By Amanda Knox

Makaela Pollock is the director of ArtsWest’s latest production, Really Really by Paul Downs Colaizzo. It is a play that, when it was first produced in 2013, the New York Times described as “Lord of the Flies with smartphones.” Pollock, who describes herself as quietly ubiquitous within the Seattle theatre scene, sat down with me to discuss what audiences may expect of the play with her steering the helm.

Tell me about Really Really.

Really Really is a little bit dangerous. It’s a play that I think ArtsWest is brave to be doing, because it asks us to look at culpability, gender roles, class roles, and the issue of sexual assault in really complex and grey ways. It’s a play that doesn’t come out with a right or wrong kind of morality. Things are really compromised for everyone. You see everyone make objectionable choices.

Is greyness and culpability supposed to define the millennial generation?

To me it’s really a coming-of-age story. In this day and age it takes us a little longer to grow up. We’re asked to take on full responsibilities as a culpable individual a little bit later. Oftentimes it feels like parents don’t expect their kids to be fully on their own until they’re thirty. It used to be that when you turned eighteen you were supposed to be an adult. That has shifted. What Paul Downs Colaizzo has done is paint a picture of the coming-of-age at graduation from college. It’s the new right of passage.  The play puts into stark contrast where the characters came from, what type of person they were—a jock, a nerd, the good girl, the girl from across the tracks—and what their role in society is supposed to be against what their hopes and dreams are. This is a dangerous play because the seven characters are fighting tooth and nail for the future they think they deserve.

What have you been trying to get across and how have you been doing that?

Above anything else, empathy. One of the great benefits of spending an evening in the theatre, as opposed to any other form of storytelling, is that it’s a real person up there doing something. That allows us to engage more with the idea of what if it were me? I’ve been trying to make every character on the stage accessible in this way to the audience. I’ve asked the audience to look at everyone as both predator and prey.

What is the take away?

Without giving anything away, my hope is that people will strengthen both their willingness to understand someone with a different point of view, and be more willing to claim what they think is right or wrong. And be willing to change.

Also, the play is structured as a thriller. With each new scene you are given new information about what we think the facts are, who the characters are, and how much we trust them. The audience gets to experience this play as a detective, which is great.

What else should prospective audiences should know about the production?

One of the things that ArtsWest is doing in conjunction with this production is to host audience conversations after every performance. They’re really living up to their mission of both programming things that provoke conversation and providing a place to have that conversation. There’s a place for the audience to engage with their take-away, not with an expert, by as a community.

Really Really plays January 21 – February 14, 2016 at ArtsWest Theatre (4711 California Ave. SW Seattle, WA 98116), Wednesdays – Saturdays at 7:30pm, Sundays at 3:00pm . Tickets are on sale now and may be purchased online at www.artswest.org or by phone at 206.938.0339, or at the box office.