Five Seattle Premieres Set for ArtsWest's 2023-2024 Season

ArtsWest has announced their 2023-2024 season SOMETIMES I DREAM…, with five productions – all Seattle premieres – featuring the work of Tony Award and Pulitzer Prize-winning playwrights, new collaborators, and the premiere of a brand-new holiday show specially built for Seattle. This is the third season programmed by a collective of ArtsWest Associate Artists in collaboration with ArtsWest Artistic Director Mathew Wright, with this year’s Associate Artist roles taken on entirely by ArtsWest staff. 

Pithy and joyous quotes inspiring us to pursue our dreams have resounded across space and time – but it can be a difficult path, especially when the world seems to have other plans for you. Dreaming big takes courage, curiosity, and imagination - but it often takes support from the outside world as well. What would it take to create a world in which everyone is free to pursue a dream?  In one of their boldest outings yet, ArtsWest explores the pursuit of dreams through five distinctly different lenses in a season of searing comedy, beloved music, and touching humanity, designed to subvert expectations at every turn.  

SOMETIMES I DREAM…opens this fall with the Seattle premiere of MATT & BEN, award-winning writer and comedian Mindy Kaling’s NYC Fringe hit about Hollywood’s most famous bromance – which originally starred Mindy Kaling and Brenda Withers in the title roles – in a biting satire on the Hollywood dream machine. Fresh for the holiday season, December will see the world premiere of SNOWED IN, created by Mathew Wright and Corinne Park-Buffelen, a holiday special reinvented for the 21st century and starring some of Seattle’s most-beloved musical theater talent. In the new year, ArtsWest will present the Seattle premiere of Liz Duffy Adams’ BORN WITH TEETH,  a queer-punk-inflected encounter between Christopher Marlowe and the young upstart William Shakespeare in which they attempt to write a history play together before they either fall in love or kill each other. April will see the Seattle premiere of this year’s Pulitzer Prize winner in Drama, ENGLISH by Sanaz Toossi. Co-produced by Seda Iranian Theatre Ensemble, ENGLISH is a deeply moving and brilliantly funny meditation on language and identity in an Iranian TOEFL classroom.  Rounding out the season is two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Lynn Nottage’s latest Broadway triumph, CLYDE’S. Presented in partnership with The Hansberry Project and directed by Seattle luminary Valerie Curtis-Newton, CLYDE’S explores the dreams of the workers at a truck stop café – and the ways in which we can act as obstacles or aids to each other in the pursuit of those dreams. 

MATT & BEN 

by Mindy Kaling & Brenda Withers 

September 7 – October 1 

Winner of the 2002 FringeNYC Award 

From the mind of multi-award winning writer and actress Mindy Kaling, Matt & Ben depicts its Hollywood golden boys – before J-Lo, before Gwyneth, before Project Greenlight, before Oscar… before anyone actually gave a damn. When the screenplay for Good Will Hunting drops mysteriously from the heavens, the boys realize they’re being tested by a Higher Power. Originally performed by Mindy Kaling and Brenda Withers in the title roles, Matt & Ben is a hilarious satire on the real and imagined difficulties of pursuing a dream. 

SNOWED IN 

Created by Corinne Park-Buffelen & Mathew Wright 

November 30 – December 23 

ArtsWest has sent four incredible artists on a cozy retreat to write the most perfect holiday show the world has ever seen.  But when a blizzard hits and tensions rise, the crumpled up notebook pages start to pile up even faster than the snow. Will they finish the show in time? Or will they have to rely on a sprinkle of holiday magic to pull the whole thing off?  

  

Inspired by classic holiday TV specials and musicals about putting on a musical, witness the birth of a new Seattle theater tradition as four of the city’s most beloved musical theater stars take you on a journey of song, dance, friendship, family, and the true meaning of the holidays. 

BORN WITH TEETH 

by Liz Duffy Adams 

Directed by Mathew Wright 

February 1 – February 25 

Winner of the 2021 Edgerton Foundation New Play Award 

Finalist for the 2023 Steinberg-ATCA New Play Award 

An aging authoritarian ruler, a violent police state and a restless, polarized people seething with paranoia: It’s a dangerous time for poets. Two of them — the great Christopher Marlowe and the up-and-comer William Shakespeare — meet in the back room of a pub to collaborate on a history play cycle, navigate the perils of art under a totalitarian regime and flirt like young men with everything to lose. One of them may well be the death of the other in this biting comedy about ambition, ego, and history. 

ENGLISH 

by Sanaz Toossi 

Directed by Naghmeh Samini 

April 4 – April 28 

Winner of the 2023 Pulitzer Prize in Drama 

Co-Produced by Seda Iranian Theatre Ensemble 

Two words set in motion award-winning playwright Sanaz Toossi’s intricate and profound New York debut: “English Only.” This is the mantra that rules one classroom in Iran, where four adult students are preparing for the TOEFL — the Test of English as a Foreign Language. Chasing fluency through a maze of word games, listening exercises, and show-and-tell sessions, they hope that one day, English will make them whole. But it might be splitting them each in half. 

CLYDE'S 

by Lynn Nottage 

Directed by Valerie Curtis-Newton 

June 6 – June 30 

2022 Tony Award® Nominated Best Play by  

Two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Lynn Nottage (Sweat, Ruined) 

Presented in Partnership with The Hansberry Project 

“Feisty comedy is on the menu” (Washington Post) in two-time Pulitzer Prize winner Lynn Nottage’s latest Broadway triumph. Creating the perfect sandwich is the shared quest of the formerly incarcerated kitchen staff of Clyde’s, a truck stop cafe. Even as the shop’s mischievous owner tries to keep them under her thumb, the staffers are given purpose and permission to dream—finding that “sometimes a hero is more than a sandwich” (New York Times). 

About ArtsWest

ArtsWest is a vibrant center for both theater and visual arts located in the West Seattle Junction. This 149-seat theatre provides a unique setting for audiences and artists as stories of human emotion unfold in an intimate space. Winner of the American Theatre Wing's 2012 National Theatre Company Award, and winner of multiple Gregory Awards, ArtsWest has produced work by such varied playwrights as Dominique Morisseau, Henrik Ibsen, Annie Baker, Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, Taylor Mac, and David Henry Huang. ArtsWest produces artistic events that provoke conversation, incite the imagination, and use live theater as a powerful agent of change. www.artswest.org 

Tickets: A variety of subscription options, including ArtsWest’s Marquee Club package are found online at www.artswest.org/subscriptions. Packages start at just $99. Season subscriptions are available now with single tickets being offered in July.  

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