Very quickly, she discovered that no job is truly 'unskilled,' that even the lowliest occupations require exhausting mental and muscular effort. She lived in trailer parks and crumbling residential motels. Moving from Florida to Maine to Minnesota, she worked as a waitress, a hotel maid, a cleaning woman, a nursing-home aide, and a Wal-Mart sales clerk. But how does anyone survive, let alone prosper, on $6 an hour? To find out, Ehrenreich left her home, took the cheapest lodgings she could find, and accepted whatever jobs she was offered.

She was inspired in part by the rhetoric surrounding welfare reform, which promised that a job - any job - can be the ticket to a better life. In 1998, Barbara Ehrenreich decided to join them. Our sharpest and most original social critic goes 'undercover' as an unskilled worker to reveal the dark side of American prosperity.Millions of Americans work full time, year round, for poverty-level wages. For reservation information, call (206) 269 1900. The Intiman Theatre is located in the Seattle Center at 201 Mercer St. Productions there include Waste, Cymbeline and the upcoming Don Juan, due in spring, 2003. Sher helmed the Intiman's 2002-03 season opener Titus Andronicus and has had great success directing for Off-Broadway's Theatre for a New Audience. Intiman's artistic director Barlett Sher directs, replacing the previously announced Amanda Dehnert of Trinity Repertory Theatre. Also in the cast are Jason Cottle, Kristin Flanders, Cynthia Jones and Olga Sanchez.

Sharon Lockwood stars in Nickel and Dimed. Adaptor Holden was the principal playwright for the Tony Award-winning San Francisco Mime Troupe from 1970 to 2000. Through her contacts, she realizes how physically, emotionally and economically hard it is to work for what is considered a living wage. In the opening chapter of her book, Ehrenreich figures out her necessary wage ($7 an hour), a living space (she aspires to afford something as 'good' as a trailer in Key West, Florida) and a job (waitressing the dinner shift at the Hearthside for $2.43 an hour plus tips). Time magazine essayist Barbara Ehrenreich gave up her writing job to work as a waitress, then a maid and finally at Wal-Mart and the result was the New York Times bestseller, 'Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in America.' Joan Holden, under the artistic advice of Anna Deavere Smith ( Fires in the Mirror, Twlight: Los Angeles), has fashioned the book into a stage play, making its world premiere July 26-Aug.

And dimed