Ursa Major presents How to Be Cool, an original comedy about music, monkeys, and the Culture of Cool.
It’s 1962, and the students at Oakvale High School are getting more than they could have imagined today during their Civics Class. So’s the Civics teacher, as she hands the proceedings over to Eugene Wright, a man who’s so filled with thoughts about the future, politics, ethics, and consumer culture that he can scarcely contain himself. He plays records. (Your records! Bring your own LPs and 45s!) He shows slides. He tells stories. And though he sure doesn’t look cool, he just might be onto something.
How To Be Cool was originally produced in 2003 and 2004 at the Seattle Fringe Festival, Theatre Babylon and Bumbershoot and the show was a hit with both audiences and critics.
Actor Evan Whitfield won a 2008 Seattle Times Footlights Award for his performance in Three Days of Rain. Playwright and director John Longenbaugh’s other plays include The Man Who Was Thursday, Scotch and Donuts, Bible Stories for Agnostics, and Catholic Schoolgirls, and his play The Case of the Christmas Carol: a Sherlock Holmes Mystery opens this winter at Taproot.
Theater Seattle called the show “delightfully kooky and inspiring,” Three Imaginary Girls declared it “a refreshing, earnest pleasure,” and the Seattle Times said was “educational and entertaining, a combination that is, unequivocally, pretty cool.
How to be Cool runs through August 8 at Open Circle Theatre, 2222 2nd Avenue. Tickets for the show are $12 and are available here.
For more information, visit ursamajortheatre.org.
