Preview: 'It's Not in the P-I' celebrates defunct paper's history

Shortly after the demise of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Seattle playwright Paul Mullin was in a bar with former P-I science and technology reporter Tom Paulson, commiserating over the current state of American newspapers.

Listening to Paulson's war stories from his years as a P-I reporter, Mullin knew it was great material for a play, but Seattle's prominent theater companies couldn't accommodate a local premiere conceived with a necessary sense of urgency. Mullin sought a collaborator who could meet a staging deadline that was, by theater standards, almost journalistically demanding.

"In addition to that," says Mullin, "the last thing we wanted was for this to be a requiem or an elegy to the P-I. We wanted to celebrate the P-I's history while examining the impact of its closure. Eight months is a very fast turnaround for a new play, but we were aggressive about getting it done within the fastest possible time frame."

Enter playwright Dawson Nichols, director of the theater department at North Seattle Community College, whom Mullin recruited early in the process. As co-writers and co-producers, Nichols and Mullin chose four other local playwrights — Scot Augustson, Kelleen Conway Blanchard, Pam Carter and Bryan Willis — to shape material based on interviews with former P-I writers, editors and others affected by parent company Hearst Corp.'s decision to shut down the P-I on March 17.

Early on, the decision was made to stage "It's Not In the P-I" as a "living newspaper," a theater form (with origins in Russia) popularized in the U.S. by the Federal Theater Project during the Great Depression. With each playwright contributing "articles" that would be performed by anywhere from one to nine actors on stage, the material was given an organic, nonlinear structure that favored flexible pacing and shifting of time and space.

After the completed play was turned down by all but one of Seattle's major theater companies due to scheduling logistics (Seattle Rep was eager but ultimately unable to stage the production), Nichols offered NSCC's acting students, and its Stage One performance facility, to bring the project alive.

"I never hesitated to do this," says Nichols, "because it needed to be done, but also because it offered our students everything they need. It's relevant theater. It gets them excited, gets them exposure, and the kind of experience they need if they're going to stay in the theatrical profession. And they're the first people to ever speak these words onstage, so how exciting is that?"

"It's Not In the P-I" addresses more than a century of P-I history. With many more angles to cover, Mullin and Nichols are considering future "editions" of their production.

"You dig into this material," says Nichols, "and you realize what a profound change our culture is going through. We've only begun to grapple with it."

Jeff Shannon: j.sh@verizon.net