NOTE: “Today” and “tonight” refer to Friday, June 3.
PORT ANGELES — It’s hip to be weird, say the organizers of the 2016 Find Your Voice Play Festival at Peninsula College.
Celebrating its 10th year, festival organizers earlier this year invited students and community members to submit plays for consideration with the most peculiar selected to be performed live during the event, known as Misfit Manifesto, taking place now through June 11 at the Little Theater, 1502 E. Lauridsen Blvd.
This year’s theme is “Eccentrics of the Northwest.”
Show dates are tonight, Saturday, Friday, June 10 and Saturday, 11 with excerpts featured at Peninsula College’s Studium Generale on Thursday.
Show times are 7:30 nightly.
The show is intended for mature audiences only, as some content might not be suitable for children.
College students can attend for free.
General admission tickets are $12, senior tickets are $10 and tickets for students not attending the college are $5.
Tickets will be available at the door and also in advance for an additional fee online at www.brownpapertickets.com.
Eclectic mix
This year’s selection of winning plays features a smorgasbord of topics, from lowbrow campy comedies to esoteric philosophical musings, organizers said.
Playwrights include Donna Latham, a Kennedy Center finalist, winner of the David Mark Cohen Playwriting Award, and proud member of the Dramatists Guild.
Latham’s plays, “Woo Her Like a Badass” and “Hairy Toe,” are featured in the show.
Other quirky playwrights include Lara Starcevich, Richard Stephens, Jonathan Mitchell, Kate Henninger and Steve Berry, and Seattle playwright Suzanna Bailie.
Directors include current college students and community members Megan Mundy, Sarah Tucker, Stephanie Gooch, Ingrid Voorheis, Stephens, Henninger and Berry.
Misfits unite
Starcevich — along with a cohort of similar misfit writers including Stephens, Jonathan Mitchell, Joe Crollard, Fred Robinson and Steve Boutelle — have been planning this festival for longer than a year.
“All of this year’s plays are about how the Northwest welcomes eccentrics,” Starcevich said.
“There are a lot of unusual people in the Northwest. And if you weren’t eccentric when you got here, you will be by the time you leave.”
Starcevich referred to one particular play submitted for the festival that highlights those local eccentricities.
Standing outside a local dive bar, a man reveals seven rings pierced through a male appendage that would cause most men to shrink in fear.
Unforgettable locals such as this make the Olympic Peninsula the magnet for eccentrics it so proudly is, Starcevich said.
“Maybe it’s because we are out here on the northwestern most part of the U.S., maybe it’s because we’re isolated on a peninsula and forced to get along with other people that we disagree with, maybe it’s because marijuana is legal, maybe it’s because the grayer weather predisposes people to hibernate more and nurture eccentricities, and maybe it’s because of all the fluoride in the water,” Starcevich said.
“I don’t know, but there are quite a few lovely, eccentric people around and somehow most people don’t seem to give a rat’s hiney about anyone else’s weirdness.”
Starcevich pointed out that residents of the Peninsula don’t seem to mind that generations of logging families walk alongside fashionistas at the annual Esprit transgender celebration, and live among members of more than 100 different churches in Sequim and Port Angeles.
“Political orientation, sexual orientation, religious affiliation, politically correct or not — people around here just seem to be OK with whoever or whatever you are,” Starcevich said.
“And that’s what this year’s Find Your Voice Play Festival is celebrating. Weirdness. Non-conformity. Freedom. The Northwest.”
For more information, send an email to laras@pencol.edu.
