SGN Sep 28, 2018 - Part 2

Arts & Entertainment

Funny and cathartic, Gilda a spellbinding love letter to a comedy legend

ArtsWest’s Skeleton Crew a deeply moving production

by Sara Michelle Fetters

SGN A&E Writer

LOVE, GILDA

Now playing

Gilda Radner was a celebrity my parents could agree on. Not that either of them ever really said out loud she was their favorite comedian or anything. But even as a little kid I could still tell. Both of them would randomly break out with a line of hers as Roseanne Roseannadanna or Lisa Loopner at random moments that always struck me as

by Paul Torres SGN A&E Writer

SKELETON CREW ARTSWEST Through October 14

see LOVE, GILDA page 7

Chills, thrills and more –On stage in October

by Miryam Gordon SGN A&E Writer

There are indeed a few scary offerings for this month, but the range of topics and presentations in the coming weeks is a bit awe-inspiring! Come From Away is returning to town, along with opportunities to see 2017 Tony winner, OSLO, the return of Mike Daisey, and many productions with ethnic diversity of both subjects and casts! Check it out:

A Thousand Splendid Suns, Seattle Repertory Theatre and American Conservatory Theater, 10/5-11/10 (opens 10/10).

Based on the sweeping, internationally best-selling novel, A Thousand Splendid Suns is the tale of the unlikely connection that blossoms between two Afghan women in war-torn Kabul. As rockets shriek down from the heavens, the friendship of Laila and Mariam develops into an iron-bound

see OCT. OPENINGS page 4

Life in the USA changed drastically in 2008. The economy collapsed and just when all hope was lost, we found a new sense of hope again with the election of our first African-American President, Barack Obama. Yet, see SKELETON CREW page 3

PNB’s “Jerome Robbins Festival” a delightful celebration of his genius

which

to kick off its 2018-2019

by Sharon Cumberland SGN A&E Writer

PACIFIC NORTHWEST BALLET

“JEROME ROBBINS FESTIVAL”

PARTS A & B

MARION OLIVER MCAW HALL

Through September 29

as

of a

The Pacific Northwest Ballet is currently celebrating the American choreographer Jerome Robbins with a two-evening extravaganza of his best-known works, from the elegant “Dances at a Gathering,” to the jazzy “West Side Story Suite.” Robbins worked see PNB page 10

IN MEMORIAM: Arthur Mitchell (1934-2018)

SKELETON CREW

the wreckage from an economic downturn had repercussions all across our country. This was especially true for the automotive manufacturing industry in Detroit. Dominique Morisseau’s Skeleton Crew is a deft depiction of a small group of African-American workers in an auto stamping plant. This is from Morisseau’s trilogy of plays called The Detroit Project. ArtsWest launches their 2018-2019 Beyond Ideas themed season with this deeply moving production.

At an auto stamping plant (sheet metal pressing) in Detroit 2008, the days are numbered as rumors fly about a work shutdown. A seasoned employee, Faye, who sneaks forbidden smokes in the breakroom, is the UAW rep who really knows what’s up and struggles to keep the news about any closing under wraps from her two co-workers, Dez and Shanita, who have future plans. This puts her at odds with her supervisor, Reggie – a boyhood friend of her estranged son, and up against her role as a union rep.

The cozy cast gives a remarkable performance. Skeleton Crew is led by a brilliant Tracy Michelle Hughes as Faye, a hardened, proud, mama-figure (who is also a Lesbian) to the crew. Hughes absolutely succeeds at portraying this beyond the rules woman. She’s a highlight of Skeleton Crew as the moral sundial with all its pinpoint accuracies and murky shadows. She’s also a delight at delivering snarky lines like “If “ifs” were a fifth, we’d all be drunk” and spirit breaking deliveries like, “The first thing to go be the family. Then the house. Then the car. Then the job. You know what’s left after that? The soul. Then nothing. I’m running on soul.” Hughes reveals Faye’s bravery and fear in this scene alone.

Rounding out the cast is a sensational Charles Wright as Dez portraying a daring debonair with charm, and a bit of hurt beneath his skin. An excellent Allen Miller III expertly plays Reggie, the supervisor made good who is engaging as a protector of his crew despite being beholden to management. Allyson Lee Brown is superb as the bright and nurturing (and pregnant) Shanita, whose character brings some levity.

Morisseau’s insightful script mines the story of this beleagured crew for all its heart and soul of this beleaguered crew. She also uses Detroit-style comic wisecracking which brings light moments to the

by Sharon Cumberland SGN A&E Writer

Arthur Mitchell, the first black dancer to penetrate the aristocratic, all-white world of classical ballet, has died at the age of 84.

He grew up in Harlem, supported his family from the age of 12, and attended the High School of Performing Arts in Manhattan. He was accepted into the New York City Ballet School and was mentored by the great Russian choreographer, George Balanchine, who created works especially for him. Balanchine threatened to withdraw New York City Ballet from any venue that objected to having a black man dance with white women.

Mitchell was a principal dancer with NYCB for fifteen years. After the assassination of Martin Luther King, Mitchell left the company to found the Dance Theatre of Harlem in order to introduce black children to classical dance, and to give them a chance to follow in his footsteps. “I want to change the world,” he said, “and particularly for African Americans and in classical ballet … I was the first, so it’s a responsibility on your shoulder.”

Arthur Mitchell never married and had no children. The Internet and literature

written about him are silent on the possible intersectionalities of his life beyond race and ballet. His private life was very private. But as all educators know, people who teach well and open doors to young people are parents many times over. Arthur Mitchell had thousands and thousands of children.

To see one of the most iconic works Balanchine made for Mitchell, “AGON Pas de Deux,” enter that title on YouTube and look at the original cast. Mitchell dances with the beautiful Diana Adams, whose black leotard and white skin contrast with Mitchell’s black tights, white shirt, and black skin to create a checkerboard that morphs continually into different configurations. The geometry created with their bodies is the essence of modern ballet – and a vision of racial harmony.

Mitchell once said that “The arts ignite the mind. They give you the possibility to dream and to hope.” He brought that hope to thousands of people – those who love ballet, those who never imagined black people could be ballet dancers, and those who had a mentor who led them into a large, international world of discipline and beauty.

devastating circumstances. Skeleton Crew brilliantly illustrates the automatic coping mechanism of the employees whose lives are under threat. Their struggle is real. Her script magnificently depicts an undercurrent of unspoken ferocity (a gun in a locker, acts of theft at the plant) and ebullient humility (a suburban home, a baby on the way). Morisseau gets this right.

The direction seems easy going. The plot unfolds matter-of-factly and without heavy drama. This is the masterful handiwork of director Jay O’Leary. She allows the plot to slowly exhale, therefore, giving the actors breathing space for their touching deliveries. The audience absorbs the drama that’s in their lives; a job under threat and an unknown future. And who are we if we don’t know our future? This existential fear permeates the story like the smoke-stained factory walls. O’Leary’s direction makes for a compelling play that speaks to these times ten years after Skeleton Crew’s 2008 storyline. This goes beyond nuts and bolts directing style – this is powerful storytelling.

Coming from a Michigan town where a piston ring plant shut down, I could feel the desperation of these characters. Fortunately, my father was in a position with an engineering education to find stable work again. This was not the case for many other citizens there. What replaces the plant that employs a good chunk of the town? Nothing. Where do the laid-off employees work now? Nowhere. How do they live their lives? They don’t. Skeleton Crew isn’t fiction; it’s a true depiction of what’s happening now. Morisseau’s story is authentic.

For well-heeled Seattle audiences who live in a city with abundant jobs from companies that seem to have a firm foothold in the city, this play may appear to be a Rust Belt tale about the unfortunate ones. If you look beyond the grime-stained factory windows and into the breakroom with its one working heater for a cold Detroit winter shift and beyond the racket of machines whistling and slamming, you see people acting on their human instincts of survival and their struggles to maintain dignity, pride, and hope for their futures. You see that nothing is a sure bet and that no job is a sure thing. When our industrial pillars begin to rattle and crack, we realize that we are all standing on the same foundation. Skeleton Crew doesn’t reveal anything new about our economic culture and how it affects minority communities, but that is precisely what makes it relevant and daring.

Skylight misses clarity

by Miryam Gordon SGN A&E Writer

SKYLIGHT

ACT THEATRE

Through September 30

Generally speaking, shows at ACT Theatre are created with care. They are wellcast, often superbly outfitted with technical support (set, lights, sound, costumes) and directed well. (Good direction, for reference, is many parts – from the rhythm and movement of the piece, to the “pictures” of the actors on stage, to melding the different parts into a whole, and encouraging the actors to engage in appropriate emotionally deep interactions. It’s a fairly complex activity!)

Many times, the productions cause the script to be elevated and to attain more resonance in meaning. Sometimes, no matter what a producer does, the script just won’t budge from its current state of “not working.” This is the case with Skylight, now on stage at ACT.

All the technical details are in place, with particularly astute and intricate support from Robertson Witmer, a veteran sound designer who has supported dozens of local plays. In this case, he’s helped shape a window opening to a winter street scene sound realistic, metal pipes creaking on and off in an old building, and many other subtleties for this play. These kind of details help the audience focus on the realism of the otherwise unreal pretending going on on stage.

The actors, Daniel Gerroll, Elinor Gunn and Michael Monicatti, provide as much actualization as they can muster. What they’re mustering, though, is a script by David Hare that may have resonated a little better when Hare wrote it in 1995, but has lost steam and meaning in 2018. While it had revivals in London and New York in 2015, and apparently then garnered acting Tony awards at that time, it’s hard to imagine even the Tony winners doing a better job to make the play “work.”

Kyra (Gunn) is a young woman on her own, now, but we learn that when she was just 18, she moved in with Tom (Gerroll) and his wife Alice and their son Edward (Monicatti) and while she lived with them, she had a torrid affair with Tom for six years! In exposi-

OCT. OPENINGS

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rapport, forged by their defiance of a life of senseless tyranny. Secrets, lies, and pacts are made in this harrowing yet ultimately beautiful piece about the true cost of sacrifice. www.seattlerep.org

Honey Noble’s Last Show Ever, Cheat Day, 10/5-14 (at Nii Modo, 4455 Stone Way N)

An interdisciplinary meta-exploration of the many identities of the lead singer of a band, this performance features a fiveperson band, dancers, actors, and tons of original content from music to theatre to everything in between. Real life band Honey Noble performs their final set in Seattle before KT has to move off to New York, but things do not go as planned and the audience is whisked down a rabbit hole of family, mystery, epic rock shows, violent conflicts with identity and awkward company cocktail parties.

https://www.brownpapertickets.com/ event/3624042

Little Shop of Horrors, Shoreline Community College, 10/5-10/14

Little Shop of Horrors, a deviously delicious Broadway sci-fi smash musical, has devoured the hearts of theater goers everywhere. Seymour, a meek flower shop assistant stumbles across a strange plant he names “Audrey II,” after his co-worker

tion, we learn that she told Tom many times that if Alice ever found out, Kyra would have to leave. Kyra apparently loved Alice. The play takes place in “real time” roughly for the first two-thirds of this long play – i.e., the time in the play goes by about like the time in our real lives. Edward shows up at Kyra’s cheap apartment of at least a year and tells Kyra that Alice has died and that Tom is not doing well after a year of mourning. Then Tom shows up immediately after, not knowing that Edward had just been there. Tom seems to want to be back in relationship with Kyra. Kyra is unsure. Kyra has become a teacher, after leaving to carve out a new life she respects and is dedicated to. Tom denigrates her new life and its poverty. There are many class-conflict issues presented as he makes fun of where she lives and the fact that she teaches lowincome children.

crush. This foul-mouthed carnivore promises unending fame and fortune to the down and out Seymour as long as he keeps feeding it – blood.

This production of Little Shop will feature custom-built puppets – (Avenue Q / “Sesame Street”-style) – in the leading roles of Audrey, Seymour, Mushnik and Orin, in addition to the usual puppet progression of Audrey II – to reflect our modern understanding that a voice and soul is not pre-determined by the skin it resides in.

Both puppet and puppet-performers will perform in full view of the audience.

https://www.brownpapertickets.com/ event/3599485

Goldilocks and the Three Bears, Thistle Theatre, 10/6-21 (various locations)

The three bears load up their trailer and leave Yellowstone Park for a vacation in Hollywood, California. When Papa Bear, Mama Bear and Baby Bear take a walk, Goldilocks and her pet duck stumble upon their campsite where the porridge is hot and the bed is just right! Songwriter Sue Ennis has written ’50s rock, country and pop tunes for this classic story with a modern twist.

Amy Escobar, Andre Nelson and Zane Exactly are the puppeteers in the production directed by Jean Enticknap with puppets designed and built by Brian Kooser. www.thistletheatre.org

One might guess that those class issues and aspects of conversation regarding “what is a life?” – debates about what is fulfilling or useful to do with a life – were part of the reason the play was chosen. The bigger problem is that Tom is a boor and a bully, that Kyra may have been groomed by him to be in a relationship with him to begin with, and neither of them acknowledges any of that, really.

It feels more like a play that men might not “get” in terms of women wondering why Kyra was ever attracted to Tom –again, see “grooming” – and certainly now that she’s gotten free of him, what possible reason would she have to accept his attentions now. But then, see “grooming” again. If that focus is not solved, there really is no reason to pay attention to the class warfare Tom wages, or the discussions about what is worthwhile to do with your life, either.

Come From Away, 5th Ave Theatre, 10/9-11/4

The Seattle-to-Broadway-back-toSeattle hit tells the remarkable true story of 7,000 stranded passengers and the small town in Newfoundland that welcomed them. Cultures clashed and nerves ran high, but uneasiness turned into trust, music soared into the night, and gratitude grew into enduring friendships. National tour. www.5thavenue.org

And in This Corner: Cassius Clay, Seattle Children’s Theatre, 10/11-11/25

Idris Goodwin writes about how, long before he was Muhammad Ali, 12-yearold Cassius Clay knew he would be a hero someday, no matter what anyone else had to say. In the nation’s dark time of Jim Crow racism and violence, Cassius – with the support of his family, training from Officer Joe Martin, and his own hard work – fought his way onto the gold-medal stand and into the history books.

www.sct.org

Brainpeople, Latino Theatre Projects, 10/11-11/3 (at Theatre Off Jackson)

Brainpeople is a deeply psychological story of three women and the life events that haunt them. A wealthy Puerto Rican woman who is still obsessively grieving the parents she lost at age eight sends her armored limousine out into a violent, dystopian Los Angeles to pick up two complete strangers and bring them back to her home

As a woman attuned to the general #MeToo atmosphere (and obsessed by the goings on of the current Kava-NO situation), I am perhaps hypersensitive to the power imbalances in male-female relationships. Presented with such an imbalance on stage, now I am looking for it to make sense and/or be resolved somehow. So, plays that ignore it altogether, like Skylight, fail to engage me on whatever other levels they think the play is talking about. I simply can’t care about their speechifying, since they’re ignoring the elephant in the room. For more information, go to www.acttheatre.org or call 206-292-7676.

Discuss your opinions with SGNCritic@ gmail.com or go to www.facebook.com/ SeattleTheaterWriters. More articles can be found at MiryamsTheaterMusings. blogspot.com

for an exotic feast and deep conversation. A mixture of comedy and chaos ensues when one of the guests, who suffers Dissociative Identity Disorder, brings along her crew of “brainpeople” and the other, a nervous, intelligent Armenian woman, reveals the source of her distrust of all people. The meal turns into an evening of brutal honesty and terrifying introspection.

www.latinotheatreprojects.org

Fade, Seattle Public Theater, 10/12-11/4

In this witty, true-to-life new comedy, Mexican-born Lucia is hired to write for a ruthless Hollywood studio. She soon discovers that the studio’s Mexican American custodian, Abel, has a windfall of plot ideas – but as their friendship grows, his stories start to blur with hers, leading to unexpected consequences.

www.seattlepublictheater.org

Legally Blonde the Musical, Seattle Musical Theatre, 10/12-28

Legally Blonde The Musical, follows the transformation of the famously perky Elle Woods as she tackles stereotypes and scandal in pursuit of her dream fella. Ultimately, she defies expectations, quickly realizes her potential and sets out to prove herself to the world while staying true to her delightfully “pink” personality. Actionpacked and exploding with memorable songs and dynamic dances - this musical is so much fun, it should be illegal!

www.seattlemusicaltheatre.org

A Small History is sweet and unexpected

by Miryam Gordon SGN A&E Writer

A SMALL HISTORY OF AMAL, AGE 7 FORWARD FLUX PRODUCTIONS AND PRATIDHWANI (AT WEST OF LENIN)

Through October 6

Pratidhwani combines forces with Forward Flux Productions to present a “small” play, simply presented with few set pieces, many sound effects made directly by the actors, about a small seven year old Indian boy. It’s a production that enchants and delights in the small moments of life. A Small History of Amal, Age 7 by Lindsay Joelle, is exactly what the title says it is.

We’re introduced to Amal (Nabilah S. Ahmed), who is sick, though we don’t know why. His uncle has to leave him in the hospital to go to work. Uncle (Gurvinder Pal Singh) is worried about his nephew, and feels badly leaving, because Amal’s mother and father are both dead and Uncle is all Amal has. But Uncle works on trains and must keep working.

We get to know Amal as he interacts with his doctor (Abhijet Rane), nurse (Meenakshi Rishi), the hospital aide (Jay Athalye) and meets a small girl, Suda (Varsha Raghavan), who has to periodically visit the hospital for monitoring. The cast also becomes train passengers and siblings of Suda, and helps create the playful atmosphere of discovery that Amal infuses his world with.

Much of the play is light and delightful. While it’s not completely a childoriented play, it feels like children would entirely accept and enter this world and this explorer-mentality of Amal. The play asks the audience to look at the world in that child-like wonder, as well.

Later, it may surprise you how invested you become in the life of this small boy, as the play turns darker and the explosion of terrorism on Uncle’s trains takes a toll. Then, the play becomes a vehicle of exploring our connection to violence when the violence is far away in both physical miles and time.

The play is set in 2006, on the day a train was bombed in Mumbai, India. The playwright said in an interview, “When

OSLO, ACT Theatre, 10/12-11/11 (opens 10/18)

2017 Tony Award for Best Play. OSLO tells the true – albeit little known – story of Norwegian diplomat Mona Juul and her husband, Terje Rød-Larsen, who together coordinated top-secret peace negotiations between Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Palestine Liberation Organization Chairman Yasser Arafat in the early 1990s. Their efforts culminated in the signing of the Oslo Accords in 1993. A deeply personal story set against the background of a high stakes political thriller about the individuals behind world history and their all-too-human ambitions.

www.acttheatre.org

The White Snake, ReAct Theatre, 10/13-11/18 (at 12th Avenue Arts)

Mary Zimmerman reimagines an ancient Chinese legend in which a snake spirit transforms herself into a beautiful woman in order to experience the human world. Adventuring down her mountainside with her companion, Green Snake, White Snake meets and falls in love with the humble, virtuous Xu Xian and convinces him to marry her. Together, the three friends open a pharmacy, but soon the remarkable healing powers of White Snake draw the attention of a treacherous monk, Fa Hai. Outraged at the union between a mortal and a snake spirit, Fa Hai takes it upon himself to destroy it.

https://www.brownpapertickets.com/ event/3621959

my friend was living in Mumbai, she was introduced to Rabindranath Tagore’s century-old short play Dak Ghar (The Post Office) about a sick child with the heart of an explorer, who interacts with the people in his village as they pass by his bedroom window. As a result, my Amal shares many … symptoms, as well as … optimism, intellectual curiosity, and inner strength.”

The cast, directed by Samip Raval, does a fine job of creating the atmosphere of storytelling. No matter their age, they throw themselves into young characters or into creating vocalisms of rain or wind. Nothing is too silly to perform.

A People’s History, Seattle Repertory Theatre, 10/17-11/25

Master storyteller, author, and actor Mike Daisey returns to the Rep with the autobiographical story of when Daisey comes across a battered copy of his high school U.S. history textbook and decides, in true Daisey fashion, to contrast it with something wildly different: Howard Zinn’s electrifying

“A People’s History of the United States.” In this series of 18 stand-alone monologues, Daisey explores a history of the U.S. not typically taught in schools. www.seattlerep.org

The Night Parade, REBATEnsemble and Pork Filled Productions, 10/17-11/3 (mystery location)

Based on the Japanese folk tale of “Night of a Hundred Demons,” written by Kendall Uyeji, this is an immersive horror story. Brilliant, innovative and deeply troubled, Shunkuno Arashi was a pioneer of Japanese art who was unknown to the world until the last decade. Her legacy spans one hundred pieces; all attributed to the theme of demons. When an art show featuring her work arrives in town, mysterious happenings take place. The walls begin to move and shadows take form. https://nightparade.brownpapertickets. com

I and You, Theater Schmeater and Pratidhwani, 10/18-11/3

Playwright Lauren Gunderson has had a

Ahmed brings her considerable talents to bear as Amal. She is able to disappear as a woman and a grown up into this seven year old. Her wide-eyed questioning of the world and the sense of folding new information into a revised understanding is pitch perfect.

Jordan Gerow is credited with set design, and uses mobile hospital beds and metal and sheet covered hospital privacy barriers to set various hospital locations. The 3/4 surround of the seating makes the production feel like a camp-fire story and like we’re all imagining together.

This is a sweet and unexpected play that provides a lot of different aspects to react to.

number of local productions here. I and You is an ode to youth, life, love, and the strange beauty of human connectedness. Anthony arrives unexpectedly at Caroline’s door bearing an urgent homework assignment. She hasn’t been to school in months due to illness. As these two sparring, sparking, high school students share their secrets, they unlock a much deeper mystery that has brought them together. www.schmee.org

Ghost Game XII: Into The Dark, The Cabiri, 10/18-11/3 (Arcadia, 943 NW 50th St.)

An intimate, immersive theater experience that includes acrobatic theater, aerial dance, puppetry, and terrifying tales from myth and folklore as only The Cabiri can present. Into the Dark explores how humans draw darkness upon themselves, the actions of their lives invoking darkness from the supernal realms. www.cabiri.org

Hostages, Radial Theater Project, 10/19-11/3 (at 18th & Union)

Playwright Yussef El Guindi crafts a play about two college professors who leave their homeland for a war zone. They are there on a mission of peace, but peace is hard to find when you’re chained to a radiator. Hostages explores how human beings cope when they’re deprived of personal contact and torn from the pleasantries of everyday life.

www.18thandUnion.org

In an unassuming way, subject matter as large as Life and Death becomes accessible to everyone. For more information, go to https://tickets. forwardflux.com/products/a-small-historyof-amal-age-7?variant=12646444761197.

Discuss your opinions with SGNCritic@gmail.com or go to www.facebook. com/SeattleTheaterWriters. More articles can be found at MiryamsTheaterMusings. blogspot.com.

[title of show], SecondStory Repertory, 10/19-11/4

Jeff and Hunter, two struggling writers, hear about a new musical theater festival. However, the deadline for submissions is a mere three weeks away. With nothing to lose, the pair decides to try to create something new with the help of their friends Susan, Heidi and Larry. Jeff and Hunter begin a conversation about what to write about and eventually Jeff suggests they write about what to write about. They make a pact to write up until the festival’s deadline and dream about the show changing their lives.

www.secondstoryrep.org

Ghost Party, Dacha Theatre, 10/2011/4 (at the Russian Community Center) You live, you die, you move on – that’s how it’s supposed to go. When an unlucky subset of the dead have been reliving the same ill-fated party over and over for decades, it’s up to you to try find a way to change their fates. In Ghost Party’s immersive environment, you will interact with its diverse inhabitants. You might dive deep into one ghost’s tragic past and find a way to set them free – or you might try and meet as many spirits as you can. But be careful, upsetting the delicate balance these poor spirits have been in for centuries may have consequences – for both the dead and the living.

https://www.brownpapertickets.com/ event/3618785

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Arms and the Man, Seattle Shakespeare Company, 10/23-11/18 (Seattle Center Armory Theatre)

Raina Petkoff is young, beautiful, and filled with romantic notions about love. She’s all set to marry war hero Major Saranoff, but then the combat crashes through her window in the form of a soldier fighting for the opposing side. Intrigued, Raina agrees to hide him, but only after learning he carries chocolates instead of bullets. After the war ends, both rival soldiers return for their love, and that’s when the real battle for Raina’s heart begins. It’s George Bernard Shaw’s classic play. www.seattleshakespeare.org

On Your Feet, Paramount Theatre, 10/23-28

The story of Gloria Estefan and Emilio Estefan, two people who – through an unwavering dedication to one another and their pursuit of the American dream – showcased their talent, their music and their heritage to the world in a remarkable rise to global superstardom. The musical is set to Gloria’s chart-topping, smash hits. www.stgpresents.org

A Bright Room Called Day, The Williams Project, 10/25-11/18 (at Hillman City Collaboratory)

Tony Kushner’s play starts with a new president just come to power by the slimmest of margins. Though his rhetoric is alarming, democratic institutions are strong and the opposition is looking good heading into the next election. This is Ber-

lin, in 1932. In Agnes Eggling’s apartment, a group of artists and activists struggle between their conscience and their comfort, trying to decide how much they are willing to sacrifice for their beliefs. First produced in 1985, this prophetic play is a wake-up call for contemporary America, posing timely questions about citizenship, resistance, and complicity. www.thewilliamsproject.org

Anansi and the Halfling, Annex Theatre, 10/26-11/17 (world premiere)

Written by Madison Jade Jones, Anansi and the Halfling is a mystical journey of discovered identity, ancient truth, and incredible fun told through the lens of a young black woman desperate to find herself. Ancient African wisdoms were passed down through song, dance and (often comical) metaphorical re-tellings. This telling, with a modern twist, snakes through a

college classroom, a mystical story realm, and the home of the gods themselves, with puppetry, drumming, and movement. Our heroine strives to learn that in order to know where you’re going, you have to know where you came from – even when the past is painful.

www.annextheatre.org

Parliament Square, Pony World, 10/26-11/17 (at 12th Avenue Arts)

Kat leaves her family one morning to commit an act of protest that she hopes will change the world. But her attempt is spoiled by a well-meaning stranger. Though she fails to change the world, she does forever change her life and the lives of her family. And now she must deal with the consequences.

www.ponyworld.org

Peggy: The Plumber Who Saved the Galaxy, Annex Theatre, 10/30-11/14 (Tue/ Wed)

Marcus Gorman and Jake Farley have written a science-fiction comedy adventure about a plumber, an AWOL pilot, and a galaxy in crisis. The year is 3732. Peggy – a Plumbing Specialist First Class at the prestigious Universe University – unexpectedly finds herself trapped in a galactic conflict between worlds. As she and an AWOL female military pilot named Rogen bounce across the far reaches and strange planets of the galaxy looking to stay alive, they become key in the means to achieve peace and save the day.

www.annextheatre.org

Letting Gilda tell Gilda’s story

Love, Gilda director Lisa D’Apolito brings Gilda Radner back to life

by Sara Michelle Fetters

A&E Writer

Love, Gilda is one of the best documentaries of 2018. Sitting in the theatre watching, I was struck by how vital and how timeless Gilda Radner’s journey to stardom proved to be, how relatable her journey was even for viewers who never had the pleasure of watching her when she was a featured player on “Saturday Night Live” or catching her scenestealing work in films like Hanky Panky or The Woman in Red back during their original theatrical release. A talented artist who broke new ground for women working in comedy, she also became a force of nature on Broadway, her one-woman show Gilda Radner –Live From New York a major success.

Director Lisa D’Apolito, given unprecedented access to Radner’s personal diaries, audio recording and home videos, brings the comedian’s life and times to the screen with astonishing clarity. From her early days working with the likes of Martin Short, to her iconic turns on “SNL” bringing classic characters like Roseanne Roseannadanna to life, to her marriage to Gene Wilder, battles against cancer and publication of her bestselling memoir It’s Always Something, it’s all here, and what’s truly extraordinary is just how resonating the comedian’s story still is today almost three full decades after her untimely death.

“What is resonating about Gilda for today is how the kids love her,” proclaims D’Apolito. “And what they love is that she’s so relatable. She’s like you and I. Plus she’s somebody who is funny. And non-threatening. And heroic. Gilda is just a good person. Her spirit, I think, it still shines through. I think she’s timeless in some sense.”

In town to debut her documentary to audiences attending two jam-packed screenings right at the very end of this past summer’s Seattle International Film Festival, I had the pleasure to catch up with the director at the Pan Pacific Hotel during her brief stay. Here are some of the highlights from our wide-ranging conversation:

Sara Michelle Fetters: This is your first documentary feature. When did you know Gilda’s story was one you needed to tell and you were the right person to do it?

Lisa D’Apolito: My background is in advertising and commercials. I do all the fundraising videos for Gilda’s Club in New York City and I didn’t really know much about Gilda. I knew who she was, and her characters, but I didn’t know her story. But, wait; you know what Gilda’s Club is all about, yes?

Sara Michelle Fetters: I do indeed. I did a couple of fundraisers for the Seattle Gilda’s Club about a decade ago when I was Imperial Princess of Seattle.

Lisa D’Apolito: Imperial Princess? My goodness. I’m being interviewed by royalty. Who knew?

Sara Michelle Fetter: Not really. [laughs] It’s a long story. And was a lifetime

ago. Besides, I want to know more how you went from doing promotional work for Gilda’s Club to making a thought-provoking, emotionally incisive documentary about Gilda Radner’s life.

Lisa D’Apolito: Well, I just fell in love with Gilda’s Club. That’s easy to do, as I’m sure you know. When I would interview members for these fundraising videos, they would talk about Gilda as if she was still present. I was like, this woman is just so special! And from there the film just evolved. The film was originally about members of Gilda’s Club and how they were inspired by Gilda Radner. But I was filming these kids at Camp Sparkle and there was a little girl and she was drawing the Roseanne Roseannadanna character. I was like, “What are you doing?” “Oh, I’m drawing Gilda,” she responded. Just like that. And she had no idea who Gilda was. None. And yet she obviously still did. I was amazed.

But that’s because Gilda is just still so present at Gilda’s Club. She’s always there, and this led me to go to the head of Gilda’s Club in New York City and proclaim that I wanted to make a movie about Gilda Radner. I really thought she had the most unique legacy. Not just as an iconic female comedian, but as somebody who really is important to people who are going through cancer. There are 18 Gilda’s Clubs in the country and everyone, no matter their age or background, they know who Gilda is. That’s incredible.

So I think that was my impetus to tell her story. People need to know about Gilda. I think subconsciously, I was like, we gotta tell people about Gilda, and I have to be the one to do it. I just knew I had to make this movie.

Sara Michelle Fetters: Once you made that leap to tell her story, how did you end up getting all this access to her materials? Gilda’s diaries. All of those recording. Those home videos. You had access to so much stuff.

Lisa D’Apolito: Well, I got the support of Gilda’s estate and her brother, Michael Radner. There was a point where I was going to make a combination of my original ideas, a point where the film was going to be melding of my interviews with members of Gilda’s Club and my research in Gilda Radner. But when I asked Michael if he had any extra materials that were from Gilda anywhere, he was like, “Yeah. I do. We’ve got all these boxes in storage.”

see LISA D'APOLITO page 8

LOVE, GILDA

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bizarre. We also went to see The Woman in Red and Haunted Honeymoon at the drive-in mainly because she was in both of them, and as much as we all enjoyed Young Frankenstein and Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory I can’t exactly say my mom and dad were head over heels for Gene Wilder. She was the draw. It was obvious, and even if I doubt either of my parents would remember any of this now, all of this is nonetheless burned into my memory as if it were yesterday.

All of those memories and more came flooding back like a massive tsunami while I was watching director Lisa D’Apolito’s remarkable documentary Love, Gilda Given unparalleled access to the iconic actress and comedian’s home movies and personal diaries, this is a story told almost entirely via its subject’s own words. While D’Apolito does interview a flock of individuals who knew her best, including fellow “Saturday Night Live” alumni Chevy Chase, Laraine Newman and Paul Shaffer, it is the voice of Radner herself that resonates most. From her early days just starting out working with the likes of Martin Short, to her time on “SNL,” to her groundbreaking one-woman Broadway show, to her love affair and marriage to Wilder, which was sadly quickly followed by her tragic battle against cancer and the publication of her best-selling memoir It’s Always Something, she talks about all of it.

It’s fairly extraordinary, D’Apolito’s film a stunning chronicle of one of the 20th century’s most remarkable talents who trail-blazed her way through a misogynistic, male-dominated industry like few others before her had been able to accomplish. More, Radner forged a path a whole army of female comics have been building upon and expanding ever since, and to see so many of them appear here reading from her journals, and so clearly emotional at being given the opportunity to do so, is continually incredible. Everything is here in one way or another, the director craftily building a story of a singular life that’s continually striving for more and in the process manufacturing a saga of triumph, regret, tragedy and courage that’s universal in its breadth, scope and emotional resonance.

I find it interesting that this film is coming out now. Right in the heart of the #TimesUp and #MeToo movements, at the

time when Frances McDormand is standing on the Oscar stage shouting, “inclusion rider” for all the world to hear and essentially putting every Hollywood studio on instantaneous notice, with political, corporate and social worlds being rocked by one scandal after another, here is a story of a talented woman who had to fight for everything she achieved all the while being told every step of the way she just wasn’t as smart or as talented as the men she happened to be standing next to in front of a global audience each and every week. To D’Apolito’s credit, she doesn’t shout about the parallels between then and now, instead once again allowing Radner herself to do all the heavy lifting for her. This gives her documentary a vitality and an urgency it likely never would have obtained had the director been more didactic or heavyhanded in her approach, all of which gives the film another emotional level to rise to that will likely take many audience members by surprise.

But this is Radner’s story. Even if one isn’t as familiar with her achievements as one would hope they would be (she died back in 1989, after all), it’s crystal clear after watching D’Apolito’s opus why so many of today’s most accomplished entertainers, people like Amy Poehler, Melissa McCarthy, Bill Hader and Maya Rudolph look up to her with such adoration. Not just for her work on “SNL.” Not just for her Broadway triumphs. Not just for her scenestealing performances in Hanky Panky and The Woman in Red. Not just for her autobiography or her life-saving work being a figurehead in the battle against cancer which led to the founding of a number of Gilda’s Clubs throughout the United States. They admire her for all of it, every step of that journey, Radner’s story one people of all backgrounds, genders and ethnicities can look at for inspiration.

It is that aforementioned universality that ends up making Love, Gilda so magnificent. After watching, I couldn’t help but be instantly reminded as to why my parents loved Radner as much as they did. Better, D’Apolito has made a movie that will introduce the legendary comedy firebrand to a potential new audience of youngsters who will be blown away by her whip-smart brilliance. No joke, this is one of 2018’s best documentaries, and I hope viewers of all types take the time to give it a look the second it becomes available for them to do so.

At first he was very reluctant to let me take a look, but then Gilda’s best friend Judy Levy, who is in the film, wanted to see them, too, and she ended up flying down from Toronto to look through them with Michael. So I thought, why not film the two of them going through the boxes? That was the start of Michael gaining trust in me to the point he allowed me to look through the boxes as well.

Sara Michelle Fetters: Going through all of that material, never knowing what you were going to find, that had to be like opening an unexpected present on Christmas morning.

Lisa D’Apolito: I called it the “Gilda Journey.” I never knew what was going to happen next. As new people came onto the team they would go through the experience. Everyone was walking away saying, “Gilda said this to me.” All of a sudden you feel like Gilda’s with you. It was good to see other editors come on board, other produc-

Admittedly, it was very overwhelming. It took me three trips to Detroit to really grasp and go through what was in the boxes. As I’d read Gilda’s book, the first thing I was looking for was any home movies because I knew from the book that she had recorded her ninth chemotherapy. I really wanted to find that.

Sara Michelle Fetters: That had to be something, going through all that material not really knowing what it was you were going to find.

Lisa D’Apolito: It was. There were so many boxes and so many various VHS recordings of so many different things. But then Judy picks up this VHS tape and written on the side it clearly says, “Gilda’s Ninth Chemotherapy Video.” I couldn’t believe it. But we put the tape in the player and there’s Gilda in her hospital. It was amazing. Just amazing that she recorded her own chemotherapy session. And then I watched it I realized it was so much more than that. She had edited it. This tape was like its own 20-minute film! It was just extraordinary.

From then on I was a woman on a mission. Every family member, every friend, anyone who had ever met Gilda, I had them go into their storage units looking for whatever they could find. I went to libraries. I went on eBay. I looked for anything that I could find that was personal because I knew after watching that chemotherapy tape I wanted Gilda to tell her own story. I wanted the story to come from her point of view.

Sara Michelle Fetters: Was that the point you realized Gilda had to be the one telling this story?

Lisa D’Apolito: It was. When I heard the original audio tapes, I wanted the audience to feel exactly what I was feeling. My editors and I, we just listened to Gilda for 32 hours of Gilda. After the tapes were over we sat down and listened to them all over again. It was just hearing her; it was heartbreaking and inspiring.

I went to every journalist that I could find, calling them up and asking, “Hey, do you have the tape of when you recorded Gilda Radner 42 years ago?” It was a Gilda scavenger hunt. But having Gilda tell her own story? That became my goal. I was so adamant. Nobody was going tell Gilda’s story but Gilda.

That’s how it was with all of them. Bill Hader was visibly shaking when he was looking over the pages. I was a little shocked just how much Gilda and her words meant to all of them.

Sara Michelle Fetters: How did you decide on who was going to read what?

Lisa D’Apolito: There are a couple of journals. One of them is nicknamed “The Fame Journal,” which is the one we mostly use in the film. It was so important to me to have their reactions to that journal in the film. I tried to choose sections for them to look at I felt they’d respond to emotionally. Fame was so hard for Gilda, but she still made fun of it all, found humor in her own insecurities. This “Fame Journal” is a really great journal.

After that I supplemented other things I thought that would resonate with them all, little pieces from other journals. There’s a lot of material of each of them responding to all of it. The DVD extras will be so good. There’s so much material. There’s like fourand-a-half hours of the comedians reading and talking about Gilda. It’s amazing stuff, but we had to cut a lot of it out because I didn’t want any of this to overpower the film.

Sara Michelle Fetters: And the great

because he wanted to be in the film, but because he loved Gilda. He loved her. He respected her. They were such good friends. Everyone thought of her as an equal.

Sara Michelle Fetters: It is always striking when you see that photo of the original “Saturday Night” cast. You see that extraordinary collection of talent. And Gilda wasn’t just a sidekick to the likes of Bill Murray or Dan Aykroyd or Chevy Chase. She was an essential member of the cast.

Lisa D’Apolito: Gilda was a very generous performer. Very easy to perform with. Very giving. Very willing to make the other person look good and to just live in the moment. So I think some of the best sketches you see, with John Belushi and her, with Steve Martin and Bill Murray, she’s so generous with her talents. Gilda felt totally equal to all these guys. She had no doubt that she was as talented. She held her ground and she was really the breakout star. John and Dan went on to do The Blues Brothers, and Chevy Chase had a big career. But she was really the breakout star. The one everyone was talking about. She and Chevy Chase. They were really the breakout stars at the beginning. I think that’s fair to say.

Sara Michelle Fetters: I love that

ers and the animators who were animating her writings. They all said that. Everyone got immersed into the world of Gilda.

Sara Michelle Fetters: Even so, could you have ever imagined the reactions you’ve been getting from these enthusiastic festival audiences?

Lisa D’Apolito: Never! It’s a little surreal. You always wish that people are going to like your movie. Everyone wants an Academy Award. You dream about that stuff. When it became the opening film at Tribeca. I think I cried. Tina Fey opened the film, and she almost cried twice talking about Gilda. She was mentioning my name and she’s expressing all this love for the film. That was something. And then seeing the kids of today, younger audiences, being so interested, whether they’ll see the film or not I think that’s exciting.

Sara Michelle Fetters: Speaking of people like Tina Fey, you’ve got actors like Melissa McCarthy and Amy Poehler reading from those journals. It’s pretty remarkable, watching them all sitting there, reading her diaries and responding to Gilda’s words with such emotion

Lisa D’Apolito: I think that was probably the most surprising thing. You imagined people would say how much they loved watching her on television or that they modeled their careers on her, stuff like that. You would expect those kinds of things. But I had limited time with everybody, and I didn’t let them know what I was going to ask them to do. That’s not quite accurate. Actually they wound up knowing that they were going to see the journals. But I didn’t really let them know they were going to be reading excerpts from them.

Amy was my first person to get the journals. You don’t want to go through agents because they’ll want to know what their client is going to be reading. It was my producer who suggested I just read something from them myself, that I just take out the diary and read to Amy. So that’s what I did. I took out the diary and I said, “This is Gilda’s journal.”

The look on Amy’s face was priceless. “This is Gilda’s journal?” she asked immediately? She grabbed the pages out of my hands and just started reading. It was an incredible moment.

thing is that they don’t overpower the film. You utilize them so sparingly, sprinkling their appearances here and there to augment whatever Gilda happens to be talking about herself at any given moment.

Lisa D’Apolito: That was the idea. I’m glad you think we pulled it off.

Sara Michelle Fetter: Also, when was the last documentary you have to tell people to stay through the credits for the postcredits stinger? It’s like you’ve made the Marvel film of documentaries.

Lisa D’Apolito: [laughs] If you say so. I do wish I would have sprinkled in some pictures of Gilda and her life into the credits in order to help ensure audiences will stay through the end. Hopefully they still will.

Sara Michelle Fetters: You also have some surprisingly intimate interviews with many of Gilda’s contemporaries, including insights from Martin Short, Chevy Chase, Laraine Newman and Paul Shaffer, just to name four. All of them tend to get a little emotional as they talk about her.

Lisa D’Apolito: They missed her. Everybody lost her. They lost her so young. They loved Gilda. They missed her. That was always sad. It was always sad. I felt like I made everybody sad, because they were remembering how much they loved her, and they remembered the loss they felt. So those were much more difficult interviews than the modern-day comedians, because they were all just remembering.

But they did it for Gilda. Lorne Michaels, the most powerful man in comedy. He was still mourning. And yet he still did it, still sat down for the interview, not

moment when you show them all doing the show in New Orleans. She looks so terrified when she realizes just how many people are there to see them all. How could they not know they were so popular? That “Saturday Night” had become such a phenomenon.

Lisa D’Apolito: I love that sequence of the film, too. It felt like an important sequence that we needed to explore. But how did they not know? I don’t know. It was the 1970s. You didn’t always know what people were watching in their dorm rooms. What people at college were gathering together, like 30 or 40 people in a room, to watch.

And they were all so isolated. The “Saturday Night” cast was working like six days a week in order to make each show happen. They were all together pretty much all the time. They couldn’t really know what was going on in the outside world. They were in their own little creative bubble. So going to New Orleans? Seeing all those people? I think it had to be shocking to all of them to realize just how famous they all really were.

Sara Michelle Fetters: Which is great because you make a point of showing just how hard Gilda is working, how much of herself she’s putting into each and every show.

Lisa D’Apolito: Definitely. That was important.

Sara Michelle Fetters: And then that’s juxtaposed with her thoughts from the journals talking about her insecurities, how difficult she was oftentimes finding things. Not only do you get a real feel for

what it was like to be a woman working in a male-dominated industry in the 1970s, you’re also reminded that things haven’t changed nearly as much as we like to think they have. You compare what Gilda is talking about in her journals and it’s honestly not that far removed from what Frances McDormand was saying when she picked up her Best Actress Oscar.

Lisa D’Apolito: I thought about that, too. The thing is, Gilda, she would wonder why this is still happening now. She would be wondering about it all. I think her insecurities were as a person in relationships. It was about her body issues. It was about her relationships.

But she was a savvy businesswoman. She was a strong woman. Nobody took advantage of her career-wise. She wouldn’t let them. So I think she’d be shocked that this was still going on now. That was one of the things we wanted to explore that we didn’t get as strong in the film as I wanted. At least I don’t think we did. When you ask people who were there, the writers from “SNL,” the actors at the time, they all really truly felt equal. But the writers did have trouble. They had to fight to get their voices heard.

But they did fight, and I think they all felt like they got what they wanted. At the same time, Gilda never got a writing credit, even though she was great writer. I mean, I don’t know if it worked back then, but that’s still pretty astonishing, if you think about it.

That was an interesting tape, actually. Gilda talks about how they weren’t realizing how revolutionary they were and how the ’70s were revolutionized for women. As she says, there were never women doctors on television. Newscasters were always blonde. If they were women they were blonde. They didn’t realize as the women’s movement was changing, comedy was changing, too. And “Saturday Night Live” was reflecting that. I’m glad we were able to get snippets of that tape into the movie.

Sara Michelle Fetters: And then, of course, you have her relationship with Gene. Your heart can’t help but break for Gilda Radner and Gene Wilder. Their story is so affecting. Why does that story between these two mean so much? Why does it affect us so deeply?

son he married Gilda was that her dog ate rat poison. It’s not in the film. She was supposed to go to France with him but her dog ate rat poison, so she stayed behind. And he realized that she was independent. That she was her own person. He loved that. I mean, it’s a kind of weird story, but she tells it in her book as well and it sounds so surreal. Is it true? I don’t know. But having Gene tell it to me? That was magical. It became real.

And that was their love story. It was real. Even when you couldn’t quite believe it, their love story was real. Every word.

Sara Michelle Fetters: My mother adored Gilda Radner, and she followed just about every part of this story. When she had her own breast cancer scare, I think, in a way, Gilda Radner helped her get through it.

Lisa D’Apolito: And she got through it?

Sara Michelle Fetters: She did. Yes. It was a real fight, but she’s still here.

I guess I bring thing this up because so many of us have been impacted by cancer in one way or another. We can relate to what Gilda is going through in a very personal, almost visceral way. All of which makes watching her battle, especially when we know the outcome, incredibly difficult to watch at times.

Lisa D’Apolito: It had to be hard to watch, I think. But also inspiring. That was important. Gilda knew that this was a difficult fight; she knew what she was going through. Yet she still found a way to keep inspiring people. I don’t think she ever lost hope.

Sara Michelle Fetters: Case in point, that chemotherapy video we were talking about earlier. It’s extraordinary.

Lisa D’Apolito: I still cry during that moment. Every time. Audiences tend to laugh a little bit when they see her interacting with Sparkle, her dog, but that whole tape just wrecks me.

Sara Michelle Fetters: Watching what Gilda Radner is going through, even though it’s tragic, it’s also quite heroic. I was inspired after watching this movie. I wanted to attack the world. I wanted to go out there and make a difference. That’s her legacy, isn’t it? That she could look at this horrible situation and keep fighting?

Lisa D’Apolito: Yes. Definitely. That’s exactly it.

not exactly uplifting? We had different ideas. Gilda talked a lot about all she was going through. She was in and out of hospitals. She talked a lot about all the awful things that were happening to her, but not in an awful way. But she really struggled, more than you see in the film. I didn’t want

Lisa D’Apolito: It is a love story. It’s that simple. Gilda loved Gene. Those hours of audiotape, it’s always “my husband.” She loved him so much. I think he taught her a different way of life. He taught her to enjoy food, to enjoy reading, to enjoy playing a game. Gilda was a homebody at heart. I think they were so different but so similar. I was able to spend a day with Gene a year before he died, and it was at the house that he and Gilda lived in, that he still lived in. He did go on and meet someone else. He had love. So it’s not such a sad story for him. But, talking to him about Gilda, she meant so much to him.

I was nervous going to speak with Gene. I walk into the room and he turns around and is really not well, but he turns around and looks at me with his big blue eyes and he’s still so handsome. Handsome. And he’s like, “You look like a little girl.” And I melted. It just made me feel so comfortable. Out of everything I had done, that was the day I was the most nervous. I wasn’t filming him or anything. It was just a meeting. He was so gracious with his time and he told me stories, stories that I didn’t believe even though they were in Gilda’s book, but were just so incredible. But he made me look at them all through fresh eyes. He talked about the rea-

Sara Michelle Fetters: Like with that appearance with Gary Shandling. That was, in essence, an act of resistance, don’t you think? A statement telling the world that, no matter what happened next, she would be victorious one way or another.

Lisa D’Apolito: Yeah. I think you might be right. She just enjoyed the fight, I think. Throughout her life, whether it was overcoming her eating disorder or her battle with cancer, she started to heal and grow and mature and become a different person. As she left “SNL” and started doing movies, she fell in love with Gene, the whole world was opening up for her.

And then she had cancer. But I think she made the best out of this situation, out of every situation. She never hit rock bottom. Even in the diaries, she’d write these horrible things, but she was always able to bounce herself out of these doldrums. That’s so inspiring to me because I can’t imagine going through what she was. Who knows how you would react? I hope I could react like Gilda. That would be my dream.

But that’s so great that you felt inspired, because that was a tricky thing with the film because everyone knows the ending. We know Gilda didn’t beat cancer.

So how do you do the ending when it’s

to go into the details of her surgeries and stuff like that. It didn’t feel appropriate.

But through it all, no matter how difficult it was, she just enjoyed life. She enjoyed people. And I think with cancer, she met so many amazing people, people part of The Wellness Community, so many who were going through the same thing as her. She bonded on a level with them that maybe she hadn’t bonded with anyone else in a long time. Making sure that was in the movie was very important to me. I think people needed to see that.

Sara Michelle Fetters: And is that Gilda’s legacy? That it goes beyond comedy, beyond being this extraordinary talent. That her legacy is this ability to stay positive in the face of such overwhelming odds. That she refused to stop fighting.

Lisa D’Apolito: That’s what I’d like people to walk away with. Her legacy of really finding joy in the darkest of times. Finding a way out. As you see in the film, she does discover that this isn’t going to end well, that she’s not going to make it. But I guess her legacy is positiveness, and I think that’s important to showcase in a world that’s not so positive right now. That’s why I always say that the world needs a Gilda. Like Amy Poehler says, Gilda was a red-

blue, she’s like a red-blue state. She’s loved by all. I don’t think there’s anything about Gilda that pushes anybody away. She’s unifying. Two people who have totally different political beliefs could still both love Gilda. That’s her legacy. I get emails and messages every day from someone who is battling cancer, or from people who just love Gilda and who miss her, who want to reminisce about her, and they always touch me so deeply. I think Gilda brings back memories for people of where they were and what they wanted from life. It brings back a youth. People who know Gilda love Gilda. If you don’t know who Gilda is, you don’t know why that is, but after watching the film hopefully you will know, if that makes sense. [laughs]

Sara Michelle Fetters: With that in mind, what do you hope people are talking about after the film comes to an end?

Lisa D’Apolito: People are saying, “Thank you.” They’re saying, “Thank you, for making the film.” I mean, I did put a couple years of my life into making this, and there were so many times I thought it was never going to happen. That I was never going to finish. But I knew that would be a disservice to Gilda’s example. I had to keep plugging away. I had to finish. So what do I want people to be talking about? I hope they laugh. I hope they cry. I hope they feel like you do, that they feel inspired to go out and make a difference, to make a positive difference in the world around them.

One other thing, which came up only in Seattle, and it came up with all the modernday comedians as well, people’s parents introduced them to Gilda. All the modernday people were introduced by their parents. Beth Barrett, who did my Q&A last night, said the same thing. So that’s amazing. I never truly realized how many people have told me their parents introduced them to Gilda. It’s a family thing. So, with this film, it’s like now this new generation gets to know about her. We get to pass Gilda along onto them. I’d never thought about that before I’d gotten to Seattle.

So Gilda’s journey continues. All these decades later, her story remains vital. I love that.

side-by-side with the more celebrated George Balanchine to make the New York City Ballet an international success, so it’s only right that he stands alone in the spotlight for a change. His special approach to dance, as well as his love for the music of Frédéric Chopin, are on delightful and beautiful display. It doesn’t matter which program you attend – both presentations are so full of pleasure that you will come away from McCaw Hall with a dreamy smile on your face.

The tone for both A and B programs is set by “Circus Polka,” a short work to the music of Igor Stravinsky designed to show off the skills of ballet students. PNB has a successful training school for young dancers, so this piece was a treat for parents and audience alike. Normally we only see children dancing onstage during the Christmas run of “George Balanchine’s Nutcracker,” but “Circus Polka” proves that Robbins was as skilled as Balanchine at maneuvering quantities of kids across a stage, each at the proper level of development. It begins with a ringmaster

striding onstage in a red coat and top hat – on opening night Artistic Director and Director of the PNB School, Peter Boal, did the honors – and calls onstage three ranks of tutu-clad dancers: first 16 girls in blue, who execute a sequence of steps to create a circus ring around the master, followed by 16 younger girls in green, then very tiny dancers in pink – 48 girls in all. They skip, march, bow, jump, and scamper through formations that are as pleasing as any corps de ballet sequence. On both nights I attended the audience burst into applause when the dancers formed a threering carousel of opposing circles, prancing like ponies to Stravinsky’s delightful music.

The A program continues with the mesmerizing “In the Night,” set to Chopin’s beguiling nocturnes. Four couples explore the many dimensions of love, from the first crush to seasoned friendship. Words like GORGEOUS, WONDERFUL, and BEAUTIFUL are scrawled all over my notebook. And for “Other Dances,” to Chopin’s piano mazurkas, I wrote CHARMING and BIG SMILE! Not very articulate, but very sincere. The only thing better than Chopin’s music is great choreography to his music –and dancers who execute it beautifully.

Also in the A program is the “West Side Story Suite” that revisits Robbins’ and Leonard Bernstein’s long running Broadway show based on Romeo and Juliet. The gang conflict between the Sharks and the Jets seemed a bit old fashioned (Where are the guns? Do they really stop beating each other up at the sound of a police whistle?) but the final number seemed more relevant than ever. “There’s a Place for Us” could be the theme song of every immigrant in the world. Stephen Sondheim’s timeless lyrics are so full of hope that you can almost see a better world past all the cruelty and corruption that never seems to go away.

My favorite dance of the evening, however, is “Afternoon of a Faun” – cleverly set in a dance studio. The faun is a ballet boy, the nymph is a ballerina, both in practice clothes, entwining each other to Debussy’s lush music while checking their moves in the mirror – the 4th wall – giving the audience a peeping-Tom’s view of their movements. When the faun finally looks straight at the nymph and gives her a kiss on the cheek, their entry into a real world makes a climax better than sex.

The B Program contains Robbins’ longer works – “Dances at a Gathering” and “The Concert.” Both are set to the music of Chopin, but with two very different moods. “The Concert” is a hilarious send-up of concert-goers and their foibles, as an onstage pianist (the elegant Cameron Grant) plays through a menu of Chopin favorites, richly accompanied by Emil de Cou and the PNB orchestra. The high point is Robbins’ famous “Mistake Waltz” in which six under-rehearsed ballerinas bollix up their piece with comical consistency. “Dances at a Gathering,” on the other hand, focuses on Chopin’s mazurkas and waltzes, giving us every combination of pairs, trios, quartets and sestets and solos, exploring not only complexities of movement but complexities of emotions. We see a young man dance alone, dreaming of a partner, we see a couple who are joyous in their partnership, then an ever-building and flowing wave of relationships as they form and dissolve.

Jerome Robbins had a special affinity for Chopin, which both programs demonstrate. In “The Concert” we can hear the reason why: Chopin composed almost exclusively for the piano, and invented the

“tempo rubato” style – that dreamy, heartwringing technique of keeping time with the left hand while the right hand melody slows down and then hurries to catch up. It’s hard to do – PNB has a line-up of wonderful pianists who can do it – and it creates a languid urgency that is pure romanticism. While the loose, pantomime approach to choreography in “The Concert” lent itself to “tempo rubato,” Robbins’ rapid, non-stop parade of dances in “Dances at a Gathering” seems to blunt Chopin’s most characteristic effect. Pianist Christina Seimens worked her way through the eighteen waltzes, mazurkas, and etudes with great stamina and discipline, but to my ears it sounded as though both hands were keeping strict time, and that the romantic lag and hurry was missing in the right hand. If

I had a magic wand I would eliminate two or three of the shorter dances and give the heroic pianist time to do the elusive magic that Chopin invented. Nevertheless, I think Chopin would enjoy these dances as much as the delighted audience did on both nights I attended. Jerome Robbins was a choreographer of consistent quality, whose explorations of great music have given us a legacy of charm, energy, and pure beauty. He is often characterized as a great American choreographer, but I think he’s a great choreographer without qualification. Come see either program A or B – or both – and experience the great Chopin through the eyes of the great Jerome Robbins. PNB is performing the Jerome Robbins Festival through September 29.

Coats and bright colors dominate the 2018 Collective Show at Bellevue Fashion Week FASHION

by MK Scott SGN Contributing Writer

For the third year in a row I attended Bellevue Fashion Week’s annual Collective Show which was held on Saturday, September 22 this year and which once again showcased some of the best brands that The Bellevue Collection has to offer and all for a great cause. 100% of the proceeds of the 13th annual Bellevue Fashion Week went to the Washington Special Olympics.

Representing Special Olympics Washington was Kirby Winfield, current board chairman. He took the stage with his daughter, Kate, who has Downs Syndrome and Autism, to share her story and to thank the audience for purchasing tickets to the event.

Coats and more coats dominated the evening plus lots of bright colors with collections from Max Mara, Vince, Kate Spade, Nordstrom, Intermix, Robert Graham, Eileen Fisher, Ted Baker and Diane Von Furstenberg.

Some of the best in eye-candy wore inspired fashions mostly from Ted Baker London, Vince, and Robert Graham. For more information and post-event news, visit http:// fashionweekbellevue.com/

Photos by Brian Matt

Rainbow City Performing Arts presents the 2018 Rainbow Ball & Gala Fundraiser

Dear Friends,

Please join us as we present the 2018 Rainbow Ball and Gala Fundraiser and Concert, an evening featuring dance-themed music, dinner and fundraising on October 20, 2018 at 5:30pm at the Seattle Renaissance Hotel.

Attendees will be treated to an elegant, fun-filled evening including a cocktail reception, dinner, silent and live auctions, and a full slate of concert band music.

Concert band musical selections feature traditional and popular dance music including “Danzon” from Fancy Free (Bernstein), “Symphonic Dance No. 3: Fiesta” (Williams), “Suite of Old American Dances” (Bennett), and “Just Dance” (Lady Gaga) among others.

Proceeds go to Rainbow City Performing Arts (RCPA) to support community music, purchase new instruments to expand the bands repertoire, promote membership outreach, and create a safe space for LGBTQA musicians of all levels to make music.

“I want to take the opportunity as we reinvigorate our annual gala to celebrate the transformations of our organization and all of the people who have made RCPA the family that it is today. I hope that you join us in our mission to make the Seattle community better with the band!” said Tim Norris, Rainbow City Band Artistic Director.

[EDITOR’S NOTE: Rainbow City Performing Arts coordinates the activities of Rainbow City Concert Band, Purple Pas-

sion Swing Band, Rainbow City Marching Band, SpinOUT Color Guard, Renegayde Pep Band and Small Ensembles.]

Festive black tie and formal wear encouraged. The event will be hosted by Brian Calvert of “KOMO News.”

Tickets are 100% preorder and are available at https://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/3618871 for $100 per person until October 10, and $125 after October 10. A vegetarian option is available. Don’t

forget to select your meal choice when you buy your tickets and remember, tickets will not be available at the door!

The evening doesn’t have to end after the auction! Treat yourself and your guest to a night at the elegant Renaissance Seattle Hotel with a special 15% discounted rate. Use promotional code K6Y at http://www. renaissanceseattle.com.

The Seattle Renaissance Hotel is located at 515 Madison St. in Downtown Seattle. Discounted self-parking is available for $15 in the hotel garage.

More information for this and future events can be found on our website at http:// www.rainbowcityband.com/ and at our Facebook page.

We hope to see you there!

Thank you!

Rainbow City Performing Arts

Celebrating LGBTQ+ Pride in Seattle

Sadistically satirical Nation violently assassinates the patriarchy

by Sara Michelle Fetters SGN A&E Writer

ASSASSINATION NATION

Now playing

In the town of Salem, high school seniors Lily (Odessa Young), Bex (Hari Nef), Em (Abra) and Sarah (Suki Waterhouse) have somehow become the most hated quartet of teenagers in all of America. Their small, conservatively close-knit community is in the middle of a total meltdown, a mysterious hacker disclosing over half of the population’s secrets on the Internet for the world to see. For a variety of reasons, these four young women have become the focal point for all of Salem’s fear, hysteria and anger. When the rule of law breaks down, the four friends are forced to take violent action in order to defend themselves, choosing to fight back against the violent delusions of members of their community who are for some reason psychotically determined to wipe the very existence of these teenagers off the face of the earth.

Audiences sitting down to watch writer/ director Sam Levinson’s (Another Happy Day) sophomore outing can’t say the film doesn’t give them fair notice in regards to what it is they are about to watch. An opening montage highlights all of the movie’s aggressively satirical ambitions, going through a long list of “Trigger Warnings” including hot-button topics like bullying, classism, toxic masculinity, homophobia, transphobia, nationalism, racism, the male gaze, sexism, torture, violence, gore and the fragile male ego. This is a movie that is going to dive deeply into the raging societal hypocrisies lurking right at the center of modern Americana, doing so in a way that will be decidedly uncomfortable for viewers who decide to give it a look, especially men.

In particular, conservative-leaning white men. Levinson’s drama is unapologetically feminist, looking at male privilege through a liberal-leaning lens that’s obvious throughout. Most of the guys who play a major part of this story cannot handle having their fragile egos attacked, and even though it’s their own actions that have been put under the

microscope they’re still unwilling to take responsibility for anything they’ve done. Instead, they find ways to blame others for their missteps, most notably by putting Lily, Bex, Em and Sarah in the condemnatory crosshairs the citizens of Salem find more palatable than being forced to deal with unpleasant truths. They deflect and come up with excuses for their actions, embracing a holier-than-though sanctimony that’s transparently insincere.

Not that Levinson lets his heroes off the hook. These ladies aren’t perfect angels. They’re navigating the complicated waters of high school dealing with a world so reliant upon social media that each Twitter tweet, Facebook post or image uploaded to Instagram could have a wide variety of unforeseen repercussions that might change the course of a person’s life forever. They can be selfish. They can be vain. They can let their own personal self-interests influence their actions in ways that impact others negatively. They drink, cuss and experiment with sex and drugs with enthusiastic gusto, never thinking any of their actions could come back and haunt them later on.

But here’s the thing. They’re not doing anything that their fellow male classmates aren’t also out there attempting, things that they all get celebrated for trying while female teens like Lily, Bex, Em and Sarah are labeled as sluts, bimbos and whores when they do the same. More importantly, Levinson does a fine job of showcasing just how strong the friendship amongst this

quartet is, their bond authentically naturalistic. They’re all there for one another, and as surrealistic and fantastically unhinged as things become that facet of the film emotionally grounds the story in a way that’s continually surprising.

It should be noted that none of the points being made here are in anyway subtle. They’re also blatantly obvious. But that doesn’t make what Levinson is saying any less vital or important. His observations on what’s happening in the United States culturally right now is fairly spot-on, and as extreme and as exploitive as things get all one has to do is watch a Presidential rally or turn on the nightly news and realize it wouldn’t take all that many steps for civilization to dehumanize itself in a somewhat similar fashion. Levinson takes “boys will be boys” and asserts that all of us, women in particular, should just shut up and be okay with that cliché to its logical conclusion, the fact these four women won’t do just that the reason they end up being put right into the middle of the violently hypochondriacal crosshairs.

Not all of it works, and Levinson takes his sweet time letting things in Salem completely devolve into pandemonium. But I loved the performances he coaxes out of Nef, Abra, Waterhouse and especially Young, all four actresses traversing into unexpected emotive terrain that frequently caught me unprepared. There’s a marvelous moment from Nef that had me choking back tears, Bex desperately trying to keep her composure after a class-

mate she’s been crushing on makes his move and she willingly gives herself to him body and soul only to have the boy slink out of the room afterward terrified his friends will discover he’s had sex with his school’s lone transgender student. Later on, Young has a pair of stunning scenes where Lily witnesses unspeakable carnage coupled with a selfless sacrifice that allows her to flee to safety only to discover she’s inadvertently found solace in the arms of the person who’s been secretly leading the charge to string her and her friends up for crimes they did not commit. Moments like these are what give the movie its punch. Levinson allows his heroines to be real people. They make mistakes. They don’t always do the right thing. But they’re honest with one another when it counts, ready to do whatever it takes to ensure they all have at least a fair shot at happiness. So even when things turn into a Russ Meyer Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! fantasyland where scantily clad women strike back at those who have wronged them with a lethal viciousness that seems more than a little fantastical, because Levinson has grounded Lily, Bex, Em and Sarah in an honestly emotional foundation I was much more willing to accept the implausible craziness of the situation far more readily than I otherwise would have been able to.

There’s plenty I’ve managed to avoid talking about in regards to the film, stuff like a brief supporting turn from Bill Skarsgård that might be more terrifying than his work as Pennywise in last year’s It or how editor Ron Patane (A Most Violent Year) dynamically cuts the picture with a stylistic precision that’s invigorating. I also couldn’t help but love the way the director stages a signature sequence straight out of the Sergio Leone playbook where all four women clad in stylish red trench coats take up arms and defiantly stand up against the two-faced lynch mob looking to murder them. But it’s how all these various pieces fit together that makes Assassination Nation work as well as it does, and while Levinson doesn’t hit every target he aims at, the ones that strike the target end up right at the very center of the sadistically satirical bulls-eye.

Imaginatively inventive Clock a magically good time

by Sara Michelle Fetters

SGN A&E Writer

THE HOUSE WITH A CLOCK IN ITS WALLS

The House with a Clock in Its Walls is very entertaining. Fast-paced and imaginative, this beguiling gem of a family-friendly horror yarn is an engaging bit of supernatural goofiness I enjoyed immensely. Based on the best-selling book by John Bellairs and featuring a solid script by “Supernatural” mastermind Eric Kripke and surprisingly nimble direction from Cabin Fever and Hostel impresario Eli Roth, this movie is a blast, and I have a sneakily sinister suspicion audiences of all ages are undoubtedly going to feel the same.

At least that’s my hope. Roth and Kripke remember that horror can be for kids and adults alike, neither of them skimping on the scares or the wonderment as far as this magical piece of pop entertainment is concerned. The pair strike a delicate balance, maintaining their PG rating and making things suitable for younger viewers while at the same time treating both them and their parents with a level of intelligent respect that’s rare for live action horrorfantasies in this vein. It puts recent efforts like 2015’s Goosebumps (which incidentally also starred Jack Black, the erstwhile headliner here) to shame while at the same time reminding me of past favorites like

Gremlins, Adventures in Babysitting, The Witches and even that first adventure of everyone’s favorite boy wizard, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone

Not that I’m proclaiming Roth and Kripke’s adaptation an instant classic or anything. It’s a little overly comical, and not all of the individual elements fueling the story come together as nicely as they maybe could have. While an energetically wicked Kyle MacLachlan is having an obvious ball portraying the film’s primary villain, he’s also not utilized particularly well and as such he’s just not that threatening. Also problematic is Roth’s staging of the climactic sequences, the director allowing the special effects to overwhelm the story in a way that lessens the emotional impact of the life or death decisions our heroes are forced to make.

As to that plot, the basic scenario revolves around the recently orphaned Lewis Barnavelt (Owen Vaccaro). It is 1955 and he finds himself relocated to the sleepy Midwest town of New Zebedee to live with his eccentric Uncle Jonathan (Black) in his creepy gated mansion which he’s fairly certain has a mind of its own. Lewis is also introduced to his Uncle’s best friend and neighbor Florence Zimmerman (Cate Blanchett), the larger-than-life woman showcasing a kooky affinity for the color purple and a delicious ability to make the best chocolate chip cookies the boy has ever tasted.

Turns out, both Jonathan and Florence have magical abilities. More, they’re willing to teach Lewis the tricks of the trade and, if he shows enough interest and is willing to study hard, are going to help him become a full-fledged warlock if he so desires. But the pair is also hiding a terrifying secret, and it’s lurking inside the very house in which the boy now lives. Years earlier powerful dark warlock Isaac Izard (MacLachlan) hid a devilish clock inside the walls, and Jonathan and Florence must find it before it strikes its final doomsday gong.

Lewis is naturally the key to solving this mystery, the kid both the reasons things begin to accelerate towards apocalypse as well as the one who is most likely to save the entire Earth from certain annihilation. In the end each hero learns important life lessons about family, love, friendship and responsibility that will affect them for the rest of their lives. Most notably, Florence is forced to face down her tragic past and rediscover powers she’d allowed to go dormant in the aftermath of WWII, Kripke’s scripting of this and other moments never hesitating to go into some pretty complex territory. But he also assumes his audience, no matter their age, will be smart enough to put many of the pieces of Lewis, Arthur and Florence’s respective stories together for themselves, never spoon-feeding what is going on which then allows the emotional components to become all the more powerful.

It’s pretty terrific, and Roth handles the various facets of this tale with confident gusto. Even as cartoonish and silly as some of it can be, which honestly is a little par for the course for kid-centric thrillers such as this, the filmmaker continues to put his characters first, allowing them to craft full-bodied, three-dimensional portraits overflowing in honest human emotion. Also, as good as Black is (he’s pretty wonderful) and as enchanting as newcomer Vaccaro might be (he’s a spunky delight), Blanchett takes command of the movie and steals every single scene she’s in. Her flamboyant exuberance is intoxicating, and I’d honestly love a spinoff tale following Florence in her day-to-day life picking just the right purple outfit and perfecting her chocolate cookie recipe while battling supernatural evil in her spare time. Roth has made a few movies I’ve liked, most notably Cabin Fever and The Green Inferno, but none of his efforts have ever struck me as pieces of exploitive horror entertainment I’d ever watch more than once. The House with a Clock in Its Walls is the first feature of his I can’t wait to return to, and the filmmaker being forced to deliver a PG rating seems to have focused him behind the camera like it never has before. As slight this movie might be, it’s just so much gosh darn fun its various shortcomings thankfully don’t add up to much, Roth finally making a motion picture I can heartily recommend with no reservations whatsoever.

Murderously facile Life Itself a torturous melodrama

by Sara Michelle Fetters SGN A&E Writer

LIFE ITSELF

Now playing

Life Itself isn’t very good. Writer/director Dan Fogelman (Tangled, Crazy Stupid Love) has delivered a massive star-studded melodrama that’s relentlessly cruel, unbelievably cloying, unabashedly sentimental and frustratingly facile. In an attempt to flesh out a sprawling, universal story of life’s byzantine mysteries which includes healthy helpings of tragedy, regret, heartache and grief to go along with its depictions of family, romance, joy and selfless magnanimity, Fogelman forgets to ground his emotional smorgasbord into anything resembling reality. Instead, he’s made a movie that’s impossible to enjoy even during the portions of the story that do in fact work, the finished feature a disastrous misfire that easily ranks as one of 2018’s most head-scratching disappointments.

The most unfortunate aspect to all of this is that there are sequences of the film that do work. Most notably, there is an entire subplot devoted to life on an olive farm in Andalusia lorded over by the mysterious Mr. Saccione (Antonio Banderas) who ends up taking a special interest in the life of his kind-hearted plantation manager Javier’s (Sergio PerisMencheta) wife Isabelle (Laia Costa) and son Rodrigo (Adrian Marrero). It is the only section of the film that feels grounded in a recognizable environment, each character an intriguing conundrum of human frailty and dauntless courage that is extremely easy to relate to. Featuring a sensational performance from Banderas that’s continually fascinating, I was drawn into this portion of the story in a way that honestly made me wish Fogelman had just made a film about these four and excised the rest of this disjointed mélange altogether.

But even this chapter of the tale ends up falling far short of its potential. Fogel-

man doesn’t even attempt to conceal how these characters will end up becoming acquainted with the various New Yorkers we’re introduced to during the first twothirds of the movie. In fact, it’s almost as if he is celebrating the gigantic coincidences required to bring them all into contact with one another. It’s almost insulting how all of this fits together, the last scenes obnoxious in their mawkish self-indulgence. For all intents and purposes it is like the director is perfectly content to shoot himself in the foot over and over again for almost the entire 118 minute running time, and for the life of me I can’t seem to figure out who he thought would find any of this intriguing let alone worth watching in the first place.

Split into a series of various chapters chronicling individual characters and/or couples at any one time, the movie attempts to cover roughly 21 years of life split between New York and that Spanish olive farm. One story focuses on married couple

Will (Oscar Isaac) Abby (Olivia Wilde), while another concerns their daughter, Dylan (Olivia Cooke) and her relationship with her grandfather, Irwin (Mandy Patinkin). There’s a piece that follows Will by himself as he chats about what’s going on inside his head with his court-mandated psychiatrist Dr. Morris (Annette Bening), the two having an elongated session where comforting fiction gives way to tragic reality. The climactic section concerns itself with a new college-aged Rodrigo (Àlex Monner), the young man heading across the ocean to attend school at NYU only to end up encountering someone directly tied to a terrifying family vacation that irrevocably scarred him over a decade prior.

For a movie where 21 years splash by in the blink of an eye, it’s impossible to know when exactly Fogelman is staging any of this nonsense. Considering Will and Abby’s fondness for 1990s cinema (Pulp Fiction, Beautiful Girls and The Profes -

sional are all directly referenced), one can assume their romance and marriage takes place during that decade. But other than some Halloween costumes, the clothing, makeup styles and production design look decidedly modern. If that were the case, though, that would mean Dylan and Rodrigo’s respective stories would be taking place sometime in the future. Yet things still look the same, almost as if everyone involved in this tale was frozen in some sort of time loop, making this just another element that shatters any chance the film might have had to be grounded in anything resembling a realistic milieu.

Yet that isn’t the big problem. That is Fogelman’s sprawling, disjointed script. While he’s trying to show how life’s myriad of possibilities, positive, negative and all areas in-between, help shape who we are as human beings in ways we barely comprehend, instead all the filmmaker does is craft a relentlessly cruel drama that seems more interested in showcasing heartlessly exploitive melodramatic coincidences than it is in doing anything remotely substantive. It maims, kills, bruises and batters its characters with the determination of a psychopathic serial killer, “life” in Fogelman’s world nothing more than an invisible Michael Myers callously slaughtering metaphorical babysitters.

I don’t want to sound like the film is a total loss. The Andalusia section really is quite good at times, and both Banderas and Costa are exceptional. Wilde, too, gives a rather strong performance, and if her character wasn’t so poorly treated by the material there’s a good chance I’d have been willing to forgive Fogelman’s opus for at least a few of its more egregious missteps. But I just can’t do it. This movie slams the viewer against the pavement time and time again almost as if doing so were an Olympic sport. As I’ve already stated, Life Itself isn’t very good, and unlike the longwinded Fogelman I’ve got nothing more to add.

Unfocused Night School flunks its entertainment exam

by Sara Michelle Fetters SGN A&E Writer

NIGHT SCHOOL

Now playing

After he loses his job as a salesman when his place of employment literally goes up in smoke, it quickly becomes apparent Teddy Walker (Kevin Hart) isn’t going to find another well-paying job anytime soon without a high school diploma. As such, his best friend Marvin (Ben Schwartz) convinces him to head back to their old stomping grounds, Atlanta’s Piedmont High School, and get his GED.

Unknown to both of them, Teddy’s former nemesis Stewart (Taran Killam) is the current principal, and he’s looking forward to seeing the guy who mocked him as a kid fall flat on his face when he fails to pass the test. But determined teacher Carrie (Tiffany Haddish) isn’t interested in seeing any student, even her night school adults looking to get their GED, not live up to their potential, and she’s determined to do whatever she can to see all of them, including Teddy, succeed.

Night School, not to be confused with the gender-flipped 1981 cult favorite slasher film of the same name, has a lot more on its mind than reveling in a bunch of adults making fools of themselves by engaging in a number of ribald juvenile high jinks.

Director Malcolm D. Lee, the man behind Girls Trip, The Best Man Holiday, Roll Bounce and Undercover Brother, attempts to make a movie that celebrates the power of education while also generating a number of laughs that hopefully come from a place of character-driven authenticity. His goal is to balance drama, humor and a bit of social commentary in much the same manner as he has in his previous efforts,

hopefully entertaining and enlightening the audience in equal measure as he does so.

Unfortunately, Lee can’t pull it off. Working from a script credited to six different writers, a list that includes Hart (who also produces), Nicholas Stoller (Neighbors) and John Hamburg (Zoolander), this comedy is a hodgepodge of ideas, subplots, concepts, jokes and melodramatic contrivances that never coalesce into a coherent whole. It’s a messy, unfocused comedy that feels continually out of balance with itself, almost as if Lee and his talented cast are desperately searching for a way to make all of this work in a way that doesn’t feel forced or false. While there are some laughs, while a few solid dramatic moments are to be found, on the whole nothing ends up working, the final film a frustrating misfire that sadly proves to be a waste of time for almost everyone involved.

Which is a shame because there are a lot of nice things happening here, not the least of which is Haddish’s committed and surprisingly fiery performance. Carrie has a lot to say about her job, what it means to her

and why education matters. Additionally, the character also finds time to make more than a few salient points about the educational system as a whole, and while some of them might come off as overly glib or slightly flippant, these remarks still allow the actress to display an agreeably dynamic serious side she doesn’t typically get to show.

I also like that a number of the supporting players are given room to shine, most notably Mary Lynn Rajskub as one of Teddy’s fellow night school classmates, the “24” and “The Girlfriend Experience” veteran making the delightful, energetic most out of every scene she’s involved with. It’s also nice to see a movie that attempts to showcase a platonic relationship between its two leads, allowing them to have separate lives out of the classroom that have nothing to do with one another.

But the rest of the night school class? It’s as if all of them, Rob Riggle, Romany Malco, Al Madrigal, Joseph “Fat Joe” Cartegna and Anne Winters, aren’t working from the same page. There are long stretches where I felt

like they were all in a different movie, as if each actor had been dropped into this story from a storytelling planet located at opposite ends of the universe. The melodramatic bits and the raunchy bits never gel together in satisfying fashion, while almost any moment that Killam is involved with (save a postcredits bit of silliness at his high school’s prom) falls flatter than a pancake run over by an out of control steamroller.

Yet the biggest problem is Hart. As funny as he can be at times, he’s just all wrong as Teddy. His performance is too broad, too cartoonish, too all over the map, his entire presence a cacophony of energetic tics and tricks that grow increasingly tiresome as the story moves forward. Hart’s antics are more annoying than they are anything else, and as Teddy is supposed to be someone the audience is supposed to grow to love the fact I wanted to watch every other character in the movie make something out of themselves other than him is undeniably a giant problem. Hart overplays his hand to such an extent he ends up slaughtering any chance the dramatic moments ever had of proving to be effective, and all I could do as the story continued was wonder how much better all this might have been had Lee reined his star in even a little bit.

There are other issues, most of a relatively minor variety, that sadly begin to add up into being hugely problematic over the course of the film’s 111-minute running time. The thing is, as hit-and-miss as I personally find Lee’s filmography, the truth of the matter is that he’s got a pretty solid track record of being able to balance comedy, drama and a social conscience rather nicely. The fact Night School is such an unacceptable catastrophe on that front is rather unbelievable, the whole project flunking its final exam so thoroughly I can only imagine it will be expelled from theatres relatively soon.

1533 13th Ave. - 323-1525

SEATTLE

BATHS

SEATTLE

BATHS

CLUB Z - (men)

1117 Pike near Boren - 622-9958

HOT HOUSE SPA & SAUNA - (women)

CLUB Z - (men)

1117 Pike near Boren - (206) 622-9958

SW corner of Pike & 11th

(stairs behind Wildrose) - 568-3240

HOT HOUSE SPA & SAUNA - (women)

STEAM WORKS - (men)

SW corner of Pike & 11th

1520 Summit - 388-4818

(stairs behind Wildrose) - (206) 568-3240

STEAM WORKS - (men)

1520 Summit Ave - (206) 388-4818

RESTAURANTS & BARS

88 KEYS - 315 2nd Ave. S. - 839-1300

BALTIC ROOM - 1207 Pine St. - 625-4444

RESTAURANTS & BARS

THE BOTTLENECK LOUNGE

2328 E. Madison St. - 323-1098

88 KEYS - 315 2nd Ave. S - (206) 839-1300

C.C. ATTLE’S BAR & GRILLE

BALTIC ROOM - 1207 Pine St. - (206) 625-4444

1701 E. Olive Way - 726-0565

THE BOTTLENECK LOUNGE

2328 E. Madison St. - (206) 323-1098

RETAIL SHOPS

DIESEL BAR - 1413 14th Ave. - 322-1080

GLO’S - 1621 E. Olive Way - 324-2577

HOT MAMA’S PIZZA - 700 E. Pine St. - 322-6444

BABELAND - 707 E. Pike St. - (206) 328-2914

JAZZ ALLEY - 2033 6th Ave. E. - 441-9729

CASTLE SUPERSTORE #17

JULIA’S - 300 Broadway Ave. E. - 860-1818

1017 E. Pike St - (206) 204-0126

KREMWERK - 1809 Minor Ave. #10 - 682-2935

DIEGO PELLICER - 2215 4th Ave. S - (206) 624-0070

MADISON PUB - 1315 E. Madison - 325-6537

DOGHOUSE LEATHERS

NEIGHBOURS - 1509 Broadway - 324-5358

1312 E. Pike St. - (206) 257-0231

OUT WEST - 5401California Ave. SW

EMERSON SALON - 909 E. Pike St. - (206) 323-7437

FANTASY UNLIMITED

THE PINE BOX - 1600 Melrose Ave - 588-0375

POCO WINE ROOM

2027 Westlake Ave. - (206) 682-0167

1408 E. Pine St. - 322-9463

1510 1st Ave - (206) 624-1784

POKE BAR - 1542 12th Ave - 402-5178

HASHTAG - 3540 Stone Way N - (206) 946-8157

PONY - 1221 E. Madison St. - 324-2854

HERBAN LEGENDS - 55 Bell St - (206) 849-5596

HERB(N) ELEMENTS

PURR - 1518 11th Ave. - 325-3112

R PLACE - 619 E. Pine - 322-8828

11013 Lake City Way NE - (206) 535-8769

RE-BAR - 1114 Howell at Boren - 233-9873

ROOT TABLE 2213 NW Market St. - 420-3214

LAUGHING BUDDHA TATTOO

1534 Broadway - (206) 329-8274

THE CANTERBURY - 534 15th Ave. E. - 322-3130

CHANGES IN WALLINGFORD

CAPITOL CIDER - 818 E Pike St. - (206) 397-3564

C.C. ATTLE’S BAR & GRILLE

2103 N. 45th - 545-8363

1701 E. Olive Way - (206) 726-0565

SEATTLE EAGLE - 314 E. Pike - 621-7591

SHORTY’S 2222 2nd Ave - 441-5449

THE NEW YORK XCHANGE

STOUT -1530 11th Ave - 397-3825

225 Broadway E. - (206) 726-3300

TOULOUSE PETIT

ONYX LEATHER

THE CRESCENT - 1413 E. Olive Way - 720-8188

THE CANTERBURY

THE CUFF COMPLEX

534 15th Ave. E - (206) 322-3130

CHANGES IN WALLINGFORD

2103 N. 45th - (206) 545-8363

THE CRESCENT

1413 E. Olive Way - (206) 720-8188

THE CUFF COMPLEX

1533 13th Ave. - (206) 323-1525

DIESEL BAR - 1413 14th Ave. - (206) 322-1080

GLO’S - 1621 E. Olive Way - (206) 324-2577

HOT MAMA’S PIZZA

700 E. Pine St. - (206) 322-6444

JAZZ ALLEY - 2033 6th Ave. - (206) 441-9729

JULIA’S - 300 Broadway Ave. E - (206) 860-1818

KREMWERK - 1809 Minor Ave. #10 - (206) 682-2935

THE LUMBER YARD

9619 16th Ave. SW - (206) 695-2007

MADISON PUB - 1315 E. Madison - (206) 325-6537

NEIGHBOURS - 1509 Broadway - (206) 324-5358

OUT WEST

5401California Ave. SW - (206) 937-1540

THE PINE BOX - 1600 Melrose Ave - (206) 588-0375

POCO WINE ROOM

1408 E. Pine St. - (206) 322-9463

POKE BAR - 1542 12th Ave - (206) 402-5178

PONY - 1221 E. Madison St. - (206) 324-2854

QUEER BAR - 1518 11th Ave - (206) 687-7491

R PLACE - 619 E. Pine - (206) 322-8828

RE-BAR - 1114 Howell at Boren - (206) 233-9873

ROOT TABLE 2213 NW Market St. - (206) 420-3214

SEATTLE EAGLE - 314 E. Pike - (206) 621-7591

SHORTY’S 2222 2nd Ave - (206) 441-5449

STOUT -1530 11th Ave - (206) 397-3825

TOULOUSE PETIT

601 Queen Anne Ave. N - (206) 432-9069

UNICORN - 1118 E Pike - (206) 325-6492

UNION - 1318 E. Union St. - (206) 328-1318

WILDROSE - 1021 E Pike - (206) 324-9210

ZIPPY’S GIANT BURGERS 9614 14th Ave SW - (206) 763-1347

1605 12th Ave. #8 - (206) 328-1965

601 Queen Anne Ave N - 432-9069

UNICORN - 1118 E Pike - 325-6492

OZ - 3831 Stone Way N - (206) 251-0630

PACIFIC NORTHWEST SHOP

4411 Wallingford Ave. N. - (206) 535-6920

PANACHE - 225 Broadway E. - (206) 726-3300

PONDER - 2413 E Union - (206) 420-2180

RUCKUS - 1465 E Republican St - (206) 257-4805

TABOO ADULT VIDEO

9813 16th Ave SW - (206) 767-4855

TRUE LOVE ART GALLERY & TATTOO

1525 Summit Ave. - (206) 227-3572

UNDER U 4 MEN

709 Broadway Ave. E - (206) 324-6446

UNCLE IKE’S

2310 E Union St - 1-800-GET-DRUGS 501 15th Ave E - 1-800-GET-DRUGS

9822 15th Ave SW - 1-800-GET-DRUGS

WILD AT HEART

1111 NW Leary Way - (206) 782-5538

BELLINGHAM

LOVER'S

193 Telegraph Road - (360) 752-1862

RUMORS CABARET 1119 Railroad - (360) 671-1849

DES MOINES

ADULT AIRPORT VIDEO 2 21635 Pacific Hwy S

ADULT

LOVER’S - 112 SE Everett - (425) 353-3607

LOVER’S - 3402 Broadway - (425) 252-8754

KENT

WILDROSE - 1021 E. Pike - 324-9210

ZIPPY’S GIANT BURGERS

5633 Airport Way S - 466-5954

9614 14th Ave SW - 763-1347

LOVER’S - 25801 104th Ave. SE - (253) 852-1720

RETAIL SHOPS

THE FANTASY SHOP 604 Central Ave. S - (253) 850-8428

CASTLE SUPERSTORE #17

NASHVILLE’S SPORTS BAR (Drag Shows) 114 - Railroad Ave. N - (253) 852-0909

1017 E. Pike St - 204-0126

DOGHOUSE LEATHERS 1312 E. Pike St. - 257-0231

LA CONNER

EMERSON SALON - 909 E. Pike St. - 323-7437

HASHTAG - 3540 Stone Way N - 946-8157

NEW YORK EXCHANGE

THE HERON INN & WATERGRASS DAY SPA 117 Maple Ave. - (877) 883-8899 info@theheron.com

225 Broadway E. - 726-3300

ONYX LEATHER - 1605 12th Ave. #8 - 328-1965

OZ - 3831 Stone Way N - 251-0630

PANACHE

OLYMPIA

225 Broadway E. - 726-3300

RUCKUS 1465 E Republican St. - 257-4805

DARBY’S CAFE

THE FANTASY SHOP 9630 16th Ave. SW - 762-3299

211 5th Ave. SE - (360) 357-6229

LOVER’S 3959 Martin Way E, Suite D - (360) 456-7300

TABOO ADULT VIDEO 9813 16th Ave SW - 767-4855

JAKES - 311 4th Ave. E - (360) 956-3247

TOYS IN BABELAND - 707 E. Pike St. - 328-2914

UNDER U 4 MEN

PORT ANGELES

709 Broadway Ave. E. - 324-6446

MAPLE ROSE INN 112 Reservoir Rd - (800) 570-2007

UNCLE IKE’S 2310 E Union St - 1-800-GET-DRUGS

SPOKANE

501 15th Ave E - 1-800-GET-DRUGS 9822 15th Ave SW - 1-800-GET-DRUGS WILD AT HEART 1111 NW Leary Way - 782-5538

ANDY’S - 1401 W. 1st Ave. - (509) 747-0304

THE BLIND BUCK

BELLINGHAM

204 N. Division St. - (509) 343-9425

GLOBE BAR AND KITCHEN

LOVER’S 193 Telegraph Road - (360) 752-1862

204 N. Division St. - (509) 443-4014

NYNE BAR AND BISTRO

RUMORS CABARET 1119 Railroad - (306) 671-1849

232 W. Sprague Ave. - (509) 474-1621

DES MOINES

EVERETT

KENT

LA CONNER

TACOMA

CASTLE SUPERSTORE

OLYMPIA

PORT

SPOKANE

TRI-CITIES

TACOMA

TRI-CITIES

TUKWILA

Activities

TO GET A CALENDAR LISTING: To have your meeting or event considered for the Community Calendar, please mail, fax, or drop off details to: SGN, Attn: Community Calendar, 1707 23rd Ave., Seattle, WA 98122. SGN phone: (206) 324-4297. E-mail: sgn2@sgn.org.

INCLUDE: Date, time, location, contact phone # for publication (if possible), brief description of event & sponsoring organization. DEADLINE: Tuesday 5pm. ACCESSIBILITY: Is your event accessible to LGBTQ people with visible or hidden disabilities? See Jean’s List webpage www.scn.org/activism/calendar/disabilities. html for Marla Nonken’s disabilities accommodations lists.

NOTE: 10-digit dialing has come to the Seattle area. The (206) area code must now be used to dial local calls. Location of meetings/events is in Seattle unless otherwise noted.

SATURDAY - September 29

Seattle Frontrunners Fun Run. 9am. Greenlake (outside Evans Pool). Every Saturday. GLBT running & walking club sponsors weekly runs, monthly potlucks, track & field activity, annual Run With Pride. (206) 4488518. www.seattlefrontrunners.org.

Positively Living Coffee Social. 9:30am-12 noon. Cupcake Royale, 1111 E Pike St. Every Saturday. Casual social get-together for the HIV community. Anthony, 206-957-1600. Sponsored by LIfelong. Rainbow Walk for LGBTQ Elders 50+ - Green Lake Walk. 12 noon-1pm. 7201 E Green Lake Dr. N. Every Saturday - Come Rain or Shine! - Meet at the Wading Pool (along the north end of the lake). Hot coffee and beautiful Rainbow umbrellas to use “just in case.” For info, call (206) 393-3400;. Wheelchair-friendly walk. Sponsored by Generations Aging With Pride.

Mature Friends Monthly Potluck. 6pm. Wallingford Community Senior Center, Good Shepherd Center, 4649 Sunnyside Ave N, Suite 140. Monthly potluck meets last Saturday most months. MF is a social organization for Gay men & women, 40 years & over. www. maturefriends.org

Oasis Youth Center in Tacoma - For Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender & Questioning Youth, Ages 14-25. 6pm-12 midnight. Call for location & details. Every Saturday. (253) 671-2838. www.oasisyouthcenter.org.

(Also Thursdays & Fridays 4-10pm.)

“Diva Glam 2.0.” - A Celebrity Impersonation Show. 7pm. R-Place, 619 E Pine St. $10 cover. Proceeds benefit Lifelong Sponsored by the Imperial Court of Seattle. imperialcourtofseattle.com and on Facebook. com/ISCSORE

SUNDAY - September 30

Center for Spiritual Living. 8:25, 9:45, 11:30am. 5801 Sand Point Way NE. Blessings & we hope to see you soon! (206) 527-8801 ext 203, www.cslseattle.org

Ravenna United Methodist Church. 8:30am “Seattle’s most dangerous Sunday school” - 9:45am Worship. 5751 33rd Ave NE. A reconciling congregation, fully inclusive and affirming of LGBTQ persons. (206) 525-7988. Seattle Unity Church. 9am & 11am Sunday Services. 200 8th Ave N. “Come join our Gay & Lesbian-friendly, spiritual family at Seattle Unity Church. Our mission is to bring love, miracles & spiritual awakening into everyday life!” (206) 622-8475; www.seattleunity.org.

Seattle Soto Zen. 9:15am Zazen Instruction, 9:30am Zazen. 101 Nickerson St, Lower Level. Follow the traditional forms of the Soto school of Zen in a spirit of warmth & inclusion. Anyone interested in meditation, whether new or experienced in Zen practice or other traditions, is welcome. (206) 323-1659, www.seattlesotozen.org

Gay Men’s Bowling in Everett 9:30am. Glacier Lanes, 9630 Evergreen Way, Everett. Every Sunday. Spectators welcome. Join us for lunch afterwards! Sponsored by the Snohomish County Gay Men’s Task Force. For info email John at johndmarsh@mac.com; www.gaysnohomish.org Tacoma First United Methodist Church. 9:30am Worship, 11am Adult Education. 423 Martin Luther King Way, Tacoma. This reconciling congregation welcomes with warm hands, warm hearts & open minds GLBT persons seeking a spiritual home. (253) 627-0129, www. fumctacoma.org

University Lutheran Church. 9:30am Worship, 10:30am Coffee Fellowship, 11am Adult Forum & Education Hour. 1604 NE 50th St. All are welcome. We choose love. (206) 525-7074. universitylutheranseattle.org

University Unitarian Church. 9:30am & 11:15am Central Lutheran Church. 10am Worship. 1710 11th Ave (just north of E Pine St). An open & affirming church, which in Lutheran churches is called “Reconciled in Christ.” “We seek to share God’s love with all people regardless of race, age, gender or sexual orientation.” All are welcome. (206) 322-7500. East Shore Unitarian Church. 10am Sunday Service. 12700 SE 32nd St, Bellevue. An open & affirming congregation. (425) 747-3780.

Gethsemane Lutheran Church. 10am Worship. 911 Stewart St. A downtown faith community centered in justice. An open & affirming congregation. (206) 682-3620. Plymouth Church United Church of Christ. 10am Worship. 1217 6th Ave. Love your (LGBTQ) neighbor as yourself. (206) 622-4865, plymouthchurchseattle.org Queen Anne United Methodist Church. 10am Worship. 1606 5th Ave W. (206) 282-4307.

community calendar

Unity Church of Kent. 10am. 218 State Ave S, Kent. A welcoming congregation open to people of all races, religions, creeds & lifestyles. Join us any Sunday for an inspirational message, joyful fellowship & a fresh spiritual outlook. (253) 854-9747.

University Congregational United Church of Christ. 9am all ages education; 10am Worship. 4515 16th Ave NE. UCUCC is an open & affirming congregation. (206) 524-2322; www.universityucc.org.

Welcome Table Christian Church. 9:45am Meditation; 10:30am Worship; Labyrinth 2nd Sundays 1-4pm. 1322

S Bayview St. Where people of all genders and sexualities, and families of all shapes & sizes are welcome and celebrated. A welcoming and affirming community since 1987. welcometablecc.org

Wallingford United Methodist Church. 10am Worship. 2115 N 42nd St. A progressive congregation. In 1984 Wallingford UMC became the 9th reconciling Methodist church in the U.S. (206) 547-6945 (office); (206) 2855077 (George).

All Pilgrims Christian Church. 10:30am Worship. 500 Broadway E. Come as you are. All are welcome. A congregation of the Disciples of Christ & the United Church of Christ. (206) 322-0487, www.allpilgrims.org

St. Clement’s Episcopal Church. 10:30am Worship. 1501 32nd Ave S. Great music. Dynamic preaching. Holy communion. Encountering the transformative and unconditional love of God in Christ. Join us! www. stclementseattle.org

Seattle Sunday Bowling. 10:30am. West Seattle Bowl, 4505 39th Ave SW (at SW Oregon St). Open bowl every Sunday for the GLBT community & friends. You don’t have to worry about how you bowl! $6.50 + $3 shoe rental. (425) 785-4729. Westside Unitarian Universalist Congregation. 10:30am. 7141 California Ave SW. (206) 935-0418, office@wsuu.org, www.wsuu.org

Emerald City Metropolitan Community Church Seattle. 11am Worship. Chapel at University Temple United Methodist Church, 1415 NE 43rd St. MCC is a progressive Christ-centered faith community committed to providing a nurturing environment for individual & community growth thru Jesus Christ while celebrating unity in diversity. MCC is Seattle’s oldest Gay-friendly church. (206) 325-2421, www.mccseattle.org.

Meditation for GBT Men. 11am-1pm. Cal Anderson House, 400 Broadway. Suitable for beginning & experienced meditators. Sponsored by Dharma Buddies. Contact Forrest Rode, (206) 920-6117, or Doug Allison, doug.l.allison@gmail.com. Find us under “Dharma Bud-

dies” on Meetup.com or at DharmaBuddies.org. (Women are invited to contact our sister meditation group at www. LotusSisters.org.)

St. Paul’s United Church of Christ. 11am Worship. 6512 12th Ave NW. An “open & affirming” congregation. “We celebrate our diversity in religious background, sexual orientation, race, age & abilities.” (206) 783-6733; www.stpauluccseattle.com.

St. Paul’s Episcopal Church. 11:15am (also 7:30am, 9am, 5pm). 15 W Roy St. We are an accepting, progressive, Anglo-Catholic parish, renewing its people for their Christian lives in today’s world through worship, spiritual formation, engagement in the arts, and acts of compassion. www.stpaulseattle.com

Holy Covenant International Christian Community Church. 12 noon. 4525 19th Ave NE. Outreach to the LGBT community. holycovenantccc@gmail.com

Just for Today (NA). 12-1:15pm. SASG, 115 15th Ave E, Suite 201. Every Sunday. Drop-in 12-step Narcotics Anonymous group open to anyone in recovery. (206) 322-2437; www.sasgcc.org

New Beginnings (SLAA). 12 noon-1pm. SASG, 115 15th Ave E #201, O’Neil Room. MEETS DAILY (except Saturday). Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous is a 12-step/12- tradition-oriented fellowship of men and women who share their experience, strength and hope to overcome sex and love patterns of addiction. (206) 322-2437; www.sasgcc.org

Paths to Recovery Al-Anon Family Group. 12-1:30pm. Seattle University Student Center, 901 12th Ave, Room 122. Every Sunday. LGBTQ supported. The Al-Anon Family Groups are a fellowship of relatives & friends of alcoholics who share their experience, strength & hope in order to solve their common problems. We believe alcoholism is a family illness & that changed attitudes can aid recovery. Greater Seattle AIS 24-hour number (206) 625-0000; www.seattle-al-anon.org

Rainbow Walk for LGBTQ Elders 50+ - Green Lake Walk. 12 noon-1pm. 7201 E Green Lake Dr. N. Every Sunday - Come Rain or Shine! - Meet at the Wading Pool (along the north end of the lake). Hot coffee and beautiful Rainbow umbrellas to use “just in case.” For info, call (206) 393-3400;. Wheelchair-friendly walk. Sponsored by Generations Aging With Pride. Orca Swim Team Workout. Sun: Afternoon; Mon/ Weds/Fri: Evenings; Tues/Thurs: Mornings. Seattle University, Redhawk Center, 14th Ave & E Cherry St. Pre-registration required. Orca Swim Team workouts are for both competitive & recreational swimmers. www. orcaswimteam.org

Rain City Soccer Club - Kickabout. Sunday afternoon usually at 3pm. Location varies. Join us for Seattle’s mostly-weekly mostly-LGBTQ pickup soccer game. We play an organized, 2-hour scrimmage on nice fieldturf surface. Sometimes there is a brief training/practice session before we play. Usually there is a “one-beer” after the scrimmage. To sign up visit www.raincitysoccer.org Shame to Grace (SAA). 6-7:30pm. SASG, 115 15th Ave E, Suite 201. Every Sunday. Sex Addicts Anonymous is a fellowship of men & women who share their experience, strength & hope with each other so they may overcome their sexual addiction & help others recover from sexual addiction or dependency. Seattle SAA helpline (206) 237-8828, SAA International Service Organization 1-800-477-8191. (206) 322-2437; www.sasgcc.org Pride League Bowling. 6:30pm. West Seattle Bowl, 4505 39th Ave SW. Every Sunday. Regular league bowling. Jeff, (206) 932-3731; leagues@wsbowl.com. Integrity/Puget Sound. 7pm Worship & Fellowship. St. Mark’s Cathedral, Thomson Chapel, 1245 10th Ave E. Integrity is an international ministry of Gay & Lesbian Episcopalians, their friends & families, dedicated to education, support & service within the Church & the GLBT community. (425) 226-2746.

Noche Latina - Latino Night. 10pm. Capitol Lounge, 916 E Pike St. Every Sunday. Go-go dancers at 10:30pm; drag show at midnight. 21+ ID required. $10 cover. Co-sponsored by Entre Hermanos.

MONDAY - October 1

Out & Equal Workplace Summit (10/1-10/4) outandequal.org

Rainbow Walk for LGBTQ Elders 50+ - Volunteer Park Walk. 12 noon-1pm. 14th Ave E & E Prospect St. Every Monday - Come Rain or Shine! - Meet at Black Sun sculpture across from museum. Hot coffee and beautiful Rainbow umbrellas to use “just in case.” For info, call (206) 393-3400;. Sponsored by Generations Aging With Pride.

SLAA New Beginnings: 12 Steps of SLAA. 12-1pm. SASG, 115 15th Ave E, Suite 201, in the O’Neill Room. Every Monday. SLAA step-study meeting starting with Step One in “A Gentle Path.” The meeting is open to anyone interested in doing 12-step work. No matter where you are in the steps, or if you haven’t begun, feel free to join us. Books, paper, and pens provided. You need only bring your willingness to grow!

SOBER On Meds. 1-2pm. SASG, 115 15th Ave E, Suite 201. Every Monday. 12-step group open to anyone in recovery & living on a medicine regimen. (206) 3222437; www.sasgcc.org

Strength Over Speed (SOS). 2-3:30pm. SASG, 115 15th Ave E, Suite 201. Peer support for Gay and Bisexual men recovering from crystal meth addiction. www. strengthoverspeed.org. (206) 322-2437.

Orca Swim Team Workout. Evening. Seattle University, Redhawk Center, 14th Ave & E Cherry St. (See Sunday afternoon listing.)

Freely Speaking Toastmasters. 7pm. Seattle Unity Church, 200 8th Ave N. Every Monday (except holidays & the last Mondays in August & December). Seattle’s only LGBT speaking club. www.FreelySpeaking.org

Trans Youth Group. 7-8:30pm. Lambert House, 1818 15th Ave. Every Monday. A chance for youth to talk with others about their experiences & concerns related to identifying as Transgender. www.lamberthouse.org Lambert House Art Night. 7:30-9:30pm. 1818 15th Ave. Every Monday. Bring your ideas & let’s have some fun. (206) 322-2515, www.lamberthouse.org

Destiny/Unity AA Meeting in Tacoma 7:30-8:30pm. Christ Episcopal Church, 310 N “K” St, Tacoma. Every Monday. LGBTQ-friendly AA meeting. (253) 474-8897. (Also meets Fridays.)

Washington Gender Alliance Support Group Meeting in Shoreline 7:30pm. Center for Human Services, 17018 15th Ave NE, Shoreline. Every Monday. www. washingtongenderalliance.com

TUESDAY - October 2

Out & Equal Workplace Summit (10/1-10/4) outandequal.org

Orca Swim Team Workout. Morning. Seattle University, Redhawk Center, 14th Ave & E Cherry St. (See Sunday afternoon listing.)

LGBTQ+ Group. 1:15-2:15pm. Orion Center, 1828 Yale Ave. Every Tuesday. A group for LGBTQ youth ages 13-24 & their allies. Sponsored by Youthcare. (206) 622-5555.

Rainbow Walk for LGBTQ Elders 50+ - Alki Beach Walk. 2-3pm. 61st Ave SW & Alki Ave SW. Every Tuesday - Come Rain or Shine! - Meet at Statue of Liberty statue. Hot coffee and beautiful Rainbow umbrellas to use “just in case.” For info, call ((206) 393-3400;. Wheelchair-friendly walk. Sponsored by Generations Aging With Pride. defeatHIV Community Advisory Board (CAB). 5:307:30pm. Cal Anderson House, 400 Broadway @ E Jefferson St. Meets 1st Tuesday each month. CAB builds community involvement in order to advance defeatHIV’s clinical research into a potential gene therapy cure for HIV infection. If you want to learn more about our efforts to ensure that all of Seattle’s communities that are affected by HIV have a strong voice in the cure research of defeatHIV, please come to one of our community dinner meetings. More info, contact Michael Louella, (206) 667-5810; mlouella@fredhutch.org

Gay Men’s Task Force of Snohomish County in Everett 6-8pm. Snohomish Health District, 3020 Rucker Ave Ste 309A, Everett. Meets 1st Tuesday each month. Open to all Gay & Bisexual men in Snohomish County. “We will be discussing issues concerning the local Gay community & value your opinion, voice, comments, suggestions & attendance. Come join us as we build community in Snohomish County.” David, (425) 339-5238. LGBTQ Questioning & Allied Youth Drop-in Group in Renton 6-8pm. Renton Area Youth Services (RAYS), 1025 S 3rd St, Renton. Every Tuesday. Confidential. Snacks provided. Bring friends or come alone - anyone 12-18 is welcome. Questions? Call Sarah Hardin, (425) 271-5600 ext 155, or email sarahh@rays.org

Strength Over Speed (SOS). 6-7:30pm. SASG, 115 15th Ave E, Suite 201. Peer support for Gay and Bisexual men recovering from crystal meth addiction. www.strengthoverspeed.org. (206) 322-2437; www. sasgcc.org

Diverse Harmony. 6:30-9pm. Seattle First Baptist Church, 1111 Harvard Ave. Every Tuesday. Diverse Harmony is the nation’s first Gay/Straight Alliance Youth Chorus. Youth ages 13-22 are welcome regardless of sexual orientation. www.diverseharmony.org

No Man’s Land - For Female-Identified Youth, Ages 22 & Under. 7-8:30pm. Lambert House, 1818 15th Ave. Every Tuesday. Topics range from family issues to school happenings to like/lust/love relationships. All Queer females welcome. Come discuss how smart. strong Queer women live their lives. (206) 322-2515, www.lamberthouse.org

Tuesday Night Sex Addicts Anonymous (GLBTQI).

7-8:30pm. All Pilgrims Christian Church, 500 Broadway E (enter at 509 10th Ave E; buzz in, Colonial room). Every Tuesday. SAA is a fellowship of men & women whose primary purpose is to stop addictive sexual behavior & help others recover from sexual addiction. Seattle SAA helpline (206) 237-8828. SAA International Service Organization 1-800-477-8191.

Different Drummers. 7:15-8:30pm. Every Tuesday. Hand drumming classes for Gay men. For info & location call Dennis at (206) 363-4500 or www.outdrum.com Men’s Discussion Group. 7:30-9pm. SASG, 115 15th Ave E, Suite 201. Every Tuesday. Peer group for Gay & Bi men. (206) 322-2437; www.sasgcc.org

Here & Now Gay & Lesbian AA Meeting in Tacoma

7:30pm. Christ Episcopal Church, 310 N “K” St, Tacoma. Every Tuesday.

Spiritual Empowerment. 7:30-9pm. SASG, 115 15th Ave E, Suite 201. A vibrant drop-in workshop for those of any spiritual belief. (206) 322-2437; www.sasgcc.org

Seattle Otters Water Polo Team. 8-9:30pm. Medgar Evers Pool, 500 23rd Ave E (at E Cherry St). Every Tuesday & Thursday. GLBT & GLBT-friendly co-ed water polo team is open to all who want to play. Beginners & experienced players welcome. Check our website for up to the minute details, or call the Otter Hotline (206) 414-8797. www.otterpolo.com.

Seattle Poetry Slam. Doors 8pm, Show 8:30pm. Rebar, 1114 Howell St. Every Tuesday. A spoken word poetry event that features a weekly open mic, feature poet, and slam (poetry competition). Come out and express yourself. LGBTQ- & QTPOC-friendly; all genders welcome. $5. 21+. seattlepoetryslam.org

WEDNESDAY - October 3

Out & Equal Workplace Summit (10/1-10/4) outandequal.org

Mature Friends Walk Around Greenlake. 11am. Meet up at 10:50am with a group of older men gathered at the north end of the parking lot that is next to the boathouse along the southwest side of Greenlake. Every Wednesday. Walk around Greenlake followed by lunch at a local restaurant. www.maturefriends.org

Rainbow Walk for LGBTQ Elders 50+ - Volunteer Park Walk. 12 noon-1pm. 14th Ave E & E Prospect St. Every Wednesday - Come Rain or Shine! - Meet at Black Sun sculpture across from museum. Hot coffee and beautiful Rainbow umbrellas to use “just in case.” For info, call (206) 393-3400;. Sponsored by Generations Aging With Pride.

True Colors: Connecting LGBTQ Teens in Shoreline 4-5pm. Every Wednesday. Discussing your important issues, building a supportive community. For information, location & to REGISTER call Lindsay Bagley (206) 362-7282 x 8018 or email lbagley@chs-nw.org Positively Living. 5-7pm. Lifelong, 1016 E Pike St., 3rd Fl. Every Wednesday. Social and support group for the HIV community with various topics for discussion and conversation. Anthony, 206-957-1600. Sponsored by Lifelong.

GLOBE (GLBTQ Loving Ourselves, Becoming Empowered): A Support Group for GLBTQ+Youth (14-20) serving Snohomish County & surrounding communities. 6-8pm. Phone or email for location. Every Wednesday. Sponsored by PFLAG Everett. Brenda, (425) 263-2908. globeleaders@hotmail.com Queer Seattle Book Club. 6pm. SASG, 115 15th Ave E (upstairs). Every Wednesday. This month’s title is The Diamond Setter by Moshe Sakai. https://faculty. washington.edu/swittet/SGLBookClub/ Southeast Seattle Lesbian Evening Group. 6pm. Southeast Seattle Senior Center, 4655 S Holly St. Meets 1st Wednesday each month. RSVP to Kate Hawkins (206) 722-0317. www.sessc.org. FREE. Lotus Sisters Meditation & Dharma DiscussionNorth. 6:15-8pm. Ravenna Bryant neighborhood. Every Wednesday. Call (206) 525-7295 for location. www. LotusSisters.org.

Center for Spiritual Living. 6:30pm-Meditation, 7pmService. 5801 Sand Point Way NE. Blessings & we hope to see you soon! Info (206) 527-8801 ext 203, www.cslseattle.org

community calendar

Seattle Frontrunners Fun Run. 6:30pm. Volunteer Park, 14th Ave E & E Prospect St. Every Wednesday. Meet at Black Sun sculpture across for museum. (See Saturday at 9am.)

Orca Swim Team Workout. Evening. Seattle University, Redhawk Center, 14th Ave & E Cherry St. (See Sunday afternoon listing.)

Ingersoll All-Trans Drop-In Support Group. 7-9pm. Seattle Counseling Services, 1216 Pine St, Suite 300. Every Wednesday. All Transgender, Gender Variant, Gender Queer, Gender Questioning, allies, family & friends are welcome. This is a drop in group to get & give support, social interaction & information for the whole Gender community. No fee, donations welcome. www. ingersollcenter.org

Mature Friends Weekly Bridge Group. 7pm. Wallingford Community Senior Center, lower level of Good Shepherd Center, 4649 Sunnywide Ave N. Every Wednesday. All levels welcome. MF is a social organization for Gay men & women, 40 years & over. www. maturefriends.org

PFLAG/Renton Monthly Meeting. 7pm. St Luke’s Episcopal Church, 99 Wells Ave S, Renton. Meets 1st Wednesday each month. Parents & Friends of Lesbians & Gays is a national support organization for parents, spouses & families of GLBT persons, as well as those minorities. PFLAG/Renton: 425-235-4139. PFLAG/ Puget Sound: (206) 325-7724. www.seattle-pflag.org.

Mature Friends Pinochle Group. 7:30pm. Wallingford Community Senior Center, lower level of Good Shepherd Center, 4649 Sunnywide Ave N. Meets 1st & 3rd Wednesday each month All levels welcome. MF is a social organization for Gay men & women, 40 years & over. www.maturefriends.org

Washington Gender Alliance Open Support Meeting in Everett 7:30-9pm. Everett United Church of Christ, 2624 Rockefeller Ave, Everett. Every Wednesday. Trained peer facilitators lead a structured support meeting helping people deal with issues of gender identity & expression. All adults are welcomed, including those who are questioning, allies, or identify as FTM, MTF, Transgender, Queer, or Intersex, among others. (360) 445-2411; www.washingtongenderalliance.com.

“Queercore: How to Punk a Revolution.” 8pm. NW Film Forum, 1515 12th Ave. Tickets: $12 general; $9 student/senior; $7 members. nwfilmforum.org (Also 10/4 @ 7:30pm, & 10/5 @ 8pm.)

Pride Skate Seattle. 8:30-11pm. Southgate Roller Rink, 9646 17th Ave SW. Meets 1st Wednesday each month. $8 admission includes skate rental. Must be 18+, with 21+ bar. Performances, roller skating, and fun! See you there! www.southgaterollerrink.com

THURSDAY - October 4

Out & Equal Workplace Summit (10/1-10/4) outandequal.org

Orca Swim Team Workout. Morning. Seattle University, Redhawk Center, 14th Ave & E Cherry St. (See Sunday afternoon listing.)

ALISS - Aging Lesbians in South Seattle Lunch Gathering. 11:30am-2:30pm. Southeast Seattle Senior Center, 4655 S Holly St, Rainier Ave S & S Holly St., Arts & Crafts Room. Meets 1st Thursday each month. This is a group primarily for Lesbians but all are welcome to attend. Facilitator: Fai Coffin; Cost: Free for gathering; $5 suggested donation for lunch. Metro route 7. Wheelchair accessible. Kate, (206) 722-0317; www.sessc.org. Safe and Sober (AA). 12 noon-1pm. SASG, 115 15th Ave E, Suite 201. Open meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous. (206) 322-2437; www.sasgcc.org

BABES Women’s Support Group/Lunch Meeting. 12 noon-2pm. Call for location. Every Thursday. The BABES Network is a peer led agency; a sisterhood of women facing HIV together. (206) 720-5566 or 888-2921912; www.babesnetwork.org.

Rainbow Walk for LGBTQ Elders 50+ - Green Lake Walk. 12 noon-1pm. 7201 E Green Lake Dr. N. Every Thursday - Come Rain or Shine! - Meet at the Wading Pool (along the north end of the lake). Hot coffee and beautiful Rainbow umbrellas to use “just in case.” For info, call (206) 393-3400;. Wheelchair-friendly walk. Sponsored by Generations Aging With Pride. Oasis Youth Center in Tacoma - For Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender & Questioning Youth, Ages 14-25. 4-10pm. Call for location & details. Every Thursday. (253) 671-2838, www.oasisyouthcenter.org

First Thursday Art Walk in Downtown Seattle/Pioneer Square. 5-9pm. Art galleries in Downtown Seattle/Pioneer Square host opening night receptions. Seattle Art Museum is free today. Rouge at Maximilien. 5-7pm. 81a Pike Place Market. Live Parisian music during First Thursday Art Walk. Seattle Human Rights Commission. 6-8pm. Seattle City Hall, 600 4th Ave. Meets 1st Thursday each month. SHRC is made up of 15 citizen representatives who advise the Mayor, the City Council, & all City of Seattle Depts in matters regarding human rights. The commission advocates for justice & equal opportunity & collaborates with & educates the public & private sectors about how to prevent & eliminate discrimination city-wide. Meetings open to the public. (206) 684-4540. B-GLAD (Bisexual, Gay, Lesbian, Trans & Questioning Adolescent Drop-In Group). 6:30-8pm. Call for location. Every Thursday. Sponsored by Youth Eastside Services, which offers many programs for GLBT youth. (425) 747-4937.

Boys Group - For Male-Identified Youth, Ages 1422. 7-8:30pm. Lambert House, 1818 15th Ave. Every Thursday. Youth take the opportunity to talk about issues that relate to their everyday lives, with the facilitation of a male volunteer. (206) 322-2515 ext 16. www. lamberthouse.org

Seattle Prime Timers Coffee Reunion. 7pm. Northgate Mall, 491 NE Northgate Way. Meets 1st Thursday each month. Monthly social meet & greet. Look for your fellow Prime Timers at a table in the Food Court at the south end of the mall. Northgate is served by many bus routes including 26, 40, 41, 63, 67, 75, 303, 345, 346, 347, 348, 555, 556. www.seattleprimetimers.org

21st Century Bowling. 7pm. West Seattle Bowl, 4505 39th Ave SW. Every Thursday. Regular league bowling. Jeff, (206) 932-3731; leagues@wsbowl.com. Buddhism & Recovery. 7:30-9pm. SASG, 115 15th Ave E, Suite 201. Every Thursday. A meditation/recovery group. (206) 322-2437; www.sasgcc.org

Emerald City Social Club. 7:30pm. Call for details & location - phone staffed most Tuesday evenings or leave message. Meets 1st Thursday each month. ECSC is a confidential crossdressing social & support organization for Transvestite & Transsexual individuals, primarily MTF, which offers confidential membership, private monthly meetings, frequent events on the town, & help in coming out. (425) 827-9494.

Gay Fathers Association of Seattle. 7:30-9pm. Group Health, 201 16th Ave E, Central Bldg, Lower Atrium. Every Thursday. Support meetings for Gay fathers & Gay men who are currently or previously married. Safe, anonymous, non-judgmental environment of caring fathers & friends. You are not alone. For information, community events & “questioning” visit www.gfas.org or our message board at http://groups.yahoo.com/groups/ gayfathersseattle

Gay Male Sexuality & Relationships. 7:30-9pm. SASG, 115 15th Ave E, Suite 201. Every Thursday. Ongoing support group open to Gay and Bisexual men. (206) 322-2437; www.sasgcc.org [NOTE: Please contact the facilitator prior to attending.]

Ingersoll Gender Center’s Birthday Party. 7:309:30pm. KEXP Gathering Space, 472 1st Ave N @ 1st Ave N & Republican St. Join us for our second annual Birthday Party and Fundraiser. We’re excited to celebrate 41 years of transgender and gender nonconforming leaders creating space, building power and serving our communities. This year we’re partnering with our friends at KEXP to host our birthday party at their Gathering Space. There will be a great program, food, beer and wine, as we look back on the last year and share some of our exciting plans for the future. We couldn’t do this without you and can’t wait to celebrate with y’all! Call us or email us to make reservations. Also contact us if you’re interested in volunteering or sponsoring our event. (206) 849-7859 or info@ingersollgendercenter.org.

“Queercore: How to Punk a Revolution.” 7:30pm. NW Film Forum, 1515 12th Ave. Tickets: $12 general; $9 student/senior; $7 members. nwfilmforum.org (Also 10/3 @ 8pm & 10/5 @ 8pm.)

Seattle Otters Water Polo Team. 8-9:30pm. Medgar Evers Pool, 500 23rd Ave E (at E Cherry St). Every Tuesday & Thursday. (See Tuesday listing at 8pm.)

FRIDAY - October 5

Ageless in Recovery (AA). 12 noon-1pm. SASG, 115 15th Ave E, Suite 201. Every Friday. A drop-in AA group for 55+. (206) 322-2437; www.sasgcc.org

Rainbow Walk for LGBTQ Elders 50+ - Kubota Gardens Walk. 12 noon-1pm. 9817 55th Ave S. Every Friday - Come Rain or Shine! - Meet at the corner of 55th Ave S and Renton Ave S. Hot coffee and beautiful Rainbow umbrellas to use “just in case.” For info, call (206) 393-3400;. Wheelchair-friendly walk. Sponsored by Generations Aging With Pride. Road to Recovery (SLAA). 12 noon-1:30pm. SASG, 115 15th Ave E, Suite 201. Every Friday. Ongoing 12step group for sex and love addicts. (206) 322-2437; www.sasgcc.org

Oasis Youth Center in Tacoma - For Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender & Questioning Youth, Ages 14-25. 4-10pm. Call for location & details. Every Friday. (253) 671-2838, www.oasisyouthcenter.org

LGBTQ & Allies 18+ Free Friday Night Drop-In Volleyball. 6-7:45pm. Miller Community Center, 330 19th Ave E. Every Friday. 206-684-4753. Orca Swim Team Workout. Evening. Seattle University, Redhawk Center, 14th Ave & E Cherry St. (See Sunday afternoon listing.)

Strength Over Speed (SOS). 6-7:30pm. SASG, 115 15th Ave E, Suite 201. Peer support for Gay and Bisexual men recovering from crystal meth addiction. www. strengthoverspeed.org. (206) 322-2437. Game Night. 7pm-11pm. SASG, 115 15th Ave E, Suite 201. Every Friday. Card games, board games and fellowship. (206) 322-2437; www.sasgcc.org

Lambert House Queer Movie Night. 7-9:30pm. Lambert House, 1818 15th Ave. Every Friday. Lambert House is a nationally-recognized activities & resource center for GLBT & questioning youth, ages 14-22. (206) 322-2515, www.lamberthouse.org

Rain Country Dance Night. 7-11pm, lessons at 7:15pm. The Cuff, 1533 13th Ave. An evening of country-western dancing for the LGBTQ community. FREE. www.raincountrydance.org.

Destiny/Unity AA Meeting in Tacoma 7:30-8:30pm. Christ Episcopal Church, 310 N “K” St, Tacoma. Every Friday. LGBTQ-friendly AA meeting. (253) 474-8897. (Also meets Mondays.)

LGBT Friday Night Al-Anon Family Group. 8-9pm. SASG, 115 15th Ave E, Suite 201 - in the O’Neill Room. Every Friday. The Al-Anon Family Groups are a fellowship of relatives & friends of alcoholics who share their experience, strength & hope in order to solve their common problems. We believe alcoholism is a family illness & that changed attitudes can aid recovery. Greater Seattle AIS 24-hour number (206) 625-0000; www. seattle-al-anon.org; (206) 322-2437; www.sasgcc.org “Queercore: How to Punk a Revolution.” 8pm. NW Film Forum, 1515 12th Ave. Tickets: $12 general; $9 student/senior; $7 members. nwfilmforum.org (Also 10/3 @ 8pm & 10/4 @ 7:30pm.)

SATURDAY - October 6

(See previous Saturday for ongoing activities.) SUNDAY - October 7

(See previous Sunday for ongoing activities.) PFLAG/Whatcom County (Bellingham) Monthly Meeting. 5pm. Community Food Co-op Bakery, 405 E Holly St, Bellingham. Meets 1st Sunday each month. Parents & Friends of Lesbians & Gays is a national support organization for parents, spouses, & families of GLBT persons, as well as those minorities. www.whatcompflag.org; PFLAG/Puget Sound: (206) 325-7724. Seattle Jazz Vespers. 6-8pm. Seattle First Baptist Church, Seneca St & Harvard Ave. Meets 1st Sunday each month (October-June). The historic Gothic sanctuary of Seattle First Baptist Church is offered to the best jazz groups in the city to perform 100 minutes of their own popular music. FREE. For info (206) 325-6051, www.seattlefirstbaptist.org/sjv.

COMMUNITY RESOURCES

Allyship - an organization of LGBTQ individuals fighting for economic and social justice. www.LGBTQAllyship. org, allyship@yahoo.com, (206) 279-8169.

American Veterans for Equal Rights - www.aver.us Another Gay Social Club! - www.meetup.com/AnotherGay-Social-Club/ Bellingham/Whatcom County - www.theslowlane. com/guide.html

BiNet Seattle is a mixed gender, social group for Bisexuals, their partners & other Bi-friendly folks - www. binetseattle.org.

Bremerton/Kitsap County - www.outwestsound.org

Capitol Hill Alano Club - www.chacseattle.org

Cascade Rainbow Community Center (Mount Vernon) - (360) 840-8499 and on Facebook.

COLAGE unites people with LGBTQ parents and caregivers into a network of peers and supports them as they nurture and empower each other to be skilled, self-confident, and just leaders in our collective communities - www.colage.org

Central Washington University GALA Hotline: (509) 963-1994.

DIFFA/Northwest (Design Industries Foundation Fighting AIDS). (206) 763-8885; www.diffanorthwest. org DOMESTIC VIOLENCE & SEXUAL ASSAULT: Crisis Clinic, (206) 461-3222 (24 hour line); King County Sexual Assault Resource Center (KCSARC) - 24-hour crisis line for information, support, & medical & legal assistance: 1-888-99-VOICE; Northwest Networksupport & advocacy for Bisexual, Trans, Lesbian & Gay Survivors of Abuse & Dating Violence, (206) 568-7777 (voice), 517-9670 (tty), www.nwnetwork.org; Pierce County Domestic Violence Helpline: Teresa, (253) 798-4166; Seattle Counseling Service for Sexual Minorities - offers on-going support groups for men: 323-1768; Seattle Police Dept Domestic Violence Unit, (206) 684-0330; State Wide Domestic Violence Hot Line, 1-800-562-6025. In an emergency call 911 Report domestic violence and sexual assault. Equal Rights Washington - (206) 324-2570; www. equalrightswashington.org

Everett/Snohomish Cty - www.gaysnohomish.org

Freely Speaking Toastmasters - www.freelyspeaking.org

Gay City promotes wellness in LGBTQ communities by providing health services, connecting people to resources, fostering arts, and building community. Gay City Health Project’s Wellness Center provides anonymous & confidential HIV/STD testing. 517 E Pike St. More info or to schedule an appointment, (206) 860-6969. www.gaycity.org

Gay & Lesbian National Hotline (GLNH): 1-888-THEGLNH (1-888-843-4564). Non-profit, peer-counseling, information & local resources telephone hotline for GLBT people across the country.

Generations Aging With Pride empowers elder LGBTQ adults to live with pride and dignity by promoting, connecting, and developing innovative programs and services that enhance belonging and support, eliminate discrimination, and honor the lives of older members of our community - (206) 393-3400; info@gapseattle.org; gapseattle.org

GLSEN/WA - Gay, Lesbian, Straight Education Network - (206) 330-2099; www.glsenwa.org

Greater Seattle Business Association (GSBA) - (206) 363-9188; www.thegsba.org

HIV/AIDS Program, Seattle/King County Dept of Public Health, provides confidential/anonymous information about & testing for HIV/AIDS. (206) 205-7837. For a comprehensive list of HIV/AIDS service organizations see the GSBA Guide or visit www.thegsba.org or call Lifelong AIDS Alliance, (206) 328-8979.

Imperial Sovereign Court of Seattle & the Olympic & Rainier Empire - www.facebook.com/ISCSORE; www. imperialcourtofseattle.com

Lambert House - (206) 322-2515; www.lamberthouse.

org

LGBT Library - 517 E Pike St. Open Mon-Fri 2-8pm; Sat 2-5pm. A wide range of fiction and non-fiction for the LGBT community and allies can be borrowed free of charge.

LGBT MS Connection - (206) 250-5002; LGBTMSConnection@gmail.com. Support group for LGBT persons with MS and their partners and their caregivers. Sponsored by the National Multiple Sclerosis Society. Lifelong AIDS Alliance - (206) 328-8979, www.lifelongaids alliance.org

Lion’s Main Art Collective - www.lionsmain.org

MEN: Gay City: (206) 860-6969, www.gaycity.org; Knights of Mantra: (206) 329-0886, www.jetchapterkofm.com; Mature Friends: Gay men & women 40 & over, www.maturefriends.org; Northwest Bears: www. nwbears.com; The Olympians: www.TheOlympians. net; POZSeattle: www.pozseattle.com; Q-Squared: www.qsquared.org; Rain City Jacks: www.raincityjacks. org; Seattle Gay Couples: www. seattlegaycouples.org; Seattle Men in Leather: www.seattlemeninleather. org; Seattle Prime Timers: Gay & Bi men 40 & over, www. seattle primetimers.org; Tacoma Older LGBT: www. tacomaolderlgbt.org. (See also listings under Bisexual, Parenthood, People of Color, Transgender.)

MUSIC: Diverse Harmony: www.diverseharmony. org; Rainbow City Band: 1-866-841-9139 ext 2126; rainbowcityband@onebox.com; www.rainbowcity band. com; Seattle Men’s Chorus and Seattle Women’s Chorus: (206) 388-1408, (206) 323-0750. www.seattlechoruses.org.

Northwest Lesbian & Gay History Museum Project - gayhistnw@aol.com

Northwest Rainbow Alliance for the Deaf - www. nwrad.org

Olympia/Thurston County - www.RainbowCenterOly. org

Out & Equal Workplace Advocates/Seattle Regional Affiliate supports the work of LGBT employees and the growing number of ERGs (Employee Resource Groups) making a difference within local companies, including Alaska Airlines, Amazon.com, Amgen, AT&T, Bank of America, Deloitte, Macy’s, Microsoft, Russell Investments, Safeco Insurance, Starbucks Coffee, Xerox. www.outandequal.org/affiliates/seattle Out & Proud Grays Harbor Coalition - http://outandproudgh.org

PARENTHOOD: Families Like Ours provides a gateway for LGBT families interested in adoption & provides a network of safe placement agencies, training, support & resources: (206) 441-7602, www.familieslikeours. org; Family Works offers support, information & activities for LGBT families: (206) 694-6727, www.familyworksseattle. org; Gay Fathers’ Association of Seattle offers support groups & social activities: www.gfas. org; Proud & Loud Families - Northwest, www.meetup.com/proudand-loud-families-northwest, plfnorthwest@aol.com; Queer Parent Networking Dinners: (206) 568-7777, qpnd@nwnetwork.org, www.nwnetwork.org; Rainbow Families of Puget Sound: www.rainbowfamiliesps.org PFLAG is the national organization for parents, families, allies, and LGBTQ people united for equality with chapters in Seattle, Bellevue/Eastside, the Puget Sound region and across Washington state. PFLAG Seattle: (206) 325-7724, info@pflagseattle.org, and www.pflagseattle.org; PFLAG Bellevue/Eastside: (425) 483-6642, info@bellevue-pflag.org, http://community. pflag.org/PFLAGBellevue; PFLAG Pacific Northwest: www.pnwpflag.org; PFLAG Washington State: www. pflagwsc.org.

PEOPLE OF COLOR: AARTH (African American Reach & Teach Health Ministry), (206) 850-2070, www.aarth.org; Asian/Pacific Islander Queer Network Program at API Chaya, (206) 467-9976; Center for MultiCultural Health, (206) 461-6910, www.multiculturalhealth.org; Entre Hermanos, GLBT Latinos/as, (206) 322-7700, www.entrehermanos.org; Ile LaiLai, (206) 781-3565, iya@ilelailai.org; Men of All Colors & Cultures Together (MACCT), (206) 923-8313, macctseattle@yahoo.com, www.macctsea.org; Northwest Two Spirit Society, https://www.facebook.com/ groups/nw2spiritsociety/, Nubian Pride Productions, nubianpride@gmail.com; People of Color Against AIDS Network (POCAAN) offers rapid HIV testing, M-F, 10am-5pm, (206) 322-7061, www.pocaan.org and on Facebook; QBASS - Queer Black Alliance of the South Sound, (253) 256-1846, weareqbass@gmail. com; Sistah 2 Sistah, LBT women of African descent, (206) 322-7061, (206) 255-8951; Somos Seattle, somosseattle.org; Trikone-Northwest, GLBT South Asians, (425) 985-4376, www.trikonenw.org; Two-Spirit Honor Project, 1-866-685-0164; U.T.O.P.I.A. Seattle, www.utopiaseattlewa.org; VietQ Greater Seattle, vietqorganization@gmail.com Pierce County AIDS Foundation - (253) 383-2565; www.piercecountyaids.org Pride Foundation - (206) 323-3318; www.pridefoundation. org Pride Lives - www.facebook.com/PrideLives/ Project NEON is a program of Seattle Counseling Service providing FREE information & services to Gay & Bi men to reduce health risks associated with methamphetamine use. (206) 323-1768. www.crystalneon.org Public Health-Seattle & King County Online Comprehensive Health Information for Sexual Minorities: www.kingcounty.gov/healthservices/health/personal/ glbt.aspx

Q Law: The GLBT Bar Association of WA - (206) 682-6711; www.q-law.org

community calendar

Q Law GLBT Legal Clinic - (206) 235-7235.

Queer Geek! - queergeekseattle.org

Rainbow Center - Resource Center for Tacoma/Pierce County LGBTIQA community. Through education, advocacy and celebration, the Rainbow Center expands resources, and safe space for the LGBTQIA community. Sponsors Tacoma Pride Festival. (253) 383-2318, www. rainbowcntr.org

Safe Schools Coalition - www.safeschoolscoalition. org; (206) 451-SAFE; (206) 451-7233. SEAMEC interviews, researches & rates candidates for public office on issues of concern to the LGBT community. www.voteseamec.org

Seattle Area Support Groups & Community Center (SASG) is a non-profit organization that builds community and cultivates powerful, healthy lives by providing emotional support and personal development services to those affected by HIV/AIDS, the Queer communities, and those who love them. Our work is done in a spirit of safety, trust, inclusiveness, and celebration of individual differences. (206) 322-2437; www.sasgcc.org

Seattle Bisexual Women’s Network - BiSeattle.wixsite. com/SBWN and on Facebook.

Seattle Counseling Service for Sexual Minorities is a community mental health service for GLBT persons & their families providing comprehensive mental health services on a sliding scale. (206) 323-1768.

Seattle LGBTQ Commission - (206) 684-4503. www/ seattle.gov/lgbtq

Seattle Out & Proud - (206) 322-9561; www.seattlepride.org

Seattle Police Department Sexual Minorities Community Advisory Council: kim.bogucki@seattle.gov

Seattle PrideFest - www.seattlepridefest.org

Servicemembers Legal Defense Network - (202) 328-3244; www.sldn.org

Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, The Abbey of St. Joan - (206) 860-3666; www.theabbey.org

Snohomish Health District HIV/AIDS Program provides free confidential/anonymous HIV counseling & testing 9am-5pm Monday-Friday, until 7pm Tuesdays. (425) 339-5298.

South Sound Q Calendar - LGBTQ events in Tacoma, Olympia & Sound Puget Sound area; www.SouthSoundQCal.com Spokane/Inland Northwest - www.outspokane.com; www.stonewallnews.net

SPORTS & RECREATION: Bent Car Guys: www. bentcarguys.org; Border Riders Motorcycle Club: www.borderriders.com; Bottom Dwellers Scuba Club: www.bottomdwellers.org; Capitol Hill Cyclers: join their Facebook group or email capitolhillcycling@ groups.facebook.com or jordan.l.simonson@gmail.com; Cascade Flag Football: www.cascadeflagfootball.org; Cascade Flyers: www.cascadeflyers.org; Emerald City Mudhen Rugby: www.mudhenrugby.com; Emerald City Softball Association: www.emeraldcitysoftball. org, www.eteamz.com/womensecsa; Ethyl Forever Car Club: ethylforever@hotmail.com; Festival of the Babes: www.festivalofthebabes.com; Olympic Yacht Club: www.oycnw.org; OutVentures: outdoor education & recreation activities, www.outventures.org; Pacific Northwest Gay Rodeo Association: www.pacificnwgra.org; Puddletown Squares: www.puddletownsquares.org; Rain City Soccer: www.raincitysoccer.org; Rain Country Dance Association: a country-western dance organization catering to the LGBTQ community but open to all, www.raincountrydance.org; Sea Dawgs: LGBT ice hockey - SkateSeaDawgs@gmail.com and on Facebook; Seattle Frontrunners: www.seattlefrontrunners.org; Seattle Gay Basketball Association: www. seattlegaybasketballassociation.com; Seattle Orca Swim Team: www.orcaswimteam.org; Seattle Otters Water Polo: www.otterpolo.com; Seattle Quake Rugby: www.quakerugby.com; Seattle Tennis Alliance: www. seattletennisalliance.org; Seattle Unified Bowling Association (SUBA): magee98106@aol.com, www. teamseattle.org/bowling.htm, www.theprideleague. com, Century 21 League; Seattle Volleyball Club: www.seattlevolleyballclub.com; Ski Buddies: www. skibuddies.org; Team Seattle Gay Sports Network is an umbrella organization for a wide range of local GLBT sports activities, (206) 367-4064, www.teamseattle.org (see website for comprehensive list of sports clubs); Triangle Recreation Camp at Bender Creek: recreational camping for GLBT folks. Must be 21; ID required. trc@ camptrc.org, www.camptrc.org, 1122 E Pike St #1069, Seattle 98122-3934. Strength Over Speed - www.strengthoverspeed.org Tacoma/Pierce County - Rainbow Center, 2215 Pacific Ave, Tacoma, a resource center for the LGBTIQA community of Pierce County, (253) 383-2318, www. rainbowcntr.org

TRANSGENDER: Emerald City Social Club: (425) 827-9494; Gender Alliance of the South Sound: www.SouthSoundGender.com; Gender Diversity: www.genderdiversity.org; Gender Justice League: www.genderjusticeleague.org; Gender Odyssey:

www.genderodyssey.com; Hermanos Trans Latino & Foreign-Born Support Group: (206) 322-7700; Ingersoll Gender Center: (206) 329-6651, www. ingersollcenter.org; Lion’s Main Art Collective: www. lionsmain.org; The New BoyZ Club: www.olympiaftmgroup.webs.com; Olympia Trans Discussion Group: www.facebook.com/pages/Olympia-Trans-DiscussionGroup/262449878114; [trans] ACTION: Trans* & Gender Non-Conforming Sex Workers’ Support Group - a safe, peer-led space. mail@utopiaseattle.org; TRANSform Washington: transformwashington.com; Trans Resource & Referral Guide: kctransguide.org; Washington Gender Alliance: (360) 445-2411, www. washington genderalliance.com

WOMEN: Aging Ballard Lesbian Exchange (A.B.L.E.): We are Lesbians 60 years (generally) and up, living (mostly) in the north half of Seattle. The purpose of the group is to connect, socialize and support each other. ruthemilyvogel@gmail.com; Aging Lesbians in South Seattle (ALISS) - Lesbian Group at the Southeast Seattle Senior Center. This is a gathering primarily for Lesbians but all are welcome to attend. Kate, (206) 722-0317; www.sessc.org; BABES: support groups for HIV+ women. (206) 720-5566, 1-888-292-1912; Coming Out Women Support Group of Tacoma: www. comingoutwomen.org; Festival of the Babes: www. festivalofthebabes.com; Mature Friends: Gay men & women 40 & over, www.maturefriends.org; Puget Sound Old Lesbian Organizing for Change: http:// psoloc.org, (253) 777-3357; Older Lesbians Organizing for Change/WA State Chapter: gloria@oloc.org, mary@oloc.org, www.oloc.org; Pacific Northwest Lesbian Archives: www.pnwlesbianarchives.org; RainshadowWomen: RainshadowWomen@aol. com; Seattle Bisexual Women’s Network: BiSeattle. wixsite.com/SBWN; Seattle Girls of Leather: www. sgol.org; Tacoma Lesbian Concern (TLC): www.tacomalesbianconcern.org; Tacoma Older LGBT: www. tacomaolderlgbt.org; Women of West Seattle (WOWS): a fun, member-driven social group for Lesbians, http:// groups.yahoo.com/group/womenofwestseattle; YWCA Women’s Health Outreach: providing low or no-cost mammograms for income eligible 40+ LBTQ individuals. Follow us at http://lbtqhealth-ywca.blogspot.com, twitter.com/ingridWHO or email lbthealth@ywcaworks. org, (206) 461-4493. (See also listings under Bisexual, Parenthood, People of Color, Transgender.)

YOUTH: B-GLAD (Bisexual, Gay, Lesbian, Trans & Questioning Adolescent Drop-In Group): Youth Eastside Services offers many programs for GLBT youth, including B-GLAD, (425) 747-4937; Coyote Central: www.coyotecentral.org; Diverse Harmony: www.diverseharmony. org; GLSEN/Washington State (Gay, Lesbian, Straight Education Network) & Washington State GSA (Gay-Straight Alliance) Network: GLSEN works to create safe schools for LGBT students. WA GSA Network supports youth-led GSA’s to fight harassment & homophobia in Washington state schools. (206) 330-2099; www.glsenwa. org; www.wagsa.org. GLOBE (GLBTQ Loving Ourselves, Becoming Empowered): a support group & HIV/STD prevention program for GLBTQ youth, 14-20, in Everett, (425) 263-2908, www. globeyouth.org; It Gets Better Project: www.itgetsbetter.org; Lambert House: an activities & resource center for LGBT youth, 14-22, in Seattle, 1818 15th Ave @ E Denny Way; (206) 322-2515, www.lamberthouse.org; Lifelong HEYO (Health Education Youth Outreach): for LGBTQ youth, ages 16-24: (206) 957-1665; www. llaa.org/HEYO; www.MatthewsPlace.com; The Mockingbird Society: (206) 323-KIDS (5437), www.mockingbirdsociety.org; Oasis Youth Center: for GLBTQ youth, ages 14-25, in Tacoma, (253) 671-2838, www. oasisyouthcenter.org; OUT There Adventures: www. outthereadventures.org; Parents, Family & Friends of Lesbians & Gays (PFLAG)/Puget Sound: (206) 3257724, www.seattle-pflag.org; Peace for the Streets by Kids from the Streets (PSKS) Drop-In Center & Young Adult Shelter: 1609 19th Ave @ E Pine St., (206) 7268500; www.psks.org; Pizza Klatch: weekly lunchtime support groups for LGBTQ youth in Thurston County, www.pizzaklatch.org; Prism: for LGBTQ youth, 14-21, in Puyallup - Cherise.Alexander@ multicare.org; www. facebook.com/PuyallupPrism; Proud Out Wonderful (POW!): for LGBTQ youth, 13-21, in South King County, (206) 326-9112, www.facebook.com/proudoutwonderful; Q Youth Resources: in Kitsap County - (360) 698-3335; www.kchaf.org; Renton Area Youth Services (RAYS): LGBTQ, questioning and allied youth drop-in group, ages 12-18 - Sarah Hardin, (425) 271-5600, ext 155; sarahh@rays.org; Roots Young Adult Shelter: 1415 NE 43rd St., (206) 632-1635; www.rootsinfo.org; Safe Schools Coalition: www.safeschoolscoalition.org; (206) 451-SAFE, (206) 451-7233 (non-emergency), 1-877-SAFE-SAFE (1-877-723-3723) (crisis line); Seattle Young People’s Project (Queer Youth Resource Board): (206) 860-9606, www.sypp.org; Street Youth Ministries (SYM): (206) 524-7301 ext 111; www. streetyouthministries.org; Teen Link: (206) 461-4922, 1-888-431-TEEN; The Trevor Project: 866-4-U-Trevor; www.thetrevorproject.org; True Colors - Connecting LGBTQ Teens: in Shoreline, (206) 362-7282 x 8018, lbagley@chs-nw.org; Vista Youth Center: for LGBTQ, questioning and allied youth, ages 14-21, in Kennewick, (509) 396-5198, www.vistayouthcenter.org; YouthCare/ Isis Program (Transitional Living Home for LGBTQ Young Adults, 18-22): (206) 522-8412; YouthCare/ Orion Center Young Adult Shelter: 1828 Yale Ave @ Stewart St. (206) 622-5555; Youth in Focus: (206) 723-1479; www.youthinfocus.org; Youth Suicide Prevention Program (OUTLoud-GLBTQ): (206) 297-5922, ext 116, 1-800-273-TALK, www.yspp.org

20 [HEALTH & WELL-BEING]

ENERGY/BODYWORK

KITTY CO. –

WE EXCLUSIVELY SERVE CATS

Capitol Hill based provider of in-home cat sitting services. Licensed, bonded, insured and meticulous about your cat care needs. Book now for peace of mind while you’re away. Gay owned! www.kittycoseattle.com; 206-612-1533 39/3

Therapeutic massage. 30 years experience. Relaxation, major/minor injuries, chronic muscle pain. Small Ballard home office/studio. Massage table or massage chair. Convenient parking. (I’m a Gay-friendly straight male graphic artist, web author.) First session 50% off = $45/1.5 hours (travel extra). By appointment only. References available. Chris Pringer, Reiki Master, 206-286-0899. If you get a voice message mentioning “extension #,” please hang up and call back again; otherwise, please leave a message. Brochure, testimonials, etc. via chalicebridge.com/BMI-Brochure. html. 44/21

21 [LICENSED MASSAGE - NON-SEXUAL]

ENJOY A SOOTHING MASSAGE

Swedish, Deep Tissue, Sports, and Hot Stone Massage on Capitol Hill. $65 an hour. Jeff, LMP. 206-6500542; rjeffa@hotmail.com; www.broadwaymassage. com. 29/3

EXCEPTIONAL BODYWORK

Given by highly trained LMP. I specialize in injury treatment, acute, chronic, and repetitive stress motion. I have a studio on CapHill, and one just north of the UW. Insurance accepted. Matt Shafer, LMP, 206-2357766. 41/12

PETS OF THE WEEK

Adoption Center

Sunday – Wednesday | 11 a.m. – 6 p.m. Thursday – Saturday | 11 a.m. – 8 p.m.

13212 SE Eastgate Wy, Bellevue, WA 98005 (425) 649-7563 | adoption@seattlehumane.org

Is your life missing a furry friend? Now is the perfect time to open your world to a pet in need. Coldwell Banker’s Homes for Dogs program with Adopt-a-pet.com has helped place 20,000 dogs into homes across the country. Could your place be the next happy ending for a pet in need? Make your house a home by visiting the shelter and bringing back the pet of your dreams.

Howl for the Hawks Sept. 28-30

Score a touchdown in your life by adopting a pet in need! Adopt a good-luck charm at Seattle Humane and you’ll have the perfect companion for all of the games this season and all of life’s adventures! Just visit the shelter in Bellevue in your Seahawks gear September 28th through the 30th and you can take 50 percent off adoption fees on all dogs 1 year and up. Your MVP-to-be can’t wait to join your team! See available pets at Seattle Humane dot o-r-g.

EROTICALLY CHARGED nude full body rubdown from playful top, stimulating the senses. Get seduced. Incalls in Renton area. Scott, 206-355-4469. 33/3

GREAT MASSAGE

Given by highly-trained, clean-cut, handsome guy. I have two private studios, one on CapHill, and one just north of the UW. Call/text Matt, 206-235-7766. In/ out calls. 41/12

RAIN CITY JACKS

RCJ is Seattle’s private club hosting hundreds of group jack-off events since 2005. Hot, friendly, and genuine male bonding for men 18+ only. Email or visit our web site for information. info@raincityjacks.org; www. raincityjacks.org. 30/12

FREE & ANONYMOUS HIV & STD COUNSELING/TESTING Walk-In or by Appt GAY CITY HEALTH PROJECT 517 E. Pike St. M-F: 3pm-8pm; SAT: 12:30pm-5pm More Info & to Schedule Appt 206-860-6969

Midnight

Meet Midnight, a delightful 9-year-old Chihuahua. Midnight is a goofy-grinned dog who will charm you instantly. Midnight can be uncomfortable with new people and situations but learns quickly that he is safe. He will do well with adopters who have experience with dogs and are willing to give Midnight the time he needs to get comfortable. Midnight likes to go for walks – except if it's raining! He loves treats and you can use them to help him in new situations or just teach him a new behavior. Every day he plays with our volunteers who have been teaching him "Sit," "Come," and "Touch." After a play session, Midnight is ready to claim your lap! Come meet this sweet boy at Seattle Humane!

As with all of our dogs, Midnight has been neutered, microchipped, vaccinated and behavior tested. He will go home with a certificate for a complimentary veterinary examination and an identification tag. PLUS, most dog adoptions include 30 days of pet insurance from Trupanion and six weeks of on-campus training classes – a great way to start off on the right paw!

Introduce to dog-savvy teenagers, no history with cats, dog intros required but he may prefer to be the only dog.

Dame Didi

Meet Dame Didi, an aptly-named 12-year-old Calico cat. Dame Didi's history is a bit of a mystery, but she is truly regal in character. This gentle soul has the sweetest personality. She may seem a bit shy, but that's because her movements have purpose. She'll approach you with an elegance of a ballet dancer, and when she reaches you, you'll be rewarded lots of soft purrs. While she has been enjoying meeting new friends, she can't wait to find a home of her own where she can relax and lounge on a comfy chair. Come visit Dame Didi at Seattle Humane today!

As with all of our cats, Dame Didi is spayed, microchipped and vaccinated. She will go home with a certificate for a complimentary veterinarian examination and an identification tag. PLUS, most cat adoptions include 30 days of pet insurance from Trupanion - a great way to start off on the right paw!