Icicle Creek Center for the Arts | Leavenworth, Washington

Icicle Creek Theatre Festival

About Icicle Creek Theatre Festival (ICTF)

Recognized by the Seattle press as a "prestigious incubator of new plays," the Festival plays an important role in advancing the American theatre by offering playwrights unique opportunities to develop their new work in collaboration with professional actors, directors, and live audiences.

The Festival is one of a handful of groundbreaking programs across the country which focus on the development of promising plays through intensive workshopping and collaboration. These types of innovative models in new play development have recently received national and international academic and media attention for the critical role they serve in a changing the theatre landscape.
The inspiring, distraction-free environment of Leavenworth allows playwrights to be completely immersed in re-shaping their plays, and then to connect directly with live audiences at Icicle Creek in Leavenworth, and at ACT- A Contemporary Theatre in Seattle.

ICTF has also created and championed the Icicle Creek Theatre Conservatory for Youth, which each summer provides opportunities for young people to learn theater skills and stagecraft from professional working actors. ICTF is committed to enriching the cultural life of the residents of Leavenworth and the Wenatchee Valley.

ICTF was founded by Allen Fitzpatrick, who acts as Icicle Creek Center for the Arts' new play festival Artistic Director and consultant for theatre programming. A nationally-acclaimed actor and well-known figure on the Seattle theater scene, Mr. Fitzpatrick was inspired by the idea of establishing a first-class theater program as part of Leavenworth's growing profile as an arts destination.

Virtually every play selected by ICTF since its inception has met with success, some winning awards and large development grants, and many receiving full productions.

These include ATOMIC FARMGIRL (by C.D. Swanson), based on Teri Hein's memoir about growing up in the shadow of the Hanford nuclear site in the ‘50s; DOV AND ALI, by Anna Ziegler, exploring a challenging relationship between a Jewish high-school teacher and his Muslim student; CHARM, by Kathleen Cahill, examining the struggle of Margaret Fuller as she fought not only for women''s rights but for recognition on an equal basis with her male colleagues; ON THE NATURE OF DUST by Stephanie Timm, in which an adolescent girl struggles in her relationship with her single mother; HIM, focusing on a family of three adults living together in near poverty and facing an uncertain future, written by Daisy Foote; THE JEWEL IN THE MANUSCRIPT by Rosemary Zibart, based on actual events in the life of the great Russian author Fyodor Dostoevsky; AND WHEN WE AWOKE THERE WAS LIGHT AND LIGHT by Laura Jacqmin, in which an American high-school girl becomes the internet friend of a young man caught up in savage genocidal warfare in Africa; PILGRIMS MUSA AND SHERI IN THE NEW WORLD by Yusef El-Guindi, portraying the complex relationship between a Middle Eastern cab driver, engaged to a traditional woman, and his American girlfriend; YOU FOR ME FOR YOU, by Mia Chung, depicting an escape attempt by two desperate sisters trapped in North Korea; THE WHALE, by Samuel D. Hunter, in which an obese man strives to reconcile with his daughter and provide guidance to her before his imminent death; MY BEFORE AND AFTER, wherein the death of an artist reveals the beauty, melancholy, and wry humor of relationships reborn in the wake of great loss; and SEVEN SPOTS ON THE SUN by Martin Zimmerman, in which a doctor working in a country ravaged by civil war faces a moral dilemma when he discovers he has the miraculous power to heal.

Regarding Icicle Creek's involvement in developing THE WHALE: in May 2013 it was announced that The Whale won a Drama Desk Award, recognizing excellence and significant contributions to the theater. The Drama Desk committee stated that "[Mr.] Hunter's empathic and indelible The Whale affirms his arrival as a distinguished dramatist who depicts the human condition." The Drama Desk Awards are given annually in a number of categories and are the only major New York theater honors for which productions on Broadway and Off-Broadway compete against each other in the same category. Presented since 1955, they are considered one of the most important awards in the American theater. Also in May 2013, The Whale was nominated for another major award, the Lucille Lortel Award which recognizes excellence in New York Off-Broadway theatre. Mr. Hunter's new play, A Great Wilderness, was featured in April 2013 at the 32nd Annual William Inge Theatre Festival in Independence, KS; it was announced in May 2013 that the play would have its world premiere at the Seattle Repertory Theatre next season.

ICTF was the first company to discover and develop the award-winning PILGRIMS MUSA AND SHERI IN THE NEW WORLD, a brand new play by Seattle playwright Yussef El Guindi. That play was produced by ACT-A Contemporary Theatre in 2010. In 2012, the play won this country's top award for plays produced outside of NYC, the highly-coveted American Theatre Critics Association / Steinberg Award. In May 2013, PILGRIMS MUSA AND SHER ... received another production at California's Center Rep.

Also developed at Icicle Creek, Mia Chung's YOU FOR ME FOR YOU was nominated for the 2013 Steinberg Award. Though it was not ultimately selected as one of six finalists, the play's nomination for the Award recognizes its true excellence in an extremely competitive field. You For Me For You recently enjoyed its second full production, at Boston's Company One Theatre.

The Icicle Creek Theatre Festival joined the Icicle Creek Center for the Arts in 2012 to become their flagship theatre program. Icicle Creek Center for the Arts has been actively re-inventing its role as a cultural driver in the Upper Wenatchee Valley. Armed with a new mission, new name, and a new 240-seat theater, the organization is pushing its programmatic boundaries beyond classical music and now is home to an array of multi-disciplinary programs including world, jazz, gypsy, fiddle, and bluegrass music; dance; contemporary theater; literary arts; and residency programs.

The Icicle Creek Center for the Arts admits students of any race, color, national and ethnic origin to all rights, privileges, programs, and activities generally accorded or made available to students. It does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, national and ethnic origin in administration of its educational policies, admissions policies, scholarship and financial assistance programs, and other school-administered programs.

Artistic Director:

Allen Fitzpatrick