Offbeat theatrics march to own rhythm

It is September, which means many Seattle theaters are revving up for a new season.

Before such big players as Seattle Repertory Theatre, Seattle Children's Theatre and Village Theatre get in gear, let's look to some offbeat and under-the-radar theatrical events that catch our attention:

SITE Specific

Look out, if you're strolling around the Seattle University campus on Capitol Hill this weekend.

Those people you see lurking in the bushes or emoting near a construction site may not be students goofing off. They're probably actors participating in a mini-festival of new plays.

A first-time event that its organizers hope can happen yearly, SITE Specific has commissioned playwrights to devise (and direct) works that utilize the SU campus as a backdrop. They constitute a bill of four one-acts, with the audience being led from "stage to stage" by ushers.

The idea, says SU theater professor and festival co-producer Ki Gottberg, is to emulate the "site specific" nature of the Padua Hills Playwrights Festival that had its heyday in Southern California in the '80s. At that event, patrons roamed the range too, taking in works by David Henry Hwang, Maria Irene Fornes and other noteworthy dramatists.

The plays here are being produced simply, with minimal props and sets, "and the playwright is the central focus," Gottberg says. "One of the sites we're using is a garden area, another is a construction site, and one of the plays partially occurs in an art gallery. But there's an outdoor aspect to everything."

Site-specific theatrics have been warmly embraced in Seattle lately. Soon, 4Culture, the King County civic arts arm, will sponsor its third-annual season of works in unorthodox venues around the Puget Sound area. And the yearlong 365 Days 365 Plays project, ending Nov. 12 and created by dramatist Suzan-Lori Parks, has presented readings of Parks' work at bus stops, in coffee houses and at municipal parks, as well as in theaters.

Gottberg says writing for unusual sites can spark an artist's imagination, and an audience's. She should know. Gottberg is one of four playwrights contributing a script to the SU festival. The others are Kristen Kosmas, Vince Delaney and fest co-producer Cheryl Slean.

Opens tonight and runs Friday-Saturday through Sept. 22. Each show begins at the Lee Center for the Arts, Marion & 12th Avenue on the Seattle University campus; $10 (206-296-2244).

"The Summer After the Summer of Love"

This year the mass media is not letting us forget, for a single minute, that it's the 40th anniversary of the Summer of Love.

The youth celebration that ushered in the "flower power" movement is often trivialized in the re-telling, especially when it's reduced to images of love beads, wafting incense and orgiastic dancing in Golden Gate Park.

Given his track record for quirky, inventive scripts, Seattle's Scot Augustson will hopefully get beyond the obvious in this new play of his, which has its world premiere at Theater Schmeater this weekend.

We have few details about the plot. But the play is described as a "slightly twisted romantic comedy" about two guys who get their minds blown in the 1960s. Hmm ... .

Opens tonight. Runs Thursday-Sunday through Oct. 6 at Theater Schmeater, 1500 Summit Ave., Seattle; $15-$18, under age 18 free (800-838-3006 or www.schmeater.org).

"Mrs. Klein"

Austria-born Melanie Klein was one of the first women to become a psychoanalyst, after being analyzed herself by a close colleague of Dr. Sigmund Freud.

She made substantial contributions to the mental-health field, but Klein's own life was scarred by private tragedies. British author Nicholas Wright's play focuses on the sudden, somewhat mysterious death of her young-adult son, and its repercussions for Klein and her daughter, a fellow therapist.

Praised for its wit and insight in Off Broadway and London productions, the 1988 work finally gets its local debut, from veteran director Susanna Burney and the new troupe Sight Nine Theatre.

Opens Thursday and runs through Sept. 29 at Theater Off Jackson, 409 Seventh Ave. S., Seattle; $15-$18 (206-340-1049 or www.theatreoffjackson.org).

Misha Berson: mberson@seattletimes.com