Kenmore’s ‘Quickies’ Get Quirkier With These New Prompts
The locally-sourced annual shorts fest stands out with its love for unique prompts and connection to its home base on Lake Washington’s north shore. As If Theatre Company’s annual Kenmore Quickies performs this Friday through Sunday.
The Kenmore Quickies, As If Theatre Company’s mashup of a playwrights’ festival with weird prompts, 14/48 randomness, and local storytelling, has always been pretty quirky.
Separated by a pandemic, the festival’s first two in-person iterations kept the themes close to its Kenmore home, drawing inspirations first from a locally famous mural, and then from bits of real (and often unexpected) Kenmore history — memorably, one prompt involved a brothel in the middle of the golf course — curated by the local historical society.
This time, the company returns to the visual cues, with a further-reaching twist: the prompts are eight (wildly) different works of art, all created by different local artists, and all with plenty of visual intrigue for a playwright to work from.
What stories will they tell? What creative sparks do they ignite in you already? The possibilities alone are good reasons to come see what these theatre artists will spin from them.
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Below are the selected works created by eight visual artists, which are randomly assigned to inspire the festival’s eight playwrights:
Playwrights: Holly Arsenault, Angela Gyurko, Romney Humphrey, P.H. Lin, Andrew Meyers, Anna Tatelman, Carolynne Wilcox, and Michael Yichao
Visual artists: Staci Adman, Suzanne Bailie, Sam Gentry, Sara Solum Hayashi, Payal Patel, Kimberly Smith, Sebastian Vivas, and Bex Worrich
Directors: Jana Blumberg, Terry Boyd, Jack Conley, Dawn Cornell, Marianna de Fazio, David Dorrian, Keith Gehrig, and Yvonne Williams
Actors: Jana Blumberg, Terry Boyd, Monica Chilton, Dawn Cornell, Tina Devrin, Kevin Finney, Sam Neer, Jane Martin Lynch, Kait Miller, Jennifer Nielsen, Elizabeth Shipman, Jay Vilhauer, and Christina Williams
Founders: Cindy Giese French (Artistic Director), Amy Gentry (Managing Director), and Molly Hall (Engagement Director)
The Kenmore Quickies: A Play on Art runs 8/11-13 at the Kenmore Community Club. Tickets are $22, here. Accessibility notes: restrooms are gendered and multi-stall. Theatre and some common areas are wheelchair accessible.
Chase D. Anderson is Editor & Producer of NWTheatre.org.