New Play Café reading series – donations at door

Six new plays by Pacific Northwest playwrights, selected from 75 submissions, are featured in the launch of the New Play Café reading series, presented by Bellingham TheatreWorks. The New Play Café continues Bellingham TheatreWorks mission to produce stories of significance to the Pacific Northwest, with an emphasis on local actors, directors, and playwrights.

The inaugural New Play Café series is March 3,4,5 and 10,11,12 at 7:30 pm at the New Prospect Theatre, 207 Prospect Street, Bellingham. Donations are accepted for admission.

The plays will have one or two rehearsals, and are presented without staging, props or sets.  The actors are at music stands, reading from the script.
“This is an exciting new step for Bellingham TheatreWorks, (BTW), one that’s been made possible thanks to our expanded community-member board,” said Mark Kuntz, BTW artistic director. “My producing partner Steve Lyons and I have both written and directed plays for BTW in the past. Now we have the organizational capacity to expand our programs to showcase and celebrate the work of emerging local artists and foster their growth.”

The playwrights come from throughout the Pacific Northwest, including two from Bellingham, two from Seattle, one from Camano Island, and one from Portland.

Themes in the plays include the complexities of family dynamics, and monsters; an exploration of sex, power and unrequited love; belonging, connection, and the barriers we experience with each; and, two plays inspired by real events: one of a famous Seattle Madam and a second play about a lighthouse keeper.

Friday, March 3^rd 

Making Burgers His Way by Sean Walbeck
Just a simple story of a pregnant woman whose teeth don’t move, choosing a life with her werewolf husband over her abusive (but supportive) father, and the simple dinner where they hash out the monsters in their lives.

Sean is an award-winning playwright from Bellingham WA.  Other plays include Last Respects, Sons of a Common Mother, Exit, Chased By a Bear, The Days of Future Passed, Why Christmas Pageants Suck, BI-VOCALS (with Alycia Francis), A Fistful of Walbeck, The Forest for the Trees, At the Escher Zoo, Nighthawks-Maybe, Portrait Study, You Didn’t Hear This From Me, Sin-n-Tonic, Aglets and Grommets, and A Buttload of Walbeck.  A graduate of the University of Montana and Western Washington University, Sean is a member of the Dramatists Guild of America.  Sean’s  work has appeared at the Seattle Repertory Theatre, Tacoma Little Theatre, BOAT Festivals, The Seattle Fringe Festival, AACTFest’s National One-Act Play Festival, Western’s Children’s Tour, and the Great Platte River Playwright Festival.