This weekend, the Vashon Theatre will be packed with actors, actresses and dancers hoping to nab a part in the pilot of islander Curtis Lee Fulton’s television show: Vashon – A Mini-Series.
“We’re getting pretty booked up,” Fulton, who has lived on the island for three years, said in an interview last week. “Most spots are full of off-islanders. The Seattle-area scene is really intrigued. I think Vashon comes with its own mystery, so there’s a lot of interest.”
That Vashon mystery and the subject of “kind of gentrification or force of becoming obsolete” is what Fulton said inspired his sci-fi mini-series. The premise of the series, estimated to be no longer than eight episodes if the pilot sells, is that a secretive company begins constructing a bridge to the island, but as construction continues, islanders find it increasingly difficult to leave.
“I’ve been working on the script for (the pilot for) about two years,” Fulton said. “This firm is constructing this bridge, and the island is in turmoil. A small group of people has found out that since this project started, some odd coincidences keep them from getting on the ferries.”
He said that at one point in the pilot, an islander trying to move cannot leave because police are conducting a manhunt and the ferries have been stopped.
“It’s things like that, and eventually all of the clues point to this construction company,” Fulton said. “This idea that you can, in your lifetime, encounter changes that could have previously taken a generation and are now taking only a few years (was interesting to me). I felt the idea of this bridge really defined that. If a bridge was built, the island would turn into an arm of whatever suburban area was closest.”
The series’ pilot marks Fulton’s first venture into television. Working as a software engineer in Seattle, he said writing plays and making films is a hobby he does outside of his day job. He said the pilot combines his non-fiction documentary experience with the fictional play he’s done.
So far, only the pilot is written; if Fulton can sell it to a service such as Netflix, Amazon or HBO, writing and filming work on the other episodes will begin.
Filming for the pilot will be done entirely on-island and is expected to begin in June and run through September.
“Everyone will have day jobs coming into this, so the timeline really depends on people’s schedules,” Fulton said.
