SnoValley Star
FEBRUARY 19, 2016
K2
If you go Theatre Black Dog presents ‘K2’ q Feb. 26-27, 8 p.m.; March 5, 8 p.m.; March 6, 4 p.m.; March 11-12, 8 p.m. q Directed by Susan Bradford q The Black Dog Arts Café, 8062 Railroad Ave. S.E., Snoqualmie q Tickets are $15 general admission, $12 for students and seniors, and are available online at brownpapertickets.com/event/2505532 or at the door
From Page 1 to direct more than act. But not before she and Darchuk starred in “Arsenic and Old Lace.” “Here we were playing old ladies while in our 30s,” Bradford said. “Now it’s time to really do it.” Until they decide to return to starring roles on the stage together, the two are making due running the show for “K2.” This time, Bradford, 66, is directing the twoman play and Darchuk is assistant director, right where she likes to be, away from the action on stage. “I have a love of theater,” said Darchuk, who actually founded the Village Theatre in Issaquah with her exhusband, Carl. “I love to see things happen. I like being a part of it, but as a distant person, not the actual blood sweat and tears of it.” Bradford founded The People’s Theatre in Snoqualmie in 1996, which would later become Theatre Black Dog. She joked that now Darchuk, 65, is retired, her day job is costumes and props. Which proves to be an impor-
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By Greg Farrar / gfarrar@snovalleystar.com
Issaquah’s Susan Bradford stands outside the Black Dog Arts Café in downtown Snoqualmie where she directs the Theatre Black Dog production of the Patrick Meyers play ‘K2.’ tant role for a production about two climbers stuck on the side of K2, the second-highest mountain in the world. Set within a restaurant, the stage sometimes encompasses the entire facility for productions, Bradford said, allowing her to really go outside the box. “I get to direct what I want. So for ‘A Man For All Seasons’ and ‘To Kill
A Mockingbird,’ we use the whole space,” she said. “I kinda can’t be stopped if I want to do a show. I try to push the envelope.” It was the script which drew her to “K2.” When brainstorming what to do for one of Theatre Black Dog’s biannual productions, Bradford thought back to her days teaching theater. She’d have act-
ing labs requiring students to perform acting monologues. “One of the kids did the last monologue of this play and it stayed with me for years and years,” Bradford said. For the key role to deliver the monologue, she cast longtime friend Rich Payne, an Issaquah veteran of 15 or so shows at Village Theatre himself. “The line load is a challenge,” Payne admitted. “There are a lot of words. My character is a physicist. He was a member of the team that developed the neutron bomb, so he uses lots of big words. Lots of existential explanations. Cosmic reality. It’s demanding. I understand what he’s saying, but to put it into memo-
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ry and have it come out in the proper emotions is a tall task.” To help get the details right of two climbers stuck on the side of a mountain 27,000 feet up, Bradford cast an Argentinian climber, Raúl E. Peyret, now living in Bellevue. Peyret has been climbing since 2001, most recently having scaled Mount Adams and Mount Rainier in Washington. But he’s been acting even longer. “Not too many places that actually have an actor climbing with blocking in it,” he said. “This one I didn’t know, so I was attracted by the possibility of doing some technical stuff.” Peyret knows many climbing movies play fast and loose with the rules of climbing, taking creative license to make it more dramatic. He looks forward to bringing the true protocol of climbing to an audience.
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“This stage is challenging. It’s small,” he said. “Some of the elements we want to showcase may be potentially risky. If we had a bigger stage, it may actually be less risky.” Bradford hopes audience members don’t walk away with memories of an on-set injury. She prefers they gain an appreciation for the play’s timely message. “It’s written in the ’70s, so it’s pre-technology,” Bradford said. “But when they’re up there fighting for their lives, and also reflecting upon their lives, it gets pretty philosophical, pretty honest. They go through a lot of emotions. But they comment on technology, a lot of racial situations going on. It could be today. It’s just amazing how timely it is. Also in the sense of fighting for their lives and what the meaning of life really is.”
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