Writer/director/performer Marya Sea Kaminski’s Condo Millennium tells the tale of Pike/Pine’s transformation amid the real estate boom and bust. The multi-media performance exposition will run at 8 p.m. May 13 – 15 at the Northwest Film Forum at 1515 12th Ave.
Condo Millennium incorporates performance, video, song, dance, absurd fantasy, and even puppetry, and draws on live interviews with politicians, activists, developers, children, comedians, and residents.
Not everyone Kaminski solicited for advice as she developed the show was eager to help. “In honesty, we tried to meet with many developers, and they were hesitant to speak with us. I think they were assuming we were going to condemn condominium culture,” Kaminski said. While it may be easy to speak negatively about development, Kaminski said, she is trying to give a more balanced depiction of urban development patterns.
Marya Sea Kaminski
Kaminski, who lived in Capitol Hill from 2004 until just two months ago, describes the show as a love song to her former neighborhood. “I was inspired by the neighborhood as a microcosm for development happening in major cities nationwide,” she said. A major theme of the show is the concept of urban density versus sprawl, and while she says that change is inevitable in urban neighborhoods, progress is not necessarily inevitable.
“We decided early on that the objective of the play was for people to have a slow walk home,” Kaminski said. Though she often hears Seattleites wistful for the chance to live elsewhere, she hopes the show helps people remember why they chose to live in Capitol Hill and Seattle in the first place.
Kaminski was named Seattle Magazine’s 2007 “Artist of the Year” and Seattle Weekly’s 2006 “Best Performing Artist” and 2008 “Best Local Stage Actor”. She is also a three-time honoree on the Theatre Short List for the Stranger’s Genius Awards.
A wine reception will follow the opening performance Thursday night. Also, this week marks the opening of the Translations: Seattle Transgender Film Festival.
Northwest Film Forum is a CHS partner.
In the ’90s we had ‘Rent’…now we have ‘Condo’!
Seriously —-I wish Ms. Kaminski luck with her production—it would be interesting though to know if the theme of the show extends sympathy to all the young condo buyers in Seattle and elsewhere who are now hopelessly ‘underwater’ with their purchase.
Now and for years to come.
Maybe ‘Rent’ was not so bad after all….