Building community through celebration

Chautauqua Week returns to Port Townsend

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The New Old Time Chautauqua will be celebrating its second annual Chautauqua Week during Rhody Fest, with a special performance by the Flying Karamazov Brothers to honor their 50th anniversary.

This return is thanks to a partnership between Paul Magid, a Flying Karamazov Brother and founder of NOTC, and Daniel Milholland, director of operations for the Production Alliance (a Jefferson County ensemble of collaborators for events and celebrations).

For Magid, it all began on April 23, 1973, at the University of California Santa Cruz.

“There was a juggling craze that went through the college that year. We got obsessed,” Magid recalled.

Magid and his partner Howard Patterson, who lived across the dorm hall, got their start as an opening act for a UCSC theater play. Their duo became a quartet called the Flying Karamazov Brothers.

When they graduated in 1976, they went professional with the goal of being on Broadway 10 years hence.

“We got there early!” Magid chuckled.

In 1983, they performed their first show at the Ritz Theatre (now called the Walter Kerr Theatre). With New Wave Vaudeville — morphing certain performance skills like juggling, hula hooping, and clowning into something theatrical — sweeping the nation, the Flying Karamazov Brothers performed on Broadway five more times. They also appeared on TV programs such as “Seinfeld” and “Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood.”

Magid reminisces fondly about his experiences over the last 50 years, including a bawdy run-in with Dolly Parton on tour.

When asked what his biggest takeaway has been, he said, “It’s not just about entertainment. It’s something a bit more.”

He came to this realization after a gig at the Oregon County Fair. While there, they performed with other vaudeville acts. Magid enjoyed collaborating with the community and wanted more.

After the fair, he met with actor Max Gail in Santa Monica. Gail was working on a documentary about Chautauqua, a mix of entertainment and education first established in 1874.

Magid was inspired by the “building of community through celebration” and decided to establish his own group called the New Old Time Chautauqua in 1981. A native Washingtonian, Magid was drawn to Port Townsend after a performance for Centrum because of the boats, community, and beautiful landscape.

He moved here in 1986 and opened the Palindrome, which still serves as home base for the New Old Time Chautauqua.

Chautauqua shows hit their zenith in the last century. By the time one reached Port Townsend, 40 million Americans were attending Chautauqua shows a year. At one point, there were 1,000 traveling Chautauqua groups in the country. Now, the New Old Time Chautauqua is the last surviving group in the world.

The Production Alliance has helped keep the Chautauqua tradition alive.

Milholland has Chautauquan roots himself; a Port Townsend native, he recalls spending quite a bit of time at the Palindrome growing up. He traveled with New Old Time Chautauqua for a summer after high school when he was the manager of local performing arts group NAANDA, who frequently toured with the event. Years later, Milholland had the chance to coordinate several Chautauqua benefit events.

When the Dakota Pipeline protests happened in 2016, Milholland and members of Chautauqua helped lead a large expedition out to Standing Rock.

Milholland’s extensive local connections were helpful when Chautauqua came to the Production Alliance last year with interest in putting on a 40th anniversary celebration.

Milholland approached the Rhody Fest Association with the idea of filling the void the carnival had left with this circus/vaudeville event, and it was met with success. This year, they plan to build on this partnership with new developments, including co-producing Rhody’s Friday Opening Ceremony. This will feature a Chautauqua teaser performance and an outdoor movie showing short-form content from local filmmakers such as Andrea Love and Tomoki Sage.

“It’s yet another layer of collaboration the Chautauquans facilitate,” Milholland said.

Speaking of layers, Chautauqua also works with native nations in a synergetic manner. This year’s Chautauqua Week theme is “Water as Home” because, as Magid explains, “for the people of this area, the water is home. The land is part of the water. How do we impart this to the audience?”

The Chautauquans plan to bring the timely Doctrine of Discovery repudiation of March into focus.

“A whole new legal structure is suddenly on the horizon. How do we deal with it in a constructive, celebratory, and human way?” Magid asked. “We don’t want to be confrontational, we just want to talk about how would it be if everyone felt good about living on the water?”

They will be honoring visiting native nations during the ceremony. The Queets and Quinault Tribes will be present, as will be the S’Klallam Tribe of the Port Gamble area. Fort Worden Hospitality has provided a dorm house and four officers’ quarters to demonstrate their support of the production. All proceeds from the weekend’s ticket sales will benefit the upcoming summer Montana tour to partner with the Blackfoot Nation Confederacy, who will be attending the opening ceremony to honor Port Townsend. Ron Johnson, a Makah elder, has been instrumental in the gathering, according to organizers of the New Old Time Chautauqua.