KRNN

If you’re not sure what the proposed Willoughby Arts Complex is, imagine the old armory, now known as the Juneau Arts and Culture Center, completely remodeled and expanded to accommodate numerous community arts-related activities and performances.

The project has officially been in the works since 2012 and had been a partnership between the Juneau Arts and Humanities Council and Perseverance Theatre until last week when Perseverance decided to remove itself from the project.

The theater’s executive artistic director, Art Rotch, says they’re not in a financial position to be a part of the project right now.

“Love the idea, I think is a good idea for Juneau. Love working with the arts council, but want to be thoughtful and responsible about the theater’s resources and priorities,” said Rotch.

And those priorities go back to a conversation Rotch heard many years ago between then-board member Bishop Michael Kenny and Artistic Director Molly Smith.

“The Bishop asked Molly a really simple question. He said, ‘Molly, if you kind of soft-focused your eyes and you imagine Perseverance Theatre–Is it a physical place? Is it a piece of architecture? Or is it people?’ And she immediately answered, ‘It’s the people and it’s the performances. That’s really what makes the theater thrive.’ So if we’re not putting our efforts behind the people that make the work, make the art, we’re misplacing our priorities,” Rotch said.

Juneau Arts and Humanities Council Executive Director Nancy DeCherney has mixed feelings about Perseverance’s removal.

“It was going to be very exciting to have that collaboration, and I think that having all of the arts groups in one building really could contribute to a lot of synergy. So, in that regard, it is sad that we weren’t able to make this work at this time. I don’t think that this means necessarily down the road that some collaboration like that won’t happen. On the other hand, it’s cumbersome as you know whenever you have more people involved. The process gets more complicated. It makes it a little smaller and more affordable project, so I think that it works out for the best for all concerned at this time,” DeCherney said.

Without Perseverance’s partnership, DeCherney said some adjustments will be made to the structure, including the removal of one of the planned theaters which would have held 280 people.

There will still be room, she said, for Perseverance to perform in either the remaining theater, which is the same size, or the smaller 120-person theater.

Correction: We’ve updated this article to reflect the correct spelling of Art Rotch’s name.

Dara Rilatos serenaded the KTOO arts room with this three-song concert on November 25, 2015. Rilatos is from Wrangell, Alaska, and is a folk singer-songwriter. This performance includes “While You’re Here,” Making me a Fool” and “95.”

Watch additional Red Carpet Concerts with Annie Bartholomew and Rebecca File, Liz Snyder, Cousin Curtiss, Sean Tracey and Nate May, and Harrison B.

Seattle-based Letters Aloud will perform Tuesday night at the Juneau Arts and Culture Center. The group of reality theater actors formed in 2013 with the mission of connecting modern audiences to an endangered form of communication — the handwritten letter.

Tuesday night’s show is themed “fame.” On a Juneau Afternoon, Letters Aloud actor Todd Beadle read an unusual appeal from a young Sidney Poitier.

Dear President Roosevelt,

My name is Sidney Poitier and I am here in the United States in New York City. I am from the Bahamas. I would like to go back to the Bahamas but I don’t have the money. I would like to borrow from you $100. I will send it back to you when I get to the Bahamas. I miss my mother and father and I miss my brothers and sisters and I miss my home in the Caribbean. I cannot seem to get myself organized properly here in America, especially in the cold weather, and I am therefore asking you as an American citizen if you will loan me $100 to get back home. I will send it back to you and I would certainly appreciate it very much.

Your fellow American,
Sidney Poitier

Letters from Marilyn Monroe, Elvis Presley and Andy Warhol will also be read and accompanied by a slideshow. Curator Paul Morgan Stetler says the project gives listeners unique insight into the lives of heroes and celebrities of the past.

“It’s like a time travel to a certain degree — you feel like you’re really connecting to these people in a way that you wouldn’t normally have access to.” Stetler said.

The live performance begins 7 p.m. Tuesday at the JACC.

Juneau theater artist Frank Henry Kaash Katasse won a short play competition Sunday. “Reeling” — a play based on Tlingit values — won Native Voices at the Autry’s Fifth Annual Short Play Competition in Los Angeles. Katasse says the play’s main characters are two female cousins who lose the uncle who raised them.

“They go and steal his urn from his memorial service and they decide they’re going to go throw the urn into the halibut hole (where) he would always take them. And so the whole play takes place on a canoe,” Katasse says.

Listen to our interview with Katasse here:

For the production, Katasse imagines the canoe on wheels with the uncle moving the cousins throughout the play. Flashbacks also help tell the story.

The play was partially inspired by a story Katasse heard about some determined canoers in Kake who braved high seas to honor a family member. In this story, the cousins are honoring their uncle’s wish.

“Because that’s what he said he always wanted — to be placed there because he took so many halibut from this halibut hole,” Katasse says. He adds, “I talk a lot about balance and a lot of traditional Tlingit core values. … That’s what it all comes down to.”

As winner of the competition, Katasse received the Von Marie Atchley Excellence in Playwriting Award and a $1,000 prize. Katasse says another one of his plays — “They Don’t Talk Back” — received accolades from the same theater company in the spring and is now under negotiation for production.

Perseverance Theatre’s production of Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, opens Friday night.

Actor Enrique Bravo plays Benjamin Barker, aka Sweeney Todd, in the musical. On a Juneau Afternoon, Bravo sang a few lines that are the foundation of the story.

“There was a barber and his wife,
And she was beautiful.
A foolish barber and his wife.
She was his reason and his life,
And she was beautiful.”

Listen to the audio version of the story and Bravo sing here:

Enter the evil judge Turpin who is interested in Barker’s wife and unjustly sends the barber off to prison in Australia. Barker breaks out, returns to London and finds out that his wife, Lucy, poisoned herself and that their daughter, Joanne, is a ward of the judge.

One might assume the rest of the plot would be a predictable revenge tale until Barker teams up with Mrs. Lovett who runs a pie shop — that serves meat pies.

“She’s been in love with Benjamin Barker for a long time, so that fuels that relationship,” Bravo said.

So does their business arrangement where Barker dispatches his victims with a straight razor and Mrs. Lovett cooks them in pies. But the play is about more than that.

“There’s a lot of themes of classes in society. The rich basically taking advantage of the poor. So it’s got a lot. It’s a meaty musical. It’s not one of those fluff musicals,” Bravo said.

A meaty musical! The cast includes 14 actors and singers and 6 musicians. Music director Todd Hunt said he’s gained new respect working with the play’s sometimes complicated music composed by Stephen Sondheim.

“You can see, though, that in all of the difficult things that he put in, there’s always a dramatic reason for why. Like when there’s something repeated, it’s not exactly repeated; it’s a little bit different or the harmonies are a little bit different underneath it. It’s because things are always changing. And in that way it’s very organically written music, and that has been wonderful to discover,” Hunt said.

Note that there are both a pie and a barber shop within walking distance of the theater. OK, well pizza and a hair salon, but you never know.

The play opens Friday at 7:30 p.m. and runs through Sunday, Dec. 6. Tickets are available at ptalaska.org.