by James O’Barr
When Theatre Artists Olympia was founded in 2003, the United States had just embarked on a war in two Middle East countries that ended only 20 years later. Twenty years and change (so to speak) brings another incursion into the Middle East. The artists, craftspeople, and stagehands of TAO are still at it, still committed to their original mission of pushing boundaries and presenting new and innovative theatre work in masterful, accessible productions, all in the service of enriching the cultural fabric of the South Sound. If, as it has been said, history rhymes, we can now look forward to following TAO for decades to come, even if it takes a pillage. And it may be just a coincidence, but after long periods of being intermittently “unhoused,” and thanks to a grant from Inspire Olympia, TAO has found a new and improved home at the site of the former Johansen Olympia Dance Center. As part of what is now called The Jefferson Street Arts Center, TAO’s Oly Theater will soon be an intimate, 75 seat performance space with all the bells and whistles of a state-of-the-art black box. And their choice of a production to inaugurate the new venue, Ruben Grijalva’s Anna Considers Mars, is the very model of TAO’s trademarked “untamed theater” while speaking, at the same time, to our fateful current condition.
Grijalva has been making waves in the Bay Area for more than a decade with plays, films, commercial work, and has won awards for writing, directing, and editing. He says that his aim is “to take uncertainty seriously and render it vividly, to write plays that grapple with ideas too big to bring to heel in a single evening of theatre.” Just so, Anna Considers Mars brings us to the not-so-distant future, where the earth’s habitability is critically threatened by climate change, the human search for a new home is under serious consideration, and people are overwhelmed by having to live in a vividly augmented reality, in which they wear glasses that make them appear to others wearing the glasses to be better-looking than they really are. In Grijalva’s all-too easily imagined near-future, Medicare is kept solvent by way of a “Personal Responsibility Act,” which allows physicians to deny patients care if they don’t “take care of themselves,” a sort of Make America Healthy Again, Or Else. In this distempered America, you could think you’re having a heartfelt conversation with someone, until they turn out to be an augmented-reality ad, which can only be avoided by upgrading your fancy glasses…to a premium account.
Described as “part science fiction, part dark comedy, part family drama,” the play follows the misadventures of the eponymous Anna (Leslie Gordon), a scientist and founder of The Center for the Preservation of Noncharismatic Species, working to save earth’s “ugly” creatures while being obsessed since childhood with the idea of going to Mars. Anna competes for a slot in the first Mars colonization effort, where she can escape a world in which, she says, “every day, someone is having the worst day of their life,” especially her, and where humankind can start over with a new generation of Adams and Eves. At the same time, Anna worries that leaving a ruined earth behind for a chance to create a new, more perfect civilization on Mars is to choose “the wrong side.” Malcom (Gabe McClellan) her would-be lover, has no regrets. “It’s the only side that’s going to make it,” he tells her, “so learn to embrace it.” In addition to Leslie Gordon as Anna, the multi-talented cast includes Kate Ayers as her mother Renata, John Serembe as Carson, her formally attired virtual assistant, McClellan as Malcom, and Drew Doyle and Heather Christopher in a wide variety of supporting roles.
While it may feel like the worst of times, it’s also, as always, the best of times. Just follow the TAO.
WHAT:
Anna Considers Mars by Ruben Grijalva
WHEN:
April 24 – May 9, 2026
Fridays and Saturdays, 7:30 p.m., Sundays 2 p.m.,
Thursday, April 30, 7:30 p.m., Sunday, May 9, 2 p.m. and 7:30 p.m.
WHERE:
The New Oly Theater, Jefferson Street Arts Center, 412 Jefferson St. SE (formerly Johansson Dance)
COST:
$20 (Opening Night show, Friday, April 24, $20 or Pay What You Can)
LEARN MORE:
https://www.olytheater.com/