Lisa Phu

Five Juneau teens star in a play about the complexities of date rape. The show is called “Hush,” but the teens hope the audience do exactly the opposite.

“And I could’ve said something, you know. I mean, I said no, but I could’ve said something else or fought harder or fought even more or, I don’t know, something like that …”

Brita Fagerstrom rehearses the role of Kim Tuesday night at Juneau-Douglas High School. Kim’s been raped by her boyfriend and consequently deals with depression and getting her life back together.

Fagerstrom hopes the message about consent in the play is clear.

“No means no. It shouldn’t have to be a struggle. It shouldn’t have to be some crazy loud act. Even just saying no in a whisper, anything like that,” she says.

Demaris Oxman, who acts the roles of a parent and therapist, says the play explores how consent often gets muddled in a relationship.

“Rob, Kim’s boyfriend in the play, says, ‘We were fooling around and she may have said that she said no, but I knew what she really meant.’ And I feel like it kind of shows that some people in our culture really do think that somebody has a right to do whatever they want if they’re already together, like that’s a form of consent, but it’s not,” Oxman says.

Robert Newman plays Rob, a character confused about what he’s done and isn’t sure how to deal with the guilt or losing his friends. Newman says Rob isn’t a monster.

“It’s any person, any person who doesn’t listen to their partner can fall into this role. And that’s something we really got to teach our generation,” Newman says.

For a group of actors who are used to performing in musicals and comedies, “Hush” was challenging and personal.

Oxman says she had to sub in as Kim’s best friend during a short performance last weekend.

“It was very intense because I had to think about how would I react if this happened to my best friend or to me, and then it became very real,” she says.

Ashleigh Watt, who plays the best friend, says people sometimes don’t realize they’ve been raped or are in denial.

“We see things like this all the time, where to some degree something like this happens, and a lot of times people just ignore it and that’s not OK,” Watt says.

Director Michaela Moore says as a teacher and a parent, she’s heard and dealt with a lot of heartbreaking things having to do with partners not being respectful.

“I just really hope that kids will come [to the play] so they can begin to talk about these things, and girls, especially, can realize it is their right to give consent or not give consent, and that they need to stop letting boys have such power over their life,” Moore says.

She hopes the play makes people feel uncomfortable. Fagerstrom says it will make an impact.

“This show is kind of jarring. It’s putting it in your face and the reason it’s called ‘Hush’ is because it’s a topic you don’t talk about, but this show is about talking about it. It’s about opening up a conversation with the community about it,” Fagerstrom says.

Everyone needs to part of the conversation — children, teenagers, adults — so it’s out in the open. If not, she says, then sexual assault and date rape will continue to happen.

“Hush: A Play About the Complexities of Date Rape” will be performed Friday and Saturday at 7 p.m. @360, 360 Egan Drive.

Update | 12:54 p.m. 

The Juneau Police Department has put out an official statement on the airport incident.

Update | 12:19 p.m.

The security check was prompted by the discovery of a .22 caliber bullet by an Alaska Airlines pilot on a jetway, according to airport manager Patty deLaBruere.

deLaBruere says about 105 passengers for northbound flight 61 and southbound flight 62 had to go through security again.

“They had to take all their belongings off the aircraft and out of the departure lounge because we don’t know how it entered and so you have to get all precautions and get everyone off,” she said.

deLaBruere says nothing was found during the security sweep, but the investigation is ongoing. She says as of 11:30 a.m., airport business and flights are operating normally.

Original post | 11:16 a.m. 

A Juneau Police Department dispatcher says officers are performing a security sweep at the Juneau International Airport, but couldn’t say why.

Traveler Randy Katzenmeyer was supposed to leave on a flight to Sitka. He says he and other travelers were told to leave the departure lounge around 10:30 a.m. and go through security again without explanation.

Katzenmeyer had been in the departure lounge since 8:15 a.m. His flight was supposed to leave at 10:22.

This is a developing story. Check back for updates. 

In the film “The Unrideables: Alaska Range” a former Juneau kid makes aggressive ski turns, flips and literally flies off snowy cliffs.

Jon Devore started skiing and skydiving in Juneau. Now, he’s turned his passion into a profession by skydiving, speedriding and performing Hollywood stunts for a living.

Unrideables is a documentary on speedriding, a combination of big mountain skiing and high speed parachute flying.

“I have spent my whole life waiting for this moment – an opportunity to pioneer and ski mountains that were previously thought unrideable,” Devore says in the film.

The 39-year-old grew up in Juneau.

“If you didn’t get outside and do something, you’d go crazy living here,” Devore says. “And as a kid, whether it was scuba diving, skiing, kayaking, climbing – I went out and did everything that this beautiful area offers.”

He started skiing Eaglecrest Ski Area at age 5 and, as a young adult, spent summers river raft guiding. His first time skydiving was in Juneau.

“When I was a senior in high school, a guy rolled through the town offering tandem skydiving and I was his first client,” Devore says.

After that, he was hooked. Devore moved to Arizona in 1995 to pursue skydiving full time. He became part of a group that was perfecting, what was at the time, a new style of skydiving – free flying.

“Most people think skydiving is belly to earth falling flat. Well, we were taking it into three dimensions whether we were standing up vertically and having our feet go first, or going head down towards the earth or everything in the middle,” he says.

Devore worked as a skydive coach and competed in world skydiving meets. After a little while, “the world of Hollywood and the stunt world started calling.”

He coordinates, films and performs aerial stunts.

“We did all the wingsuit scenes in Transformers 3 where we were flying our wingsuits through downtown Chicago through all the buildings having the robots chase us.

In “Furious 7,” part of the “The Fast and the Furious” series, Devore is an aerial cameraman for cars that are dropped out of an airplane. He’s the lead actor’s stunt double in the remake of “Point Break,” due to come out in December. The original movie was what first inspired him to skydive.

Devore is the manager of the Red Bull Air Force Team, which performs in about 60 shows a year doing stunts like skydiving into a Seattle Seahawks game or into a concert. In his 20 year career, Devore only recently experienced his first injury – a torn ACL.

But he says he’s had close calls. During a movie shoot in New Zealand, DeVore was supposed to jump out of a helicopter, land on a big mountain, cut his parachute off and ski down. He had been practicing for weeks, but while filming,

“My parachute didn’t open, my lines came out and they tied around my ski boots and bindings, so I basically tied myself up in the sky and my parachute never inflated. It was just being towed like a piece of garbage. And I took that all the way into the ground and impacted at probably 95-100 miles an hour, almost pure free fall speed,” Devore says.

Devore was positive he was going to die. All he could think about was his wife. His curled up his body and hit the ground on his back.

“Two minutes later, I stood up and didn’t have a broken bone, zero injuries, nothing,” Devore says.

The mountain he landed on was part of the Invincible Snowfields.

Despite the close calls, Devore loves what he does and is sticking with it for as long as he can. He has friends in their late 60s and early 70s still skydiving. He says, he may one day bring the sport back to Juneau and, just maybe, change some kid’s life.

Jeremy Briggs Roberts is The Juneau Symphony’s third conductor candidate this concert season.

The symphony is trying to replace Kyle Wiley Pickett, who was music director for 14 years.

Briggs Roberts will lead the orchestra this weekend through a program called “Russian Portraits.”

The symphony will open with a piece called “Eight Russian Folk Songs.” Briggs Roberts says it focuses on rural Russian peasant life. It was written by Anatol Liadov in 1906, the same year Juneau became the capitol of what was then the District of Alaska.

“In trying to pick a program, I wanted to pick something that would be close to people’s hearts here in Juneau and sort of reflect the area, culture and history that has happened here,” Briggs Roberts says.

The entire program is Russian. Briggs Roberts says it will end with Tchaikovsky’s monumental Symphony No. 4.

“He was going through a lot of depression issues at the time that he wrote it,” Briggs Roberts says. “A horrible failed marriage. He attempted suicide at one point in the midst of writing it and yet it ends with probably one of the most joyous movements in music literature at that time.”

Briggs Roberts is the musical director and conductor of the Washington Idaho Symphony in Pullman, Wash., where he lives. He says the orchestra and arts community there are similar to Juneau’s.

He first started rehearsing with The Juneau Symphony earlier this month. He says he has a good rapport with the local group of musicians.

“The orchestra musicians are so desirous of making great music and really working hard to produce the best product they possibly can for the Juneau community and that feeds me and my enthusiasm and it’s a really great reciprocal relationship,” Briggs Roberts says.

He received a doctorate degree in orchestral conducting from the University of Washington.

Briggs Roberts is The Juneau Symphony’s final conductor candidate. Executive Director Sarah Radke Brown says the symphony will announce its new music director in June.

The Juneau Symphony performs “Russian Portraits” at Juneau-Douglas High School Saturday night at 8 p.m. and Sunday at 3 p.m. There will be a concert conversation with Briggs Roberts an hour before each performance.

The House Fisheries Committee on Thursday advanced a bill that would eliminate the Commercial Fisheries Entry Commission and transfer its duties to the Department of Fish and Game and the Office of Administrative Hearings.

House Bill 112 would get rid of the CFEC’s three commissioners, put in an executive director and move the remaining 25 full-time employees to Fish and Game. This would mean an immediate savings to the state of $424,000, according to a Fish and Game estimate.

During public testimony, several commercial fishing associations urged the committee not to move forward with the bill.

Paul Shadura II from the Kenai Peninsula testified on behalf of the South K Beach Independent Fishermen.

“We adamantly oppose reconfiguring the Commercial Fisheries Entry Commission into the schizophrenic Department of Fish and Game. The commercial fishing community feels very strongly in our area that to have an independent body within the state agencies is a blessing,” Shadura said.

Julianne Curry is executive director of United Fishermen of Alaska, a commercial fishing trade association representing about 35 groups statewide.

“We have the results of a legislative audit that will be coming out in June and we recommend that this committee holds onto the bill until that audit is complete,” Curry said.

Anchorage Rep. Charisse Millett highlighted the backlog of 28 cases more than 15 years old and says CFEC heads have been working at a slow pace.

“This is a serious conversation that we’re having with a group of employees that have been tasked with doing something and some commissioners, at best, that have been dragging their heels,” Millett said.

Millett credited licensing staff for doing the majority of the work at CFEC. Fish and Game Deputy Commissioner Kevin Brooks said those same employees would be doing the same work under Fish and Game. He said Fish and Game doesn’t have a formal position on the bill, but assured the committee his department would make the transition work.

Ben Brown is a Commercial Fisheries Entry Commissioner. He pointed out potential conflicts with transferring CFEC duties to Fish and Game. For example, if the director, deputy commissioners and commissioner are allowed to have an ownership in a commercial limited entry permit or commercial fishing business interest.

“We certainly are aware that there is a lot scrutiny being applied to us and a lot of justifiable questioning about the nature of our workload and the best way to go forward as an agency,” Brown said. “I would respectfully submit that none of that militates in favor of the nuclear option of destroying the agency in one fell swoop.”

Rep. Millett said she took offense to Brown’s comments.

“Destroying an agency is not my mission. My mission is efficiency and budgetary crisis does add for efficiencies and opportunity, and I see this as an opportunity,” Millett said.

She added that the Department of Law could review any potential conflicts and make recommendations to avoid them.

The bill to eliminate CFEC still needs to clear several legislative hurdles before it becomes law.

Several Juneau teenagers are heading to Anchorage this weekend to accept a Spirit of Youth Award for making a YouTube video on healthy relationships and nonviolence.

A row of 10 Oreo cookies are laid out on a rock wall. The camera pans across each one. Then— BAM!

A hammer smashes the 10th one. Up pops the statistic – “1 in 10 teens have been physically abused by their partner.”

“We thought we needed to engage the audience a little bit more than just saying the fact,” says 16-year-old Deanna Hobbs, one of the six award-winning creators of the video. “Some people think it’s humorous, some people think it’s a little harsh, but it always gets people’s attention, so I think we got the point across.”

The 5 and a half minute video has been viewed almost 900 times. It shows teenagers talking about the importance of communicating to prevent violence, and the concepts of consent and boundaries.

“Boundaries are important not only in romantic relationships but also in friendships,” a voice-over says in the video, as a line is being drawn in sand. “It’s so important to maintain your sense of individual identity and to just know when you need to take time for yourself.”

The video also features teens talking about what healthy relationships look like and dramatizes red flags of unhealthy relationships. Another video creator, 17-year-old Analicia Castaneda-Felipe is in a dramatization. It starts out with a couple, sitting and having a conversation.

“The girl gets up and walks away and the guy picks up the phone and starts looking at it. And then we thought it would be funny if some random person – me – just walks in and asks, ‘Did she say you could read her texts?’ It kind of catches him off guard,” Castaneda-Felipe says.

Other red flags include a bossy or controlling attitude, someone who’s disrespectful or isn’t trusting.

Castaneda-Felipe and Hobbs are both part of Teen Council, a peer-led sexual education program of Planned Parenthood. The group meets once a week and has led discussions at workshops and school health classes.

“Talking about sex or just sexuality topics is really taboo for teenagers. It’s something that growing up we’re taught we shouldn’t be comfortable talking about. So if teenagers see their peers openly talking about healthy relationships and boundaries and stuff, it might show them that it’s not weird to be comfortable with it,” Castaneda-Felipe says.

Hobbs says they also talk to friends and classmates and have one-on-one conversations.

“We know that if we educate one person, that person is going to go and educate other people,” Hobbs says.

Spirit of Youth is a nonprofit dedicated to recognizing youth involvement in communities across the state. The awards recognize teenagers who actively work to make Alaska a better place. Juneau teens Korbyn Powers, Justin Sleppy, Addisohn Jones and Calvin Zuelow are also on the video team getting awarded.

Castaneda-Felipe says being part of Teen Council, making the video and spreading awareness of healthy relationships has empowered her.

“It’s taught me that I can use my voice and then be heard and appreciated for doing so, because I’ve always really been, like, the quiet person in class and whatnot. So people watch the video and they’re like, ‘Wow, she has good things to say,'” Castaneda-Felipe says.

The Spirit of Youth Award comes with $500. The teens are using the money to help fund a teen-only event in Juneau, Teentopia. It’s open to all local high schoolers. The free event, for teens by teens, takes place Friday night 6 to 9:30 at the Juneau Yacht Club.