Playwright reared on Bainbridge brings his offbeat perspective home

Growing up on Bainbridge Island, Jordan Harrison caught the theater bug early. Now he's a respected playwright, bringing it all back home.

His touted gender-bender comedy "Act a Lady" opens tonight at Theater Schmeater. And next month, Macha Monkey presents his mystery "Kid Simple: A Radio Play in the Flesh"at Theatre Off Jackson.

The 30-ish Harrison, New York-based and educated at Stanford and Brown universities, has a rising rep as a verbally playful scribe, who embraces offbeat topics.

His work is getting national play, and locally it's also appeared at Washington Ensemble Theatre and Empty Space. During a recent Bainbridge visit, Harrison chatted by phone with us.

Q: What was the first play you saw?

A: It must have been "Peter Pan," like at age 6. Or a magic show by Doug Henning. We definitely made it into town for shows at the 5th Avenue, Seattle Rep. But until I was a teenager, I vaguely thought all plays were by dead people.

Q: How did you first get active in theater?

A: I was in the teen drama program at Bainbridge Performing Arts. It was great — in the same year I got to play the Scarecrow in "The Wizard of Oz" and Macheath in "The Threepenny Opera."

Q: "Kid Simple" has an unusual structure.

A: I call it "a radio play in the flesh." It was my first full-length play to be produced. Everything I loved or that interested me, I threw it all in!

Q: What's a "radio play in the flesh"?

A: It's got lots of sound effects. I liked the idea of making an audience really listen to a sound design, and hear the difference between, say, a summer wind and a winter wind.

Q: And what prompted the more recent "Act a Lady"?

A: I'd just moved to Minneapolis, and got a play commission from the Commonweal Theatre, in the small town of Lanesboro, Minn. It has a little historical society, where I found about 100 photos from the late 1920s of the town's entire male population dressed up as women.

Q: How strange. Why?

A: It's a phenomenon called womanless weddings, which was all over the South and Midwest, mainly in the 1920s to 1950s. It's like a town pageant, often a fundraiser, where men act out a wedding by playing all the roles, including the bride, the bridesmaids.

Q: What fascinated you?

A: I loved the extreme juxtaposition of two worlds. I wondered what it would be like to finish a day working hard on the farm, then you go put on some hose and heels! What would the conversations between those men be like?

Q: So what's next in your already prolific career?

A: I'm working on several commissions — all in various stages of being late! One is "Futura," like the printing font, about the extinction of the printed word and what we lose when we no longer write or read print on a page. I'm doing my first children's play, based on Hans Christian Andersen's last story, "The Flea and the Professor." And I'm writing a musical.

Q: The topic?

A: The creator of Wonder Woman, and the lie-detector test. Strangely enough, the same guy — William Marston.

Misha Berson: mberson@seattletimes.com