Assembling SnowGlobed
My mom used to transform our home into a holiday wonderland. Garland on every rail, snow villages filling every empty service, multiple themed Christmas trees (my favorite the Space Tree, which was adorned with characters from Star Wars & Star Trek surrounded by stars & moons). Snowmen & Santas from around the world came out to celebrate the season. Magic danced on music and in the lights inside & out, sparkling, shining, signally to the rest of the world that the holidays are here & we want to share our celebrations with you. To say the least, from the earliest age I learned to celebrate the holidays with zeal & flourish. To say it plainly, I love the holidays. So when I moved back to the Seattle area in 2011 to work at the Bellevue Youth Theatre and found myself searching for more opportunities to do ‘grown up’ theatre & came up empty handed, I created my own. It was the holiday season, so I combined my two loves into one, and thus SnowGlobed was born. It is an evening of holiday inspired scenes & spectacles, that allowed me, my friends, as well as some strangers [turned collaborators], to create a festive, insightful, celebration of the season. To say the least, SnowGlobed is a holiday party fueled with theatre. To say it plainly, SnowGlobed is my Christmas gift to my community for letting me learn, work, & grow here.
SnowGlobed has grown tremendously over the last 5 years from a one night event in TPS Theatre4 to a 3 week main stage run at West of Lenin. As it has, the mission has grown alongside of it. It has always been about creating opportunity to play and finding artists from different worlds in order to create a unique evening, new collaborators, & a cross pollination of patrons. The last couple of years it has become exceedingly important to me in choosing artists to provide opportunity to women & people of color. I started SnowGlobed and Playing in Progress for myself because the opportunities as an emerging director are nearly nonexistent. I continue to do it because numbers in regional theatres & Hollywood aren’t changing. Because it is 2015. Because I can. I can create change in my company, in my community, in my city and my country and this is where I begin. The growth of SnowGlobed provides me with even more chances to support emerging artists. We’ve never needed a full design team before but this year we did and SnowGlobed had an entirely female design team. Pilar O’Connell, who has acted in SnowGlobed previously, came to me last year and said, I have an idea for a play, can I be one of the playwrights next year? Of course, I said, and this year SnowGlobed features Pilar’s first produced play. There is more than one point of view to be heard in this world & we seek to hear the ones currently unspoken.I spend more time than is probably healthy in internet rabbit holes reading articles about the underrepresentation of women & people of color in theatre & film, on stage & behind the scenes. The state of the world continues to baffle me. How, I ask, how is this still the state of the world. I don’t have an answer & I doubt I’ll find it on the internet, mixed in amongst statistics & trolls.So, instead, I play.
With you, for you.
I work.
With you, for you.
I create.
With you, for you.
Because it is the only thing I can do.
Because it is the holidays & they are meant to be shared.
Because it is time to hear all the stories left untold by those bursting to begin.
And maybe, together, we will find a way to change what remains.
Two chances remain to see SnowGlobed, December 18 & 19, 8pm at West of Lenin. Tickets available at snowglobed5.brownpapertickets.com
About the Author:
Rachel Delmar has been working to get people to the theatre since she was 9 years old. She has worked around the country as an actor, director, teaching artist, producer, & marketer. Through her company, Playing in Progress, she has spent the last 5 years in Seattle producing opportunities for playwrights, actors, directors, & artists to gather together and develop new work. Most notoriously through SnowGlobed (an evening of holiday inspired scenes & spectacles) that takes place every December. As a marketer, Rachel specializes in social media marketing & content creation. She isn’t afraid to hit the streets and talk to real live people about what’s going on in Seattle Theatre. Marketing is an art and the more ways we find to artistically engage our current & future patrons the better. Her personal motto? – “One barstool at a time, I’m going to take the world to theatre.” She received her theatre degree at the University of Southern California.National credits include: Guthrie Theatre, the Flowershop Project and the O'Neill Theater Center. Los Angeles credits include: Playwright's Arena, LA Theatre Center, Antaeus Theatre, The Virginia Avenue Project, The Odyssey Theatre Ensemble, Director’s Lab West, Red Dog Squadron (current company member). In Seattle, she has worked with MAP Theatre, theater schmeater, ACT, Balagan, The 14/48 Projects, Annex Theatre, Seattle Playwright's Collective, West of Lenin, Seattle Public Theater, LIVE GIRLS!, theater simple, Infinity Box, Second Story Rep, Bellevue Youth Theatre, and Playing in Progress. rachel@forwardflux.comFollow her for a peek into her Theatrical Adventures:
- Twitter: @RachelDelmar
- Instagram: RachelDelmar
- Snapchat: RachelDelmar
- Regular Internet: www.racheldelmar.com
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