No Class
Age doesn't make everything better. Neither do more expensive lights. Case in point: A year and a half ago, the actor John Aylward did a staged reading of David Wagoner's play First Class at Richard Hugo House. The play is a one-man show about Theodore Roethke, the Northwest poet, who was Wagoner's teacher at UW, and it is a great text. Aylward reading Wagoner channeling Roethke was a thing to behold both because Aylward eerily resembles Roethke and because, smartly, Aylward wasn't trying to be Roethke, wasn't pretending, wasn't putting on a play. He was just reading; he had the script in his hand. When he interacted with the audience—audience interaction is built into First Class—you couldn't tell if it was Aylward interacting with the audience or Roethke interacting with the audience, and so it was both.
Now a modified First Class is playing at ACT—through August 25—and all the modifications since the initial staged reading have made it worse. It's become very theater-y. We are now supposed to believe that we are beholding Theodore Roethke before us in the flesh—risen! praise Jesus!—and we aren't supposed to roll our eyes. As opposed to the far more interesting is-it-Aylward-or-is-it-Roethke guy who was doing the show last year. Whereas the show used to begin (if I remember correctly) with Roethke walking into the room and starting a class, with the audience as his students, which is an excellent way to go, now new material at the top of the show has Roethke covered in a white sheet and shrieking. Because, you know, he's gonna go crazy later. The worst thing: For a good half of the show, the stage is awash in a lighting effect that covers everything in cursive handwriting. For the love of God.
As we were filing out, someone was yelling at us to go into the cabaret space for more poetry and music, and while good people are involved in the post-play Roethke-related cabaret programming, I'd had it. Later on, I found myself at Pony watching the last act in a bill of amateur comedians: a fat girl in a skirt making jokes about, among other things, scabies. It was so depraved it was almost likable. And then it became awesome. She closed with an inspired parody of spoken-word poetry, tearing petals off a rose, writhing on the ground, then going stiff. Dead. The applause went on and on. She remained stiff. Eventually she screamed into her mic: "I'm dead, retards!"
But If You're Interested In the Roethke Cabaret
Here's the lineup for the next two weeks: On Thursday, August 16 and Saturday, August 18, Catherine Wing and Allen Johnson will read Roethke-inspired poems; fiction writer Jonathan Crimmins will do his thing; musician Ken Benshoof will make noises; and Erin Jorgensen and Sara Edwards will do things with a marimba and a guitar that will light you up inside. On Thursday, August 23 and Saturday, August 25, Jennifer Borges Foster and (another Genius Awards shortlistee) Kary Wayson read poetry; Rebecca Brown (a Stranger Genius Award winner) reads prose; and Benshoof, Jorgensen, and Edwards continue to bang on things. Swivel's Brangien Davis and The Stranger's Brendan Kiley emcee all the cabarets. The ones on Thursdays start at 9:00 pm. The ones on Saturdays start at 9:30 pm. And they're free. You don't even have to see the play first.
And Speaking of the Genius Awards
This year's party is at the downtown library on Friday, September 14. Doors open to the general public at 9:00 pm. It'll be free. Velella Velella and the Blow are playing. This year's Stranger Genius Award recipient in literature: Heather McHugh. (It's about time, huh?) 
