Intiman Playhouse - Recent History

Recent History

• On August 5, 2011 the first performance of Seattle Theatresports took place, the show having previously been performed in the Gum Wall Theatre in Pike Place Market.

• On April 16, 2011 the Board of Trustees voted to close the Intiman theatre and lay off the entire staff, including Artistic Director Kate Whoriskey. In November, 2010 the Intiman had found that the theatre was $2.3 million in debt and had begun a fundraising effort to pay overdue expenses and reduce debt. However, shortly after the season opened, the Board decided that the financial situation would compel the Board to close the theatre, temporarily. The Board has engaged Susan Trapnell, a consultant, to advise it on a plan to reopen the theatre in 2012.

• Intiman has been transitioning from one generation of leaders to the next. Laura Penn departed as Managing Director in March, 2008. Her replacement, Brian Colburn, officially started in November, 2008 but did not move to Seattle until early 2009. Colburn resigned Nov. 1, 2010. Kate Whoriskey replaced Bartlett Sher as Artistic Director in 2010. Originally the plan was for them to jointly manage the first season of the transition, but that changed when Mr. Sher departed in March, 2010.

• Intiman completed a project entitled The American Cycle, a series of five plays written by prominent Americans— four of which were not originally written as plays. They were:

1. Thornton Wilder's Our Town (2004)
2. adapted John Steinbeck novel The Grapes of Wrath (2005)
3. adapted Richard Wright novel Native Son (2006)
4. adapted Harper Lee novel To Kill a Mockingbird (2007), and
5. adapted Robert Penn Warren novel All the King's Men (2008)

• A new project, The New American Cycle, began in 2009 with Robert E. Sherwood's Abe Lincoln in Illinois.