A group of theater and arts supporters in Haines met Monday to discuss the viability of resurrecting the Alaska Community Theater Festival (ACTFEST), or some version of a theater festival here.
Carol Tuynman of the Alaska Arts Confluence said she helped organize the meeting after residents expressed the idea to her.
A judged competition of hour-long plays, ACTFEST was held biennially in Haines, or 14 times between 1974 and 1999. It featured nightly performances by community theater groups from around Alaska and workshops during the day open to the public.
Festival winners qualified for regional and sometimes national competition sponsored by the American Association of Community Theatre.
In its glory years, when the state Council on the Arts provided travel grants, the festival drew more than a dozen amateur theater groups from around the state, including places as far away as St. Paul Island, Kodiak and Kotzebue.
Held in April, the event also brought an influx of money and visitors at a lean time in winter, endearing the event to residents as well as to local actors, said Annette Smith of Lynn Canal Community Players. “The energy was high during ACTFEST. Everybody walked, talked and lived theater for a week.”
But participation dropped in the 1990s, and the final festival attracted only three out-of-town troupes.
Smith said at this week’s meeting the festival suffered setbacks including a near-elimination of travel funds, fatigue by the group’s statewide board and local organizers, and the difficulty participants had scheduling a week off.
Smith said another big element of putting on the event was recruiting interest in other communities, a task that her mother, Mimi Gregg, took on at her own expense. “If you don’t have representatives in other communities, it’s really tough. People have all kinds of reasons they can’t come. You have to solve them for them so they can’t say no.”
Even for groups as close as Ketchikan, travel costs could run to $8,000 or more, Smith said. Participation by the Halsingland Hotel, located walking-distance to events at the Chilkat Center, was key. The hotel offered special rates that included meals.
A half-dozen participants at Monday’s meeting agreed to contact the national festival as well as groups statewide to gauge potential interest. They also suggested interest in variations of the festival that might incorporate puppet theater or other community groups.
Former ACTFEST chair Heather Lende said in an interview a revived theater festival may fare better as not a competition. The festival involved rules and rigidity that required a high number of volunteers. “All the volunteers had to take a week off.”
Lende suggested a week-long spring festival that might include puppets, theater, music and visual arts. “The same things that made ACTFEST happen can make a festival happen again. If we can put on the Southeast fair and an international bike race, we can put on a festival.”
After the meeting, Tuynman said much of the interest in resurrecting the festival is coming from residents under age 35. “A lot of young people are totally into it.”
She said she’d like to have a festival in 2017 to coincide with the 150th anniversary of the U.S. purchase of Alaska.
Larry Bottjen, play director with Valley Performing Arts in Palmer, this week said he participated in ACTFEST in the early 1990s. He said he had such a good time at the festival, he can still remember it clearly. He said he’d personally support returning to a Haines festival, but the cost of travel and time off from work for players would be an issue.
“I don’t know how you surmount those,” Bottjen said.