You still have time to catch some daring, funny, touching solo performances

Seattle's Solo Performance Festival, which features a veritable army of actors, runs through April 3 at Theatre Off Jackson; see complete schedule at www.theatreoffjackson.org.

Here are some highlights of the festival — and when you can see the acts — seen recently by Seattle Times writers Misha Berson and Michael Upchurch:

Inside every good actor is not always a good writer. But many of the participants in Seattle's Solo Performance Festival have boldly penned scripts for themselves. The main trick is to keep you listening to a single voice, and that was achieved in the three pieces I saw on a recent bill.

"Your Own Personal Alcatraz"

Written and performed by Suzanne Morrison.

"Your Own Personal Alcatraz" has a tricky subject: a young girl's fascination with executed serial killer Ted Bundy.

Writer-actor Suzanne Morrison's sly, understated monologue outlines her adolescent fixation on Bundy (a handsome former Seattleite who confessed to killing at least 30 women) and her intense curiosity about her parents' link to him.

There are no gory details here, but the cringe factor is strong. In recalling her "crush" on Bundy ("He was hot!"), Morrison evokes our insatiable interest in such villains — or, at least, in the idea of them. And, obliquely, she alludes to the difference between being titillated by the specter of a murderous psychopath and actually knowing one.

Morrison's script is still sketchy but probably worth beefing up. (March 18).

"Kitty in the City"

Written and performed by Jeffrey Frieders.

"Alcatraz's" polar opposite, "Kitty in the City," is an extended, outrageous comic sketch about a swishy, endearing "kitty day spa" owner intent on sharing his recipe for spiritual bliss with us.

Author Jeffrey Frieders is an adroit actor (recently seen in Book-It Rep's "The River Why"), whose versatility is impressive.

With his elastic voice and frame, he conjures a flat full of pampered cats getting pedicures and the mindset of a neighbor enraged by the mad feline emporium above him.

"Kitty in the City" is very amusing, but the script needs a shampoo and a trim. Frieders might also cut way back on the simpering, frantic, lisping mannerisms of his protagonist, a caricature in search of a character. (March 20, 22 and 31).

"Demonstrate the Place of My Abode"

Written and performed by Lisa Koch.

Lisa Koch's winning "Demonstrate the Place of My Abode" has a most compelling character at its center.

The noted local musician-comedian pays poignant tribute here to her late, lovable father — an Ashland, Ore., grade-school teacher, a connoisseur of bad jokes and good music. Employing family photos, and snatches of singalong folk tunes, the homage is sweet, heartwarming.

But Koch has a larger purpose in telling her dad's story: confirming the value of Oregon's Death with Dignity program (a similar one has been adopted by Washington state).

The practical and legal difficulties of the Oregon law, which allows gravely ill patients the option to end their own lives, are personalized here. And the gentle, non-polemical case Koch makes, from her own family's experience, is compelling.

"Demonstrate the Place of My Abode" is ultimately more about living than dying. It's the kind of solo theater that makes you say: "Please, do share." (March 18 and 30).

Misha Berson, Seattle Times theater critic

"Samson"

Written and performed by Billie Wildrick.

Billie Wildrick is one of Seattle's most vibrant singer-performers, as anyone who's seen her at the 5th Avenue Theatre ("Wonderful Town," "Company") will know. And she brings her sure talents to her Solo Performance Festival offering, "Samson," which she introduces with the frank admission that she's trying to sidestep the amplification and overblown stage effects that characterize musical theater on Seattle's big stages.

That doesn't stop "Samson," Wildrick's expansion and retelling of the Biblical story, from being a puzzler on several fronts. Wildrick brings flair to it, of course, and a fine, light voice to the piece's occasional guitar-accompanied musical interludes. She also gives the tale a fuller psychological component than you'll find in The Book of Judges. Marital unease, social isolation, games of trust and mistrust, male hubris and female oppression — all are part of Wildrick's scenario, along with the betrayals, the visions and the slaughter of thousands that are part of the Old Testament parable.

Still, her monologue, at close to 90 minutes, is almost an invitation for your attention to drift. Wildrick manages it better than just about anyone else could. But this staged reading simply doesn't feel like a full performance.

And then there's the question: Why Samson? What drew Wildrick to this material? If she's going to be candid about shunning amplification and theatrical excess, she might also want to explain how she came to choose the subject of her tale. (March 18 and 29).

"The Dwellers"

Written and performed by Jonah Von Spreecken.

As you enter the theater, you're greeted by a terribly polite young man with a European accent that hovers somewhere between Prague and Transylvania. This gentleman professes, oh so solemnly, to have "the utmost respect for your shoes" — then asks you to take them off and leave them on the stage for the duration of the show.

Welcome to the strange world of "The Dwellers," a show in which a tenants meeting takes surreal turns involving hats, footwear, love, jealousy and fortune cookies, all inside the precarious confines of an apartment building where the floors are even thinner than the walls.

Fedja (actor-writer Jonah Von Spreecken) is our unreliable guide to this world. Shy, stuttering, nervously laughing, he's the keeper of the shoes ("these stinky creatures," as he fondly calls them) in the lobby of this fragile building. He's also a journalist with a taste for whimsical subject matter. ("In a neighbor city today," one of his stories goes, "the entire town sneezed at the same time.")

As he explains his infatuation with his reclusive upstairs neighbor Suzette and the reason he thinks his purchase of a new hat might win her to him, his story recalls the fabulist turns of Franz Kafka or Steven Millhauser. In passages where he lip-syncs to recordings on his Victrola (Fedja apparently is in the habit of recording all his dealings with the outside world), he even brings to mind the deliberately cobwebbed avant-gardism of Canadian filmmaker Guy Maddin.

Von Spreecken completely inhabits his odd creation, down to the printed plot twist he inserts in every shoe on stage as the show draws to its conclusion. He's a canny performer, smoothly blending creepiness with comedy, and making Fedja's woebegone tale as palatable as it is preposterous. (March 19 and 29).

Michael Upchurch, Seattle Times arts writer