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No props, no sets at New Play Cafe

Bellingham TheatreWorks features works in development

Actors read through Bellingham-based playwright Sean Walbeck's full-length play
Actors read through Bellingham-based playwright Sean Walbeck's full-length play (Photo courtesy of Amy Erickson)
By Amy Kepferle Staff Reporter

In 2011, Bellingham-based playwright Sean Walbeck participated in iDiOM Theater’s then-annual Serial Killers tournament, which saw groups of writers, actors and directors battle to stay alive during a weekly stage competition featuring short plays whose storylines got longer as more teams were voted off.

Walbeck’s original work, “Making Burgers His Way,” made it to the finals that year, but plans to produce it as a full-length play never quite came to fruition, despite the fact that Walbeck’s wife, Shawn Fuller — who is also involved in the local theater scene as a director and adjunct theatre professor at Western Washington University  — was willing to help him find a way to get it back onstage.  

As part of Bellingham TheatreWorks’ New Play Cafe, “Making Burgers His Way” will get a second chance to shine. The inaugural play reading series will kick off at 7:30 p.m. Friday, March 3 at the New Prospect Theatre with Walbeck’s tragicomic tale of a pregnant woman choosing a life with her werewolf husband over her abusive (but supportive) father. The action takes place during a dinner where the main characters work through the monsters in their lives as well as family dynamics.

“Twelve years later, my hope is that through this reading I’ll be able to see things I can work with, then submit it around the country,” Walbeck said.

photo  Logan Hyer-Long, left, and Siara Woods-Lindholm rehearse for an upcoming reading of “Making Burgers His Way.” (Photo courtesy of Amy Erickson)  

The six plays were chosen by Bellingham TheatreWorks from 75 submissions from playwrights around the Pacific Northwest —  two from Bellingham (including Walbeck), two from Seattle, one from Camano Island and one from Portland, Oregon — and they will be presented without staging, props or sets. The actors will be at music stands, reading from the scripts, and only one or two rehearsals will take place before the show. Because audience members will be seeing plays that aren’t fully formed, entry is free or by donation.

“When you go to a play reading, you’re not seeing something that’s polished,” Bellingham TheatreWorks co-founder Steve Lyons said. “It’s having a reading because it’s an acknowledgment that it is in development.”

Lyons said the expectancy of participating playwrights is the readings will be a springboard for coming up with new drafts of their plays in hopes of getting them produced. Plus, just being selected for the New Play Cafe becomes an accolade playwrights can put on query letters when attempting to elicit further attention.

Walbeck is no stranger to staged readings of plays. He helps produce a quarterly Lend Us Your Ears reading series at the Bellingham Theatre Guild, which focuses on works which are already established and are not too expensive to produce since they only need to pay a one-off royalty fee. Those events are also pay-what-you-will, making them accessible to anyone who’s interested. 

Bellingham TheatreWorks’ artistic director and co-founder Mark Kuntz is directing the reading of “Making Burgers His Way,” and Walbeck is eager to see how the audience reacts to it. On the first go-round in 2011, he also performed in it, so the public reading will give him an entirely different viewpoint.


“What this reading will offer me is the perspective of sitting outside of the play and seeing how it works,” Walbeck said. “That I’m very interested in — to see if it reads independently as both a full-length as well as a serial play.”

As someone who reads upwards of 250 plays a year, the award-winning playwright is eager to sit in on the other productions taking place March 4-5 and 10–12 at the  Bellingham venue. The night following his own play, Karen Fix Curry’s “Crazy Quilts” will be featured, and Sunday, March 5 will see Kate Danley’s “Madame Lou,” which focuses on Seattle’s “founding mother,” Madame Lou Grant.

Fast-forward to Friday, March 10, and watch “Thais Passion” by Bellingham’s Michael Wallace, about a Christian monk who falls in love with a servant of Venus. Saturday, March 11 tells the tale of a young football player who suffers a head injury in Western alum Aaron Allen Ussery’s “marcus.” Finally, “This Gray House” by August Croft closes out the New Play Cafe Sunday, March 12 by delving into the tragic and true story of Mary and Alexander Pesonen, the first keepers to tend to the North Head Lighthouse in southern Washington.

All of the playwrights will be on hand on the night their plays make it onstage at New Prospect Theatre’s Lucas Hicks Auditorium, and will stick around following the readings to hear feedback from those in attendance.

“Going to a reading has a different spirt about it,” Lyons said. “As an audience member, you feel like you’re participating much more. You’re not only enjoying the reading, you’re thinking to yourself, what will I say to the script-writer about my sense of this play?”

However, Walbeck said, one need not arrive with the expectation they’ll have to engage in lengthy discourse with the playwrights, actors and directors — although their viewpoints will be welcome.

“Going to a reading is like being tucked comfortably in your bed while somebody tells you a story,” Walbeck said. “As adults, we don’t get that experience enough. Just listen to something that someone else is lovingly telling you. It’s a nice experience.”

The New Play Cafe takes place March 3–5 and 10–12 at the New Prospect Theatre, 207 Prospect St. Entry is free; donations are welcome. Info: bellinghamtheatreworks.org

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