Where is Kirkland’s Acting Troupe?

A FEW WEEKS AGO I had the pleasure of seeing the Oregon Shakespeare Festival’s production of The Pirates of Penzance at Ashland’s beautiful outdoor Elizabethan Stage.  The musical direction was phenomenal, flawlessly incorporating modern jazz and rock with Gilbert and Sullivan’s Victorian-era score.

But what made the show truly memorable was the well-oiled manner with which the cast worked together: a quality a cast of actors can only obtain by regularly working together like the actors in The Pirates  consistently do season-by-season.  (The lead actor in The Pirates alone has performed 51 roles in 41 productions over the course of 17 seasons at the Festival.)

The benefits gained by acting companies whose members regularly work together are nothing new.  Since Thespis – the ancient Greek who, according to Aristotle, was the first to portray someone else to tell a story (hence we get the word “thespian”) – companies of actors have bonded to produce great stage productions.  In Renaissance London, acting companies like William Shakespeare's troupe The King's Men, travelled the country performing for royalty as well as common people.

Kirkland, however, is missing an acting company of its own.  As fantastic as is for Kirkland’s youth theater, it doesn’t contribute to Kirkland’s theatrical richness in the way an established adult acting company might.  And while the has managed to book some theatrical productions (for example, Lyric Light Opera of the Northwest’s The Music Man that starts Sept. 24), it falls short of supplying Kirkland’s residents with the quantity of fantastic theater it deserves.

Having acted myself at Kirkland’s Performance Center, I know that it is a fantastic state-of-the-art venue that is ideal for staging stimulating, funny, and enriching plays and musicals.  Moreover, Kirkland is a community driven by creativity and is a community that embraces artistic stimulation.  I wonder then, what is preventing an established community of actors from calling Kirkland its home?

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Trent Latta is an attorney and current member of Kirkland's Cultural Council. You may email him at TrentLatta@gmail.com.