A Short-Term Solution to a Long-Term Problem

This amazing one-man show from David Schmader is back at Hugo House for one night only! Commissioned by Hugo House, and originally presented in 2012, we look forward to celebrating this work crafted at Hugo House!

A comedy about unfunny things, “A Short-Term Solution to a Long-Term Problem,” is writer/performer David Schmader’s solo play about the dramatic life upheaval that drove him to spend a decade “living every day like it’s your last!”—a profoundly ridiculous adventure that finds Schmader aiming his pointy-headed, fall-off-your-seat wit at marriage, Mormons and the type of relaxation that comes from watching a baby get a spray tan.

David Schmader is a writer and performer who’s been living and working in Seattle since 1991. A performance artist devoted to everyday behavior, complicated ideas, and serious comedy, Schmader writes autobiographical solo plays that tackle larger social and cultural issues, such as homophobia and the unifying power of anger (in 1993’s Letter to Axl), the world of “pray away the gay” conversion therapy (in 1999’s Straight), and trauma, escapism, and forgiveness (in 2011’s A Short-Term Solution to a Long-Term Problem). Directed by Dan Savage, Chay Yew, and Matthew Richter, Schmader’s shows have toured the country, with productions at New York City’s Dixon Place, Los Angeles’s Highways Performance Space, Seattle’s Bumbershoot Arts Festival, San Francisco’s Theatre Rhinocerous, and the Wexner Center for the Arts in Columbus, Ohio.

Beyond solo plays, Schmader has been a writer for the Seattle newsweekly The Stranger since 1998, working as a staff writer/editor from 1999-2014 and continuing his pop culture-and-politics column “Last Days: The Week in Review” to this day. He’s currently writingWeed: A User’s Guide, which will be published by Sasquatch Books in spring 2016. In his spare time, he’s the world’s foremost authority on the transcendent awfulness of Paul Verhoeven’s 1995 stripper drama Showgirls, hosting annotated screenings at film festival across the country and supplying the commentary track for the ShowgirlsDVD. Schmader lives on Seattle’s Beacon Hill with his husband Jake and their ridiculous dog Pickles.

"David Schmader's writing is beautifully observed, artfully rendered, and funny as shit—Clark Kent sets out to find Jean Genet and comes home as none other than David Schmader, the boy your mother would want you to marry if she had a lick of sense."—Craig Lucas, author of Prelude to a Kiss, Longtime Companion, and The Light In The Piazza

"David Schmader is a tremendously gifted writer. Schmader doesn't beat up on the usual suspects, nor does he trot out standard retorts. Instead he digs deeper, exposing hypocrisies—including his own—by turning them inside out. Schmader's writing is informed, exhilarating, and brilliantly funny. He's the real deal."—Dan Savage, author of Savage Love and The Kid.

"David Schmader does the masters of the confessional monologue (like Spalding Gray) one better, by linking the form to an older, more literary tradition—the personal essay, where personal experience becomes a springboard to much larger issues."—Chicago Reader