PORT TOWNSEND — On this night: joy, terror, light, heat.
“Heart Stories,” a free, public event on Valentine’s Day, aka Thursday, is an evening of live, personal stories.
This is not an open mic; not a traditional story swap. “Heart” is a collaboration of spoken word, dance, music, mime and visual artists, all together at the Cotton Building, 607 Water St., from 6 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. Doors open at 5:30 p.m. with seating first-come, first-served.
Thursday’s program is the live-performance debut for Storyborne, the online magazine Port Townsend’s Bonnie Obremski founded a few months ago. While there’s no charge at the door, donations are welcome and will go directly to the performers, Obremski said. The first edition of Storyborne’s print magazine, featuring an additional set of artists, will be available at the event.
“I’ve taken to calling it a multimedia personal storytelling extravaganza … come see the breadth of ways a human can express their personal story,” she said, adding that the variety of acts has thrilled her.
Performing artist Kerry Christianson will offer a spoken-word-mime-autobiographical piece titled “Be Mime;” musician Aki will sing and play “The Thing,” his original song about a journey to fatherhood; choreographer Anna Hansen has brought five women together to perform a spoken word and movement piece about their lives. This piece is titled “Rising.”
Alongside, Port Townsend artists including painters Linda Okazaki and Julie Read and photographers Jen Chapman, Al Bergstein and James Cook will tell their stories through their visual art.
The house band featuring saxophonist Alex Dugdale and double-bassist Dirk Anderson will play between acts, while Centrum provides stage, light and sound production.
And Dugdale, a tap dancer, will add one more story, told via rhythm and footwork.
Obremski, a writer-photographer-marketer-sailmaker, appears in Hansen’s “Rising,” along with Amy Sousa, Hannah Lose-Frahn, Virginia Grace and Michelle Sandoval.
“I think [‘Rising’] is going to be a showstopper,” Obremski said.
In it, each performer gives a short, spoken story and adds expressive moves to correlate with key moments in that story.
“We all then use those movements,” she noted, “to reach a crescendo of shared feeling and experiences as women.”
“For me, it was a no-brainer to be part of this,” said Chapman, who recently opened her Jen Lee Light photography studio at 1009 Water St.
To “Heart Stories,” Chapman is contributing poetry and a pair of self-portraits. First is “The Hunter,” a piece about breaking through those critical voices in a woman’s head that try to convince her she’s not good/pretty/smart enough. Second is “The Guide,” a portrait of a woman whose heart may be broken — but she’s wiser and still has the guts to feel love.
Visual storytelling is a way to connect with people nearby and far away, Chapman said. Through it, we learn and heal; “our community, all communities really, desperately need this.”
Christianson, for her part, has a theater background, while it’s been years since she’s stepped onto a stage.
“A lot of life has happened in the meantime. When Bonnie told me about this show, it just felt right to be a part of it,” she said.
“I look forward to seeing what she does with [Storyborne] going forward,” Christianson added.
“I think she has a huge opportunity here.”
Obremski hopes “Heart Stories” will be the start of an ongoing performance series — “this community has so many more stories to tell” — so she’s seeking sponsors.
“At least for this event, all the storytellers are volunteers, and many are sharing something deeply personal for the first time ever,” she added.
Obremski’s vision includes having sponsors so she can pay participating artists while keeping the performances free to the public.
The inaugural “Heart Stories” received a $1,500 grant from the Port Townsend Arts Commission along with a lot of enthusiasm from members of the local arts community, Obremski said.
“This was all a big experiment,” she added, “and I think so far it’s going well … it’s feeling like a magical time filled with the right people in the right place.”
But this being a night of personal revelations and new beginnings, she admits: “I’m also anxious as heck.”
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Diane Urbani de la Paz, a former features editor for the Peninsula Daily News, is a freelance writer living in Port Townsend.
Port Townsend artists Bonnie Obremski, top, Anna Hansen and Amy Sousa bring “Rising,” a spoken word and movement piece to “Heart Stories,” a multimedia performance Thursday at Port Townsend’s Cotton Building. (Photo by Storyborne)
