Jubilee Youth Performing Arts Show is Friday

The Homer Council on the Arts annual Jubilee Youth Performing Arts Show is 7 p.m. Friday at the Mariner Theatre. Tickets are $5 youth, $10 HCOA members and $15 general admission, on sale at HCOA and the Homer Bookstore.

Youth performers this year are Rebecca Trowbridge, Autumn Dangle and Debbie Weisser, and the Homer Children’s Choir. Elizabeth Prescott and Elsa Pietch will present piano and vocal selections. Pianists this year include Jackson Sarber and Jimmy Gao. Olivia Glasman and Delta Fabich will sign in American Sign Language to music, and a string quartet including Clyde Clemens, Sammy Walker, Ethan Benedetti, and Daniel Perry from the Homer Youth Orchestra will present Blue Rhythmico. Three groups from the Harbor School of Music present a dance performance. Ireland Styvar and Freida Renner will share their newly mastered aerial skills. Katia Holmes will present an original solo dance piece. Marina Co, Simon Lopez and Brightly Thoning do an original clowning skit. Homer’s youth marimba group, Vheneka Marimba, performs “Kumafaro.”

Auditions for Pier One play are Saturday

Pier One Theatre holds auditions for another of its summer plays, Tom Stoppard’s “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead,” directed by Jennifer Norton. Auditions are 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. Saturday and Sunday at the Homer High School Mariner Theatre. Performances are in July at Pier One. There are big and small roles for men and women and even mimes. In “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead,” Stoppard tells the story of Shakespeare’s Hamlet from two minor characters in the play. For more questions about auditions, contact Norton at 299-3599.

Ray Troll art workshop sold out

A drawing class taught by artist Ray Troll is sold out. Troll teaches the class at 1 p.m. Saturday at the Homer Council on the Arts. Troll visits Homer for a series of Earth Day week events sponsored by Salmonfest and the Kachemak Bay Conservation Society. Troll and the Ratfish Wranglers perform at 8 p.m. Saturday at Alice’s Champagne Palace. Tickets are $15 in advance and $20 at the door. Sponsored by Salmonfest, the concert also is the kick-off event for the 2016 festival on Aug. 5-7 at the Kenai Peninsula Fairgrounds, Ninilchik. The Ratfish Wranglers play “fishy science music,” as Troll describes it.

Troll also Ray performs today at Chapman School, Anchor Point, and Homer High School, and Friday at West Homer Elementary School and Fireweed Academy (both big and little Fireweed).

One of Alaska’s more popular artists, Troll has become known for his playful, science-themed designs that appear on everything from coffee labels to T-shirts. 

Tidelines Ferry Tour visits Homer

Four visiting artists stop in Homer on the M/V Kennicott on Sunday as part of a state-wide tour by marine highway. Artists on the Tidelines Ferry Tour perform at 7 p.m. Monday at Bunnell Street Arts Center. There is a suggested $5 donation. At 6:30 p.m. Tuesday is a Climate and Culture Conversation at the Center for Alaskan Coastal Studies.

Traveling on the Tidelines Ferry Tour are weaver and storyteller Teri Rofkar, playwright and blogger Chantal Bilodeau, musician and performer Allison Warden, and creative futurist Michelle Kuen Suet Fung. The tour is the Island Institute of Sitka’s first nomadic group residency program. The artists examine the issue of climate change through their respective creative approaches. The group previously visited Sitka, Wrangell, Ketchikan, Kake, Petersburg, Juneau and Kodiak, and will visit Anchorage after their Homer stop. For more information, see www.iialaska.org.

Bowie tribute show is next weekend

The Homo Superior presents “A Solitary Candle: The Music of David Bowie” at 8:30 p.m. April 29 and 30 at Alice’s Champagne Palace. Formerly The Mother Superior, a group of 12 Homer musicians performed the Beatles’ White Album show in Homer and to a sold-out crowd at the TapRoot in 2014. The band name has changed to The Homo Superior for this performance of the music of David Bowie. The core band includes seven of Homer’s finest musicians. Joining them are eight string and horn players. Spanning decades of great David Bowie music, the evening will consist of excellent performances of more than 30 songs and great dancing moments. 

The core band are Megan Murphy, percussion, vocals, keyboards; Jennifer King, bass, violin; Johnny B.,  piano, keyboards; Tyler Munns, vocals, guitar; Dylan Smith, bass, vocals; Steve Collins, guitar, vocals, and Ian McCullough, drums. Joining them are Rudy Multz, guitar; Daniel Perry, Trina Uvaas, Cathy Stingley,  Tom Klinker, Bobby Creamer, Lisa Schallock, all on strings; and Jon Sharp and Amy Johnson, horns.

Tickets are $10 in advance at Alice’s and the Homer Bookstore and $15 at the door.

Early registration for writers conference ends May 2

Early registration with a reduced fee of $375 for the 15th annual Kachemak Bay Writers Conference ends May 2. Sponsored by the Kachemak Bay Campus of Kenai Peninsula College for teachers, writers, students and general public, conference is June 10-14 at Land’s End Resort. For program and registration information, visit writersconference.homer.alaska.edu.

This year’s keynote presenter is 2012-2014 U.S. Poet Laureate and Pulitzer Prize finalist Natasha Trethewey. Conference presenters include 17 award-winning, nationally-recognized authors, editors and agents who will conduct creative writing workshops, readings, craft talks and panel presentations in creative fiction, nonfiction, poetry and the business of writing. Presenters are Miriam Altshuler, Dan Beachy-Quick, Richard Chiappone, Jennine Capo Crucet, Forrest Gander, Lee Goodman, Richard Hoffman, Erin Coughlin Hollowell, Sarah Leavitt, Nancy Lord, Jane Rosenman, Peggy Shumaker, Sherry Simpson, Peggy Shumaker, Frank Soos and David Stevenson.

Optional activities include manuscript reviews, editor-agent consultations, receptions, a boat cruise and open mic. Evening readings on June 11-13 by visiting writers will be open to the general public at no charge. 

A special post-conference writing workshop is at Tutka Bay Lodge. A Youth Workshop for high school students on graphic novels will be held June 10. To register and for more information, visit writersconference.homer.alaska.edu.