Playing French Seattle 2011 - come play!

[Tom Ansart]

Perhaps you have heard that several community performing arts and French cultural organizations have been partnering with the University of Washington for the past several years to produce a festival of plays in French language each Fall at the Ethnic Cultural Theatre.

In preparation for the 2011 Playing French Seattle festival, Steeplechase Productions has scheduled a series of French language script readings beginning next month. The first two meetings (Monday, September 12th and Monday, September 19th 7 - 9 pm, University Heights Center, room 108 (50th and University) will be devoted to casting. Subsequent Mondays will be geared to planning and rehearsing various festival activities.

If your interest is music, there is an opportunity to create musical underscoring. For choreographers and dancers, we have space allotted for an "Masque/interlude" during the main stage production.

Playing French Seattle is more than an annual festival. Throughout the year we are selecting and reading scripts, participating in events (like Bastille Day) and building new relationships with artists and companies.

There are many other ways to assist the productions (for example: stage and house management, graphics, set, costume and technical design, marketing, and ushering). Francophone and French language students can assist with translating, and creating/running supertitles, participating in student readings of selected scripts and conducting dramaturlogical research. Credited internships are now possible through the department of French and Italian Studies. In previous years students have organized an RSO (registered student organization) which has shadowed the festival, providing a unique vehicle for student participation.

Steeplechase Productions has a long history of producing plays in Seattle and has sponsored Playing French since 2006. We have staged classical plays (from Racine, Rostand and Molière), contemporary plays (by Pliya, Ribes and Visniec) and adaptations (of works by Balzac, Dickens and Verne).

The theme of this year's festival is "Mutiny." We previewed an adaptation of Jules Verne's "Les Revoltés de la Bounty" for the French Chamber on Bastille Day and will stage a full production of a new adaptation of this play ("Les Mutins") during the November festival.

In the past we have invited participation by guest artists and companies. I hope you see this as an opportunity to carve out a place for yourself, your group, or company, in this collaborative venture and look forward to discussing new ideas!

Please contact me via e-mail to confirm your interest or to clarify options to participate in Playing French Seattle 2011!

Sincerely,
Tom Ansart, Steeplechase Productions
libchase@aol.com