PORT ANGELES — Already it’s time to toss a hat — or a song, a comedy routine, even a magic show — into the ring.
The ring is the second annual Juan de Fuca Festival of the Arts talent show, which will take the stage at 1 p.m. Feb. 25 at the Port Angeles Senior and Community Center, 328 E. Seventh St.
“We’re doing it totally differently,” from 2011, said Dan Maguire, the Juan de Fuca Festival’s executive director.
Last year, performers had to audition, and there was an admission charge.
This year, there will be none of the above.
To be in the show, singers, dancers, comics and other entertainers from across the North Olympic Peninsula need only contact the festival office at 360-457-5411 or www.JFFA.org.
Maguire is urging would-be contestants to email him at DanMaguire@jffa.org or phone the festival office for an entry form by 5 p.m. Feb. 17.
Thanks to volunteers and to the city of Port Angeles’ donation of the space, the show costs the Juan de Fuca Festival practically nothing, Maguire added.
So “this is our gift to the community,” he said.
5 minutes in spotlight
Each performer will have five minutes in the spotlight.
Last year, there were 25 acts — bands, solo singer-songwriters; ages 6 to 80ish — and Maguire predicts a similar number will make up this year’s show.
“My goal,” he said, “is to figure out a way to give everybody a chance.”
In 2011, there were several prizes, but this time the talent show promises just one: a $100 honorarium and a slot on the main stage of the Juan de Fuca Festival, which arrives in downtown Port Angeles May 24-28.
Elise Beuke, then 13, won that grand prize at the 2011 show with “Don’t Let Me Go,” her original song she sang while accompanying herself on the grand piano.
“She was stunning,” said Sarah Tucker, a Juan de Fuca Festival board member.
Tucker’s daughter Zoe, then 11, also sang in last year’s show.
She was nervous and had trouble remembering the lyrics to part of her song, but “she pulled through and took her bow,” Tucker said.
Backstage afterward, a distraught Zoe got a quick cheering-up from mistress of ceremonies and seasoned singer Amanda Bacon. Bacon told her the story of how she’d once forgotten a verse of a song, and just kept singing the words she did know, over and over.
Tucker, for her part urges other singers — novices or not — to take part in this year’s talent show.
“It’s a chance for originality to be rewarded,” she said, adding that the prize of playing on the Juan de Fuca Festival stage is “a really neat reward . . . We have to have those kinds of things for kids to dream about.”
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Features Editor Diane Urbani de la Paz can be reached at 360-417-3550 or at diane.urbani@peninsuladailynews.com.