Taproot Theatre Company (TTC) is a professional, non-profit theatre company in Seattle, Washington, with a multi-faceted production program. Founded in 1976, Taproot Theatre has mainstage productions, at its location in the Greenwood neighborhood, touring productions through the Pacific Northwest

Pacific Northwest

The Pacific Northwest is a region in northwestern North America, bounded by the Pacific Ocean to the west and, loosely, by the Rocky Mountains on the east. Definitions of the region vary and there is no commonly agreed upon boundary, even among Pacific Northwesterners. A common concept of the...

, and theatrical training through its acting studio. Taproot Theatre Company is a member of Theatre Communications Group

Theatre Communications Group

Theatre Communications Group is an organization dedicated to the promotion of non-profit professional theatre in the United States. TCG has over 450 member theatres located in 47 states; 17,000 individual members; and a growing number of University, Funder, Business and Trustee Affiliates...

 (TCG), Theatre Puget Sound (TPS), and the Greenwood-Phinney Chamber of Commerce.

Mainstage

Taproot Theatre produces five plays each year for its Mainstage season, plus an annual holiday production. Play selection includes classics, world premieres, musicals, dramas and comedies. Each Mainstage production offers one pay-what-you-can performance. TTC reaches approximately 30,000 audience members each year through more than 150 performances.

In addition to its regular performances, Taproot hosts matinees targeted to specific audience, either students or seniors. Each student matinee includes a post-show talk-back with the actors and director. For some students, it is the first time they have seen a professional production.

Acting Studio

Taproot’s Acting Studio was founded in 1992 to provide affordable, encouraging and artistically challenging classes for children and adults interested in learning the craft of acting. In the years since then, TTC has expanded the program to offer year-round classes in dozens of subjects including musical theatre

Musical theatre

Musical theatre is a form of theatre combining songs, spoken dialogue, acting, and dance. The emotional content of the piece – humor, pathos, love, anger – as well as the story itself, is communicated through the words, music, movement and technical aspects of the entertainment as an...

, on-camera acting, and Shakespeare.

Touring

Taproot Theatre Company began as a touring company in 1976, performing throughout Washington State at schools, prisons, churches and community centers. Today, Taproot’s Road Company spends the school year using theatre to teach social-issue lessons such as bullying and harassment prevention to schools in Seattle and throughout the Pacific Northwest; this program began in 1985. Each summer, Taproot assembles a Road Company of five professional actors to present a three-play repertoire of social-issue plays to school populations. The cast engage with the students after each performance through interactive talk-back sessions and classrooms discussions.As of early 2008, over 1 million students have seen Taproot’s social-issue plays. Plays in this program are written by Northwest playwrights and incorporate principles from Committee for Children’s Steps to Respect and Second Step curricula. During the 2008/2009 school year, Taproot’s Road Company introduced a new play, New Girl by Josh Hornbeck, about cyber bullying

Cyber-bullying

Cyber-bullying is the use of the Internet and related technologies to harm other people, in a deliberate, repeated, and hostile manner. As it has become more common in society, particularly among young people, legislation and awareness campaigns have arisen to combat it.-Definition:The term...

.

TTC also mounts touring productions for the church and corporate communities. The company’s improv comedy troupe tours as well.

Mainstage Production History

2011: Odyssey

Odyssey

The Odyssey is one of two major ancient Greek epic poems attributed to Homer. It is, in part, a sequel to the Iliad, the other work ascribed to Homer. The poem is fundamental to the modern Western canon, and is the second—the Iliad being the first—extant work of Western literature...

, The Beams are Creaking, Brownie Points, Something's Afoot

Something's Afoot

Something's Afoot is a murder mystery musical that spoofs detective stories, mainly the works of Agatha Christie, and especially her detective novel And Then There Were None . The book, music, and lyrics were written by James McDonald, David Vos, and Robert Gerlach, with additional music by Ed...

, An Ideal Husband

An Ideal Husband

An Ideal Husband is an 1895 comedic stage play by Oscar Wilde which revolves around blackmail and political corruption, and touches on the themes of public and private honour...

, Beasley's Christmas Party

2010: The Great Divorce

The Great Divorce

The Great Divorce is a work of allegory by C. S. Lewis that is complementary to Lewis' earlier book The Screwtape Letters.The working title was Who Goes Home? but the real name was changed at the publisher's insistence. The title refers to William Blake's The Marriage of Heaven and Hell...

, Brooklyn Boy

Brooklyn Boy

Brooklyn Boy is a play by American playwright Donald Margulies.Novelist Eric Weiss, critically celebrated but unsuccessful, "arrives" when his new, autobiographical novel becomes a best-seller. An outsider all his life, he is suddenly on the inside of everything: town cars, television studios, the...

, Charley's Aunt

Charley's Aunt

Charley's Aunt is a farce in three acts written by Brandon Thomas. It broke all historic records for plays of any kind, with an original London run of 1,466 performances....

, Man of La Mancha

Man of La Mancha

Man of La Mancha is a musical with a book by Dale Wasserman, lyrics by Joe Darion and music by Mitch Leigh. It is adapted from Wasserman's non-musical 1959 teleplay I, Don Quixote, which was in turn inspired by Miguel de Cervantes's seventeenth century masterpiece Don Quixote...

, Wedding Belles

Wedding Belles

Wedding Belles is a Scottish-based British television drama first broadcast on Channel 4 in 2007.-Plot:Wedding Belles centres around four young women struggling with personal issues, while preparing to throw one of their group the wedding of the year...

, Sherlock Holmes and the Case of the Christmas Carol

2009: Gee’s Bend, Tuesdays with Morrie

Tuesdays With Morrie

Tuesdays with Morrie is a 1997 non-fiction novel by American writer Mitch Albom. The story was later adapted by Thomas Rickman into a TV movie of the same name directed by Mick Jackson, which aired on 5 December 1999 and starred Jack Lemmon and Hank Azaria...

, Around the World in 80 Days

Around the World in Eighty Days

Around the World in Eighty Days is a classic adventure novel by the French writer Jules Verne, first published in 1873. In the story, Phileas Fogg of London and his newly employed French valet Passepartout attempt to circumnavigate the world in 80 days on a £20,000 wager set by his friends at the...

, Smoke on the Mountain Homecoming, Enchanted April

Enchanted April

Enchanted April is the second film adaptation Elizabeth von Arnim's 1922 novel, The Enchanted April. The novel was adapted as a Broadway play in 1925, and as an RKO Radio film in 1935 - both using the same title as the novel. The 1992 film release received several Golden Globe and Academy Award...

, It's a Wonderful Life: A Live Radio Play

2008: As You Like It

As You Like It

As You Like It is a pastoral comedy by William Shakespeare believed to have been written in 1599 or early 1600 and first published in the folio of 1623. The play's first performance is uncertain, though a performance at Wilton House in 1603 has been suggested as a possibility...

, Doubt: A Parable, Over the River and Through the Woods

Over the River and through the Woods

"Over the River and through the Woods" is a Thanksgiving song by Lydia Maria Child. Written originally as a poem, it appeared in her Flowers for Children, Volume 2, in 1844. The title of the poem is, "A Boy's Thanksgiving Day". It celebrates her childhood memories of visiting her Grandfather's House...

, Big River: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is a novel by Mark Twain, first published in England in December 1884 and in the United States in February 1885. Commonly named among the Great American Novels, the work is among the first in major American literature to be written in the vernacular, characterized by...

, Susan and God, The Christmas Foundling

2007: The God Committee, Mary’s Wedding, Seven Keys to Baldpate, Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat

Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat

Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat is an Andrew Lloyd Webber musical with lyrics by Tim Rice. The story is based on the "coat of many colors" story of Joseph from the Hebrew Bible's Book of Genesis. This was the first Lloyd Webber and Rice musical to be performed publicly...

, The Importance of Being Earnest

The Importance of Being Earnest

The Importance of Being Earnest, A Trivial Comedy for Serious People is a play by Oscar Wilde. First performed on 14 February 1895 at St. James's Theatre in London, it is a farcical comedy in which the protagonists maintain fictitious personae in order to escape burdensome social obligations...

, The Farndale Avenue Housing Estate Townswomen's Guild Dramatic Society's Production of A Christmas Carol

2006: An Inspector Calls

An Inspector Calls

An Inspector Calls is a play written by English dramatist J. B. Priestley, first performed in 1945 in the Soviet Union and 1946 in the UK. It is considered to be one of Priestley's best known works for the stage and one of the classics of mid-20th century English theatre...

, The Voice of the Prairie, The Foreigner

The Foreigner (play)

The Foreigner is a play by Larry Shue.Set in a resort-style fishing lodge in rural Georgia, the comedy revolves around two of its guests, Englishman Charlie Baker and Staff Sergeant Froggy LeSueur. Charlie is so pathologically shy that he is unable to speak...

, Smoke on the Mountain

Smoke On The Mountain

Smoke on the Mountain is an Off-Broadway musical that was written by Alan Bailey and Connie Ray. It was originally workshopped at the McCarter Theatre in 1988, given a full staging at the McCarter in 1990, and was subsequently moved by the McCarter to Lamb's Theatre in New York City, New York in...

, Arms and the Man

Arms and the Man

Arms and the Man is a comedy by George Bernard Shaw, whose title comes from the opening words of Virgil's Aeneid in Latin:"Arma virumque cano" ....

, It’s A Wonderful Life: A Live Radio Play

2005: An Enemy of the People

An Enemy of the People

An Enemy of the People is an 1882 play by Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen. Ibsen wrote it in response to the public outcry against his play Ghosts, which at that time was considered scandalous...

, Beau Jest, Arthur: The Hunt, The Fantasticks

The Fantasticks

The Fantasticks is a 1960 musical with music by Harvey Schmidt and lyrics by Tom Jones. It was produced by Lore Noto. It tells an allegorical story, loosely based on the play "The Romancers" by Edmond Rostand, concerning two neighboring fathers who trick their children, Luisa and Matt, into...

, The Last Train to Nibroc, The Trial of Ebenezer Scrooge.

2004: Arthur: The Begetting, Fools, Shadowlands

Shadowlands

Shadowlands is a 1985 television film, written by William Nicholson, directed by Norman Stone and produced by David M. Thompson for BBC Wales. Its subject is the relationship between Oxford don and author, C. S. Lewis and Joy Gresham....

, You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown

You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown

You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown is a 1967 musical comedy with music and lyrics by Clark Gesner, based on the characters created by cartoonist Charles M. Schulz in his comic strip Peanuts...

, Much Ado About Nothing

Much Ado About Nothing

Much Ado About Nothing is a comedy written by William Shakespeare about two pairs of lovers, Benedick and Beatrice, and Claudio and Hero....

, A Radioland Christmas

2003: All My Sons

All My Sons

All My Sons is a 1947 play by Arthur Miller. The play was twice adapted for film; in 1948, and again in 1987.The play opened on Broadway at the Coronet Theatre in New York City on January 29, 1947, closed on November 8, 1947 and ran for 328 performances...

, The Last Night of Ballyhoo

The Last Night of Ballyhoo

-Plot:The comedy is set in the upper class German-Jewish community living in Atlanta, Georgia in December 1939. Hitler has recently conquered Poland, Gone with the Wind is about to premiere, and Adolph Freitag and his sister Boo and nieces Lala and Sunny - a Jewish family so highly assimilated...

, God’s Man in Texas, The Spitfire Grill

The Spitfire Grill

The Spitfire Grill is a 1996 American motion picture that tells a story of a woman who was just released from prison and goes to work in a small-town café known as The Spitfire Grill. A central theme is redemption....

, Candida

Candida (play)

Candida, a comedy by playwright George Bernard Shaw, was first published in 1898, as part of his Plays Pleasant. The central characters are clergyman James Morell, his wife Candida and a youthful poet, Eugene Marchbanks, who tries to win Candida's affections. The play questions Victorian notions...

, The Carrolls of Queen Anne

2002: The Comedy of Errors

The Comedy of Errors

The Comedy of Errors is one of William Shakespeare's earliest plays. It is his shortest and one of his most farcical comedies, with a major part of the humour coming from slapstick and mistaken identity, in addition to puns and word play. The Comedy of Errors is one of only two of Shakespeare's...

, The Man Who Was Thursday

The Man Who Was Thursday

The Man Who Was Thursday: A Nightmare is a novel by G. K. Chesterton, first published in 1908. The book is sometimes referred to as a metaphysical thriller.-Plot summary:...

, Sleuth

Sleuth (play)

Sleuth is a 1970 play written by Anthony Shaffer. The play is set in the Wiltshire, England manor house of Andrew Wyke, an immensely successful mystery writer. His home reflects Wyke's obsession with the inventions and deceptions of fiction and his fascination with games and game-playing...

, Wonderful Tennessee, Oil City Symphony

Oil City Symphony

Oil City Symphony is a musical with a book by Mike Craver, Mark Hardwick, Debra Monk, and Mary Murfitt and songs by various composers. It is a recreation of a recital by four middle-aged amateur musicians who have reunited in the auditorium of the Ohio high school they attended in the 1960s to pay...

, Appalachian Christmas Homecoming

2001: You Can’t Take it With You

You Can't Take It with You

You Can't Take It with You is a comedic play in three acts by George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart. The original production of the play opened at the Booth Theater on December 14, 1936, and played for 837 performances...

, Heaven on Earth, Cotton Patch Gospel

Cotton patch gospel

Cotton Patch Gospel is a musical by Tom Key and Russell Treyz with music and lyrics written by Harry Chapin just before his death in 1981...

, Balmoral

Balmoral (play)

Balmoral is a 1987 farcical play by British playwright Michael Frayn....

, Joyful Noise, Appalachian Christmas Homecoming

2000: Moreau, Harvey

Harvey (play)

Harvey is a 1944 play by American playwright Mary Chase. Produced by Brock Pemberton and directed by Antoinette Perry, the play premiered on 1 November 1944 at the 48th Street Theatre on Broadway where it was staged for 1,775 performances before closing on January 15, 1949. The original production...

, Wait Until Dark

Wait Until Dark

Wait Until Dark is a play by Frederick Knott.-Synopsis:Susy Hendrix is a blind Greenwich Village housewife who becomes the target of three con-men searching for the heroin hidden in a doll, which her husband Sam innocently transported from Canada as a favor to a woman who has since been murdered...

, Mass Appeal

Mass Appeal

Mass Appeal is a two-character play by Bill C. Davis. The comedy-drama focuses on the conflict between a complacent Roman Catholic pastor and the idealistic young deacon who is assigned to his affluent, suburban parish.-Plot:...

, Radio Gals, Sanders Family Christmas

1999: Ah, Wilderness!

Ah, Wilderness!

Ah, Wilderness! is a comedy by American playwright Eugene O'Neill that premiered on Broadway at the Guild Theatre on 2 October 1933.-Plot summary:...

, Terra Nova, The Trip to Bountiful

The Trip to Bountiful

The Trip to Bountiful is a 1985 film starring Geraldine Page, John Heard, Carlin Glynn, Richard Bradford and Rebecca De Mornay. Geraldine Page won the Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance as Carrie Watts. The movie was adapted by Horton Foote from his television play. The Trip to...

, Bullshot Crummond

Bullshot Crummond

Bullshot Crummond is a stage play parodying the British pulp hero Bulldog Drummond. "Bullshot" was performed by Ron House, Diz White, John Neville-Andrews, Alan Shearman, and Derek Cunninghamwhen later made into a 1983 film, Bullshot....

, Quilters

Quilters (musical)

Quilters is a musical with a book by Molly Newman and Barbara Damashek, and lyrics and music by Barbara Damashek. It is about the lives of American pioneer women based on the book The Quilters:Women and Domestic Art by Patricia Cooper and Norma Bradley Allen. The show was originally developed and...

, Sanders Family Christmas

1998: Lost in Yonkers

Lost in Yonkers

Lost in Yonkers is a 1991 Pulitzer Prize-winning play by Neil Simon. After eleven previews, the Broadway production, produced by Emanuel Azenberg and directed by Gene Saks, opened on February 21, 1991 at the Richard Rodgers Theatre, where it ran for 780 performances...

, The Clearing, Busman’s Honeymoon, The Boys Next Door

The Boys Next Door (play)

The Boys Next Door is a play, written by Tom Griffin. It deals with four mentally disabled men who live in a group home. It takes place over roughly a two month period of time and consists of brief vignettes about their lives...

, Godspell

Godspell

Godspell is a musical by Stephen Schwartz and John-Michael Tebelak. It opened off Broadway on May 17, 1971, and has played in various touring companies and revivals many times since, including a 2011 revival now playing on Broadway...

, Christmas on the Orpheum Circuit

1997: You Never Can Tell, Traveler in the Dark, Boomers, Driving Miss Daisy

Driving Miss Daisy

Driving Miss Daisy is a 1989 American comedy-drama film adapted from the Alfred Uhry play of the same name. The film was directed by Bruce Beresford, with Morgan Freeman reprising his role as Hoke Colburn and Jessica Tandy playing Miss Daisy...

, St. Hugo of Central Park, Stages of Christmas

1996 First Season at Taproot’s new permanent facility in Seattle:
Pre-Season show: An Evening Around the Radio JB, Black Coffee

Black Coffee (play)

Black Coffee is a play by the British crime-fiction author Agatha Christie which was produced initially in 1930. The first piece that Christie wrote for the stage, it launched a successful second career for her as a playwright....

, The Foreigner

The Foreigner (play)

The Foreigner is a play by Larry Shue.Set in a resort-style fishing lodge in rural Georgia, the comedy revolves around two of its guests, Englishman Charlie Baker and Staff Sergeant Froggy LeSueur. Charlie is so pathologically shy that he is unable to speak...

, Edith Stein, Smoke on the Mountain

1995: The Rainmaker

The Rainmaker (play)

The Rainmaker is a play written by N. Richard Nash in the early 1950s. The play opened on October 28, 1954 at the Cort Theatre in New York and ran for 125 performances. It was directed by Joseph Anthony and produced by Ethel Linder Reiner....

, Min Ma Mulano, Opal, Beau Jest, Pilgrim

1994: The Nerd

The Nerd

The Nerd is a two-act comedy written by American actor/playwright Larry Shue.-Plot:Set in Terre Haute, Indiana in late 1979, The Nerd presents the story of Willum Cubbert, an unassuming young architect, friends Tansy and Axel and unexpected houseguest Rick, who had saved Willum's life in Vietnam...

, The Voice of the Prairie, The Curious Savage

The Curious Savage

The Curious Savage, written by John Patrick, is a comedic play about Ethel P. Savage, a woman whose husband recently died and left her approximately ten million dollars. The play was first produced in New York by the Theatre Guild and Lewis & Young at the Martin Beck Theatre on October 24, 1950...

, Cotton Patch Gospel

Cotton patch gospel

Cotton Patch Gospel is a musical by Tom Key and Russell Treyz with music and lyrics written by Harry Chapin just before his death in 1981...

1993: Talley's Folly

Talley's Folly

Talley's Folly is a 1979 play by American playwright Lanford Wilson, the second in his cycle, The Talley Trilogy between his plays Talley & Son and Fifth of July. Set in an old boathouse near rural Lebanon, Missouri in 1944, it is a romantic comedy following the characters Matt Friedman and Sally...

, See How They Run, Saint Joan

Saint Joan (play)

Saint Joan is a play by George Bernard Shaw, based on the life and trial of Joan of Arc. Published not long after the canonization of Joan of Arc by the Roman Catholic Church, the play dramatises what is known of her life based on the substantial records of her trial. Shaw studied the transcripts...

, Godspell

1992: Steel Magnolias

Steel Magnolias

Steel Magnolias is a 1989 American comedy-drama film directed by Herbert Ross that stars Sally Field, Shirley MacLaine, Olympia Dukakis, Dolly Parton, Daryl Hannah and Julia Roberts....

, Both Your Houses

Both Your Houses

Both Your Houses is a 1933 play written by American playwright Maxwell Anderson. Produced by the Theatre Guild, it opened at the Royale Theatre on March 5, 1933 and ran 72 performances. It was awarded the 1933 Pulitzer Prize for Drama....

, Becoming Memories, Smoke on the Mountain

1991: Fairview location: The Blind Date & The Midnight Caller, Angel's Fall, An Inspector Calls

An Inspector Calls

An Inspector Calls is a play written by English dramatist J. B. Priestley, first performed in 1945 in the Soviet Union and 1946 in the UK. It is considered to be one of Priestley's best known works for the stage and one of the classics of mid-20th century English theatre...

1990: Fairview location: A Gentleman's Agreement, Marriage Wheel

1989: Red Letter Days, Summer staged readings: Promise, American Lebanon, A Gentleman's Agreement

1988: Catwalk, The Brass Butterfly, The Electric Angel

Mini Seasons at the newly created 70-seat studio theatre at St. Thomas Center: 1987: Fish Tales

1987- 1995 Dinner Theatre at Fairview: 1987 Second Shepherd's Play, 1988 Angel's Arms, 1989 The Chimes, 1990 Snowman, 1991 It's Christmas and It's Live, 1992 The Day Boy & The Night Girl, 1993 Angel's Arms, 1994 Gifts of the Magi, 1995 It's Christmas and It's Live

1983–1986 Dinner Theatre Years at St Thomas: 1983 Christmas in the Marketplace, 1984 The Clown of God, 1985 Christmas in the Marketplace, 1985 Abraham & Sarah, 1986 Christmas Cards

1982: Pilgrim, The Mousetrap

The Mousetrap

The Mousetrap is a murder mystery play by Agatha Christie. The Mousetrap opened in the West End of London in 1952, and has been running continuously since then. It has the longest initial run of any play in history, with over 24,500 performances so far. It is the longest running show of the modern...

, The Fourposter, A Man For All Seasons

A Man for All Seasons

A Man for All Seasons is a play by Robert Bolt. An early form of the play had been written for BBC Radio in 1954, and a one-hour live television version starring Bernard Hepton was produced in 1957 by the BBC, but after Bolt's success with The Flowering Cherry, he reworked it for the stage.It was...

1981: Arms and the Man

Arms and the Man

Arms and the Man is a comedy by George Bernard Shaw, whose title comes from the opening words of Virgil's Aeneid in Latin:"Arma virumque cano" ....

, Easter, You Can't Take it With You, The Beams are Creaking

1980: Our Town

Our Town

Our Town is a three-act play by American playwright Thornton Wilder. It is a character story about an average town's citizens in the early twentieth century as depicted through their everyday lives...

, The Devil To Pay, Sentenced To Life

1979: Pilgrim