As part of the School of Drama’s 75th Anniversary, we’ll be celebrating the Seattle theatre community by hosting a series of five FREE, public readings of representative plays from seminal Seattle theatres of the past. The reading series will pay tribute to inspiring companies no longer up and running: Alice B. Theatre, Bathhouse Theatre, Empty Space Theatre, Northwest Asian American Theatre, and the Seattle Group Theatre.

Our series kicks off with a celebration of the Alice B. Theatre and a reading of “The Night of the Tribades” by Per Olov Enquist, directed by Susan Finque. The reading will be followed by a reception.

This series was created in partnership with UW World Series and One Coast Collaboration.

Alice B. Theatre
The Alice B. Theatre was Seattle’s first theater ensemble dedicated solely to work by gay and lesbian playwrights. Playwright Eric Des O’Del (formerly known as Rick Rankin) first sensed the demand for gay theater in Seattle after presenting an original show at New City Theatre in 1984, and then (with Sandra Nelson) organizing the city’s first Gay and Lesbian Theatre Festival. He co-founded the Alice B. with director Susan Finque in 1985 as “a gay and lesbian theatre for all people.”

The Night of the Tribades by Per Olov Enquist
The Night of the Tribades, set in Copenhagen in 1889, portrays the reunion, after a long separation, of the eccentric August Strindberg, his ambitious ex-wife Siri von Essen, and her alcoholic lesbian friend Marie Caroline David at a rehearsal of Strindberg’s one-act play The Stronger. This powerful drama, based on Strindberg’s own letters and writing, depicts the conflict between the social and sexual role of a dominant male and a woman’s right to assert her own humanity.