Daemond Arrindell. Every Wednesday night at Spitfire Grill in Belltown, The Seattle Poetry Slam hosts a spoken word extravaganza. 8 p.m., $5 cover, 21 & over IC required, go to www.seattlepoetryslam.org. 

Tim Hyland is performing at the Seattle Children's Theatre in Pharaoh Serket and the Lost Stone of Fire running January 30 - March 7.  For more information, www.sct.org

Marya Sea Kaminski is performing in The Road to Mecca at the Seattle Rep on 1/21 and it runs through 2/14. Marya will be playing the role of Elsa (directed by Leigh Silverman, written by Athol Fugard).  For more information, go to  www.seattlerep.org.

John Longenbaugh will be directing John Lennon's Gargoyle by Bryan Willis at North Seattle Community College. It's a modern-day reimagining of Candide in which a guy with some of the worst luck in the world comes to terms with just who's responsible for it. Performing Friday and Saturday Evenings at 7:30, February 20, 21, 27, 28 and March 6 and 7; and Sundays at 2pm, March 1 and 8. Special matinee Wednesday, February 25 at noon.  John also recently became the PR Manager at the 5th Avenue Theatre.

Paul Mullin will be doing a workshop/reading of his new farce with Circle X Theatre in LA on February 9.  For more information go to: www.paulmullin.org

The Journey to Submission by Jesse Putnam (continued)

But what to submit? I'd written several full-length plays, two screenplays, and-thanks to Elizabeth Heffron's classes-a host of shorts, but what could I choose to wow the judges with? Maintaining a proper sense of humility and perspective, I scrambled to find the very best thing I had ever written. Something that would thrill the crowd, have my actor friends begging to take part, get George to forget all about New Zealand (or wherever he jets off to) and eventually launch my work onto Bart's intimate stage.

Having nothing that would remotely do any of those things, I settled on a little piece I had sketched out this summer-a tender story about a broken man who conspires with his pregnant adulterous wife to murder his recently widowed mother in order to collect her life insurance payout which ends with a mass suicide. I figured I'd debut with a real tear jerker. I let Jeff Woodbridge (the famed co-director of Freehold's amazing summer hit The Man Who Came to Dinner) read it and he liked it enough to encourage me to submit it. And so, with 'lofty expression and measured tread' (Don Quixote's grandiose dementia seems an appropriate reference here), at long last I turned my work in for consideration! [beat] Yikes.

About thirty seconds after dropping my Studio Series application into the box at the Lake City post office I was on the phone with Jenny at Freehold: "Jenny! [gulp] Listen! I made a big mistake-I applied for the studio series. In a couple of days you are going to get an envelope from me in the mail. Please tear it up! Please!" This was not unlike the conversations Jenny and I had after every class I registered for, so she was calm and understanding (and probably thought I would change my mind after my next meal, as I usually did). But unlike registering for a class, which means public terror on a modest scale, this was a step toward total exposure failure. I thought about breaking into the post box to retrieve the application, but reasoned that stopping my work from being considered for a workshop wasn't quite worth a year in federal prison. Besides, Jenny would intercept it.

Jenny did not intercept it. Kate got the mail that day or Jenny forgot or the mailman met George on the curb to share a smoke and so he picked up the mail-whatever! Something happened and my work made into the pile of submissions, the committee read it, and they accepted it for the series. That's supposed to be a good thing. Right? Yeah, well luckily I knew just what to do: go get the best director I can find and hope for a miracle. And if I don't get the miracle and the play pans-blame him.

That's pretty much the end of the story about how I finally got my work out there. It'll soon be seen-hopefully not by anyone important, but by somebody. Maybe you. I know I seem calm about this whole deal, but deep down I am really nervous. Thank god I have a good director. I mean, he's pretty good - let's just see how it goes.

Jesse Putnam is a Freehold acting student in Robin Lynn Smith's Meisner class. He also writes stuff and hides it.
Jesse's play will be performed as part of the Studio Series Week 3 running February 20 and 21 at 7:30 pm and on February 21 at 2:00 pm.

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What has the process been like as you have been in rehearsals over the last few months? 

The challenge with this type of work, being spare movement, has been the clarity and efficiency of the movement and clearly portraying the steps of the characters' thought processes and actions.  Also, I've been riding the line of how much to literally reveal of story and how much to leave for the audience to fill in.  The surprise has been the life the other actors (Ted and Brynna) have brought to it and I have had to remain open to allowing the work to go these unexpected directions.
 
What are your hopes for your upcoming piece?

I would feel successful if we have created for the audience a theatrical place that is consistent with the feelings of the events I experienced in my life.

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The musical part - maybe that was a product of my environment.  Shakespeare doesn't sell well in Southern Illinois, but a good high-school production of Oklahoma will sell plenty of fund-raiser candy bars.  Musicals were pretty much the opportunities that were available in community theatre or school.  We used to do musicals in this old Opera House built in 1905.  I'll never figure that one out - that town had maybe 2,500 people in it.  We had one gas station, two restaurants, at least six taverns and a small grocery store, but in the middle of downtown (all six blocks of it) there was a 400-seat vaudeville house.
 
I think I went to college to study music theatre because it was my "thing", and there I learned respect and fascination for the craft and the never-ending challenge of it.  Thinking about it now, I've probably stuck it out because it's such a unique art form in its power to move people.  Live music is powerful.  Dance inspires.  Choral singing can give you goose bumps in a way nothing else can.  Weaving them all together with a great story takes it to a whole new level.  I believe deeply in the power of story and metaphor to transcend intellectual, social, emotional, and spiritual boundaries and impact hearts.  Great stories in any art form bob and weave around the walls we put up in our minds and shoot straight to the soul, but music seems to speak the language of the soul as fluently and piercingly as I've seen any artistic discipline express itself. 
 
Many musicals serve to simply transcend people from their hard everyday life to a more joyful place and bring people together in community to celebrate life.  That in itself has value.  A precious few musicals have the chance to change hearts and our cultural conversation at the deepest levels.  I think West Side Story did that.  Cabaret did that.  Big River was worthy to do that but didn't quite catch on.  Rent, and in a different way even Avenue Q have done that.  Cats definitely did that (just kidding).

What excites and challenges you about the musical theatre work that you have done?

I love that the styles are so diverse.  Each show is a new challenge, a new code to crack.  Though I fancy myself a leading man, my work has been more character oriented, but that's given me the chance to do so much.  In Seattle, I've been the guy who discovered rock and roll, Sam Phillips and shared the stage with "Elvis" and "Johnny Cash".  I've been a rock and roll, drunken, tap-dancing child molester in Tommy, a jealous anvil salesman, a crazed German headwaiter in Dolly, P.T. Barnum, a Tin Man, a Cat who dances with a "pickle car", and a Bunny.  
 
In Goodnight Moon, which I'm returning to this spring at Seattle Children's Theatre, I had to pull out all my tricks: play piano, tap dance, physical comedy, simple, naturalistic acting (not kidding), puppetry, fake the violin, sing.  That show is a big challenge, but it's also pure playtime. 
 
Two things excite me the most, though.  One is a story with a real message, a deep gift to be bestowed to the audience.  The other is finding the most honest, deepest desires of any character - of taking these broad, varied characters and grounding them in the longings of the heart. 
 
Also, in Seattle I've had the good fortune to work on and workshop several new musicals.  That, I think, is great fun and rewarding work.

How do you see the musical theatre work being different and similar to the non-musical theatre work you have done?
 
I think that with all the extra "toys" available to you in a musical - be it song, dance, or the usual tricked out special effects and lighting systems that accompany big shows, it can be easy to lose the story.  That may be one of the biggest challenges.  It can be hard to know when to keep things simple and basic.  It can also be hard to know when it's time to take a risk and unleash imagination and whimsy onto a production number.
 
I've found that music theatre demands a great deal of specificity, or at least attention to detail.  The first thing that happens when a young actor starts singing is that the story gets lost in emotion or feeling.  I don't know that this makes musical theatre different from any stage show, but attention to a detailed journey for the character and a well thought through physical life for the actor is a must.  It's strange.  You might get away with gesturing organically and spontaneously in an Arthur Miller play, but a big solo song, duet, or even group number demands great physical specificity to communicate well. 

You report that some of your favorite experiences include The Gentleman Caller in THE GLASS MENAGERIE, Cosmo Brown in SINGING IN THE RAIN, Danny Zuko in GREASE, and Tony in WEST SIDE STORY.  Can you describe what made those favorite experiences/performances?

Hadn't thought about it before, but each of those shows, most of which were early in my career, stretched and challenged me in new ways.  I fought hard for Singing in the Rain, choreographing my own tap number to prove to the director I could hold my own.  I was the last person I would ever have thought of to be Danny Zuko, and it pulled out a side of me I didn't know I had.  West Side was my first big professional lead, and I had just learned to sing as a tenor (I'd been trained as a baritone for years.), so that was a big, scary mountain to climb.

What do you think is the greatest misconception about acting in musical theatre?
 
That it's easy.

What projects or characters are you hoping to work on in the future?
 
I got to understudy and go on here in Seattle for Harold Hill in The Music Man, but I have yet to do the part all my own.  That's one of my all time favorites.
 
George in Sunday in the Park with George is a big one on my list.  I'd also like to play the dad in Secret Garden.  The Emcee in Cabaret, the Baker in Into the Woods.  I'll think of more as soon as I stop typing, I'm sure.  I'd also love to voice and perform a Muppet.

For more information about Matt's upcoming Musical Theatre Class, check out our website at www.freeholdtheatre.org or contact us at info@freeholdtheatre.org or call us at (206) 323-7499.

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Ten Good Reasons to Study Dramatic Movement
By George Lewis (continued)

8) We have to be more focused than in ordinary life: we must develop extraordinary focus. Movement training teaches how to focus not only with the eyes, not only with the mind, but with the entire body, the entire being.

7) We must also forge a greater relationship between what goes on inside of us and how it manifests physically. We must be available to being affected by what is going on around us, responsive to our impulses stemming from that, and then free to allow those impulses to manifest fully physically and vocally. If the audience doesnīt see and hear it, itīs not happening theatrically.

6) We must have the athletic/gymnastic/physical abilities to allow these impulses to come out and take us further than we allow ourselves to go in everyday life. We may choose not to go all the way, but that is a choice and not because we are afraid or unable.

5) We must learn to choose and shape the form of our expression. Just because in life we might respond to a given circumstance in a certain way, that does not mean it has to be that way onstage. Instinctual movement often follows learned/aquired patterns. There is no ART in that. Art involves choice. We can learn to play freely with rhythm and shape and flow and energy- with the dynamics of time and spoace. Not just the WHAT but also the HOW of physical action.

4) We must learn to do this all dynamically with the partners, both animate (other characters) and inanimate (props and set)

3) We must learn to play with the dynamics of space and time.  Including stillness.

2) We must learn to play freely and fully onstage. To PLAY an action and not just DO it. To find a deep sense of enjoyment in what we do, even if we are playing Othello strangling Desdemona.

1) We have to excite, intrigue, and inspire our audiences to live more fully than they allow themselves. The body does not lie, cannot lie. If we are extraordinarily alive onstage, then we will be doing our job.

Cyrus Khambatta and Jake Perrine are offering a Physical Theatre Class at Freehold running February 11 - March 15.  For more information, contact Freehold at (206) 323-7499 or email us at info@freeholdtheatre.org.