Lewis and Clark opens this week!

Lewis and Clark read a letter from Thomas Jefferson, Super President (Photo taken by Laura Johnston)

I’ve been a busy bee recently. After the opening of Thebes two weekends ago, I have been in final rehearsals for a production I am stage managing at Annex Theatre. This is my first production with Annex. I have often heard of them and their risk-taking style. However, I had never found the opportunity to attend a performance. Boy-oh-boy was I missing out. Annex Theatre, well-established and rooted in the Seattle theatre community, currently resides on the second floor of a building in Capitol Hill. The corner is strange, kind of dingy, and really gives Annex the environment it needs to evoke the sense of “underground theatre” I imagine happened in New York City in the 1990s. Their space is simple yet professionally run. They don’t have a lot of money, but they have a large staff and lot of love. After working with a few different companies in the area, I have observed that people and love are the elements that make a theatre company work well. Annex uses these two elements at full force, making me wish my experience with them on this show would never end.

“But what is the show you’ve been working on?,” you might ask! Well, it’s a comedy, and it’s a late night performance. (Other cool thing about Annex: they pack in a ton of theatre, with a regular season, late nights and rentals filling their space throughout the calendar year.) So on Friday and Saturday nights in the month of February, you can come and see The Thrilling Adventures of the Famous Lewis & Clark!. A silly show, set up like a 1950s serial, Lewis & Clark zips past history as if it never even happened. The Corps of Discovery have been sold for magic beans and Lewis and Clark run around with swords, guided by trusty Sacajawea. Set here, in the Pacific Northwest, they fight pirates, compete with Spaniards, ally with Zorro, and battle fictional villainous villains. It’s fun, it’s raunchy, and it’s action-packed.

Overall, the process has been long and sometimes arduous, but for the experience gained from working at Annex Theatre, it’s been totally worth it.

The Thrilling Adventures of the Famous Lewis & Clark written by Nick Poling and Alex DeRoest and directed by Collin Schreiber opens February 4, 2012 at Annex Theatre, at 11:00 p.m.

For tickets, go to Annex’s site and select purchase tickets on the right-hand column. They’re $10 a pop and Annex has a full bar. Come on out! You won’t regret it!

Categorized in: Live Performance