Expired Meds
Collection Set
Residents are invited to take their expired or unused medications to Harry Race Pharmacy 9 a.m.-6 p.m. April 21-25. Harry Race cannot accept controlled medications; however, the Public Safety Academy will be collecting controlled medications on April 26.
By Megan Pasternak
Special to the Sentinel
Mrs. Sipos is worried about her job. Mrs. Sipos wants everything to be copacetic. However, Mrs. Sipos is a busybody.
“Every play needs someone to be the foil,” said Annabel Lund who portrays senior clerk Mrs. Sipos in the upcoming production of “Parfumerie.” She added that Sipos also wants to be a matchmaker and plays both sides.
Lund is an old hand in theatrical productions both here and at Perseverance Theater in Juneau, the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco and elsewhere. She started out as a sunflower in first grade when the original actor got sick and she stepped in. Her one line was, “Now, we begin.”
When not on stage, Lund is a tutor at Mt. Edgecumbe High School and works at Sea Mountain Golf Course. She also hosts “Small Craft Warning” Tuesday evenings from 10 to midnight at Raven Radio.
“It’s a charming, romantic comedy but it does have a dark side,” Lund said in describing the play. “That’s what makes it interesting to me.”
At the opposite end of Lund’s character is another clerk, Miss Ilona Ritter portrayed by Erin Fulton who says “Miss Ritter’s head is filled with the flashy life she sees in magazines and wants a flashy man to go with it. It’s a fun role.”
Fulton has been in Sitka since September 2012 working for Alaska Sustainable Fisheries Trust. While earning her bachelor’s in biology and environmental studies and masters in forestry and environmental management, Fulton was also involved in theater in high school and college including a musical, “Into the Woods.” In Sitka she had a part in the production of the Eve Ensler piece for Planned Parenthood’s fundraiser.
Fulton will be getting back into her skates as soon as her roller derby bone-breaking mishap allows, hopefully this summer.
Deirdre LaBounty is a fellow derby enthusiast but there is no similarity between her character, Hammerschmitt’s Parfumerie cashier, and that of Miss Ritter. LaBounty says her Miss Elizabeth Mollnar has worked at the store quite a while and is “sarcastic, very practical and doesn’t want to get involved in the mess” that’s taking place in and outside the store.
While attending Massachusetts Institute of Technology, LaBounty did Shakespeare. When questioned about the juxtaposition of those two she laughed and replied, “We were a weird bunch.” She also was in “Moon Over Buffalo” while at Sitka High.
LaBounty currently works for Sitka Conservation Society.
Jack Petersen plays Arpad Novack, delivery boy and clerk for the store. A junior at Sitka High, Petersen said his acting career goes back to grade school days, “too long for it to be comfortable.” He plans to go on after high school with schooling in aspects of acting and now thinks he prefers stage to film as “it’s less competitive.”
Of his character, Petersen said “Arpad is the Jimmy Olson of the play. His purpose is to make everyone else happy and he has a father-son type relationship with his boss, Mr. Hammerschmitt.”
“I’m really happy to be part of the production,” he added.
Assisting director Sotera Perez is Bill Davis who said he’s “also morale director and whatever Shannon (Haugland, production manager) appoints me to.”
Asked how he got his long-ago start in theatre, Davis said he was a modern dancer in his “flaming youth.” He took directing classes at the University of Denver and said, directing and choreography are his first love. He also used dance to keep in shape for mountaineering. He even taught the U of D’s internationally famous ski team dancing to keep them in shape, too.
Davis said one of his claims to fame is being the only psychology major with a PhD to appear in Dance Magazine. He still moves gracefully, though he said his “knees are shot due to carrying 60- and 70-pound packs up mountains.”
“Parfumerie” appears on the Sitka Performing Arts Center stage 7 p.m. Friday, Saturday and Sunday, April 18, 19 and 20. Tickets for the Greater Sitka Arts Council production are $10 and $8 for students and senior citizens at Old Harbor Books and the door.
SCDC to Meet
Sitka Community Development Corporation board will meet noon-2 p.m. April 21 at Paxton Manor, 422 Andrews St.
SCDC is a community supported non-profit working to establish permanently affordable housing in Sitka. Members of the public are being encouraged to attend. For more information call 747-2860.
Asbestos Classes On
UAS-Sitka will hold an eight-hour refresher asbestos online training class April 17-30. The class meets the requirements of OSHA, DOL and EPA/HERA. Cost of the training is $219. For more information, call 747-7786.
Shapiro in Concert
The Sitka Fine Arts Camp will presents Raphael Shapiro in concert 7 p.m. April 21 at Allen Hall on the SJ Campus.
Music will be acoustic folk and both traditional and original Americana tunes. Tickets are $10 and available at Old Harbor Books.
Institute Writers
Offer Workshop
Island Institute writers-in-residence Tamie Harkins and Carol Green will team-teach a writing workshop titled “Calling Out the Meaning: How to Make the Touchable Talk and Make Concepts Concrete” 9 a.m.-4 p.m. April 19 at the Sitka Pioneer Home Manager’s Residence.
“Striking a balance between abstractions and sensory detail is a challenge for all writers,” say Harkins and Green.
They will offer a day of exercises and writing prompts that will help writers of all levels “address abstract topics (including spirituality and psychology) using cues from the tangible world.”
The workshop is $30 for adults and $15 for high school and college students. Those interested should sign up in advance with the Island Institute by calling 747-3794 or going to www.islandinstitutealaska.org.
‘Parfumerie’ to Open Friday
By Megan Pasternak
Special to the Sentinel
A successful business must have faithful customers and Hammerschmitt’s Parfumerie of Budapest has many. The store is the setting for Greater Sitka Arts Council’s “Parfumerie” to be on the Sitka Performing Arts Center stage Friday, Saturday and Sunday at 7 p.m. each night.
Besides working hard on scouring Sitka for and creating props, Suzan Brawnlyn plays a customer, or rather a woman who is trying to be one. This is her third production in Sitka, having taken part in GSAC’s reader’s theater presentation and melodrama last year. She said however, that this is the first time she’s taken charge of props, the first time she’s worn a costume and the first time she’s had to memorize lines. She doesn’t find any of those a problem, though, and said the props department gives her a good creative outlet.
Brawnlyn has a degree in entomology but her heart lies in being a chef which she has learned to do through self education and working her way through the line in restaurants.
Another customer in the play with speaking lines is Kikki Torrez who was last seen in “All In the Timing,” her first Sitka stage piece. She has lived here since November 2012 and works for Southeast Alaska Regional Health Consortium as the patient traveler. She came to Sitka on a relationship and decided to stay because of her “great sense of adventure.”
Torrez’s mother sent her to Plaza 3 Child Acting School in Phoenix for three years when she was 9 years old. Said Torrez, “I think I’ve always been a little dramatic.”
Sitka High drama instructor Stefanie Ask is another customer wannabe. She also teaches creative writing and is the speech and debate coach. She has been seen in several Sitka productions including “Moon Over Buffalo.” Ask is also helping with makeup for this production’s actors.
Other customers include Mary Barrett, who came to Sitka from Palmer a year and a half ago and is a nurse tracker for SEARHC and was also in last year’s melodrama; fourth grader Beatrice Petersen who has been involved in theater her “whole life” including Sitka Fine Arts Camp’s “Tales of Beatrix Potter” and “The Man Who Became a Caribou”; and Megan Pasternak whose first time acting came in 1980 in Sitka’s Baranof Little Theater Guild musical production of “The Club.”
Carole Knuth is also a customer and doublea her work load by sharing costume mistress duties with Mary Boose. Carole has had experience acting and costuming in several “Nutcracker” productions along with costumes for Sitka High, Fine Arts Camp and community theater plays. She is a physician’s assistant at SEARHC, the proprietress of Reindeer Redhots and a volunteer at Raven Radio.
Boose, the mother of cast member Michael Boose, formed her costuming repertoire when her mother taught her to sew as a young girl. She continued her wardrobe work with classes at Lewis and Clark College and an internship at Intiman Theater in Seattle. Her day jobs include business manager for Sheldon Jackson Museum’s store, substituting at Mt. Edgecumbe High and working for Allen Marine in the summer. She also volunteers at Sitka Sound Science center teaching preschoolers.
Sharing prop and set duties is Anne Lankenau. Her theater acting experiences include last year’s Alaska Day melodrama “Paris of the Pacific,” singing in high school and acting in Okinawa and Spain while serving in the Navy. She also was an elementary school teacher in her former life.
Performing Arts Center intern Lynsey Manley and Performing Arts Center technical director J. Bradley are making the actors look great with their set, lighting and sound designs.
When she finishes her internship in June, Manley will go to grad school at the University of Houston majoring in lighting design. She came here in February from New Orleans and said she’s been doing theater since the fourth grade, having been involved in more than 200 productions both on and off camera and stage.
Tickets for the Greater Sitka Arts Council production are $10 and $8 for students and senior citizens at Old Harbor Books and the door.
Chamber to Meet
Dan Fauske, president of Alaska Gasline Development Corporation, will present an Alaska Stand Alone Pipeline project update at the Chamber of Commerce luncheon meeting noon April 16 at the Westmark Sitka banquet room.
The luncheon is open to the public. For more information, call 747-8604.