Blue Heron Tales, Text, & Theater

Tales, Text, & Theater
Blue Heron Middle School
Port Townsend, WA
March 24-28, 2008

The final week of March, Centrum welcomes the entire seventh grade of Port Townsend 's Blue Heron Middle School to Fort Worden to work with movement, visual art, writing, and theater artists.

Now in its 5th year, this innovative collaboration between the Centrum, the Port Townsend School District, the Washington State Arts Commission, and PT Artscape, provides both students and teachers a model experience in arts immersion.

This program is also made possible thanks to the support of:

Homer Smith Insurance
Kristin Manwaring Insurance
Port Townsend Rotary
Port Townsend Kiwanis
Frontier Bank

For more information, please contact Martha Worthley at 360.385.3102 x120.

Sessions:

• Visual Art with Amy Johnson
• Circus Arts with Toby Shaw
• Creative Writing and Poetry with Sierra Nelson
• Japanese Taiko Drumming with Nancy Ozaki and Gary Tsujimoto (One World Taiko)
• Visual Art with Julia Freeman
• Theater with Ashley Martinez
• Social Dancing with Fred Park
• Theater with Amber Wolfe

Amy Johnson pursued her interest in visual art at the University of Colorado at Boulder and received her BFA with concentrations in photography and ceramics. She received her MFA from the University of Washington with a body of work focused on female socialization and identity. Johnson has been a resident at the Archie Bray Foundation for Ceramic Arts in Helena, MT and is in the collections of the University of Montana Museum of Art and Culture and the Archie Bray Foundation. Johnson was the recipient of the Elmer Craig Award from  The National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts in 2006.

Tobias Shaw attended clown college at Estudio Busqueda de Pantomima in Guanajuato, Mexico and trained as an actor at The Pacific Conservatory of the Performing Arts. He has pursued acting, voice and speech, Shakespeare, stage combat, musical theatre, dance, acting styles, movement and has been teaching circus skills for five years. His circus specialties are aerial silk, clowning, juggling, diablo, and gymnastics. For the Blue Heron week, Toby will focus on juggling, diabolo and clowning skills. To see what juggling with a diabolo looks like, check out this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xyTnFQd9W_A.

Sierra Nelson received a Bachelor of Arts degree in English Literature with a creative writing emphasis from Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, NY.  She received a Master of fine Arts in Poetry from the  University of Washington. She is a founding member of a performance duo called the Typing Explosion. They have created spontaneous poems from pet names and political slogans; physics equations and declarations of love. To date, the Typing Explosion have created more than 5,000 original individual poems. Sierra has been a visiting artist at at the Seattle Public libraries, Richard Hugo House and Bumbershoot. Her work has been published in a variety of literary journals.

Julia Freeman received  a bachelor of art degree from Roanoke College. She attended the Kansas City Art Institute and the University of Helsinki, Finland.  She graduated in June 2007 from the University of Washington and received a Master of Fine Arts in fibers. She recently had a solo exhibition at the Richard Hugo House in Seattle, and participated in group exhibitions at the Art Factory in Seoul, Korea, Arts Incubator in Kansas City, Missouri and the Port Angeles Sculpture Park in Port Angeles. She was recently nominated for the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Biennial Competition Award for 2008.

Ashley Martinez is an actress and arts educator based out of Los Angeles.  She has acted in productions including Little Shop of Horrors, As You Like It, Guys and Dolls, and Nunsense, among many others. Ashley has acted with companies including Utah Shakespearan Festival,  The Glendale Center Theatre, The Norris Center and PCPA Theatrefest, and has directed original projects for Cornerstone Theater Company, Inside Out Community Arts and Intiman Theater.

Founded in San Francisco, California, One World Taiko is led Gary Tsujimoto and Nancy Ozaki. One World Taiko has performed at a four year residency at the Epcot Center's Japan Pavilion at Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida, at Boston's Millenial First Night Celebration, the International Taiko Festival in Berkeley, CA, San Francisco’s Cherry Blossom Festival, and many venues across the USA. One World Taiko presents a contemporary style of Japanese drumming that incorporates dynamic and fluid movement as well as heart pounding percussion.

Frederick Park , from Swannanoa, North Carolina, has been teaching and collecting dances for more than 35 years. The traditions one may experience or revisit under his direction include American circles, squares and contra dances, English country dance, French traditional dance from Chavignol (Sancerroise, Cher), Cajun French two-step and waltz, Scandinavian turning dances and play-party or singing games from Appalachia and the Sea Islands of Georgia on America's southern Atlantic coast. He  has been a teacher, dance instructor, humorist and Master of Ceremonies at every major dance festival in the USA and several overseas. Fred is also a master storyteller.

As a theater artist, Amber Wolfe has performed in productions at Seattle Shakespeare Company (Richard III), Annex Theatre (Red Ink), Empty Space Theater ((L)imitaions of Life), San Diego Repertory (Celebration of the Lizard), and Sledgehammer Theatre in San Diego (The World is Round). She also fronts the band Miss Mamie Lavona the Exotic Mulatta and her White Boy Band, and dances with Ana Montes' Flamenco Danzarte. She also works as a teaching artist for Rainier Valley Youth Theatre.