The Stupidest, Scariest Time – Swim Pony Performing Arts @ 12th Avenue Arts (Seattle – Capitol Hill)
Welcome to the Boundless Ocean Productivity Bootcamp, replete with conference tables, nametags, multimedia screens, and workbooks for achieving personal and professional goals. Your mysterious facilitators promise that when the countdown clock expires, participants will finally know how to “do it all” before they run you through absurd exercises in life-hacking and action planning — but being “on top of things” feels even further out of reach. It’s only a matter of time before the façade finally cracks, revealing the existential toll of perpetual striving.
The Stupidest, Scariest Time is a new work of interactive theatre parodying the joyless productivity of modern life, using satiric clowning and games to illustrate the inhumane result of a constant “grindset” mentality. Participants are plunged into the action, where there’s no way out but through. When the conference tables are pushed away, audiences will be left a huddled mass of fragile beings, entreated by an enigmatic force (representing life’s unknowable chaos) to embrace a deeper, if slower, potential for their lives.
General admission seating. Tickets $44.50-$60.50 (sliding scale; select desired rate at checkout).
*****
By Adrienne Mackey & Bradley Wrenn
Directed by Adrienne Mackey
Cast: Sohrab Haghverdi, Iveliz Martel, Mario Orallo-Molinaro, and Bradley Wrenn.
Run dates: opens 10/29, closing 11/9
Venue accessibility info: Theatre & common areas are wheelchair accessible. Restrooms are multi-stall, with one single-stall gender-neutral restroom (requires key code).