PENINSULA PROFILE: Transplant jumps with both feet into Peninsula music, theater

PORT ANGELES — The experience, John Manno says, is like leaping headlong over a cliff.

He’s speaking of the 24-Hour Theatre Project, his next plunge this Friday and Saturday at Peninsula College.

Manno has done the 24-hour thing before in Milwaukee, one of several Midwestern places he lived and played music in before moving to this corner of the world.

He revels in the play-construction process.

So he and Port Angeles actor Sean Peck-Collier put the word out about a long winter’s night and day in the college’s Little Theater, and students and other community members leapt at the idea. About 50 people showed up for a planning meeting, and all systems were go.

Here’s what happens.

“At 8 p.m. Friday, everybody piles in. The first writer writes the first scene. Everybody works on it. Meanwhile, the second writer writes the second scene,” Manno begins.

“And so it goes, for the rest of the night and into the next day.

“At 8 p.m. Saturday, the people come in and see the show.”

This writing, rehearsing and performing can turn into quite the thrill ride, Manno says. He believes everyone should experience 24-hour theater at least once in his or her life.

The 24-Hour Theatre Project could serve as a kind of allegory for Manno’s own path. He’s a musical and theatrical adventurer, a Chicago-bred freelance harpist who has “retired,” except he’s still working plenty, at age 50.

And while he says — with zest — that he got his theater training “in the trenches,” Manno’s musical education was quite formal.

Harp dreams

A boy of 5, he saw a harp on television, then bugged his parents about it for a solid year till they sent him to his first music teacher. He went on to earn a bachelor’s at the prestigious Eastman School of Music in Rochester, N.Y., and to perform with orchestras, in restaurants and at weddings all over the Midwest.

His ardor for the harp — be it the classical or folk variety — has not faded. Manno fairly vibrates when he talks about two of his loves: music and theater.

As he was growing up, the far West Coast was, in his mind, Shangri-La. So when two of his closest friends decided to move to the northwestern corner of the country, Manno thought he’d start a new era in his life, too.

Besides the metropolises of Chicago and Milwaukee, Manno has lived in Houghton, Mich., a town of 7,708 on the Keweenaw Peninsula. So he knows what it means to live in a little, remote community.

Manno also knows how to keep things interesting through the winter. Not long after relocating to the North Olympic Peninsula in 2010, he auditioned for the Peninsula College-Port Angeles Light Opera Association production of “The Rocky Horror Show.”

Was he surprised that this small community was putting on a show with eye-popping costumes and sexy frolic?

“No . . . that’s what the West is all about, man,” Manno quips, cocking his head.

Manno won the “Rocky Horror” role of Dr. Scott, a scientist and rival to Dr. Frank N. Furter (played by Peck-Collier). So he was off and running; Manno has since acted in or directed shows at the college and at the Port Angeles Community Playhouse, including “Neighborhood 3,” “Time Remembered,” “Is He Dead?,” “The 39 Steps” and his most recent directorial effort, “No Exit” by Jean-Paul Sartre.

All the while, he plays and teaches the harp. In addition to various gigs, he has two students: an adult and a youngster.

On a recent Friday afternoon, he welcomed a visitor by filling the living room with what sounded like heaven.

And next week, Manno will resume his gigs at Wine on the Waterfront, the all-ages venue upstairs in The Landing mall. Beginning Dec. 30, Manno will play there from 3 p.m. to about 5:30 p.m. each Sunday with no cover charge.

In addition, he’ll play most Saturdays from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. at Oven Spoonful, the cafe at 110 E. First St. downtown. Some Saturdays, though, he’ll be over at the Port Angeles High School auditorium, performing with the Port Angeles Symphony Orchestra, of which he’s a member.

Some may consider Manno relatively new to the community. Many other symphony musicians and thespians, after all, have lived here for decades in some cases.

With such a well-established group, an outsider couldn’t be blamed for thinking them an insular bunch, set in their ways.

The plays put on here might not bode well for new blood, either. We have a lot of musicals, a lot of tried-and-true, feel-good fare. Arriving on the scene, one might figure there’s no room for anything too intense or edgy.

Yet Manno, by simply showing up to this or that audition, discovered otherwise.

“I’ve lived in very small towns in the Midwest, and I thought this would be like those,” Manno says. “But [Port Angeles] is very different.

“Even though people say this is a conservative area, it is not.

“People talk with you, and make friends, even though you weren’t born here. In the Midwest, they will treat you very nicely. But you’re not really ‘one of them.’ People are more open here.”

This seems to extend to attitudes toward the performing arts, Manno believes.

This March, Manno will direct “Equus,” the Peter Shaffer play exploring a psychiatrist’s work with a 17-year-old boy who is pathologically fascinated with horses.

“It’s an intense theatrical experience . . . the show is really about the psychiatrist’s spiritual journey,” Manno said.

While veteran actor Ron Graham will portray the psychiatrist, Manno will hold auditions for the rest of the roles Jan. 3 and 4 at Peninsula College. Tryouts will take place from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. both days in the Little Theater on the campus at 1502 E. Lauridsen Blvd.

“There is a great deal of interest in theater in this town,” Manno says. “There is a desire to see different kinds of theater here.

“I am interested in doing more difficult stuff, more challenging stuff, because that’s what I want to see.”

Manno emphasizes too that he’s already worked with actors who have both the talent and skill to bring such desire to fruition.

Performers such as Peck-Collier, Graham, Corey Labrie, Nikkole Adams, Colby Thomas and Anna Unger inspire him, he says, with their willingness to put themselves on the proverbial line.

In Peck-Collier, who’s roughly half his age, Manno has found a kindred spirit.

“I love working on intense projects, especially anything that brings the artistic community together,” Peck-Collier said of the 24-hour theater experiment next weekend.

“I find the close proximity, the heavy demands, the whole creative process invigorating,” and whenever Manno is involved in a theatrical production, things tend to run smoothly. Peck-Collier believes this is because Manno brings his classical training — plus a fierce commitment to his artistic vision — to every stage.

In the new year, Manno looks forward to realizing a number of shows. After the March 1-3 performances of “Equus,” Ibsen’s “The Master Builder” is slated for April at the Port Angeles Community Playhouse; he also wants to look into the summertime Victoria Fringe Theatre Festival.

It was Kathy Balducci, a member of the Port Angeles Community Players board, who invited him to produce plays like “Time Remembered,” “No Exit” and “Master Builder” for the playhouse’s Second Stage Series.

“When he’s directing, he is very no-nonsense,” Balducci says. “He is all business, in a loving and kindly way. The actors feel like they are being stretched, in a good way.”

The community playhouse can’t survive on Sartre and Ibsen, Balducci adds. Shows like “A Christmas Story” and “The Mousetrap” are necessary to keep the lights on. But she agrees with Manno that there’s an audience for the alternative fare.

“We enjoy John’s approach to things,” says Balducci, who has been in local theater since 1969 when she appeared in “The Time of the Cuckoo.”

When he’s not working behind the scenes, Manno is on the streets, hand-carting his harp around town. After retirement, he says, his preference is to go car-free. And having lived on Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, he admits to giggling inwardly when people say it’s cold in Port Angeles.

Now and then, he is recognized by people who haven’t yet been to one of his plays.

“Oh,” they say, “you’re that guy,” with the big harp rolling down the sidewalk.