alone. We then invited our audience to sit in hula-hoops spaced six feet apart and enjoy being at the theater again.
Location:
Rainier Arts Center, Seattle, WA
Commissioned Artists:
Justin Huertas (performed by Rheanna Atendido), Maggie Rogers, Aaron M. D. Norman, Dedra D. Woods, Ryan Purcell
Small Craft Warnings
By Tennessee Williams
A doctor, a beautician, a sex worker, a scriptwriter, a stud, a cook, and a boy from Iowa walk into a bar. In a dive on the wharf in San Diego, a makeshift community laughs, drinks, dances, fights, and cares for one another in Small Craft Warnings, Tennessee Williams’ raucous and searching meditation on the lengths to which we will go to find human connection.
Location, co-producers:
2019: Washington Hall, Seattle
Creative Team:
Director: Ryan Guzzo Purcell
Designer: An-lin Dauber
Stage Manager: Maria J. Gray
Cast:
Kemiyondo Coutinho, Max Rosenak, Grant Chapman, Lamar Legend, Madeleine Lambert, Lee LeBreton, Richard Prioleau, Dedra D. Woods
Marisol
By José Rivera
Marisol Perez has always followed the rules. Get a good job, say your prayers, never look strangers in the eye. Mostly, it’s kept her safe. But the world is changing at the speed of light. When Marisol’s guardian angel visits her in the middle of the night to warn her that God is dying and the angels have declared war, all bets are off. She must set off on an epic quest to save herself and her loved ones, through a world where the vulnerable have been left behind.
In 2021 in the heart of a pandemic, The Feast (then The Williams Project) brought this play about facing down the apocalypse outside into the industrial heart of Seattle, blurring the line of where the event ended and reality began.
Creative Team:
Director: Ryan Guzzo Purcell
Production Designer: An-lin Dauber
Sound Design: Matt Stairitt
Stage Manager: Alison Kozar
Cast:
Yadira Duarte, Porscha Shaw, Alyssa Franks, Miguel Castellano, Marlo Shagar
Photo Credit: Marcia Davis