‘Late in the Game’ is latest in playreading series

Published 1:30 am Wednesday, February 9, 2022

Northwest playwright Y York can’t stop writing award-winning plays.

She’s been doing that for nearly 40 years, and she’s lending one of her newest works to Vashon Repertory Theatre’s (VRT) Incubator play-reading series, to be performed at 7 p.m. Monday, Feb. 21, in the lobby at Vashon Center for the Arts (VCA).

“Late in the Game” introduces audiences to the character of Melissa, who is reckless because she’s going to die anyway. Her friend Flo is worried that her husband Tim is going to run off with his young secretary. Tim just wants to lose ten pounds and get a good night’s sleep. Harvey thinks that all women are interchangeable — until he meets the one who isn’t. Dying is no excuse for not living in this New York comedy of middle-aged love, marriage, and crime.

The reading will star Vashon’s own Mik Kuhlman as Melissa; Tami Brockway Joyce as her friend Flo, with Toby Nichols and Matt Wilson portraying the men in their lives.

Director Samantha Sherman and VRT’s producing artistic director, Charlotte Tiencken, will stay for a talkback session with the audience after the reading. The idea is to collect and pass along valuable audience feedback to the playwright.

VRT’s Incubator Series will run through May, with VRT presenting staged readings of new scripts by local island and Pacific Northwest playwrights on the third Monday on each month. Island playwright Trista Baldwin curates the series, with the hope that these plays, fully staged, will find their way into a future VRT season.

So far, audiences have been treated to Kat Eggleston’s “Droelin,” based on Irish folklore about the Winter Wren, and “Kichi In The Woods of Present Memory,” by Bryan Willis, about the dramatic fate of three shipwrecked Japanese sailors who floated from Japan to Neah Bay in the mid-1800s.

The next reading, after “Late in the Game,” will take place at 7 p.m. Monday, March 21. It will be a reading of “Unnamed,” by T.D. Mitchell. All readings take place at Vashon Center for the Arts.

All performances are pay-what-you-will at the door, with a $10 suggested donation. All patrons must present proof of COVID-19 vaccination, and masks are required during the reading.