PORT TOWNSEND — The works of National Book Award winner Charles Johnson will come to life this weekend as PT Shorts, Key City Public Theatre’s dramatic reading series, returns to the Northwind Arts Center.
Admission is free to enjoy three local actors reading Johnson’s stories aloud — with the author himself in attendance — in two performances:
Saturday at 7:30 p.m. and Sunday at 5:30 p.m. Both will take place at Northwind, 701 Water St., and both will feature doughnuts and apple cider compliments of Key City Public Theatre.
Johnson, a scholar and the author of novels, short stories, essays and screenplays, became the second African American to win the National Book Award.
He received it in 1990 for Middle Passage, his novel about a freed slave who boards the Republic, a ship sailing out of New Orleans — and discovers it is bound for Africa to capture Allmuseri tribal members to take back to America and sell as slaves.
Ralph Ellison, author of Invisible Man, was the first African American, in 1953, to win the National Book Award.
“It is a great honor to have Dr. Johnson visit Port Townsend and be with us at PT Shorts,” said Amy Sousa, Key City Public Theatre’s Education Director.
The PT Shorts series, cosponsored by the Port Townsend Arts Commission, is highlighting contemporary authors on the first weekend of every month, with Feb. 6 and 7 featuring acclaimed Chicago novelist Rebecca Makkai.
Author and activist Naomi Klein’s work is set for the March 5 and 6 editions of PT Shorts, and MacArthur fellow Yiyun Lee’s stories follow April 2 and 3.
Johnson is also the author of the novel Dreamer and of nonfiction books including Taming the Ox: Buddhist Stories, and Reflections on Politics, Race, Culture, and Spiritual Practice and King: The Photobiography of Martin Luther King Jr.
He was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship, aka a “genius grant,” in 1998, as well as fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation.
The 2013 Humanities Washington Award is among his recent honors.
Saturday and Sunday, a trio of veteran theater artists, Don White, Charles Duncan and Judith Glass Collins, will read Johnson’s stories.
These include “Martha’s Dilemma,” a tale told by first lady Martha Washington.
It’s about her dilemma of needing to rely on her slaves to run her plantation now that George has died, and her fear and unease at keeping the slaves that George had promised to free.
Collins, who has been seen in a number of local productions including “August: Osage County” and “The Seagull,” will read the piece.
Also in this PT Shorts program: “Soul Catcher,” the story of a slave bounty hunter and his prey, an escaped slave.
Duncan, who appeared in the Paradise Theatre’s “Othello” and in Key City’s One-Act Play Festival, is the reader.
White will bring a complete change of pace with a reading of Sweet Dreams, Johnson’s humorous fantasy about a startling new federal tax in our bedrooms.
White has acted in numerous North Olympic Peninsula productions, from Readers Theatre Plus’ “A Thousand Clowns” to Key City’s “TANSTAAFL (There Ain’t No Such Thing as a Free Lunch).”
For more information about PT Shorts and other local theater offerings, see keycitypublictheatre.org or phone 360-379-0195.