How does one honor 60 years of live theater in Jefferson County?

That is the question Key City Public Theatre’s artistic director had to answer when she set out to develop this season’s program. 

“We’re trying to take a look at our place in the world as a theater,” said Denise Winter, who has directed the theater since 2005. “This theater has been here for 60 years. How do you celebrate that?”

Winter ended up taking a something-old, something-new approach.

Included in the 2018 season is the world premiere of a play; a summer musical; the monumental undertaking that is “Hamlet;” a two-person “duet;” and a one-act piece performed on its 60th anniversary. The third annual production of “Spirit of the Yule,” along with another holiday show, is also featured.

“We’re trying to show a breadth of the way that storytelling has resonated in this community, and continues to resonate in this community,” Winter said. “How do you keep making (theater) relevant? By looking backward and forward to what is important about this art form.”

TIMELY

The season opens April 13 with the world premiere of a comedy by New York–based playwright Richard Dresser.

“Wolf at the Door” began as a 10-minute, one-act piece written more than a year ago, on Nov. 8, 2016 – Election Day. The plot follows a group of residents in a rundown apartment who come together against a landlord who is promising to “make the building great again.”

Dresser realized, after showing the play to friends, “there’s a whole world in here.”

He began to flesh out that world as a full-length comedy.

“It’s really about community, and forming a community,” he said. “It’s not in any way overtly political. I like to think that it will have a life far beyond the life of the president.”

Key City Public Theatre came to produce the play through a series of events supported by a relationship between Winter and Dresser, which started several years ago when the playwright attended the theater’s festival of new works, PlayFest.

“It seemed quite timely,” Winter said of “Wolf at the Door,” which she selected from a few other plays Dresser had written. “It also touches on an important topic.”

That topic is the housing and rental crisis, a subject relevant to Port Townsend.

And, it’s a comedy.

“We could all use a laugh right now,” Winter said.

Once it was determined Dresser’s new work would premiere in Port Townsend, he came to PlayFest in March to shape the play into its final stage with Winter and the actors.

“We did one public reading during PlayFest, which was very well received,” Winter said. “It was encouraging people were interested.”

Programming a premiere is always a bit of a risk, Winter added.

“It requires an audience that is willing to try something that they’ve never heard of,” Winter said.

Port Townsend’s audience is up to that challenge, she continued, noting world and West Coast premieres done by the local theater in the past have been well-received.

“Some of our biggest hits have been premieres,” she said. “The idea that you’re seeing a play before anyone else is seeing it is extremely exciting – I hope!”

Dresser also has faith in Port Townsend’s audience, which he describes as “smart,” thanks in part to the theater’s programming of a broad range of plays.

“I’m looking forward to coming back and seeing it on opening night,” he said. “It’s always great to be there at the beginning of rehearsal and come back and see how it all came together.”

2018 SEASON

“Wolf at the Door” plays through April 28, followed by a musical titled “Daddy Long Legs.”

After last year’s successful and award-winning “Murder Ballad,” Winter wanted to stage another song-based showstopper. The June production of “Daddy Long Legs,” a Cinderella-like story done in the “spirit of Jane Austen, the Brontë sisters and ‘Downton Abbey,’” will be its Pacific Northwest premiere, Winter said.

Then comes “Hamlet.”

“(It’s) gigantic – taking on the mammoth ‘Hamlet’ in the park,” Winter said of the play, to be directed by Port Townsend’s Marc Weinblatt. “That was a big leap to put that in the season.”

In October, there is “Annapurna,” which Winter described as a “comic and gripping duet.” That play is to be directed by Connor Zaft, the theater’s 2016 artistic apprentice, who directed last year’s season opener, “Enemy of the People.”

“It’s one of the most exciting scripts I’ve read in a long time in terms of the surprise,” Winter said.

Also offered in October is a special event: a performance of Samuel Beckett’s “Krapp’s Last Tape” with Key City favorite Lawrie Driscoll.

The one-act play will be performed on the 60th anniversary of its world premiere, said Winter.

Then the holiday season arrives.This year, there will be shows from Thanksgiving through New Year’s Eve, with productions of “Every Christmas Story Ever Told (and then some)” and the return of the theater’s own “Spirit of the Yule,” a localized musical based on “A Christmas Carol” written by Winter and Linda Dowdell.

Scattered throughout the season will be celebratory events to honor the six decades of theater in Jefferson County.

And, that is a wrap.

On one hand, Winter said, programming a 60th season has been daunting.

“On the other hand, it’s really freeing,” she said. “We’ve been doing this for 60 years, and here’s what we’re doing today.”