Winning isn’t everything and losing doesn’t always make you a loser…

Called “irresistible, riotously funny and remarkably ingenious” by the New York Times when it opened on Broadway in 2005, Spelling Bee is a Tony Award winning musical comedy that follows six middle-school overachievers as they navigate the chaos of their local spelling bee competition.

The 25^th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee runs Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday at Key City Public Theatre from October 1^st through October 25th. Thursday, Friday, Saturday shows are at 7:30 p.m. and Sunday shows are at 2:30 p.m. Tickets ($20 on Thursday/Sunday, $24 on Friday/Saturday, $10 for students any performance) are available at keycitypublictheatre.org or at the playhouse box office, 419 Washington Street, Port Townsend, 360-385-KCPT.

The Wall Street Journal called Spelling Bee, “that rarity of rarities, a super-smart musical that is also a bona fide crowd-pleaser,” and the KCPT production, with its inspired acting, musical direction from Linda Dowdell, choreography by Denise Winter, and costume design by Tamara Halligan, aims to live up to that reputation by making audiences of all ages laugh, sing, and, in the end, maybe even show off their own spelling skills!

Overseen by a group of adults, who have barely escaped adolescence themselves, this group of misfits overcome a series of increasingly outlandish trials before revealing the true lesson of the play: winning isn’t everything and losing doesn’t always make you a loser.

The KCPT ensemble includes many familiar faces, including Leah Finch, whose performance in Spelling Bee marks her first return to KCPT since Bark! The Musical, Port Townsend’s own Joey Ripley and Christa Holbrook, Marcy Girt, the standup comic from NYC, Austin Krieg, who was nominated Best High School Actor by Seattle’s 5th Avenue Theatre, and, fresh off of their performances in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Maggie Bulkley, Anthony Phillips, Kenn Mann and everybody’s favorite acrobaticalist Tomoki Sage!

Join us October 3-4, 2015 for the 33rd Great PT Bay Kinetic Race. There will be thrills, there will be chills, songs and of course there will be Glory!

Whether you crawl on all fours, or all eights. Or you slither, slide or roll. Whether you glad or flutter. Come join us for an all Bug race. Its a Bug’s World After All.

• http://www.ptkineticrace.org/

A Kinetic Skulpture is a human powered, artistically enhanced vehicle that must go through sand (Kwick Sand), mud (The Dismal Bog), float on water (The Great Bay), and transverse hilly, silly neighborhoods. Some skulptures are engineering marvels while most are a mixture of bicycle parts, styrofoam, duct tape, imagination and prayers. Awards are given to each racer whether they want it or not, but the most highly prized award is the “Mediocrity Award”, the skulpture that finishes in the middle of the pack. Kinetic racers as well as glorious spectators must be kapable of having fun without taking the event too seriously.

What started out to be a friendly, creative home town race has now grown up to be a philosophical, artistic, engineering movement, with a devoted following worldwide. It has become an appealing visual attraction drawing international media attention. The Kinetic Sculpture Race enjoys the reputation as a fun spectator sport, entertaining fans from all corners of the globe. These kineticnauts and their wacky Kontraptions; have won the hearts, and imaginations of all who witness this eccentric, eclectic pageantry of human powered machinery.

The Port Townsend race is the third oldest race on the ever growing Kinetic Racing circuit, and is one of the few remaining kinetic races that are not owned by a corporation. It is an independent race, with the volunteer organizers priding themselves on keeping the grass roots & kinetic spirit alive.

Saturday’s festivities start at Low Noon beginning with a parade downtown, followed by a break test, and then the water portion of the race! At 8:00pm there will be a Koronation Ball where a new Rose Hips Kween will be chosen, an unbelievable display of talent, jokes and recipes will help the crowd choose the winning kontestant! Live music will be played by a live band to keep everyone dancing well into the night.

Sunday the race continues, but first, in front of City Hall, the racers will be required to sing their way into the hearts of the krowd, and perform a sobriety test to prove that the Ball libations did not dull their senses. The racers begin pedaling at Low Noon, Kinetic Kops will issue citations, kontrolling khaos and konfusion at the event, while the glorious judges look on to find their favorites. Bribes given freely may help to keep the judges marking you high and help persuade the kops to ignore felonious indiscretions, and bribing the Kinetic Konsortium is always wise. Racers complete the route around 5pm if they are lucky, and arrive at the awards ceremony muddy, sore, and yet brimming with well earned Glory!

The Wayne Horvitz Septet is joined by numerous Pacific Northwest literary luminaries for a celebration of poet Richard Hugo.

An Evening of Music and Poetry with Wayne Horvitz Setptet
7:30pm, October 7, 2015 |  Wheeler Theater, Fort Worden, Port Townsend, WA

Known for his multifaceted musical personality, composer/musician Wayne Horvitz ventures into progressively‑inclined acoustic jazz and ultra‑modern classicism in his latest project, Some Places Are Forever Afternoon. Written in honor of the iconic Northwest poet Richard Hugo (1923‑82), Some Places Are Forever Afternoon is a suite of 11 compositions based on the poems of Hugo’s.

Centrum is honored to welcome Horvitz and his septet in concert. During the performance, each of the poems referenced by Horvitz will be read by Bill Ransom, Frances McCue, Tree Swenson, Tom Aslin, and others (see end of post for list and bios).

“It is Hugo’s enduring love of music, rambling, and the places of the Northwest that inspired me to interpret his work.” Wayne Horvitz.

Richard Hugo

Richard Hugo was born in White Center, and lived throughout the Northwest before settling in Missoula, Montana. He taught poetry at the University of Montana, and is the inspiration for a plethora of writers of the west, including James and Lois Welch, William Kittredge, Frances McCue and countless others. The Richard Hugo House in Seattle is named in his memory. Hugo passed away in 1982.

From West Marginal Way to La Push to the Union Bar Grill in rural Montana, Horvitz followed Hugo’s footsteps and visited some of the people and places that inspired the writer.

“Having grown up in the culture of the 60s, I am always fascinated by the writers, poets, painters and musicians who were the precursors to the giant sea change that happened in the 60s.” Wayne Horvitz

Like much of Horvitz’s oeuvre, Some Places Are Forever Afternoon is skillfully constructed by combining jazz sonorities and harmonies in a composed structure. At times haunting, his imaginative collage of pre‑composed music peppered with improvisation exudes a jazz feel. According to Horvitz, the music directly reflects Hugo’s poems.

“Hugo’s poems are inherently musical because of the way they sound, the way they read, and the way they are structured. Consequently, the music is fairly structured, really instrumental songs, which is not typical of my work.” Wayne Horvitz

Written for septet, Some Places Are Forever Afternoon combines members of two of Horvitz’s most successful groups, Sweeter Than the Day and the Gravitas Quartet.

Horvitz, who turns 60 on Sept. 1, has gone from being a key figure on the 1980s downtown New York music scene (he was the first booker at the Knitting Factory in NY in 1986) to catalyst for another fertile scene in Seattle over the past two decades (he founded Seattle’s performance venue, The Royal Room, in 2011).

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Musical Pieces, Corresponding Hugo Poems, Readers

1. Money or a story (The Milltown Union Bar) 3:34

Joseph Bednarik – Co-publisher of Copper Canyon Press, Port Townsend.

2. those who remain are the worst (Three Stops to Ten Sleep) 4:22

Bruce Bode – Minister at Quimper Unitarian Universalist Fellowship, Port Townsend. Uses poetry extensively in services and has taught numerous courses on American poets.

3. you drink until you are mayor (Dixon) 4:44

Carl Youngmann – Northwind Arts board member; with Ellie Mathews operates North Press, a letterpress studio in Port Townsend.

4. Nothing dies as slowly as a scene (Death of the Kapowsin Tavern) 3:42

Bill Ransom – Northwest poet, co-founder of Centrum Writers Conference, Poetry in the Schools colleague of Richard Hugo and William Stafford. Most recent poetry from Blue Begonia Press:  The Woman and the War Baby.

5. all weather is yours no matter how vulgar? (Fairfield) 5:06

Amy Johnson – Participant in NW poetry slams; current volunteer coordinator for Port Townsend Marine Science Center.

6. the beautiful wives (Missoula Softball Tournament) 5:55

Tom Aslin – MFA student of Richard Hugo; poet and Hugo scholar. 2015 faculty member at Centrum Writers Conference, where he taught about Hugo.

7. for Jim and Lois Welch (Cataldo Mission) 2:18

Deborah Hammond – Port Townsend poet, singer, instrumentalist, has always believed that music is poetry and poetry is music. She’s grateful to be at a wedding of the two.

8. in some other home (The Only Bar in Dixon) 5:17

Walter Parsons – Former executive director of KCTS Seattle, former board director of Copper Canyon Press.

9. The car that brought you here still runs (Degrees of Gray in Philipsburg) 10:27

Frances McCue – Co-founder and first director of Richard Hugo House, Seattle. Co-author of The Car That Brought You Here Still Runs, (UW Press, 2010) in which she and photographer Mary Randlett take a sentimental journey through Richard Hugo’s triggering towns of Montana, Idaho and Washington.

10. last place there (for Richard Hugo – No Poem) 3:28

11. You must have stayed hours (Driving Montana) 4:14

Katrina Hays – Former opera singer and river guide before finding her way to writing. Her poetry and essays have appeared in numerous publications. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the Rainier Writing Workshop at Pacific Lutheran University, and lives in Bend, Oregon.

12. Some places are forever afternoon (West Marginal Way) 4:13

Tree Swenson – Executive director of Hugo House, the writers center in Seattle. She previously directed the Academy of American Poets in New York for ten years. She was also executive director of Copper Canyon Press, which she co-founded.