The Latest in PT
Spring into Fresh & Local in April in Port Townsend
With winter waning and becoming but a fading memory, nature is bursting into bloom. Spring is beckoning hibernating homebodies to come out and play, to breathe the warmer, fragrant air, and relish longer days. So pack your bags and come to Port Townsend for a springtime stay!
Washington Secretary of Health, John Wiesman, will cut the ribbon to open the 23rd season of the Port Townsend Farmers Market on Saturday, April 4 at 9am, followed by the annual Goat Parade, featuring flower-festooned fiddlers, kids (both four-legged and two-legged) with their parents, and of course shoppers, all strolling through the market.
Secretary Wiesman is making the trip to Port Townsend to help celebrate the market opening while promoting his “Healthiest Next Generation” initiative. The goal is to help our children maintain a healthy weight, enjoy active lives and eat well by making changes in early learning settings, schools and communities. Port Townsend already has a head start in meeting a number of the initiative’s goals.
In the last few years, more and more fresh and healthy local produce from Port Townsend Farmers Market growers has made its way to the menus at Jefferson Healthcare and recently into the cafeterias of the Port Townsend schools.
Chef and Director of Food Services, Arran Stark of Jefferson Healthcare, has been a key part of the market’s education program. In addition to building a menu at the hospital that is healthy, tasty, and local, he teaches classes on how to cook local and healthy on a small budget. Chef Arran will give an opening day seasonal vegetable cooking demo in the market’s music tent at 9:30am.
Visitors to the Port Townsend Farmers Market will find lots of seasonal produce: from greens of all shapes and sizes to leeks, potatoes, and lots more. The mild winter and warm spring has led to an early bumper crop of tulips, which will be available by the bucket-load on opening day. Eggs will be in abundance, along with local beef, pork, chicken, lamb and salmon, all direct from the producer or fisherman.
The Port Townsend Farmers Market is open Saturdays from 9am to 2pm, located Uptown on Tyler St. between Lawrence and Clay. For more info, go towww.jcfmarkets.org.
Easter Sunday is April 5. Contact the Port Townsend Visitor Information Center for locations and times of church services, Easter brunch and Easter dinner. Call 360.385.2722 or email info@jeffcountychamber.org.
Celebrate Earth Day weekend at the Port Townsend Marine Science Center on the pier at Fort Worden State Park. See the new Go Blue marine science exhibits opening Friday, April 24 through Sunday, April 26, noon to 5pm. The new Go Blue exhibits feature actions we can take to understand how the ocean sustains our lives and engages in collective solutions for community-wide marine conservation.
The Go Blue endeavor dives deeper into the global issue of ocean health, reveals the human impact of climate change, plastics, and toxics on marine ecosystems, and provides choices for what we can do as a community, and as families, to address it in our own back yard. For more info go to www.ptmsc.org or call 360.385.5582.
Centrum presents Choro—the Sweet Lament of Brazil on Saturday, April 25, at 7:30pm in the Joseph F. Wheeler Theater with five Brazilian musicians joining legendary Israeli jazz artist Anat Cohen. Choro is the lively, improvisational music of Brazil. A relative of American jazz, Choro is one of Brazil’s oldest traditional music styles. Open-seating tickets are $28 and are available at www.centrum.org or by calling 800.746.1982. This concert will sell out, so purchase your tickets early!
The 15th Annual JeffCo EXPO is the weekend of April 25 and 26, 9am to 5pm, at the Jefferson County Fairgrounds. It includes 4×4 events with dirt drags, an obstacle course, the Tough Truck Competition and the Demo Derby for kids and adults. Monster Car rides are available for both days. On Saturday, there’s a horse show and car/bike show. Kids will love the big purple slide and the kids’ U-Fish Pond. For more info, go towww.jeffcofairgrounds.com or call 360.385.1013.
PTFF Women & Film Festival: March 28-29
Welcome 10 award-winning female film directors to Port Townsend with screenings of their work at the Rose and Rosebud Theatres.
For the first time, PTFF brings you a spring festival with a very specific Focus: Women & Film. Screening times are 10 a.m. and 1 p.m. Saturday and Sunday. Passes are $65, include your choice of reservations to see four films. Passes may be purchased online through Thursday at www.ptfilmfest.com.
Passes may also be purchased in person at the Port Townsend Film Festival’s office, 211 Taylor, Suite 401A or by calling 360-379-1333. Rush tickets will be sold for available seating outside the Rose lobby 15 minutes prior to screenings.
A special screening “Regarding Susan Sontag,” and a filmmaker’s roundtable discussion is Saturday night, March 28, at the Northwest Maritime Center, 431 Water St. The Saturday night event is for pass holders only and begins at 7 p.m.
THE FILMS AND FILMMAKERS
War Within the Walls
Director: Courtney Marsh will attend
Chau, a 16-year-old boy living in a Vietnamese peace camp for children genetically disabled by residual Agent Orange, battles with the reality of his dream to one day become a professional clothing designer.
Pink Smoke Over the Vatican
Director Jules Hart will attend
A visually rich and riveting documentary about 100 women ordained as priests in the Roman Catholic Church since 2002. The film begins with the early history of the church, to the seven women ordained on the Danube River in 2002, and provides a glimpse into the ministries of the courageous women ordained in Europe and North America over the past eight years.
Riding My Way Back
Director Robin Fryday will attend
A short documentary that chronicles one soldier’s journey back from the brink of suicide. At his most desperate and isolated, on 42 medications and suicidal, Aaron is introduced to the unlikeliest of saviors: a horse named Fred.
Hidden Pictures
Director Delaney Ruston will attend
Filmmaker Delanie Ruston experienced first-hand the silence that surrounds mental illness and documented in her award-winning film “Unlisted.” Through arresting images and poignant vérité scenes, the film explores questions such as how do families cope in countries where 80 percent of people with mental illness go without treatment? What happens when cultural framing of mental illness conflicts with potentially more effective treatments? How can a person be involuntarily hospitalized with no right to appeal, as is the case in half the world?
Batkid Begins: The Wish Heard Round the World
Director Dana Nachman may attend
Liza Meak Producer/Journalist will attend
The Make-A-Wish story that took the world by storm and turned San Francisco into Gotham City for a day. The crowd-funded film chronicles how then-5-year-old Miles Scott got to live out his superhero dream with the help of the city, President Obama, and thousands of supporters by playing sidekick to the Caped Crusader in a series of staged missions as onlookers cheered him on.
The Vessel
Director Diana Whitten appears via Skype
The Vessel tells the story of Women on Waves, founded in 2000 to provide sexual health services, including early medical abortions (abortion by medication), on board a Dutch ship that floats outside the territorial waters of countries where abortion is illegal.
Farah Goes Bang
Director Meera Menon will attend
A road movie about a young woman hitting the campaign trail for John Kerry with two of her best friends. Along the way, and encouraged by her friends, she tries to lose her long lingering virginity. FGB is a valentine to the adventure of youth, female friendship, and political idealism.
World Fair
Director Amanda Murray
A short documentary exploring memory and amateur cinematography through a singular, spectacular event: the 1939 New York World’s Fair. On the heels of the Great Depression and with war mounting overseas, millions of people traveled to a former ash dump in Queens to catch a fleeting glimpse of a better future. The film weaves together the memories of former fairgoers—now in their eighties and nineties—with vibrant archival footage and a textured original score, transporting viewers to the futuristic and hopeful realm of the 1939 New York World’s Fair.
Get Together Girls
Director Vanessa Crocini appears via Skype
In the mountains around Nairobi, Kenya, and more precisely close to the village of Ngong, there is a place where education, protection, creativity and initiative have come together to give hope for a better future and a great opportunity for a group of Kenyan girls. “Anita’s Home” is part of the Koinonia Community projects for former street girls.
Symphony of the Soil
Director Deborah Koons Garcia will attend
Unlike many recent documentaries about our careless stewardship of the planet, Deborah Koons Garcia’s “Symphony of the Soil” doesn’t feel like a rap on the knuckles. Unfolding with gentle joy and an unexpected beauty, this ode to the miracle of the Earth’s topmost layer gives us a newfound respect for the ground beneath our feet. Filming on four continents and with contributions from impassioned scientists, farmers and foodies, Ms. Garcia explains how dead dirt is transformed into living soil–and, perhaps more important, how many of our farming practices are effecting the reverse.
I Am Eleven
Director Genevieve Bailey appears via Skype
Australian filmmaker Genevieve Bailey traveled the world for six years talking with 11-year-olds to compose this insightful, funny and moving documentary portrait of childhood. From an orphanage in India, to a single-parent household in inner city Melbourne, to bathing with elephants in Thailand, “I Am Eleven” explores the lives and thoughts of children from 15 countries. The film weaves together deeply personal and at times hilarious portraits of what it means to sit at this transitional age.
Play it Up in Port Townsend in March
Be inspired. Be entertained. Pack the car and come to Port Townsend for an exciting weekend to match your mood and interests: from a theatre-lover’s feast of new plays to the opportunity to live the Victorian life for a few days to the melodic sounds of a quartet of guitars. Buy your tickets early as each of the events will sell out quickly. This is a month you won’t want to miss!
New plays from national and Jefferson County playwrights: (l-r, Deborah Daline, D.D. Wigley, Doug Given, Sandy Diamond, Christopher Clow, Susan Solley). Photo by Phil Baumgaertner.
Nine talented playwrights will present their work over two weekends, March 5-15, 2015, at Key City Public Theatre’s PT PlayFest, featuring winning one-acts with open rehearsals of plays-in-progress, playwriting workshops, staged readings and full productions.
“Locals Weekend,” March 5-8, 2015, features the winning one-acts and precedes the jam-packed “Festival Weekend,” March 12-15, 2015, when three days of back-to-back events in two separate venues (Key City Playhouse and the nearby Pope Marine Building) will satisfy even the most voracious theater-goer.
KCPT’s featured guest playwright this year is Doris Baizley, who will join audiences on the night of Friday, March 13, 2015, to attend and discuss her full-length play Neel Beaux.
Directing the play will be KCPT Artistic Director Denise Winter who comments, “I’m excited about Neel Beaux because it tells the story of two artists who come into their own at completely different times in their lives. It’s a perfect story for Port Townsend, in particular, because we have so many artists here that are hitting their artistic strides at different ages.” www.keycitypublictheatre.org.
2014 Girls Boat Project participants. Photo by Kim Carver.
The Northwest Maritime Center will host the 2nd Annual She Tells Sea Tales storytelling event on Saturday, March 7, 2015. Doors open at 6 pm and the event starts at 7 pm. Eleven women mariners will share their experiences of the sea through poetry, prose, storytelling, and song in a fun-filled evening that benefits the Girls’ Boat Project. The Girls’ Boat Project is in its third year of running a for-credit high school program that helps young women to learn the marine trades. www.nwmaritime.org.
Victorian steam boat, photo by Kevin Mason.
Imagine walking down Port Townsend’s bustling waterfront in the late 1880s when maritime commerce was at a frenzied peak. Picture Port Townsend Bay filled with tallships, many of them loading or unloading goods at Union Wharf. The 19th Annual Victorian Festival, March 20-22, 2015, shows how the maritime industry shaped the culture during those volatile decades of expansion, and economic tumult, and its effect here in Port Townsend.
Friday night kicks off with a rousing Sea Shanty Sing-Along at 7 pm, followed by theVictorian Pub Crawl at 8 pm, featuring saloons, “shanghai tunnels,” and fine vintage cocktails through a “staggering” selection of Port Townsend’s (in)famous watering holes.
Learn about maritime history on Saturday with explanations of rigging, sails, and celestial navigation, along with old favorites like the manly arts of self-defense. Take a steam boat ride. Watch a bicycle demo. Learn about corsets. Partake in a Victorian tea. Cap off the day with the Fashion Show, then attend the Victorian Ball at 7 pm, and the Contra Dance at 9 pm. All ages are welcome and bring your stompin’ boots!
On Sunday, from 11 am – 3 pm, take the “Insider’s Historic Building Tours” revealing intriguing stories from the past, as well as visions for the future, in structures located both downtown and uptown.
Join us for a celebration of the old that is new again, bringing together scholars, enthusiasts and curiosity-seekers from across the Pacific Northwest.www.VictorianFestival.org.
Los Angeles Guitar Quartet, photo by Jiro Schneider.
Top off the month with Centrum’s Grammy Award-winning Los Angeles Guitar Quartet on Sunday, March 29, 2015 at 2 pm in the Joseph F. Wheeler Theater at Fort Worden State Park. These four uniquely accomplished musicians bring a new energy to the concert stage with programs ranging from Bluegrass to Bach. Their inventive, critically-acclaimed transcriptions of concert masterworks provide a fresh look at the music of the past, while their interpretations of works from the contemporary and world-music realms continually break new ground.
Programs include Latin, African, Far East, Irish, Folk and American Classics, transporting listeners around the world in a single concert experience. www.centrum.org.
Enjoy Port Townsend’s varied and exciting events in March!
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