By Amanda Knox

ArtWest’s penultimate production of the 2015-2016 season returns to the musical spirit with which it started, with Green Day’s American Idiot. Violet dissects and develops another facet of the American Dream, this time through the perspective of a wounded woman in search of healing. Based on Doris Betts’ short story, The Ugliest Pilgrim, the musical premiered Off-Broadway in 1997 with music by Jeanine Tesori and book by Brian Crawley.

Director Andrew Russell is the artistic director of Intiman Theatre, a writer for the Fifth Avenue Theatre, and director for ACT Theatre, Washington Ensemble Theatre, and now ArtsWest Theatre. Confident, put-together, and purposeful, Russell met with me twenty minutes before rehearsal on his Chipotle break, and gave the impression that Violet is in capable hands.

Getting straight into the show, the main character is female. How are you working with that, as a man?

It’s important that half of our creative team are women. It’s something that I try to do in all the productions I do. Our choreographer is a women, our costume designer, sound designer, assistant director, so that at every moment that we’re making decisions, it’s not just me. We have an incredible, intuitive cast and actress [Brenna Wagner] playing Violet. She’s on point when it comes to making impulses. As director, I just try to craft the best story I can.

Violet’s drama revolves around the fact that her face is scarred. How much does this musical resemble Dead Pool?

I don’t know Dead Pool at all, so I’ll have to leave that unanswered. But the musical is based on a short story by Doris Betts called The Ugliest Pilgrim. It is a thin-sliced moment in a woman’s life that represents her entire past pain and sorrow and need for healing. It’s a four-day journey that jumps back in time, such that the past is just as present as the present.

Jeanine Tesori’s score is grounded in American roots, folk, and gospel music. How have you been working with that?

I ‘ve known Jeanine Tesori’s work very well for a while. She’s hands down one of the best composers working in theatre. Her ability to capture emotion and specificity of character development through song is out of this world. Her work constantly unpacks itself.

I grew up in a very rural environment in Indiana. My brother and sister-in-law are in North Carolina. I understand the vocabulary. I also have my own experience with shame and pain. It’s not about exposed scars. The musical is ultimately about what we carry with us that we think must be healed for us to be complete. We all have those things on the horizon and we think, once that happens, I will be done, I will be good, I will be worthy, I will be loved. Ultimately, it never works out that way. And what does actually heal us is unexpected. Many miracles seem accidental because you don’t know what the world can offer you that will actually heal you.

Musically, I have an incredible partner in R.J. Tancioco as my musical director. He’s one of the smartest humans and he saw ACT’s production of the show in 1998 and has loved it ever since. He still has the playbill and ticket stubs and talks about it.

We’re people that it’s not just another show. It’s one of the great American musicals that is not frequently done. Seattle won’t have another chance to see it for another five to ten years.

The show is being advertised as having an “exciting and experimental vision.” What’s up with that?

In the staging we’ve tried to highlight the ceremony of gathering in a room to hear a tale. We’ve broken the space and created almost a full-in-the-round experience. Some of the choreography is not necessarily traditional. If what you’re used to is seeing is very realistic things on the stage while people sing, that’s not what we’re doing. It relies on the twelve people in the cast to be sometimes metaphorical, emotional, practical people in the space. You’ll see.

What can the audience expect to come away with after seeing the show?

The audience will have a chance to hear and feel music that wakes them up and soars them to places that they rarely get to go. They’ll see a very sharp, swift, heartfelt, deeply considered folktale about healing. You’re seeing the most critical moment in Violet’s life. I think audiences will leave feeling really good about being alive.

Violet plays March 3 – April 3, 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.