RE: @1, Anonymous

Annex received many proposals for our 25th season, two of which made the cut and were intentionally paired as they both involved puppets. Our plans for producing "A Mouse Who Knows Me" and "Audrey & Nelson" were in place well before Balagan announced they would be presenting "Avenue Q".

"Stories for Bad Children" features puppets by Vox Fabuli Puppets, who not coincidently fashioned in part the puppets in Annex's "Audrey & Nelson". The answer to your question regarding frequency is largely the product of a small group of very talented individuals who are seemingly inexhaustible, and the healthy range of smaller, but technically robust venues around Seattle that facilitate such experimentation.

Your comments about Ellen Forney's poster for "Kittens in a Cage" are such a wildly ignorant display they suggest an unfortunate paucity of character. That Ms. Forney is a beloved icon and your comments being simply another frothing screed with a hidden agenda is obvious; I only acknowledge them out of a sense of routine decorum.

Lastly, regarding the work of Kelleen Conway Blanchard. I have helped produce several plays by Kelleen, and have the privilege of having another scheduled next year. You are welcome to your tastes, but I can assure you that a significant portion of the theatre-going audience does not share them. Anyone with such a demonstrated ability to write such closely observed, nuanced, and wildly funny plays deserves to be fussed over in a city that values live performance.

PS: Treating the live-performance community like some zero-sum game is a wretched way to go about what is presumably your business.

Stephen McCandless
Managing Director, Annex Theatre

Annex chooses its season from responses to our annual "Request for Proposals". No previous affiliation with Annex is required.

From these submissions the Annex Company chooses a season. We've decided that this is fair, as The Company is the body that will be working without pay to produce the chosen works. Thus, the only requirement that your play be produced at Annex is that it excite the artists who keep the theatre running.

If for whatever reason you that approach doesn't work for you, you can rent our theatre. The rates are quite reasonable; in fact, we subsidize our rental rates and charge less money than it actually costs us to maintain our space.

Between our own productions and rentals we produced or presented twenty-five different shows last year. And I'm happy to note here that many were created and directed by non-white-male types. Not that it's a focus of ours, things just turned out that way.

And Annex is only one of a dozen venues around town. All run by different groups with varying sensibilities; from the Rendezvous' Jewelbox, ACT's Central Heating Lab, and everything in-between.

Creating art is very frustrating, particularly in modern-day America. My fellow volunteers and I take great pains to afford every opportunity to those who would take to the stage.

In a few months Annex will have another RFP, and we will consider almost anything. Email the theatre and ask to be put on the 'backstage' list, and you'll receive the notice when it is sent out.

PS: I will point out that almost nobody (on a percentage basis) makes a living working in the theatre in this town. Which means for the most part the people you wish to work with are doing it do improve or adorn their lives. I would suggest that your feelings laid out in the toxic monologue above might not be as well-concealed as you think, and that your attitude might be one of your larger impediments.

Would that include yourself @6? Because you sure sound like someone in desperate need of a good fuck yourself.

Maybe, if your show WAS any good, someone might be interested in producing it; but have you actually submitted it to any local companies for consideration? Or maybe you should consider self-producing, as many demonstrably talented local playwrights do around here. Unless of course, you're just another of of those stereotypical "misunderstood artistes" who sit on their 200 page psychologically masturbatory screeds (with modern dance! And zither music!) about their childhoods, while incessantly whinging about how nobody recognizes their "true genius"; which would probably explain why nobody wants to do your "play", if you have in fact already tried to pitch it around town.

Because one doesn't have to have grown up on a farm to recognize the smell of manure when one encounters it...

Oh @9, you do know unmitigated jealousy IS the sincerest form of flattery!

Kisses!

Seems worth mentioning that everyone who commented here is either fucking or very desperately wants to fuck someone involved with the show.

Guilty. And . . . ?

I happen to like puppets. And let's face it, if theater has any interest in competing for an audience other than the aging, self-satisfied, academic neo-bourgeoisie--if we want to compete with superheroes and CGI and American Horror Story for someone who's looking to be entertained as well as edified--we're gonna have to find ways to make our game a little more exciting and/or inviting.

Now, as it is, we can only take your word for it that your work is any good. And it may well be; I'm the last person to argue with prospect that any one of us in the arts may be that rare, true genius doomed to go unrecognized in my/your/our/his/her lifetime. It might even be brilliant if it features modern dance and zither music, which may, after all, fill that same need for spectacle that some are trying to offer through puppets, or that groups with whom I work try to offer through acrobatics, physical comedy, and dissonant, postpunk noise.

I have to say, though, that attacking other artists as somehow overrated or undeserving is a terrible tactic, even if I happened to agree with you (which, in this case, I don't, though, as you point out, it might just be that I'm infatuated with the likes of Kelleen and Scotto). To call a work or an artist "underrated" says less about the work than it does about your regard for your own powers of discernment, and to blame theaters or audiences for failing to recognize your genius (which I'll assume arguendo is real and valid) is rather like, say, a politician blaming the electorate for losing at the polls.

The anonymous rant is especially curious because it targets Annex's community... even though the show in question isn't even an Annex show!

The reason the puppet theatre community and KCB get so much run is because their work is fucking funny, and good. Many working with the puppet scene are talented comedic improvisers (note that a lot of great actors in town are improvisers themselves or started out there), and that talent shows whenever they pick up a puppet and go to work on a new scripted production.

It's no wonder they draw so much interest and attention.

Y'all got trolled.