ArtSEA: Seattle’s theater scene loses two devoted players

Carlo Scandiuzzi died on February 10 at age 70. The dedicated philanthropist, arts leader and former actor touched so many local groups over such a long time, the ripple effect of his influence is incalculable. (Read his obituary in The Seattle Times.)

I first met Carlo about 25 years ago, through Seattle dance-theater company 33 Fainting Spells — one of many avant-garde arts organizations he helped support over the years. He seemed drawn to artists at the fringe, working with groups like Empty Space Theatre, On the Boards and IndieFlix.

He also served larger nonprofits, including ACT Theatre, which he brought back from the brink of closure as executive director from 2008 - 2016.

Like everyone who met Carlo, I was instantly charmed by his big smile and lovely accent (he was Swiss-Italian and immigrated to the U.S. from Geneva in 1978), and his ebullience about the artistic community. He was truly enthusiastic about performance from punk rock to opera. I always enjoyed bumping into him, noting his impeccable fashion sense and his genuinely warm greeting.

You might say he exuded “a kind of zesty savoir faire you can’t fake.” That’s how Carlo is described in a 2012 Seattle Times profile written by longtime theater writer Misha Berson, who died on Feb. 13. She was 74.

I knew Misha and her writing well, having edited the many arts stories she contributed to Crosscut (now Cascade PBS) over six years. Like Carlo, Misha was driven by her passion for arts — she was a true believer in the power of theater, who was also known for telling it straight when local dramas fell short of their potential.

Misha was a big deal. She was a juror on the Pulitzer Prize committee for drama, among other prestigious theater awards, and worked as theater critic at The Seattle Times for 25 years. I remember feeling a bit intimidated when I started editing her stories in 2018, but her friendly emails and accessible prose soon quelled any nervousness.

She was voracious in her pursuit of performance, with a deep interest in Shakespeare and August Wilson as well as in film, opera and jazz (she also sang, with her jazz-writer husband Paul Schiavo).

Along with theater previews for Crosscut, Misha wrote engaging stories about the increase in visibility of Black women playwrights, why a new New Deal is needed for arts and Chadwick Boseman’s Seattle connection.

Her last story for me was a hopeful piece about how local theater can survive the challenges that linger post-pandemic. Misha was always eager to write more, to track trends, and most of all to encourage people to get out and experience plays.

“Maybe my best qualification for the job was restless curiosity,” she said in her farewell column upon exiting The Seattle Times in 2016. “Art never stands still, and you have to follow it.”

To love opera is to love its panoply of art forms — and a new production of The Magic Flute (Feb. 22 - March 9 at Seattle Opera) ups the ante by adding interactive animated film to the mix. 

When Mozart debuted the work in 1791, it did not include a giant spider queen, a Nosferatu figure, or Dumbo-style pink elephants. But the animation magic (take a peek) adds even more reasons to see this hugely popular opera.

Let’s hear from our in-house opera buff Gavin Borchert, the Cascade PBS copy chief, who spoke with Magic Flute cast members about what makes this highly stylized, part-movie-part-stage-show tricky to perform. Take it away, Gavin!

The fun of Mozart’s The Magic Flute — especially for directors and stage designers — is that it’s a fairy tale (including a hero, quest, rescued heroine, dragon, defeated villain) and probably the least real-world-based story in the operatic canon, so you can do anything you want with it.

Directors of the stature of Ingmar Bergman, Julie Taymor and Kenneth Branagh (in a 2006 film set during WWI) have all been moved to put their own spin on the tale, and Google tells me that outer-space/Star Wars-themed productions are almost a cliche.

But Seattle Opera has chosen an acclaimed, world-traveled interpretation by Australian director Barrie Kosky and British mixed-media theater group 1927.

Their take embraces a 1920s/German expressionism/silent film aesthetic in which the onstage action interacts with elaborate hand-drawn animations — putting to full glorious use McCaw Hall’s projection system (which in previous productions has enabled pretty backdrops but rarely more).

This makes unprecedented demands on the cast, who essentially have to coordinate their stage movement with a movie running behind them. Tess Altiveros, who sings the ingenue role of Papagena, says, “The timing and spacing onstage has to be hyper-precise. … You have highly choreographed marks to hit while finding space to bring your own storytelling to the stage.”

For Camille Ortiz as the heroine Pamina (double-cast with Brandie Sutton), the staging is even more complex, because it requires “singing while elevated on a platform with a harness,” she says. (See image above.)

And then there is the shadow dancing. Ibidunni Ojikutu, who plays the second of the Three Ladies who attend the Queen of the Night, says, “This particular treatment is set in a very specific world, with a very specific style. ... Shadows also play an important role in this production. So we have to make sure that we are casting the right shadows at the right time.”

On the other hand, the detailed and delightful animations bear a lot of the responsibility for bringing the fairy-tale world to life onstage. “I think it’s been easier in some ways,” Ojikutu observes, “because there aren’t a bunch of props for us to keep track of.” — G.B.

We’ll end this week’s edition in honor of Misha and Carlo, with a few more local theater recommendations.

< Crave (through March 2 at Erickson Theater). I saw this play in 2005 at The Little Theatre on Capitol Hill’s 19th Avenue East (now a yoga studio). Some will recall that the venue was as tiny as it was beloved — but it worked perfectly with Seattle set designer Jen Zeyl’s radical “letterbox” staging.

Now Zeyl and several members of that stellar production have returned to restage the nonlinear play for Intiman Theatre, 20 years later. The Erickson stage is much wider, and once again the clever set is a stunner — as are the performances in Sarah Kane’s stark, mysterious and poetic play.

< Hamilton (through March 2 at The Paramount Theatre). If you still haven’t seen Lin-Manuel Miranda’s epic rap musical — now a cultural touchstone — the touring Broadway version is back, so don’t go throwin’ away your shot.

< The Last Five Years (through March 16 at ACT). Directed by Shermona Mitchell, this emotionally powerful musical (which won a 2002 Drama Desk Award for outstanding music) traces the rise and fall of a relationship — along two inverted timelines.