Freehold's Engaged Theatre

Summer Tour

by Sarah Harlett

Sarah Harlett has been an active member of the Seattle Theater community for many years. Locally, Sarah has been seen at Seattle Children's Theater, Intiman, New City Theater, Seattle Shakespeare Company, The Empty Space and On the Boards.  Internationally, she performed at the Centre de Danse in Paris, France with the Megan Murphy Company, staying to create a new performance piece with European artists. She graduated from Cornish College of the Arts and received additional training at the Gaiety School of Acting in Dublin, Ireland and with the Royal Shakespeare Company at Oxford University. Sarah was a recipient of the Derek Jacobi Scholarship for her training at Oxford.

In 2005, Robin Lynn Smith asked if I'd be interested in playing Hermione in Freehold's production of The Winter's Tale.  It turned out to be one of the most fulfilling theatrical experiences I have ever had.  An experience that became less about the chance to play this role and much more about the audience. 

The Winter's Tale tour brought us first to the Washington Correctional Center for Women in Purdy.  We made our way through a thorough security screening and set up our touring set in the yard between the guide dog training and the gym.   

I've never experienced audiences like those in Purdy and Monroe Correctional Facilities.   The women at Purdy responded so honestly to The Winter's Tale.  They gasped as the actor playing my husband threw me (with a fake pregnant belly) down to the ground, and were ready to beat the crap out of him afterward. 

Working into Will

by Jesse Putnam

I've been getting to know a few kings lately. Richard and Henry and his boy Hal. Strangely, I'd been hiding from these characters for years and would've continued to - along with their cohort fairies, jesters, courtiers and queens - had not Freehold's own nobility suggested I meet their maker, a certain William Shakespeare.

You see, for years I had been familiarizing myself with the history, conditions and elements of Shakespeare's life, but conspicuously avoided something rather important: the content of his verse. Of course, I had read some of the plays and seen many performed, but most often my experience was one of hearing the musicality of the language, not understanding much of it. No doubt not the first to endure this ignorance, I resolved to end it by taking a Shakespeare class and started at the top: Amy Thone's class at Freehold.

CT Doescher

Tim Hyland

John Jacobsen is stll shooting his tv show for PBS, The Artist Toolbox.  John just interviewed Chef Daniel Boulud (one of the few 4 star chefs in the US) and Isabel and Ruben Toledo (she did Michelle Obama's dress for the inauguration and he is probably the greatest graphic designer in fashion working, does all Nordstrom's ads), and also filmed the legendary jazz pianist, Ramsey Lewis.  Isabelle Allende is next!  John also just got hired to direct and produce a new tv pilot called The Perfect Sweat for The Discovery Channel.  The FilmSchool just had its 2nd Annual Oscar Night Auction which grossed over $160,000.  John is also buying the rights to a Roald Dahl book and writing the script to make that into a movie.  More information on The Artist Toolbox: http://www.mogajacobsen.com/

George Lewis

Eva Abram, Kjerstine Anderson, Shawn Belyea, Susanna Burney, Kevin Cavanah, Luisa Figueira de Paula Collova, Trina Harris, Reginald Andre Jackson, Sylvester Kamara, David Brown King, Kevin McKeon, Kirsten McCory, Lisa Norman, Kate Parker, and Lori Evans will all be performing in Freehold's Engaged Theatre Production of Julius Caesar this summer.  Public Performances:  Wednesday, July 7, 6:30 pm, Saturday, July 10th at 8:00 pm and Sunday, July 11 at 5:00 pm.  More information: Freehold's Julius Caesar

FourPlay is a slate of four short plays selected, directed and produced by a small team of local writers and directors in association with Eclectic Theatre Company.  The team includes several Freehold alumni and students including: Jeff Woodbridge, Louise Penberthy, Rebecca Goldberg (directors), Tom Spangenberg, Moll Frothingham, Jenn Hamblin, Eva Abram (actors) and Jesse Putnam (producer).  The mission of FourPlay is to provide an avenue for new Seattle playwrights to see their work onstage.  Shows run the second and third weekends of June at 8 pm at Odd Duck Studio.  The show on Friday the 18th of June will be a benefit for Freehold Theatre in support of our writing programs.  More information here: http://fourplayseattle.weebly.com/index.html

Cathleen O'Malley completed her MFA in physical theatre at the London International School of Performing Arts (LISPA).  Performed in London, Budapest & Silkeborg, Denmark with grotesque comedy troupe, Relax Your Face.  Have returned to the US to work in Bethlehem, PA with Touchstone Theatre ensemble, a Lecoq-based experimental theatre company there. 

Step I: Intro to Acting with George Lewis
Step I:  Intro to Acting with Sarah Harlett
Step II: Acting with Text with Sarah Harlett
Step III: Basic Scene Study with Marya Sea Kaminski
Acting for the Camera with John Jacobsen
Advanced Clown with George Lewis
Alexander Technique Intensive:  For the Actor's Toolbox with Cathy Madden
Movement Intensive with George Lewis
New Play Lab with Dickey Nesenger
Playwriting I with Paul Mullin
Crafting the 10 Minute Playwith John Longenbaugh
Shakespeare Intensive with Amy Thone
Solo Performance and Presentation with Marya Sea Kaminski
Voice and Voice Over with Gin Hammond

TO REGISTER:  http://www.freeholdtheatre.org/studio
or (206) 323-7499. 

Freehold's Engaged Theatre Summer Tour

by Sarah Harlett

Continued ...

At the Monroe Correctional Facility for Men, they even found new humor for us.  After one character asked "Where is the thief?", one man in the audience raised his hand and said "That's me."  But both audiences were so quiet during Hermione's trial scene, as she plead her innocence and asked the gods for justice.   Their investment in the story we were sharing with them was palpable.

In the 2009 Othello tour, we were given the opportunity to perform in the Maximum Security Unit.  A new location for the tour.  Once we arrived in that unit, it was a struggle not to be nervous as men serving sentences in Maximum Security arrived.  These men were so silent during the performance it was eerie.  I certainly didn't know how they would respond to Othello strangling his wife, Desdemona.  Yet, afterward, they asked incredibly poignant questions about the play and offered amazing insight into our characters.  The kind of questions and comments actors only hope will come out of a post-play discussion. 

All of these audiences were relating so honestly to what we were portraying.  That surprising openness made me feel more responsibility as an actor.  To tell this story honestly and to be present onstage every moment, because this story was for them.

Now, I have begun rehearsal for this summer's Julius Caesar tour.  I've been thinking, if the original actors were storytellers around a fire, then we actors need to remember our craft is the sharing of a story that needs to be told.  Now.  Here.  To this particular audience.  Our judgments about our audience, our ideas about what they will like and won't, our judgments about ourselves and each other, just hinder us.  As Robin has said, this is about "honoring the humans that we all are". 

Public Performances of Julius Caesar:

Wednesday, July 7, 6:30 pm at Seward Park Amphitheater,

5898 Lake Washington Blvd. S.

Saturday, July 10 at 8:00 pm at Broadway Performance Hall, 1625 Broadway

Sunday, July 11 at 5:00 pm at Broadway Performance Hall

Tickets:  Pay What You Can

Questions: (206) 323-7499 x14 or kate@freeholdtheatre.org

Working with Will by Jesse Putnam

Continued ...

One of the things I value most about Freehold is thus: the instructors are expert at feeding complex and challenging material to the most frightened minds with minimal violence. In classic Freehold form, Amy started us off with what may be The Bard's most challenging verse to speak. She had each of us select a sonnet and dive into it - learn the language, experience the sounds, look up those strange yet perfect words. Essentially, get to know the poet's voice through (perhaps) his purest verse.

After leafing through my book of Shakespeare's sonnets to find one that struck me, I chose Sonnet 46.

Mine eye and heart are at a mortal war
How to divide the conquest of thy sight;
Mine eye my heart thy picture's sight would bar,
My heart mine eye the freedom of that right.
My heart doth plead that thou in him dost lie --
A closet never pierced with crystal eyes --
But the defendant doth that plea deny
And says in him thy fair appearance lies.
To 'cide this title is impaneled
A quest of thoughts, all tenants to the heart,
And by their verdict is determined
The clear eye's moiety and the dear heart's part:

  As thus; mine eye's due is thy outward part,

  And my heart's right thy inward love of heart.

I wasn't sure why this sonnet caught my attention, but as I studied it, recited it and played with it through performance, I found it landed quite neatly in my heart. Or is it my eye? That is the question it raised for me: which part of my human experience do I credit to for discovering things dear to me, and which do I trust to see the true value of things? The noble but temporal eye, or the sometimes mythic yet dependable heart. That Shakespeare meant to offer this as a broad philosophical dilemma, without a specific target that set off the war between heart and eye, is something scholars may not agree with. But it felt remarkably precise to me - a question I had considered many times, albeit more gracefully posed in this sonnet than in my thoughts.

Having tasted this beautiful language and eager for more, Amy gave each of us a soliloquy to work on. With these we were each coached, as we had been with the sonnets; working ourselves into a relationship with the verse, the characters and the stories. Through the work on my soliloquy I found a joy in the writing that all but replaced the intimidation I once felt. I was given a speech from Henry V - the part at the beginning of the play when Henry responds to the insult of tennis balls given by the Dauphin. As I worked on it I fell in love with all elements of the scene: the language, the character and his needs, the story, even my comrades within the scene (especially Exeter). All elements seemed to fall together in a harmony that I can't recall every experiencing from text before. Ah, so this is what they meant when they told me about Shakespeare: divinely challenging, richly engaging, elegantly constructed. Yea, perfection.

After the soliloquy work I worked on a scene with my classmate Yasmin, who inhabited a perfect Anne for my Richard to woo. That, too, was as rewarding, rich and enjoyable as the soliloquy. (That's another things I value about Freehold: scene partners who are as committed and interested in the work as I am.)

Through this exploration of Shakespeare, I learned a few key things that helped me stay with it in the rough spots: 1) I had every reason to have felt intimidated about learning Shakespeare. As Amy says, "this stuff's hard!" 2) The language is even more beautiful once understood as when it is simply heard as music. 3) There are clearly lifetimes to be spent exploring this material and all one really need do is make a start... and keep starting.

This last point has been most helpful for me. I see now that I had kept myself away from this material out of fear of not understanding it. What Amy and this class has helped me do is allow it to work on me without the pressure of getting it, or, perhaps the artist's most corrosive thought, desiring to master it. For me, the realization that this process of understanding Shakespeare's work is to be enjoyed throughout - even at the very beginning, when the obstacles seem so great - has become a liberating principle; one that I trust, along with the power of the material, will fuel my interest in Shakespeare's plays for a lifetime. And allow me to meet a few more kings.

Amy Thone will be teaching two Shakespeare Intensives this Summer at Freehold.  For more information on these classes:, call us at (206) 323-7499 or go to:  http://freeholdtheatre.org/studio/catalog/149