New Year, New Works

As you ring in the new year, here’s one easy resolution you can keep—go see a world-premiere show written by a local playwright. New works offer audiences fresh experiences as stories are told onstage for the first time. Here are four opportunities to see new works this winter.

New Works Northwest (NW²) Festival

Union Arts Center | January 22–25

If you want a sneak peek at what might be in the pipeline on local stages, check out the New Works Northwest (NW²) Festival at Union Arts Center. Launched in 2023, this annual event offers staged readings, community events, and conversations exploring the future of theatre. This year’s lineup of staged readings includes Afropick by Gloria Majule, thou shalt be healed by Benjamin Benne, The Loudest Man on Earth by Catherine Rush, Wardenclyffe by Stacy D. Flood, Sync by Shanna Allman, and Nothing’s Changed, Everything’s New by Aliza Cosgrove.

SHe Said

Intiman Theatre | January 14–February 1

It was Halloween 2012 when Jen Ayers’ husband, Graham, identified as transgender. The couple had a long history together, having met in 1988 during freshman orientation at college, performed in bands together, and started a family. What did this life-changing revelation mean for them as individuals, as a couple, and as parents? Those questions are answered in Ayers’ new musical SHe Said.

“When I am trying to figure something out, process something, or don’t understand something, my go-to in life is often to sit at the piano, make music, and write songs,” said Ayers, who fronts the Fleetwood Mac tribute band Wild Rumours, and has shared the stage with Dave Matthews and members of Heart, REM, and Pearl Jam. “The first seedling of a song that led to this musical today probably started the morning after Graham came to this discovery.”

Billed as an ageless and transformational love story akin to Hedwig and the Angry Inch, Ayers’ musical explores the impact of gender identity on a family and couple who transition together, changing the way we think about what it means to love.

SHe Said’s journey from Ayers’ piano bench at home to Intiman Theatre’s stage spans more than a decade, with private workshops at The Royal Room and Seattle Rep, a four-night run of public performances at Broadway Performance Hall, and numerous rewrites. Ayers also released a double album of SHe Said songs in 2022.

This world-premiere iteration at Intiman Theatre features an immersive stage that resembles a nightclub lounge, complete with cabaret-style tables offering cocktail service to audience members, as well as traditional theatre seating. Ayers, who sings and plays piano, is backed by guitarists R. L. Heyer and Kathy Moore, bassist Rebecca Young, keyboardist Melissa Montalto, and drummer Geoff Redding.

Whether audiences show up for this brand-new musical is almost beside the point for Ayers, who sees SHe Said as a small act of resistance during perilous times for transgender people.

“It’s a story that needs to be shared,” Ayers explained. “When I think about what scares me about this musical, it’s more about the times we’re living in and the risk we’re taking by telling this particular story. The message of this show is so important, and we want to share it. Hearts can be changed. This is an essential time for all of us to stand up.”

Till We Have Faces

Taproot Theatre Company | January 21–February 28

Over the course of its 50-year history, Taproot Theatre Company has staged adaptations of C.S. Lewis’ novels Shadowlands, The Great Divorce, and The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, as well as productions of the more contemporary, Lewis-inspired plays Freud’s Last Session and Lewis & Tolkien. For its latest effort, producing artistic director Karen Lund has adapted Lewis’ novel Till We Have Faces, which retells the myth of Cupid and Psyche through the eyes of Psyche’s older sister, Orual.

This world-premiere adaptation, directed by Marianne Savell, is a labor of love for Lund, who first read Lewis’ novel as a young adult and found it rich in metaphor and symbolism, posing profound questions about identity, faith, love, and beauty. Lund has spent more than 10 years working with Lewis’ estate to adapt this story.

“This is a piece of art that has been nagging at me to get done,” Lund said. “Sometimes, a play gets in your body, your head, and your bones, and it says, ‘I have to come to life.’ If you trust that, really beautiful things can happen. If you don’t trust that, it continues to follow you. Sooner or later, it’s going to have to find its way. I’m here to tell you, this play has found its way.”

Published in 1956, just seven years before his death, Lewis described his novel as “my best book,” but many readers and critics found it complex and confusing. By adapting it for the stage, Lund hoped to make it more accessible to a broader audience. Despite being associated with Lewis’ name and novel, as well as Taproot’s run of successful Lewis adaptations, Till We Have Faces is very much a new work.

“It comes with all the risks of a new work; it hasn’t been tested,” Lund explained. “But with our audience, whom we’ve been having conversations with for 50 years, we feel that if we are interested in it, they’ll be interested in it too. They’ve come to trust us, and we trust them.”

The World Looks Different Sitting Down

Seattle Public Theater | February 20–March 1

Teal Sherer was 14 years old and headed to see Labor Day fireworks when the car she was riding in with three high-school friends crashed, leaving her paralyzed from the waist down. Introduced to theatre in college, Sherer went on to appear onscreen with Sir Kenneth Branagh, Kathy Bates, and Cynthia Nixon in the Emmy-nominated HBO film Warm Springs, as well as onstage with Dustin Hoffman, James Cromwell, and Annette Bening in American Voices with BroadStage in Santa Monica. You might have even spotted her in television commercials for Disneyland, Chrysler, and Liberty Mutual.

Her new solo show, The World Looks Different Sitting Down, candidly recounts her life as an actor, writer, dancer, and disability advocate.

“For the show to work, I had to be as honest as I could be,” explained Sherer. “I had to challenge myself with some of the more vulnerable parts—the frustration, sadness, and vulnerability—to really go deeper in those moments. That took some work for someone pretty good at compartmentalizing my emotions and sugarcoating things [by saying], ‘I’m okay. Everything is fine. Don’t worry about me. My life is great!’”

Sherer’s 75-minute show steers audiences through her life—from the unflinching isolation of being a teenager suddenly navigating high school as a person with paraplegia to the experience of auditioning for a role in a garbage-strewn Hollywood alleyway because the building isn’t wheelchair accessible.

Humor is an essential part of life for Sherer, who lives in Bellevue with her husband, Ali Alsaleh, and 10-year-old son, River. She wrote and starred in the loosely autobiographical online comedy series My Gimpy Life, and found humor necessary for her solo show.

“In some ways, parts of my life can be seen as tragic, hard, frustrating, or sad,” she said. “Humor has helped me through all of those things. To take people along on that journey felt good and right and human because that’s my life.”

One show highlight involves Sherer’s experience teaching Branagh how to swim while shooting Warm Springs. In the film, Branagh portrays Franklin D. Roosevelt, who visited the warm, buoyant, and mineral-rich waters of Warm Springs, Georgia, while battling polio in 1921. As Sherer playfully recounts in the show, “Ken claimed he needed to see how I swim, but I prefer to think it was a ploy to see me in my bathing suit.”

The World Looks Different Sitting Down had two workshop readings last summer at Seattle Public Theater. For this world-premiere production, Sherer is working with director and choreographer Jessica Wallenfels to incorporate Sherer’s experience as a dancer. Beyond being an engaging solo show, The World Looks Different Sitting Down aims to shatter misbeliefs and expand the audience’s view of disability.

“Disability is human and can happen to anybody at any time,” said Sherer. “Yet, it’s something we don’t talk about. If sharing my story expands anybody’s view of what disability is, I think that’s wonderful. For someone with a disability who attends my show, it may help them feel less alone and more connected.”