The Seattle One-Act Play Project (SOAP)
and BAKER Theater Workshop
in partnership with ACT Theater and Hugo House
The mission of the SOAP and Baker Theater Workshop is to support the creation and performance of new works of theater in Seattle, with a special concern for involving low-income high school students. We aspire to identify and nurture new works of theater in their early phases, and we perform with the goal of showing what’s possible and not what has been polished. We hope the theater works and theater people to emerge from our workshop will move on to further development in the Seattle theater community and beyond. We choose our name with a bit of play, and a bit of seriousness. Baker and Soap mean several things for us. Our workshop is a bakery of a kind, helping new work rise and take form, and providing a warm and nourishing environment for young people and others to explore and develop their talents and direction. Baker is also the name of Ella Baker, the most powerful behind-the-scenes leader of the American Civil Rights Movement in the 1940’s, 50’s and 60’s, founder of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. Ella Baker avoided taking credit for her accomplishments, was deeply focused on nurturing young leaders, and had little tolerance for discouragement and defeatism. She was always action-oriented and comfortable with risks of all sorts. SOAP, of course, is the acronym for the Seattle One-Act Play prize and program. Soap also washes off the grime of the world, the Weltschmertz, and refreshes and reveals the skin we live in.
About the Organizer
Peter Temes is the organizer of the SOAP and Baker Theater Workshop.
Peter is a career educator, writer and community-builder. He was a full-time faculty member at Harvard University where he taught Writing About History and Writing About Social and Ethical Issues, as well as serving as president of the Great Books Foundation, president of the Antioch New England Graduate School, and dean and campus chief executive at Northeastern University’s Seattle campus. He is the founder and president of the Institute for Innovation in Large Organizations.
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Peter co-founded the Great Books Summer Program at Amherst College and Stanford University and served as its Academic Director for 12 years. In that role, he organized a theater program for middle- and high-school students and directed several student productions. As the Head of School at the Pacific Hills School in Los Angeles, he launched and ran the Shakespeare Bakery, which brought together students and working actors for table reads.
Peter lives in Seattle with his family.