PORT TOWNSEND — NANDA, an acrobatics and comedy group made up of four men from Port Townsend, will perform its inaugural full-length solo show in the members’ hometown.
The two-hour show, Omdighaben, is on Saturday at the McCurdy Pavilion at Fort Worden, 200 Battery Way, and is a one-night-only-event starting at 7 p.m. Doors will open at 6 p.m.
Tickets are available online at: http://buytickets.at/thunderbull/96744/r/fb or at the Food Co-Op, 414 Kearney St.
Tickets will be sold at the door Saturday if there are any left.
Advance tickets are $14 for children younger than 15, general tickets are $24 and VIP tickets are $34.
Prices will increase by $2 at the door the night of the show.
The last time NANDA performed in Port Townsend was in 2014 for the group’s tenth anniversary.
“This is the first time it’s just been us,” member Tomoki Sage said.
The group combines acrobatics, comedy, juggling and slap-stick fight scenes, which the group calls kung-faux, in their performances and will tap into all of that for this particular performance.
“I’d look at it more like sketch comedy,” member Misha Fradin said.
Fradin said this performance is basically a series of comedic sketches but with the added bonus of acrobatics, juggling and dancing.
“Comedy is like the main line through it,” Sage said, “but there’s at least one things that’s not funny at all, which is actually really hard for us to write something without something funny in it.
“It’ll be cool though.”
Member Chen Pollina said: “It’s a bit of an amalgamation of things we did when we first started, things we’ve done kind of in the middle and things that haven’t been seen before. It’s a full spectrum.”
The four members of NANDA — Tomoki Sage, Pollina, Fradin and Kiyota Sage — grew up in Port Townsend. They entered the local talent show, “Stars of Tomorrow.”
The group performed on and off, mostly at local events.
“It was basically an excuse to do cool wacky stuff on stage,” Fradin said.
In 2005, the group was invited to tour with the New Old Time Chautaugua and did that for three years.
“That was how we got some exposure,” Tomoki Sage said.
Since then the group has performed at a resort in Cancun, Mexico, toured Greenland and performed at events across the United States.
The group’s name, NANDA, is a colloquial Japanese expletive which translates to “What!?” according to the NANDA website at http://www.nandatown.com/
Now three of the four members — Kiyota Sage, Tomoki Sage and Pollina — still call Port Townsend homes while Fradin lives in Las Vegas.
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Jefferson County Editor/Reporter Cydney McFarland can be reached at 360-385-2335, ext. 55052, or at cmcfarland@peninsuladailynews.com.
Kiyota Sage, Misha Fradin, Tomoki Sage and Chen Pollina are bringing their group NANDA back to the stage in their hometown of Port Townsend for their first solo full-length show. (Cydney McFarland/Peninsula Daily News)
