'Rocky Horror' To Show At Pre-Halloween Bash: KXLL Radio Sponsors Party and Showing of Cult Movie On Oct. 24

Web Posted October 23, 2008

By Libby Sterling | For the Juneau Empire

Multitudes of cult-classic movie fans and Halloween enthusiasts are preparing to rock on Friday, Oct. 24, at the Rocky Horror Halloween Bash.

The event, held at the Juneau Arts & Culture Center, is a fundraiser for Excellent Radio, 100.7 FM, and will consist of a dance party starting at 9 p.m. and a midnight showing of "The Rocky Horror Picture Show."

"This is the first showing for a long time in Juneau," said event organizer Andy Kline.

According to Kline, it's one thing to watch the film in the quiet of one's own home, and quite another to experience it with a group of people who are eager to participate.

Serious Rocky Horror fans may already know all of the parts where the audience has a duty to play a part, whether it's to holler a phrase or throw something at the screen. For first-timers, cheat sheets with cues will be provided.

The $5 cover will also include a goody bag with all the necessary props for audience involvement.

"In bigger cities, there are people who are totally dedicated to this and come dressed as various characters. A lot of people have come up to me and said they can't wait and can't believe we haven't had a showing in Juneau," Kline said.

The film was originally released in 1975 and was one of the original "Midnight Movies" shown around the country in the 1970s. It was screened alongside other countercultural, offbeat films, but remains a favorite among devotees around the world.

"We're really trying to do it exactly like it should be done," Kline said.

Preceding the midnight movie will be a Halloween-themed dance party emceed by Eric Caldwell of PolarSounds Entertainment. Partygoers are encouraged to dress in costume, whether it be in a Rocky Horror motif or otherwise. Wearers of the best costumes will be rewarded with prizes.

Caldwell will be in control of sensory items such as dance-inducing music, atmosphere-enhancing lighting and MTV-style music videos that will be projected on the big screen.

"At the Halloween Bash, we want to make everyone feel like Excellent Radio opened a nightclub. That means bright lights, big sound and music that is both cool and edgy. Because we're going to have the big screen on hand for 'The Rocky Horror Picture Show' and PolarSounds Entertainment's eclectic collection of several thousand music videos, it's going to be the wildest music video party Juneau has ever seen," Caldwell said.

Caldwell is also the host of "80s Nation" which airs Friday nights at 8 p.m. on KXLL. Because of the show, he said he has become known as "the 80s guy," and hopes the Halloween Bash will be a good opportunity to remind people that he knows other music besides 80s, especially since most of his DJ'ing career has occurred well after the decade came to a close.

Folks of all ages are welcome to attend the bash, and there will be a beer garden sponsored by the Alaskan Brewing Co. for those of legal age.

Arts, Music, Beer At Autumn Festival: Oct. 18 event moves indoors to Culture Center

Photo courtesy of Mayumi Arimitsu

Web Posted October 16, 2008

By Libby Sterling | For the Juneau Empire

Juneau's annual Autumn Festival will celebrate its fifth year this weekend with a move to the rain-free Juneau Arts & Culture Center.

From noon until 10 p.m. on Saturday, Oct. 18, attendees can partake of the sweet fruits of locals' labor through various arts and crafts offerings, and can enjoy live music and games. There will also be food aplenty, including Kettle Korn, Fry Bread and Chef Stef's catering. Edibles will be accompanied by a beer garden, sponsored by the Rendezvous and the Alaskan Brewing Co., opening at 2 p.m.

For the first four years of its existence, the festival was held at Marine Park. This year, the festivities have outgrown their former wall-less setting and organizers have opted to move the event indoors - just in case the weather happens to be less-than-desirable.

Founder, organizer, and master delegator Rachael Juzeler said she is interested in seeing how the change in venue will affect the turnout.

"People will hang out longer, I'm guessing," she said. "When we did it downtown, we didn't get so many passersby because people weren't really walking downtown anyway. They came down exclusively for this. It's super community (oriented), everyone knows each other, there are kids running around like crazy, and I expect nothing less again," she said.

Juzeler said she and a friend got the idea for a street fair around the time that Marine Park was constructed. The city was on board with the concept, but with the stipulation that the festival would have to wait until the cruise ship season came to a close, timing which naturally accommodated an autumn theme.

"It's a good kickoff for winter," Juzeler said. "It's a great place to do all your Christmas shopping in advance."

Musical performances will run all day long, and will include sets by Teri Tibbett, Train Wreck, Slow Gun Runner, Brook Morgan and others. There will also be time dedicated to impromptu performers during an open mike session.

Between musical performances, the Alaskan Brewing Co. will present awards to the winners of this year's Autumn Pour Homebrew competition. Ale-brewing champions will be announced at 4 p.m.

Another highlight will be a game called cornhole. This recreational activity is closely related to horseshoes, but rather than tossing an iron crescent around a stake, players fling cornhole bags filled with corn, beans, or sand at a target on a raised platform.

Arts and crafts tables will include work made by local jewelers, ceramicists, glass workers, knitters and more. There will also be interactive tables for children of all ages to discover and express their inner autumn creativity.

Juzeler said she expects the arts and crafts tables to sell out of products and close down around 5 p.m.

"That always seems to happen at this festival because we do have a lot of people that come through," she said.

Juzeler runs the festival as a volunteer, and is not necessarily affiliated with or sponsored by any one organization.

"It's basically just me. I have a lot of good volunteers that come and help me set things up," she said.

Admission is free, and proceeds will benefit the Juneau Arts & Humanities Council.

"It's basically just a community event with community people playing and community people all working together and showing all their stuff," Juzeler said.

Puccini Opera In Triplicate: Three acts, three sets, three costume changes highlight "Il Trittico"

Italian opera: Performers rehearse a scene from "Gianni Schicchi," the third act of "Il Trittico." From left are Therese Thibodeau, Aaron Elmore, Philippe Damerval, Wade Rogers, Cathy Pashigian and Kathleen Wayne. The opera consists of three one-act operas: "Il Tabarro," "Suor Angelica," and "Gianni Schicchi." They were composed by Giacomo Puccini and will be performed over the next two weekends at the Juneau-Douglas High School auditorium. The Amalga Chamber Orchestra will provide instrumental accompaniment to the performances.

Photo courtesy of Dave Depew

Web posted October 2, 2008

By Libby Sterling | for the Juneau Empire

It's unlikely that attendees to this weekend's performances of Giacomo Puccini's "Il Trittico" will have to journey to the lengths that Puccini did to attend opera productions when he was a young man. He and his brother once walked more than 18 miles from their home in Lucca, Italy, to see a performance of Verdi's "Aida" in Pisa.

Apparently it was well worth the trip. That performance is said to have spurred him to begin his career as a composer.

Now, 150 years after his birth, Puccini's work is still being remembered and celebrated in such faraway places as Alaska.

Juneau's own Opera To Go will launch its 2008-09 season with performances of Puccini's "Il Trittico." The opera consists of three one-act operas - "Il Tabarro," "Suor Angelica" and "Gianni Schicchi" - and will be performed with the Amalga Chamber Orchestra at the Juneau-Douglas High School auditorium. Puccini designed the three to be presented as a triptych, though they also are quite often seen separately.

"This is a different type of production," said Roald Simonson, the stage director. "It takes three sets, three casts, three lighting designs and three sets of costumes. But when you perform all three together, there are interesting relations that make a kind of emotional art," he said.
"Il Tabarro" ("The Cloak"), the first opera of the three, is set on a barge on the Seine River. What appears to be a very normal day of chores for the deckhands quickly turns into a battle for control by the three members of a love triangle. A wife plans an adulterous scheme with her new flame, and though her husband has his suspicions, they remain unconfirmed. However, through a series of unfortunate coincidences, husband and lover meet face-to-face, and only one of them will walk away from the encounter alive.

"Suor Angelica" ("Sister Angelica") takes place in a convent and focuses on a nun who has spent the last seven years escaping the worries and shame of her past life in the comfort of the church. She receives a visit from a family member bearing less-than-ideal news: Her young son, whom she hasn't seen since birth, died two years prior. Out of love, brokenness and regret, she makes the decision to force her own death to rejoin her son in the clouds. She concocts a poison and consumes it, only afterward fully grasping the reality of her decision. With a prayer to the Virgin Mary, the heavens open and mother and child are reunited.

Performer Patricia Kalbrener said "Suor Angelica" will be her first performance with Opera To Go.

"I've been in musicals before but there had always been some break in melodic action for whatever reason - a dance or spoken-word downtime - but the opera is just one big song, and when no one is singing the orchestra carries the music as if someone still were, so the flow of story is impeccable," she said.

Kalbrener said her role as a nun provided an opportunity to get to know the other performers.
"We are all sister nuns," she said, "wandering about our nunny business and existing together in the convent. It feels like we carry the sisterhood offstage with us, honestly."

"Gianni Schicchi," the third opera, takes place at the deathbed of a very wealthy Italian man, who is surrounded by a plethora of his relatives. The family, however, isn't hanging around to offer support to this poor man, but rather for what they may receive as their inheritance upon the moment of his death. Rumor eventually makes its way to the family that the funds they plan on assuming have already been promised to a local monastery. They scramble to find a way to change the man's will before their money goes out the window, and decide on a delegate to impersonate the old man just long enough to dictate a new will.

The delegate, however, decides to play his own trick on the rest of the family, laying down the will to be very much in his favor.

Meanwhile, his family is powerless to intervene, lest the whole scheme becomes uncovered and each of them loses a hand - the punishment for being an accessory to fraud at that time in Florence.

"The third opera has Puccini's most famous melody of all," Simonson said. "People who don't even know opera will recognize it. It's called 'O mio babbino caro,' meaning, 'Oh, my dear papa', and it has been heard in car commercials and many other familiar, non-operatic settings."

Juneau will have a chance to experience the "Il Trittico" both as a whole and in parts. "Il Tabarro" and "Suor Angelica" will be performed twice, on Oct. 4 and Oct. 10, as will "Gianni Schicchi," on Oct. 5 and Oct. 12. The entire "Il Trittico" will be performed Saturday, Oct. 11.

Tickets are available at both Hearthside Books locations and at the door. Each ticket purchased will be honored at every performance with no attendance limit, giving audience members a chance for an opera overdose.

Thirty-three performers make up the cast of the three operas, some of whom will double-dip and participate in as many as two of the productions.

"It's theater, and we're all there for the same reason; we want to make it as entertaining as possible," Kalbrener said.