Answered Prayers
"Answered Prayers and Other Tragedies"
We live in an era in which the pursuit of happiness is relentless, and completely predicated on our getting what we want-the right car, the perfect mate, the dream job. Yet Oscar Wilde once remarked that "the only real tragedy in life is getting what you want." What happens when our dreams come true? Is there a downside to answered prayers?
Friday, Mar. 28, 7:30 p.m. at Town Hall
4 Brand New Works on our theme from
Michelle Tea is originally from Chelsea, Massachusetts but currently lives in San Francisco. Tea was the co-founder of the Sister Spit spoken word tour. Her books, mostly memoirs, are known for their views into the riot grrrl and queercore communities. She has toured with the Sex Worker's Art Show. She is also a contributor to The Believer magazine and is the co-writer for the weekly astrology column, "Double Team Psychic Dream," in San Francisco's Bay Guardian newspaper.
Read our interview with Michelle.
David Schmader is the author of the solo plays "Straight" and "Letter to Axl," which he has performed in Seattle and across the United States. Since 1998, Schmader has worked for The Stranger, the Seattle newsweekly where he's an associate editor and columnist, writing the pop-culture-and-politics column "Last Days." In his spare time, he's the world's foremost authority on the brilliant horribleness of Paul Verhoeven's "Showgirls," hosting annotated screenings around the country and supplying the commentary track for MGM's DVD rerelease of the film in 2003. In June 2007, Schmader presented a portion of his new solo play, "Litter," as part of the On the Boards' Northwest New Works Festival, and is continuing work on the piece as you read this.
Read our interview with David.
Ben Blum, winner of the New Works Competition, has spent the last year and a half in Seattle as a visiting graduate student at the University of Washington. His current research is on protein structure prediction. His scientific articles have appeared in Cognitive Science and the Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research and his short stories have appeared primarily in a small bin on the windowsill of the communal bathroom at the house where he used to live on 25th Ave. He plays the accordion.
Saturday, Mar. 29 at Hugo House
A program for teens with
Sherman Alexie leads a workshop for teens about turning a knack and a love for writing into a career. He'll talk about the business of being a writer by trade.
A Hugo Writing Class with Michelle Tea
Michelle Tea has spent her professional career turning life into an art form. In this class, she'll show you how. After generating some memoir-based material and shaping it, the class will move on to how best deliver your work-with special concentration on navigating the hazards of performing work that is potentially revealing.
A Hugo Writing Class with
Whether you're dealing with personal essays, memoir or autobiographical solo performance, writing about yourself can be deceptively easy and oppressively hard. How do you cast your audience as by proxy participants, rather than voyeurs? David Schmader will share what he's learned over a decade and a half of pillaging his life for material, and leads you in a first-person writing exercise of your own.
