PORT ANGELES — We want it all, the women at the Port Angeles Fine Arts Center said: We want theater, visual art, Shakespearean witches and light in the darkness — on the same night.
Thus the seed was planted for “The Dark Side of Art,” the pre-Halloween party at the center this Saturday.
Sarah Jane, Lauren Bailey and Jessica Elliott, staff members there, cooked up an evening featuring a live performance of “The Tell-Tale Heart” starring Ginny Holladay as Edgarina Allan Poe, thespians Anna Andersen and Simon Close in a witchy excerpt from Shakespeare’s “Macbeth,” a fasten-your-seatbelts tour of bizarre art through history and, lest guests grow ravenous, gourmet food and drink.
Tickets are $50 to benefit the nonprofit Port Angeles Fine Arts Center, at 1203 E. Lauridsen Blvd.; information and reservations await at PAFAC.org.
During the affair from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. costumes are encouraged, as are warm clothes, since the festivities will inhabit the patio as well as the gallery.
This week, staff and volunteers are transforming the center into a candlelit haven for spooky stories and disguises of all sorts.
“This will be a few hours when everything is topsy-turvy,” said Jane, adding that she and the performers have some surprises in the works.
Andersen, artistic director of the center’s summertime Shakespeare in the Woods festival, plans a performance involving the “curse of the Scottish play,” that weird phenomenon around one of the bard’s gorier tragedies. All is not serious, however; she and collaborator Close promise laughs in their take.
As for Holladay, an actor who moved not long ago to Sequim from Jackson, Miss.: This “Tell-Tale Heart” won’t be like those seen at other venues.
“The fact that the narrator is never identified by gender gives me the chance to bring it to life with my own particular brand of insanity,” she said, “and gives the audience a fascinating version of this tale.”
For more about the “Dark Side of Art” party and other activities at the center, visit PAFAC.org, see the Port Angeles Fine Arts Center page on Facebook or call 360-457-3532.
