Spaceworks, that City of Tacoma project that fills empty commercial spaces downtown with art, music, dance and theater, has had some really good results – Toy Boat Theatre being one of them. This UPS-based, professional-level company has been able to offer Tacoma the kind of theater you’d never see in a community or professional space, thanks to the no-rent Spaceworks arrangment. Plays by Erin Cressida Wilson and Edward Albee, improv and workshops, and this weekend an original production combining poetry, music and theater focused on the winter solstice.

Well, it’s not actually on the solstice itself, which is next Tuesday, on Dec. 22. But Tuesday’s not a good theater night, so you can get a jump on the solstice and still leave the actual night free for whatever other rituals you want to indulge in by checking out Toy Boat Theatre. Directed by Suzy Willhoft, with local actors Aaron Jacobs, Matt Shimkus, Olivia Seward, Meleesa Wyatt and Toy Boat artistic director Marilyn Bennett herself, “That Delicate Light” is a staged reading reflecting on the long night and short day of this season through poems and stories ranging from Billy Collins to Suzan Lori-Parks and Dylan Thomas to Sesame Street, says Bennett, plus music from Frank Loesser to Crowded House. Read more »