This year’s Alaska Folk Festival backdrop was created by the Juneau-Douglas High School Art Club with more than 15 students contributing to the project.
Listen to JDHS students Riley Stadt, Kane Ginter and advisor Heather Ridgeway of the JDHS Art Club who made this year’s Folk Fest backdrop:
The students are auctioning off the fish and backdrop this weekend in the Centennial Hall lobby to raise money for their trip to Craig to compete in the Region V Art Fest.
The Alaska Folk Festival’s Guest Artists, Pharis and Jason Romero, arrive in Juneau today. They’re from Horsefly — a rural town in British Columbia, and split their time between parenting, making custom banjos and playing music. Sometimes with two guitars, often with a banjo, they’re known for their tight harmony singing.
Listen to this introduction that features their voices and music:
The Romeros will be joined by fiddle player Josh Rabie and will premiere 8:30 p.m. tonight on the main stage at Centennial Hall. They’ll also teach workshops on singing and banjo playing, and play a dance at 9:20 p.m. Saturday at the Juneau Arts and Culture Center.
Acoustic folk and Americana musician Hope Griffin and cellist Jamie Leigh Bennett played live on ‘A Juneau Afternoon’ today.
Griffin has roots in Alaska and now lives in Asheville, North Carolina.
Listen to the interview:
Listen to “Hanging in the Balance”:
Listen to “Curious”:
Hope and Bennett play 9:45 Tuesday night as part of the 44th annual Alaska Folk Festival in Centennial Hall.
Admission to the festival is free, but if you can’t make it to the hall you can watch it here.
It’s not hard to find something to do during the Alaska Folk Festival. Once again, your friends at KTOO tried to make it easy and list the downtown evening venue schedules all in one place. As these things go, we’ll be updating the schedule daily with changes, new events and start times as we learn more.
Alaskan Hotel & Bar
The Gold Town
Hangar Ballroom
The Viking
Red Dog Saloon
The Rendezvous
Rockwell
After years of preparation, and months of interviews and rehearsals, “Aan Yátx’u Sáani: Noble People of the Land,” opens tonight at the Juneau Arts and Culture Center.
The multimedia theatrical presentation features five people with histories in the Juneau’s Indian Village and Willoughby District.
Lillian Petershoare is one of them.
“Instead of having five individuals, individually come and tell their story exclusively by themselves, it’s like a Chilkat blanket, where each person’s story is woven in with the other individual stories,” Petershoare said. “The other individuals actually support you and help you in the delivery or your lines. It’s really kind of a collective experience and that makes it very dynamic.”
The other storytellers are Ernestine Saankalaxt’ Hayes, Khinkaduneek Paul Marks, Marcelo Quinto, Walter A. Soboleff Jr. They’re all Tlingit.
The project is a collaboration between the New York-based Ping Chong and Company, and the Juneau Arts and Humanities Council. The council wants to hear the voices of the first residents of its neighborhood.
“There’s a lot about growing up in the village. There’s experiences from elementary school,” Petershoare said. “There’s experiences at Juneau-Douglas High School at the time that ANCSA (Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act) passed. There’s reference to my college years. There’s reference to coming home, readjusting to being back in Juneau again. There’s references to my employment with the U.S. Forest Service.”
The production team, which includes theater artist Ryan Conarro and Tlingit theater artist Frank Henry Kaash Katasse, interviewed more than 20 people before choosing the five storytellers.
Then, they creatively scripted the stories.
The writers added elements like repetition and echoes.
Visual artist Abel Ryan drew formline designs on a screen hanging behind the storytellers. Greg Mitchell, on projections and lighting design, fills the screen with historical photos, animations and videos.
Katasse said the participants went through historical traumas and serious struggles, but everyone is positive and hopeful.
Humor plays a big part, too.
“This is a super important part about Native theater that I’ve noticed as well,” Katasse said. “We have to make sure the audience knows they have permission to laugh, and we establish that right off the bat throughout this show. Because it not just the writing, everyone in this show is really funny.”
Petershoare noticed another theme.
“People had happy childhoods,” she said. “I think that is something that is delightful for the community to know.”
“That was emphasized with every single person we interviewed,” Katasse said. “They were like this stuff happened. It was Jim Crow era of Juneau and this and that. But it was fun. Like we went sledding, and we did this, and we played in puddles, and we built rafts. And you’re like, this is the important part that we’d really like to emphasize.”
The show opens at 7:30 p.m. tonight at the Juneau Arts and Culture Center, and plays through Saturday night. Tickets can be purchased through JAHC.
It’s this weekend only, but if you miss it, it will be on 360 North television and 360North.org.
The JAHC will host a community conversation Monday, April 2, in response to the stories and ideas raised in the show.
Editor’s note: KTOO Public Media is a promotional partner of this production.
Comedian Paula Poundstone will perform Thursday night in Juneau, her second trip to the capital city. Her last visit was in 2012.
I gave her a call and we talked about beaver dens, “Wait Wait … Don’t Tell Me!” and more.
Below are excerpts from our conversation. You can listen to the entire 15 minute interview at the bottom.
On one of her trips to Alaska, she had a hiccup on the way to her show. She also talks glaciers, beaver dens and software developers (2:32):
Poundstone postulates on why she and “Wait Wait … Don’t Tell Me!” are such a good match (2:40):
I ask how her interactive and improvisational style developed since she started doing comedy in 1979 (2:57):
Poundstone illuminates how she never does the same show twice and how little biographies emerge from the crowd (2:28):
Advice for aspiring comedians (1:00):
Listen to the full interview here (14:48):
Doors open 5 p.m. Thursday at Centennial Hall for the 7 p.m. show. Salt will provide a no host bar.
Poundstone will use a handmade stool by Dean Graber of Rainforest Custom that will be auctioned just before the performance.
Tickets for the event are still available here.
