On Sunday, April 22nd nearly 500 people lined up and then packed themselves tight as sardines into Chop Suey on Capitol Hill to hear . . . poetry. On Friday, May 4th, at Seattle University, 450 people filled Piggott Auditorium, some resigning to sit on the floor or stand in the doorways to hear . . . poetry?

Most people's interpretation of poetry justifies the above statement. Most people think it's boring, stuffy and feel they can't relate to it, especially kids. Why? Because their only experience with it was in school where the poetry they read never had anything to do with them. Yet at the same time, when a hip hop song comes over the radio waves we almost immediately turn up the volume.

The reality is Tupac Shakur wrote poetry. Gwendolyn Brooks wrote poetry. And so did Shel Silverstein. The branches of the tree that is called poetry are vast and diverse and rarely are they all acknowledged. Which is where spoken word comes in.

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I'm writing this after the second weekend of our run, and am grateful to be working on a laptop, with my legs elevated. My knees took a beating this weekend, and I've got arnica, ibuprofen, and ice packs on my healing altar. I'm praying for happy and healthy joints by next Friday at 8pm.

Five shows down, three more to go, and as we approach the inevitable closing weekend, I brace myself for the void once the show ends. I joined the ensemble in January, so it's been five months. In my theatre experience, this has been the best kind of long-term committed relationship.

I met Dorothy Cosby Atkinson, the director of "A Dream Play" and founder of ETE, through the New Play Festival run by Amy Wheeler and Vince DeLaney at Freehold in September of 2006. Dor directed a reading from my play, "Around the Clock." Since we enjoyed working together, she asked me and another friend, Alexis Tabor, to assistant direct with her on "A Dream Play".

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Matt Smith

Matt Smith has taught at Freehold since 1991, and also teaches at Seattle University and has taught thousands of people to improvise. He has improvised for 16 years as a member of None of the Above, Seattle Improv, Seattle Theatre Sports, and Stark Raving Theatre, where he and Edward Sampson used improvisation to develop scripted performances. Solo endeavors include My Last Year with the Nuns, Helium, and Beyond Kindness: Essays in Childrearing. Screen credits include Sleepless in Seattle, Spiderman, and Almost Live. He designs communication training programs for businesses and organizations using the concepts of improv as a foundation.

What are you working on currently that is exciting to you? What about it in particular has been exciting?

I'm experimenting with keeping my mouth shut. Mostly failing, but not always. I am always trying to say and do funny things. When I resist this compulsion, a space often opens, and I am able to write more easily. I am finding that I say and do the same things over and over to gain some kind of control over any situation. I am trying to identify them and file these tactics.

What are you listening to?

Tinnitus.

What are you reading?

"Reading Real Japanese". A book of great short stories and essays written in Japanese. I am able to get through about a page a week with the help of my tutor. By my bedside is "Portrait of a Lady" by Henry James.

What have you seen recently that you liked?

"Outsourced". It's showing at SIFF this year: opening night SIFF Eastside, Thursday, May 31st in Bellevue at 7:00 pm, and Sunday, June 3rd at The Neptune in Seattle at 7:00 pm. (I have a part in it.)

 

	Freehold Faculty/Alum Shows and News
Upcoming Faculty Shows and News Vincent Delaney's new comedy "Three Screams," will be workshopped at Luna Stage in Montclair, NJ, in May 2007. "The Art of Bad Men" by Vincent Delaney won the Nathan Miller Award from the Sprenger Lang Foundation, and will be workshopped in Washington DC in May 2007. Marya Sea Kaminski will play Imogen in "Cymbeline" as part of Freehold Theatre's Engaged Theatre's Summer Tour. The production will be seen at Freehold's East Hall Theatre, Volunteer Park and will tour to underserved populations including Harborview Medical Center, New Futures and several Washington State prisons. The Summer Tour will open at Volunteer Park on Monday, July 9th and in the evenings on July 12, 13, and 14th at Freehold Theatre's East Hall Theatre. In addition to her role in the Summer Tour, Marya also will be playing the role of Hedda in WET's upcoming destruction of "Hedda Gabler." Dates TBA. Cyrus Khambatta is Artistic Director for The PhffftDance Theatre Company. May 11-13 Portland, OR - The Phffft! Dance Theatre Company performs at Imago Theatre in Portland. For more info, email info@PHFFFT.org. Timothy Piggee will be in "The Mojo and the Sayso" at ACT late this summer. Matt Smith has an interview with John Moe (KUOW) http://www.kuow.org/defaultProgram.asp?ID=12052 (last third of program) Preview of film "Outsourced" with Matt Smith: http://youtube.com/watch?v=LImhTTFu4b8 Annette Toutonghi will be in "The Women" at ACT (October 5-November 11). Kate Wisniewski is in "The Skin of Our Teeth" at INTIMAN Theatre (April 28-June 2) Dromios in "Comedy of Errors" on San Juan Island for Island Stage Left.   Freehold Alum News Freehold Alums will be performing in The Community Theatre's selection of Raymond Carver's Pieces: "What We Talk About When We Talk About Love," "What's in Alaska?" and "Fat," May 31st - June 23rd at 8pm playing at the Youngstown Cultural Arts Center, information: http://www.thecommunitytheatre.org/contact.html Amy Conant and Justin Tracy are in "The Skin of Our Teeth" at INTIMAN Theatre, running April 28th through June 2nd. Dorothy Cosby Atkinson, Precious Butiu, Andy Clawson, Robert Walker, and Kelley Faulkner; also designers Jason Gorgen, Sara Torres, and Don Carter are all Freehold affiliates/alums and will be in the upcoming production by Edge Theatre Ensemble of Caryl Churchill's new version of August Strindberg's "A Dream Play." Opens May 4th at 7 pm and also running May 5th-19th; Fridays at 8 pm and Saturdays at 8 pm, plus two Saturday matinees at 3 pm on May 12th and 19th in Freehold's East Hall Theatre. Lee Ann Hittenberger is in "Cabaret" as Fraulin Schneider at Edmonds Performing Arts Center. Performances are May 17-19 at 7:30 and Sunday 20th at 3:00. Contact www.edcc.edu/boxoffice. Lee Ann also completed a successful run of "Oklahoma" which she choreographed, played Aunt Eller and assisted with fight choreography. Her next performing venture will be at Snoqualamie Falls Forest Theater this July where she will be choreographing and playing the mother in "Meet Me in St. Louis." Jenny Schmidt (Freehold registrar and student) will be in "Lysistrata" as part of Troupe du Jour. Opens April 27th and runs through May 19th, 8:00 pm at Theatre off Jackson. For more information, www.troupedujour.org. Loni Tipton will be in "As You Like It" this summer at the Troll in Fremont. Look for it Mid-June through Mid-July on the weekends.

 

	Freehold Theatre Guild
Theatre Guild Membership The Theatre Guild is composed of a group of Freehold students and alumni who have shared in the unique Freehold experience. Freehold Theatre Guild's (FTG's) stated mission is "To help members of the Freehold Theatre Guild make the transition from student to active participant in the greater theater community". For those interested in joining Freehold's Theatre Guild, email Andy Tribolini at atribolini@hotmail.com with your desire to join. You will receive confirmation of membership by receiving notices about monthly meetings and activities in which you are strongly encouraged to participate. The Theatre Guild would love to have you be a part of the group!

   

June 2, 2007, Freehold Spring Event and Auction! For more information, and to purchase tickets, go to http://www.freeholdtheatre.org/auction/ or call (206) 323-7499 x14.

June 4, 2007, Deadline for Diversity Scholarship Registration

July 9, 1007, Summer Tour of "Cymbeline" begins

2007 Spring Quarter, April 9 - June 22, Registration starts March 5th

2007 Summer Quarter, July 2 - August 31, Registration starts May 21st

2007 Fall Quarter, September 24 - December 16, Registration starts August 13th

	About Freehold
A group of artists, who after years of professional work felt that the full potential of the theatrical event had yet to be realized, founded Freehold Theatre in the summer of 1991 when two prominent actor studios-the Pasqualini-Smith Studio (est. 1985) and the Mark Jenkins Actors' Workshop (est. 1985) joined forces. The founders, Robin Lynn Smith, Mark Jenkins and George Lewis, among others, are professional actors and directors whose credentials include recognized work on and off Broadway, as well as in major films, television, and regional theatre. They formulated the following mission: Freehold engages artists of all levels in training and experimentation so that they may become more innovative and heartfelt in generating theatre that has a lasting impact on the community we serve. As a center for the development and practice of theatre, Freehold Theatre is committed to art that embraces the full range of human experience and that inspires performers and audience to connect more deeply to themselves and to each other. We move toward this goal in four ways: Our Studio provides a place for actors, from inspired novices to working professionals, to train. Our Theatre Lab provides a forum for mature artists to research and develop new work and to re-interpret classics. Our Engaged Theatre Program reaches out to culturally under-served communities. Our rehearsal and performance facilities in the Oddfellows Bulding on Capitol Hill comprises of four rehearsal and performance studios, including a fully equipped 92-seat black box theatre. The facilities and equipment are available for rent at very reasonable rates. Here we strive to provide our artists with the tools necessary to make a deep and lasting impact on the community based on organic esthetics. Freehold has become an integral part of Seattle's thriving theatre community, having gained a reputation as the place for serious young artists to train and take the leap into performing and creating original work. In 2003 we developed an Engaged Theatre program in which we reach out to culturally under-served communities. The program comprises an annual tour to organizations that represent culturally under-served populations and a four-month residency at Washington Corrections Center for Women, in which the women create, rehearse and perform a theatre production. This year for the first time, George Lewis has developed a similar pilot program at the Monroe Correctional Center for Men. For more information about our programs and services see our website: www.freeholdtheatre.org.     What is the Freehold Forum?   The Freehold Forum E-Newsletter was born out of our desire to respond to requests from you, our Freehold community, to hear about the innovative and powerful work being done at Freehold Theatre by our incredibly talented and diverse faculty and alumni. The Forum will provide you with a wealth of information that will serve you in your work as an artist. The monthly Freehold Forum will include insightful interviews with talented actors, directors and playwrights, compelling articles on a wide array of topics to assist you in your artistic growth, cutting edge news on upcoming Freehold Faculty and alumni performances, highly newsworthy articles by Freehold's Theatre Guild and Freehold Calendar Highlights showcasing upcoming must-see Freehold Calendar events.     Become A Part of the Freehold Community!   Freehold is always looking for people interested in joining our team of committed and enthusiastic volunteers. Whether you have time, wisdom, strength, money, a desire to be involved in your community, or any combination thereof, we would love to have you join in our efforts. Here are some ways you can participate in our work at Freehold: Volunteer Opportunities Volunteers are highly treasured at Freehold!! We rely on and appreciate the invaluable and diverse skills our volunteers contribute which enable us to further our mission. We are currently seeking volunteers to help us with our administrative functions, staff performances and fundraising events!! If you have the desire to be part of a committed group of staff and other volunteers, please give us a call at 206-323-7499. Donations Freehold is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization. We rely on philanthropic donations from the community to help us continue to be a part of the theatre community and to keep the cost of our classes affordable. Donations may be sent to: Freehold Theatre, 1525 10th Avenue, Seattle, WA 98122. back to top       "Learning Something New" I first started creating and performing solo work eight years ago on the East Coast, and my adventures in solo performance have lead me to busking on sidewalks to singing in bathtubs and, most recently, to the beautiful proscenium stage of the Leo K at the Seattle Repertory Theatre. And I am always astonished how quickly this work connects me back to the very basics of acting - authenticity, presence, action, relationship. Sometimes the integration of these skills seems obvious when you're playing with a scene partner, and a little more abstract when one approaches a play all by one's lonesome. But I have found, time and time again, that these techniques apply to solo work in a relentless way. During one of the talkbacks for Rachel Corrie, a student asked me if it was difficult to act all by myself. Without thinking, I replied, "I'm not by myself. You're here too. You're my scene partner, we both have to show up for the play to work." And I realized then one of the reasons that I am drawn to this work. The audience is, of course, your scene partner in a solo show. And they are challenging and inspiring and they will never do the same thing twice. They, indeed, demand that you bring all of your skills to the table. Every night. Every time. Solo work acknowledges and embraces an audience in a way that movies and film cannot, and that theatre always will, hopefully. If you invest yourself as a performer in this work, you do actually learn something new every day. back to top         "The Power of Spoken Word" Spoken word is an art form focused on taking a written poem to the next level, breathing life into it through performance. The major format through which spoken word has caught flame is slam. Slam is a structure within which spoken word artists can present their work. Slam is about accountability, community and the high art of performance. It is bare bones: a microphone and a poet - no costumes, no props, no musical accompaniment. And the poet must perform his or her own work. It's not just what the poet chooses to say, it's also about HOW they choose to say it. Beyond that the sky's the limit, and as a result, you can hear poems ranging from adolescent acne to verbal attacks on George Bush, from last night's love interest's pathetic attempts at wooing you to the words of appreciation you've never expressed to your mother. Comical, nonsensical, intellectual, political -- you can hear it all in spoken word. But we're missing one very important part of the equation - the audience! At a slam and other spoken word shows, audiences are encouraged, and in some cases required, to react, to let go of their passive consumption of entertainment and state their opinions. They are asked to give energy to the performers, to verbally get involved in the performance and to reap what they sow in the energy that comes back to them threefold. As a result, slams and spoken word performances sometimes have the aural appearance of a Baptist church, with the "mmhhmm's" and the "come on now's" that show the poets that the crowd is really enjoying what they're doing and saying. For some folks, performances like these are the closest thing to church they will ever experience because this involvement pushes poets to places they never could have reached alone. It is through this magical process that community is created. Slam and Spoken Word require poets to ask of themselves - is what I have to say relevant? Why? They have a responsibility to the audiences they speak to. They need to connect with their audience through their words AND through their performance. So in the end, even if I've never had the experience of whatever the poet is talking about, when they're finished, I feel as if I had. Why did nearly 500 people show up to the Seattle Poetry Slam's Grand Slam on April 22nd at Chop Suey? Why did 450 people show up to the Youth Speaks Grand Slam on May 4th? They came for poetry. They came to be moved. They came to hear the truth. They came to be entertained. They came to be educated. They came to laugh. They came to be enlightened. And in the case of both events, everyone walked out . . . changed. Daemond Arrindell will be teaching a new spoken word class at Freehold Theatre this Summer. Daemond is the Seattle Slammaster and producer of the longest running weekly show in Seattle - the Seattle Poetry Slam. He is a 5-time coach of the Seattle National Poetry Slam Team, currently ranked 6th in the nation. Workshop facilitator, community organizer, advocate and poet - holds strong to the belief that poetry is a grand tree with a vast array of branches that all contribute to the complexity of the art form. back to top         My "A Dream Play" Experience After my first couple of reads of the play, I was mystified. I had absolutely no idea what it would look like or how to begin to approach the text. Dor and I began meeting to discuss her vision and the aesthetic and physical approach she wanted to use. I admired how she drew upon other artists for inspiration- including the grotesque and expressionistic work of painter, Edvard Munch, and filmmaker, David Lynch. She also wanted to apply the highly stylized physical work of V.E. Meyerhold that she and two other ensemble members learned through George Lewis' class at Freehold. In the first month, Dor taught the ensemble the basic movement vocabulary and technique of Meyerhold. Alexis and I participated in the exercises to better understand the process. In addition to developing a greater sense of balance and kinesthetic response to the ensemble, each gesture or movement across any length of the stage is broken down into three parts: otkaz (the preparation), posil (the movement or gesture), and tochka (the expressive end point). We practiced developing etudes, which are similar to movement phrases or duets, and where every movement had a clear beginning, middle, and end. With this basic foundation, we began our work on the play. One of the actors faced a major schedule conflict and left the show and I was asked to step in as an actor. At each rehearsal we continued to devote time to learning and practicing Meyerhold techniques and discovering our characters through movement. We also spent time doing extensive table-work: text and dream analysis, reading the play for meaning and discovering intention, talking a lot about the emotional undercurrents in dreams, and how symbols, images and characters can take on new meaning, recur, morph and change throughout our dreams. All this was stimulating, fun, and informative- and relatively safe. It became easy to talk about the play, and we were getting quite good at the Meyerhold exercises, but the tricky part came in combining the movement with text while keeping intention. The blocking for each scene came out of improvisation exercises - either from directly working with the text, or through parallel scenarios. At first it felt crazy making for all of the actors - especially when Dor would say, "I liked that. Do it again!" Many times, especially at the beginning, I was thinking, "Oh shit. What did I just do?" The benefit of this approach was that it forced us to develop a heightened awareness of our physical choices - to trust our impulses and respond in the moment, while being aware of what we were doing at each moment so we could repeat it if need be. This is a highly physical and expressive show. One of the personal challenges I faced as an actor was that I was trained in a more Stanislavsky-based naturalistic style of acting, which is more of an inside out approach to acting. Using Meyerhold's methods, flipped this around to an outside-in approach. One of the things I'm learning as an actor is how to synthesize my training, taking in new approaches and information and building on the foundation I have. Once I realized I didn't have to abandon everything I'd learned in the past, I felt more at ease with the process. Another personal challenge I faced in the show was taking care of my voice while exploring and accessing my full vocal range. I drew a lot from the Voice for Actors class I took at Freehold last year, taught by Gin Hammond. She taught some of the foundation of the Fitzmaurice technique, which has been likened to yoga for the voice. Principles of structured breathing and the focus line of vocal energy were really helpful for support and efficiency. Gin also emphasized the importance of visualizing operative words, and I found this practice to be really helpful with some of my monologues in the character of the Writer, where I'm trying to describe a series of elusive visions on the horizon. In addition to my personal growing pains as an actor, as we approached our third month of rehearsal, the ensemble hit a collective moment of frustration. While we were making progress, and blocking each scene, it seemed there was not enough time for us to repeat what we had done. As a scene would take shape, we'd move on to the next, and when we'd try to run a few scenes a week later, we found we'd lost much of what we'd struggled to create. Part of this was the actors were still trying to find a way to record the blocking, which, if you see the show, is more like choreography. We had a powerful group discussion full of emotion and honesty, which revealed a strong commitment to the show and wanting it to work. Dor and Alexis were great listeners and leaders through this conversation and as a result, we made some changes to the rehearsal schedule and process that included many more opportunities for repetition of scenes. This, our first "fight", if you will, I think marked a deepening of honesty and trust essential to moving forward as an ensemble. Our designers came to a couple of rehearsals and presented their ideas and plans, and while that helped, I think the entire ensemble was a little apprehensive about the play until we began to rehearse regularly in the performance space (as we have been a fringe theatre group without an artistic home). Once we had make-up, costume, lights, sound, set . . . we breathed a collective sigh of relief, as it all came together in a strange, yet cohesive dream world. And though the effect may be nightmarish at times, it is a place full of trust and engagement, and a sweet spot I'll be sad to leave. We are all pretty much in every scene of the show, either as our actual characters, or animated aspects of the environment. Because of this interdependence and interconnectedness, we are all there to keep the energy going throughout the show. It's feels buoyant, and fluid. One audience member told our director that the ensemble had the feel of a giant organism- and that was pretty cool because that's how it feels when we are performing. Kelley Faulkner, actor, is appearing in the Edge Theatre Ensemble's production of Caryl Churchill's 2005 adaptation of Strindberg's "A Dream Play", which performs three final shows this Friday, May 18th at 8pm, Saturday, May 19th at 3pm and 8pm at Freehold's East Hall Theatre. Follow the links below to a commercial and article in the Capitol Hill Times: www.footbridgeproductions.com/dreamplay.html, http://www.zwire.com/site/tab7.cfm?newsid=18296467&BRD=855&PAG=461&dept_id=520812&rfi=6 back to top