Bellingham Playwright in National Spotlight
Cathy Belben
from Entertainment News Northwest, May 2005

Bellingham playwright Sean Walbeck, who is well known in the local theater community for his performances, directing, and playwriting, says he felt "overwhelmed and very surprised" when he learned that his one-act play, Sons of a Common Mother had been selected to represent Washington and Oregon, Alaska, and Idaho ("Region IX") in the American Association of Community Theatre’s AACTFest ’05 National One-Act Play Festival. Walbeck’s play is one of only eleven to be selected for the event June 14-18 event in Kalamazoo, Michigan.

Walbeck, who has been participating in theater most of his life, wrote his first play, a sketch for his Boy Scouts troop, at age 7. He was active in theater as a teenager, writing and presenting "The Case of the Murdered Frosh" for the Bellingham High School What-a-Sho in 1982. He went on to earn an undergraduate degree in theater arts from University of Montana. At U of M he helped found a playwriting workshop called New Words in Action, and later he went on to earn a Masters in drama at WWU. While at Western, Walbeck produced a play for Western’s Children’s Tour in 1991 called "Last Respects" about a dog and a cat who had a funeral for a child who had died. "I like to mix comedy and drama,” Walbeck says, although he notes that all good drama has some humor in it. He has been involved in the Bellingham Theatre Guild since 1996, and has also been active in the Idiom Theatre, a group called We’re Not Your Mothers at WWU, and he took his play A Fistful of Walbeck to the Seattle Fringe Festival in 2000.

Sons of a Common Mother is the story of two brothers who meet for the first time in 30 years at the Peace Arch Border crossing in 2000. Walbeck says the theme is the complexity of sibling relationships. “There is an element to being a sibling where love is unconditional and betrayal is easy and the play puts two people who are on the opposite sides of an imaginary line who have to get past their wounds to get to the unconditional love." The piece appeared for the first time at the 2004 Bellinghamster One-Act Theatre Festival, where it won “Best of Fest.” It has won acclaim at numerous other venues. Walbeck won a Wildcard Excellence Award for Playwriting, and Best Production at the Washington State Community Theatre Association convention in Tacoma, and actor Ken Gunning won an Acting Excellence Award. At the Regional AACTFest competition in McMinville, Oregon this year, Sons actors Ken Gunning and Jeff Braswell received Outstanding Acting awards, Walbeck was honored for the script, and the technical crew won a "Back Stage Award" for light, choreography, and set-up.

At the National AACT Festival in Kalamazoo this summer, Walbeck, his cast, and the crew of Sons of a Common Mother will perform the play just once to an audience of 600, including numerous adjudicators. Walbeck says besides getting to produce the play again, other highlights of the festival include "getting to see a lot of other plays I wouldn’t otherwise get to see." Prizes are awarded to writers, actors, and crew members for an assortment of theatrical accomplishments, and winning an award at AACT is a prestigious and enviable honor, although Walbeck says most of the plays performed are well-known, and it’s rare for an original play to win the top award of Best Production. “It would be nice to break that wall,” he says, although he adds, "The main reason to do this was that we just wanted an excuse to do the play again so more people could see it....getting to go on means we get to do it again...the audience response has been phenomenal."  

Walbeck credits the Bellingham Theatre Guild with helping make the Sons of Common Mother a success. "The BTG has really been incredibly supportive of this project,” he says. “They’re supporting a one-act that hasn’t been performed on their stage much...they’re sending it out there with their name on it. When we approached them with the idea of going to a state convention with this play and letting it represent the Guild for the first time in 75 years, they said yes without hesitation.”

 Local theatre-goers can discover what adjudicators have already learned about Sons of a Common Mother when it is performed at the Bellingham Theatre Guild on Saturday, May 21, at 7:30 p.m. The special performance—the only local one scheduled before the Kalamazoo festival—will be a pay-what-you-will production and will include a silent auction; proceeds from the event will help the cast and crew with their travel expenses about $6000 in travel fees, housing, entry fee, and for the AACTFest trip. In addition, the audience will have an opportunity to meet with the cast after the play. For more information about the performance, please contact Sean Walbeck at (360) 647-9242. "We just want people to see it–that’s the most important thing."