If you were part of the audience at “Joe Turner’s Come and Gone” last June at the Washington State History Museum, you’ll know that it was an impressive performance. Part of a series of readings of August Wilson’s ten-play Pittsburgh Cycle, “Joe Turner” was read by a cast of mostly amateurs as a collaboration between the Broadway Center, the Museum and Northwest Playwrights’ Alliance. But in a way, that made the performance all the more powerful: Without set or costumes, Wilson’s poetic words took first place, and if the reading lacked professional smoothness, it had a raw, emotive grittiness (along …

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