Fishing For Alaska

Fishing for Alaska is a solo play, one performer and one writer in the same person. As of October 2026, Sturgis Warner is the only actor on stage in the production, and he is also the author of the script. Some of the production's own materials give the full title as Fishing for Alaska: An American Odyssey.

The central figure is a New York theater artist in mid-career. After directing a play set in Alaska, he finds himself far from rehearsal rooms, inside the state's commercial fishing business. The material comes from Warner's own summers working on Alaska salmon boats.

Three companies present the production together: Fishing for Alaska Productions, Radio Drama Network and Twilight Theatre Company. It is a limited run, staged as an Actors' Equity showcase production in the Upper Theater at Paradise Factory, a venue that describes itself as an off-off Broadway theater.

The play begins in New York, where the hero has built his career, and follows him to Alaska. He has just directed a play about the state, and that project pulls him into the real thing: the commercial fishing industry.

On the way north he meets memorable people, faces life-threatening danger and comes up against the sheer force of Alaska itself. Beyond that setup, this page keeps the plot to itself, and how the journey unfolds is best left for the theater.

Because this is a solo piece, everything the audience learns comes through one voice, and that voice belongs to the person who wrote the text. The script grows out of lived experience rather than invention.

The source is Warner's own history on the water. Directing a play about Alaska sent him to Wrangell, in Southeast Alaska, where he got a job as a deckhand on a gillnetter catching salmon. That August a 45-foot seine boat struck a reef and sank within minutes, with Warner among its crew. He and four crewmates survived but lost all their belongings. He went back to Alaska three summers later, this time to Cordova, to crew on a salmon seiner.

With one actor on stage, the setting depends on the design team: sets and costumes by Healey, lighting by Stanton and sound by Scharenberg. The Upper Theater is the stage for this run. The building around it has two black box theaters and a rehearsal studio.

The producers are Lou Moreno and Margarett Perry. Moreno was artistic director of INTAR Theatre from 2010 to 2025. Perry is artistic director of Twilight Theatre Company, a nonprofit founded in 1998 that has a co-op residency at 59E59 Theaters. The third presenter, Radio Drama Network, was started in 1989 by the radio producer and director Himan Brown as a home for audio drama and the spoken word. His granddaughter Melina Brown has run it since his death in 2010.

The play has taken a long road to the stage. On May 12, 2011, BroadwayWorld listed it among projects in development with Lou Moreno, with New York Theatre Workshop named alongside it. The piece began at Open Anything, and further development support came from INTAR and New York Theatre Workshop.

To carry the work toward production, Moreno, Garcés and Warner formed Fishing for Alaska Productions, which Erica Chamblee Garcés and Healey later joined. The first performance of the Paradise Factory run took place on October 9, 2026. As of October 2026, the production has not announced a separate opening night.