Actors, playwrights and directors from all over Kitsap County are being featured through Aug. 24 in the Island Theatre 10-Minute Plays Festival at Bainbridge Performing Arts.
Shows are at 7 p.m., along with a matinee at 3 p.m. Saturday. Due to a loss of grant funding, they are not free this year. Tickets are $15 for adults, $10 for students, seniors and military. For tickets go to islandtheatre.org
Actors – Zinnia Zeller and Jacob Freimark
In Keller’s first year acting in the festival, she had one word. This year her role is much harder. She’s one of the leads in “Damn Ye Jack Slade,” a spoof of a Western.
What’s making it even tougher is she plays a man. “Playing a guy is a challenge because I’m obviously not a guy,” she said in a phone interview this week. She said her director, Todd Erler, told her she could play the part. “Just think how a guy would act.” Easier said than done because she also plays a cowboy. But Keller said luckily the one guy in the cast, James Macpherson, taught her “how to be tough like guys were at the time.”
Keller plays 18-year-old Robbie hanging out in a prison cell with Slade. He is scheduled to be executed the next day and is waiting for a letter in the form of a presidential pardon. Keller wouldn’t give away the ending, other than to say her character is a dreamer who can see the future in great detail.
Keller, 19, will be a sophomore at Western Washington University in Bellingham after graduating from Bainbridge High School in 2023. An environmental science major, she said she doesn’t have time for drama at WWU. “Their whole lives are devoted to theater,” she said. “It’s just a small piece of my life.”
She does love community theater, however, and hopes to continue doing that as an adult. “I love the community; they’re so supportive of each other,” she said.
Her favorite part of acting is audience response. “You say something and the audience bursts into laughter—that’s one of the best things. I’ve got the audience convinced that it’s real and not a play anymore.”
Keller said she has a “pretty big imagination” and she’s had to with the variety of roles she’s played. She’s also a writer and tends to favor stories of the science fiction-fantasy genre.
Her first role as the lead character was as Megan in “A Wrinkle in Time,” when she was a BHS senior. She had to travel through time to find her father who had disappeared into space. Since she couldn’t relate from any personal experience, obviously, she said she had to watch the movie over and over again to get an idea on how to play the part, which was “moody, isolated.”
Previously, she had a major supporting role in the play “Romona Quimby,” where she had to play a third-grade bully. That also was a challenge. “I’m not used to acting like a bully,” she said. “I had to dig deep—get into the mind of an elementary kid.”
Meanwhile, Freimark is in his first play as an actor in “Blackout.” He said he’s been doing Improv the past few years, which helped him “dive into stage performance.” He does have some previous experience, however, behind and in front of the camera in film.
However, he said he’s always felt he should “be in this realm. I’ve finally caught up to where I thought I should be.”
Freimark said he’s really gotten into this role because it deals with racism. The setting is a dingy bar in Seattle right after the bombing of Pearl Harbor in World War II. He said historical accuracy and education is very important to him. He said the play helps the audience develop a deeper understanding and reflection of the “harsh realities of society.”
Freimark said he plays the role of George, a longshoreman who gets drunk and spouts off racial slurs. He admits he feels somewhat uncomfortable doing that, but, “History isn’t meant to be comfortable.” He said the play highlights the need for continued vigilance against racism. Like the saying goes, “If people forget history they will repeat it.”
Playwright – Lee Lawing
Lee Lawing wrote the play “Blackout,” which could really resonate with folks on BI as it’s about the blackout that was supposed to happen in Seattle Dec. 8, 1941, after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor.
He said the blackout didn’t really happen, but there was a woman who led a protest that included some windows being smashed. She ended up getting a $25 fine.
Lawing said when he read an article about the woman it inspired him because it wasn’t something women were really known to do at the time. “There was a lot of fear” in the nation, Lawing said.
He said usually when he writes a play it’s either accepted or rejected as is. But with this one, he was told it might be better if he worked with the director and actors “to make the acting more dramatic.” Lawing said that’s not really something he’s been able to do in the 200 or so other short plays he’s written since college.
“It’s been exciting for me,” he said, adding it was amazing to see the play “come to life.” Lawing said most of his plays have been shorter ones because of the time it takes, and while playwrighting is his passion it’s not his career.
Some of his plays are about social issues, but most have been comedy or fascicle. The one that has had the most success is called “And They Lived…” He said it has stood the test of time and has been done in many community theaters. He said it’s a take on Romeo and Juliet and involves a midlife crisis.
For him, Lawing said playwrighting is more about the process than the final product. He enjoys looking at pictures that help him develop the characters. “It’s always been about inspiration,” he said.
Director – Steve Solee
Steve Solee is directing the play “The Reservation.” It was written by Aviva Pelton and stars actors Brian Guy and Stacey Higgenbotham.
But he is also a co-founder of Island Theatre and has been producing the 10-Minute Play Festival for all of its 11 years.
At the time they were having conventional annual theatrical productions, Island Theatre at the Library—stripped down, script-in-hand, staged plays and casual potluck play gatherings called Island Theatre at Your House.
They decided to focus on short plays (10 minutes, rather than “one-acts”) and limit participation to Kitsap County residents to keep things manageable, he said.
“The festival allows for inclusion of actors and directors who may not have the free time, experience or skills yet to take on a full-sized commitment,” Solee says in an email.
This year there are about 35 actors, 10 playwrights and 10 directors, along with stage crews and producers. So even though they had to cancel events in 2020-21 due to COVID, he estimates several hundred people have participated in putting on the show over the years, with many more than that attending, of course.
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