2026 Season | The Feast

In 2026,
The Feast is building for the long haul

The Feast is a nimble, artist-driven ensemble theatre that prizes virtuosic artists working in extremes; pays those artists really well; and activates the relationship between audience and performers.

Since our inception in 2014, we’ve been making smash hit reinterpretations of classic works, developing new experimental performance, and paying artists better than theatres way larger than us.

This year, we’re doing this and more, but we’re also getting ready to grow, to do more, to pay more. Everyone says American theatre is in rough shape, but we won’t compromise on making bigger plays and bigger paychecks.

By 2029 We’re Going To

Show work, several times a year, at theatres across the nation
Develop a repertoire we share locally and nationally
Pay artists even more
Lobby other theatres in Seattle to raise their artist wages

This year, we’re building toward these visions. To DO that…

We’re bringing back your favorite pieces of our repertoire

The Wealth Walk is a perfect example of how The Feast creates work. The Wealth Walk is a theatrical walking tour of the Mount Baker and Rainier Valley neighborhoods that creates an embodied metaphor for wealth inequality. It was initially developed as part of 2021’s Campfire Festival. We then presented a second iteration—grown, dialed in, developed—in 2025. It was a smash hit. We sold out our run, extended several times and sparked meaningful conversations with critics, audiences, and neighbors. So we’re bringing it back again, this time with a new cast of some of Seattle’s best actors (who live right in these neighborhoods), deeper community connections to local orgs and schools, and an expanded indoor version accessible to those who aren’t up for a two mile walk. We made something great. We shared it widely. But this year, we want to grow its impact.

We believe that when artists work on art over multiple iterations, the pieces develop nuance, find the audiences they’re meant for, and grow over time. The Wealth Walk demonstrates the success of The Feast’s iterative model. We can’t wait to bring it back.

“The most unconventional piece of outdoor theater you’ll find this Seattle summer”
—The Seattle Times

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The

Wealth Walk

By Ryan Guzzo Purcell

May 16-June 7, 2026 | Mount Baker Park

A theatrical walking tour

We’re creating new work with virtuosic artists

August 15, 2026

The Stranger Presents:

Artists doing

At ACTUALIZE Artists in Residence

Featuring
Ben Hunter, Cherdonna Shinatra,
And Timothy White Eagle, With Keyes Wiley

Last year, we began a new experiment with Artists Doing: Nothing, a made-in-a-day festival of performance. It was wild, it was experimental, you got to see the excellence of what can be made in just one day. And we put some solid cash in artists’ pockets.

This year, we’re doing it again, featuring some of Seattle’s most exciting artists: Musician Ben Hunter, Drag performer Cherdonna Shinatra, performance artist Timothy White Eagle, with DJ Keyes Wiley. You’ll hear folk music; delight in campy and queer performance art; be immersed in ritual; and dance the night away. These artists are pushing the boundaries of their disciplines, and we can’t wait to see what kind of theatre they make with us.

Once again, we’re partnering with ACTUALIZE Artists in Residence, presenting this event immersively in their new Pioneer Square gallery space. Artists Doing is a theatrical event where you see the thrilling brilliance of Seattle’s greatest artists in process, up close. These are works that we hope go on to find lives as full productions—either with The Feast or elsewhere.

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We’re Building Our Repertoire

The Time Of Your Life

By William Saroyan
October 2026

In our long-term vision, by 2029, in any given year, we’d have a show touring nationally, a show with a local Seattle production, and a show in development.

We develop shows in public; it’s been our DNA since The Feast began as The Williams Project, creating both Orpheus Descending and Henry VI in just two weeks. So throughout a work’s lifecycle, we want to share it as it buds. Together, we can identify the potential that we’ll realize in future iterations, locally and nationally.

In October, we’re producing a workshop of The Time of Your Life, William Saroyan’s 1939 slice-of-life dramedy. The Feast first workshopped this play in 2019, as part of The Bar Plays, taking a first stab at a deconstructed production in our signature style. Saroyan’s play features a rich man trying to do good, a sex worker trying to evade a vice cop, a society couple slumming it with the riff-raff, a bored housewife looking for something to do, an old cowboy spinning tales that probably didn’t happen, a teenager trying desperately to get laid, and the worst stand-up comic in history. Together, they drink, dance, play music, and connect in a dive bar in San Francisco. Rowdy and personal, set in a honky tonk while the Great Depression rages outside, The Time of Your Life is about how to live a life worth living.

We are reimagining this play into an event that makes the audience central to the action; you’ll feel like you are in the bar with these characters. You’ll also see virtuosic performances, with a cast of 10 playing more than 30 characters.

We’re tackling this work for the second time, with a bigger workshop. As our local audience, you get to see it in its earliest moments, before it eventually gets a larger production and tours the nation.

Tickets on sale soon

We’re
advocating for everyone in
Seattle to pay
artists a
living wage

Theatre Artists Thrive:

A Campaign for Living Wage Artistry in Seattle and Beyond

Throughout our history, The Feast has led by example. Even when we barely had a budget of $23,000, we paid actors union rates (most theatres of that size pay around $200 for eight weeks of work). We pay better than theatres fifty times our size and five times better than theatres our same size. We believe in walking the walk.

But there’s only so much that can come from being the change we wish to see in the world. We need system-wide change. If we want Seattle to be a great theatre city, if we want a deep bench of artists at the height of their craft, if we want to leave this industry better than we found it, if we want to collectively survive what many are calling a “crisis” in the American theatre, we need to shift the whole ecosystem.

Thus, in 2026, we are launching Theatre Artists Thrive: A Campaign for Living Wage Artistry in Seattle and Beyond, a campaign that will organize artists, critics, funders, audiences and (most importantly) our peer institutions, to increase wages for theatre artists in the city. This project will feature a cohort of local theatres who will engage in facilitated, transparent conversations breaking down the barriers to raising their wages. We will do this in alliance with a working group of some of Seattle’s best and most in-demand theatre artists (who still can’t make a full-time living!). We will also organize critics and funders to shift their priorities towards uplifting theatres who pay artists well. We plan to publish a set of guidelines for theatres of various sizes, setting clear bars for what a living wage would actually be.

In 2029, we plan to host a major symposium featuring artists, theatre leaders, journalists, organizers, and others—rallying, educating, and lobbying to support our industry’s most essential workers. In our vision, by 2029, a number of theatres have prioritized increasing their wages, funders and journalists have shifted their priorities around who they support and cover, and artists are organized to demand more.

This vision is already underway. We toured a show to Washington D.C. this spring

Inherit The Wind

By Jerome Lawrence
and Robert E. Lee

Directed By Ryan Guzzo Purcell

At Washington D.C.’s Arena Stage

February-April 2026

It was kind of our big break: For the first time, this spring, The Feast produced work nationally, debuting the American classing Inherit The Wind at Washington, D.C.’s legendary Arena Stage. Inherit the Wind, a mid-century courtroom drama, was presented in signature Feast style, with ten actors and musicians playing over forty roles, creating the whole world onstage. Washington D.C. loved this show, and Arena Stage welcomed us in with open arms. This is the first production of what we hope will be a work with a long life (including, we hope, a Seattle production!). We hope this is the first of many many works presented at theatres around the country.