KXLL

“They Don’t Talk Back” opens at Perseverance Theatre tonight (Friday, Jan. 27). Among other themes, it’s a play about family, identity, colonization and cultural preservation. It features three generations of Tlingit men in Southeast Alaska facing change. And it’s also a love story.

The diversity of themes is supported by a diverse cast and director composed of Tlingit, Cherokee, Athabascan, Yup’ik and Choctaw people.

Tonight’s opening at 7:30 is part of what is being described as a rolling world premiere that began in California, and is in collaboration with Native Voices at the Autry and La Jolla Playhouse.

It’s also a homecoming for the playwright, Juneau theater artist Frank Henry Kaash Katasse.

The play opens with Paul Senior on a second floor balcony of a modest home with mismatched and worn furniture.

Paul Senior, played by Juneau actor and Tlingit Jake Waid, is a gruff fisherman who wears Carhart overalls and is the patriarch of the story. He’s reciting a poem in Tlingit that playwright Frank Henry Kaash Katasse would call one of the play’s interludes — poems, songs and monologues woven throughout the play’s story line.

Ironically, Katasse wrote the interludes during interludes.

“I worked at KTOO for quite some time and I’d finish work at 4:30 and my wife finished work at 5. So, sometimes I’d have a half an hour before I had to go pick her up,” Katasse said. “So what do you do for a half an hour? You can dink around on your phone, or you can work.”

Katasse hadn’t written a full-length play before, and he wasn’t trying to at the time.

“My intention was to write things that were inspiring me,” Katasse said. “One of the monologues I wrote was because I wanted an audition piece as an actor … As a matter of fact all the parts are parts I would love to act.”

Katasse also is an accomplished actor — readers may have seen him in Perseverance’s “Chicago,” or “Our Voices Will Be Heard” among others.

He’s also the board president of the Juneau Douglas Little Theatre.

And what inspired the 30-minute writing sessions?

“It was rainy one day so I write this monologue about rain and how it refreshes you,” Katasse said.

The rain interlude is now performed by actor Brian Wescott who is Athabascan and Yup’ik, and plays both a minister and Paul Senior’s son, who is a Desert Storm veteran. He’s also the estranged father of Nick, played by Skyler Ray-Benson Davis, who is Tlingit.

“After a while I had this short story about a young man (who eventually became Nick) going to live with his grandparents,” Katasse said.

He thinks the short story was called “City Boy.”

“Then I realized I could take this story and weave it through the rest of these interludes,” he said. “I could tie this story to all these different characters.”

Nick’s counterpart is his raised-in-the-village cousin Edward, played by Kholan Studi.

Katasse said both Tlingit characters represent parts of himself.

“Back in the day it was very affordable to take your family and go tour Southeast Alaska on the ferry,” Katasse said. “We would do that when I was little. And my dad was a commercial fisherman so sometimes he’d be fishing out of Petersburg, or Wrangell, or Sitka. And we’d go meet him there on the ferry.”

“So I have these vivid memories of us being little in some of these communities, and some of the experiences I had from being the city boy from the big town of Juneau,” he said.

Nick is sent to live with his grandparents, Paul Senior and Linda (played by Diane E. Benson, who is Tlingit), and Edward in the village while his mother awaits trial for drug-related charges in Juneau.

The following scene exemplifies Nick’s angst.

“Hey cousin, want to grab the skiff and go check on the crab pots?” Edward asks.

“No, I don’t want to check the f—ing crab pots, cousin! I’m sick of this place. Maybe dad had the right idea — get as far away from you as possible — get away before I end up as f—ed up as you!” answers Nick.

Drama like this is often balanced with comedy, and a diverse selection of music including a church song.

Katasse brought jazz musician and friend Ed Littlefield onto the team as a composer and Tlingit Language Consultant.

“One of the reasons you break into a song during a musical is that the character reaches an emotional boiling point, and the best way to express that is through song,” Katasse said. At one point Nick raps — another one of Katasse’s interludes. (Clink on the audio player above to hear it).

Beyond coming of age the cousins experience, and change everyone faces, it’s also a love story between the grandparents. Paul Senior and Linda play the kind of long-time in-love lovers to which many aspire.

In the spirit of year-end retrospectives, we put together a one-hour special highlighting the concerts we produced in 2016. Listen here:

Performers include (click on name to watch video where available): Sophia Street, Collette Costa and friends, Playboy Spaceman, HARM, Reeb Willms and Caleb Klauder, Harrison B, The Carper Family, Improbabilies, Forhorn, Whisky Class, The Hannah Yoter Band, Stephen Blanchet, Nicole Church, and Teri Tibbett and Friends.

It’s awful out in Juneau on a Saturday night. After a bunch of snow, it’s raining, and moat-like ponds of water fill the streets, the sidewalks, everywhere.

Bad conditions however, have not affected attendance at a Club Baby Seal show, a new comedy troupe in Juneau.

The group of four comedians, two managers, a volunteer bartender and security guard are set up at the Gold Town Nickelodeon. It’s their second show of the night and it’s well attended — the first show sold out.

After a welcome from manager Grace Lee, emcee Corin Hughes-Skandijs warms up the crowd.

Part of his open includes a self-deprecating realization that he has the look of a movie extra.

“I’m the kind of guy that you would see stuck at the top of roller coaster, the hero has to come up and save me. I’m sitting there with like, a Mickey ears hat,” he said. The audience gives the bit a healthy laugh.

Next up is one of the group’s founders, Brady Ingledue. After taking a stand-up workshop, he started gathering long-time friends to write jokes and perform at home.

One of his jokes takes place in the bedroom.

“I do like to experiment in the sack, though. What I like to do is get, like, a girl. I’m coming in, I’ll get you all set up in the bedroom right there, doing your thing,” he says. “And then I’ll be over here kind of making a baking soda volcano. You know, getting the elements going, there’s test tubes.”

Alicia Hughes-Skandijs is the other group founder who wrote and practiced with Ingledue in the beginning. Her bit is about role-playing — but in a decidedly unsexy setting, the produce section of Fred Meyer.

“So I start in the organic section, and I just, like, grab it, like I know what I’m doing,” she says in a suggestive voice. “Ohh, this recipe calls for two kinds of kale. I know what’s going to happen with it.”

She snaps back to her regular voice.

“I do know what’s going to happen to the kale. The kale is going to get really, really slimy, like in my produce drawer.”

After the show she said, “It is the best feeling in the world when people are laughing because it feels like through their laughter they’re like, ‘Oh yeah I get it. Like, I’m with you on that point.’”

Alicia and Brady eventually met Nate Williams at a party. They started doing house shows in his living room in front of a brick-patterned curtain they ordered from Amazon.

Williams also is the one who suggested the name — Club Baby Seal — an irreverent play on words he conceived as a fifth-grader for the name of a snow fort he made.

“I don’t listen to self-help directly, but I listen to people who listen to self-help,” Williams said. “It’s too powerful straight from the source, like, uncut Tony Robbins is more than anyone can really handle. And I really don’t want to improve too rapidly.”

For those first house shows they brought on Alicia’s brother, actor Corin Hughes-Skandijs as emcee, and eventually actor and long-time friend Allison Holtkamp started performing too.

Holtkamp’s performance includes a bit about artificial insemination that brings hard laughs. She also works as an actor.

“It is much more terrifying than acting because in acting you get to go on stage and you get to be someone else. With stand-up comedy you have to get up there and be yourself, and talk about things in your life that may be uncomfortable or … you know, sperm,” Holtkamp said with a laugh.

Unfortunately, Holtkamp’s sperm bit is not public-media safe, but whether it’s that, being an extra, role-playing, self-help or self-image, Alicia said material works “because there is something universal in there that everyone can relate to.”

And what does it feel like when it’s working and everyone is laughing?

“It’s like getting done with a 10-mile run and you get all of those endorphins in that one big laugh,” Holtkamp said.

Corin said, “It’d be like if your whole family was gathered in the living room when you came home from work and they all give you a standing ovation. And you were like, ‘What’s it for?’ ‘For you, and by the way, here is your favorite dinner that you’ve always wanted.’”

Williams said, “It’s like a hug from father or something. It’s a huge acceptance that what you say, what you think — yeah, it’s actually a really neat connection.”

The comedians are quick to thank their managers Hali Duran and Grace Lee, and they’re proud of providing a new artistic outlet in Juneau.

Club Baby Seal has shows scheduled in Petersburg in January, and they hope to make it to Anchorage and beyond in the spring.

Correction: An earlier version of this story misidentified one of the club’s managers. Grace Lee is a manager of Club Baby Seal, not Grace Jang.  

“The world has lost another luminary.”

That’s how the Sealaska Heritage Institute began a message announcing the death of Clarissa Rizal at age 60, a renowned Chilkat and Ravenstail weaver. She was a Raven of the T’akdeintaan Clan, also known as the black-legged Kittywake Clan.

The institute’s announcement says Native people owe her a debt for teaching and reviving the sacred art.

Rizal was diagnosed with terminal liver and colon cancer in October and passed in the early hours this morning. Her sudden death comes as a shock to many.

In addition to weaving, Rizal was a multimedia artist who worked with paint, music, spoken word, printmaking and sculpture. Among her works in recent years was a collaboration with the Seattle-based band Khu.éex’. You can hear Rizal perform in “To Her Grandmother” by clicking below.

Among other awards, Rizal was a 2016 National Endowment for the Arts fellow. You can watch her presentation at the Fellowships Concert below.

She leaves behind children Kahlil and his wife Mikiko along with their daughter Violet; Lily Hope and husband Ishmael, and their children Elizabeth, Louis, Mary and Ella; Ursala Hudson and husband Chris Haas and their daughters Amelie and Simone. She is also survived by her siblings Richard, Tim, Irene and Deanna.

A celebration of life in Juneau will take place in the summer of 2017.

FRIDAY celebrate Halloween Early with KXLL – Excellent Radio for Zombie Walk, Juneau’s annual flesh eating flash mob! Meet in the Cope Park parking lot at 7 p.m. for a brief safety meeting and to go over this year’s route to Marine Park.

Costume contest & candy giveaway to follow with Prizes from Coppa & GonZo AK for:

*Most Undead
*Funniest Zombie
*Best Celebrity Zombie
*Tiny Zombie/Kids Awards
*and more…

Fake blood will be provided!

Questions: email annie@ktoo.org

Kayla Harmon’s fifth grade class is just in from lunch-recess on a sunny Friday.

With little prompting, the students move to the front of the classroom. Some sit in kid-size chairs and tables, others sit cross-legged on the ground or on pillows.

At the beginning of the school year, 10-year-old Mia Waid asked her teacher if she could play her guitar and sing in front of the class. Harmon agreed.

Waid stands with her guitar on a throw rug. The fluorescent lights are off, and natural light filters in through large windows facing Mount Juneau. Her 26 classmates are silent, focused on her.

Harmon had seen Waid play around town before the fifth grader asked to play for the class.

“She really connects to the songs,” said Harmon. “Some of the topics are more about love or something and she’s a 10-year-old girl, but I always feel like she just really embodies the lyrics that she’s singing, and it’s so believable when she sings it.”

Today, Waid plays four songs including a class favorite called “Rip Tide” by indie-folk artist Vance Joy. Beyond Joy, this 10-year-old’s inspirations may surprise.

“I like the old stuff like Carol King, Bill Withers, Ray Charles and Michael Jackson, of course,” said Waid.

“I think it’s really fun not to necessarily look at her,” said Harmon, “but look at her peers just like, staring at her basically, with a big grin on their face. They’re so focused on listening to her, and I think they know that it’s taken a lot of time and dedication to be as good as she is.”

Among those peers is Cayman Jardell.

“It’s really inspiring. Like, I used to think that I would never be a football player, but after this, I know I think I can,” said Jardell.

And Audrey Noon.

“Mia wrote a song and that inspired me to, like, come up with my own songs ‘cause one of my career choices is a singer,” said Noon.

“When Mia got up there and was really brave it really inspired me to go do stuff and be really brave,” said Andrew Waldron.

Georgia Lawton is inspired too. “When she did her own song, I love playing guitar so it kind of inspired me to do that as well,” said Lawton.

Waid has advice for getting over the jitters, and maybe, life in general.

“Breathe slowly, and I would say, just like, instead of walking backwards, run toward it. Just like, bolt towards it, pretty much. Like a little figurative language,” said Waid with a laugh.

As for her future?

“I actually want to be an archaeologist, but I want the music to pay for my archaeology,” said Waid.

To hear Waid’s music live, keep an eye out. She’s been known to busk around town.

Correction: An earlier version of this story contained an incorrect last name for Mia Waid.