A playwright’s boat has come in

Published 7:00 am Wednesday, June 15, 2005

Matt Smith spoofs his move from the bustle of Seattle to

a sleepier little isle.

Actor Matt Smith traded urban life for quiet Bainbridge to raise his kids.

Smith’s decision to leave the city, and that move’s comic aftermath, are the stuff of theater for the island actor, whose critically acclaimed one-person show, “My Boat to Bainbridge,” has been held over at Seattle’s Market Theater through August.

“It’s about a guy who is living in Seattle, spending money on private schools,” said Smith, whose production began its run in February. “We were basically in that situation – both artists spending more than we’re making. But we had this house, we had equity.”

Smith’s plays, if not precisely autobiographical, are self-referential in that they isolate elements of the author’s psyche.

“My Boat to Bainbridge” is, on one level, about Smith’s resistance to trading Seattle for island life, while his fictionalized wife, Ginene, who promotes the move, is the hard-headed realist of the duo.

“I’m totally caught up in my identity of being an urban guy and everything that means,” said Smith, who in fact grew up on

Seattle’s Capitol Hill. “Her view of reality is, ‘listen, you’ve got to do something.’”

Ginene calls a meeting with her husband and makes a formal presentation, complete with flow charts.

“There’s one chart with how much public schools cost and how much private schools cost,” he said, “and just so I get it, there’s pie charts showing the difference.”

In “My Boat to Bainbridge,” Smith’s response to her prodding is to try various self-help workshops, supposed moves toward a decision. But the steps forward easily become sidesteps.

In one workshop, Smith learns about money and that leads him to tackle a squirrel problem the couple have in the attic of their Seattle home himself, rather than call in a professional.

The long list of subjects touched on in the course of “My Boat to Bainbridge” might cause one to wonder if the show rambles, but the links are there. The discursive quality is really a footnote to the way Smith developed the show.

A new piece typically begins with the writer’s weekly visits with his longtime director, Bret Fetzer. Smith does what he calls “check-in,” acting out what’s happening in his life.

“Mostly I improvise,” he said, “and then we go have lunch. It’s a way of hanging out.”

Sometimes Fetzer is less than excited about Smith’s check-in.

“His eyes glaze over and I know we didn’t get too far today,” Fetzer said, “but that’s part of this process (and) getting through this crap that isn’t about anything.”

However, the early stages of “My Boat to Bainbridge” weren’t particularly inspiring, Smith recalls. The process of finding the story seemed worn and the material was disjointed.

It was only when Smith learned, through a Eugene, Ore., workshop run by “Complexity Theory” guru Mark Millmann, to apply those principles to his own work that he began to find his way.

With Millmann’s help, Smith realized that the theory’s shift of systems from equilibrium to the brink of change – a state of near-chaos, with attendant opportunities for new and unforeseen configurations – and finally to realignment in a new equilibrium, could apply to improvisational theater.

“Me and Brett and the solo piece were ‘equilibrium,’” Smith said. “We’d done it before.”

Millmann pointed out that instead of directing, Fetzer might “perturb,” prodding Smith and his work in the general direction of positive change, although the path would be neither linear nor predictable.

Smith himself shifted from tried-and-true methods of making a piece to what Millmann had called an adaptive challenge, the “strange attracter that shoots everything out of equilibrium into something that galvanizes people.”

Smith decided that his personal adaptive challenge would be to conceive, write and perform one piece a month for a year. And he suddenly found that ideas for works were germinating almost faster than he could capture them.

Then the project shifted into an unforeseen configuration: The plays coalesced into one.

“What happened was, I started writing five and six pieces at a time, and what came out of it was this one piece, ‘My Boat to Bainbridge,’” he said.

In moving to the island and then creating theater from the shift in his life, the solo performance artist had successfully incorporated a personal adaptive challenge in a theater piece created through an application of complexity theory.

“I didn’t get 12 pieces,” Smith said, “but I did get excited. I did get what I needed.

“And all those pieces came together in this one show.”

* * * * *

Row over

Performance artist Matt Smith’s new 70-minute solo show, “My Boat to Bainbridge,” directed by Bret Fetzer, is playing an extended run Fridays at 8 p.m. through August at Pike Place’s Market Theatre. Tickets are $15. For reservations, call 781-9273 or visit www.unexpectedproductions.org.