New Old Time Chautauqua

W h a t W e D o

Vaudeville Show - Workshops - Parade - Community Shows - Regional Shows

We aim to delight, educate, amaze, and provoke the imagination of adults and children alike.

Our Summer Tours are typically three to six weeks long and our stay in each community is commonly about three days. During each stay, our typical list of events includes a Vaudeville Show (or a few), numerous Workshops, a Parade and a smaller Community Show or two.

In an effort to keep our expenses (and, therefore, our ticket prices) down to a minimum during our travels, we sleep in personal tents and collectively prepare our own meals.

Each Spring, to ready things for the Summer Tour, two members of the New Old Time Chautauqua travel to each of the performance sites and meet with the local organizers and presenters in order to ensure the best possible advance preparations. At this time they survey the performance venue and camping accommodations, discuss publicity, and investigate travel routes.

Then, come mid-July, a large percentage of our company attends the Oregon Country Fair, outside of Eugene, Oregon, where we present a number of shows. By the way, our Chautauqua largely originated as a subset of the entertainers and support people at this Fair who wanted to "take the show on the road."

Once this magical Country Fair is over and, like Brigadoon, it sinks into the mists, we traditionally move on to another Northwest location to meet up with the rest of our troupe and spend a few days making final preparations and plans for the Summer Tour.

Then we hit the road.

We tour using a small collection of buses, trucks, cars, and trailers. We bring along yurts (large round tents) for workshops, group meetings, and band rehearsals.

We are an entirely volunteer community. Some volunteers ("buckstoppers") take charge of making sure that various things happen as needed. However, many activities on tour - such as setting up and tearing down the campsites and shows, preparing and cleaning up after meals and even putting on the shows themselves - are undertaken as community events within our group. To the degree that it is practical, members of our touring company commonly volunteer to help out with almost everything we do at one point or another.

In consideration of the environmental impact a group our size could have on locations we visit, we make a point of cleaning up our performing spaces and camp sites when we are done. We reuse or recycle what we can and see to the proper disposal of the rest.

Poster art by the beloved Rebo

Vaudeville Variety Show

Our vaudeville variety shows generally last 2 - 2 1/2 hours and include everything from comedy to juggling and tap dancing, from comedy to rap and rope-spinning, from comedy to cowgirls and bubble-blowing and from comedy to poets and magicians - and did we mention how funny they are?

The Fighting Instruments of Karma Marching Chamber Band/Orchestra accompanies each performance with rousing music, sound effects and wisecracks.

We perform in theaters, parks, schoolyards, community centers, baseball fields, or most any open space, to audiences of 200 to 1500.

An "Everybody's Welcome!" Parade

Parade in Tiny Train The Fighting Instruments of Karma Marching Chamber Band/ Orchestra sounds Chautauqua's arrival into each community. The 20+ piece band leads the collective group down the center of towns, through intersections of society, across stages, into supermarkets, up mountains, through parks, over beaches, riding on mini-trains, and will never miss a chance to visit hot springs.

Before each tour, in an effort to make our parades as fun and inclusive as possible, a New Old Time Chautauqua member contacts local community members through civic and service organizations, clubs, dance troupes, and cultural heritage groups to encourage parade participation.

This colorful event, in which EVERYONE can participate, is also advertised to the public by Sponsors. Children decorate bicycles, families march with pets, ladies ride on horseback, and a never-ending assortment of outlandish characters accompany our procession.

Community Shows

In each area we visit, NOTC brings an abbreviated version of our show to audiences who can't come to us. We target juvenile detention centers, nursing homes, hospitals, prisons, and other institutions which have little or no access to live entertainment.

Part of our intention, in visiting these institutions, is to validate the existence of these individuals as members of the larger community. These shows attempt to bridge the gap between isolation and hope.

We believe laughter is a powerful vehicle for healing as well as a birthright.

Regional Shows:

In addition to the Summer Tour, our Chautauqua presents from three to eight regional Vaudeville performances annually - sometimes with Parade, Workshops and Community Shows, sometimes without. These performances exist for two excellent reasons:

the fun of getting our community together to entertain, confer, converse, and otherwise hobnob with our brother communities and
to raise money to support both our Summer Tour and our general operating expenses throughout the year.

Common locations for these regional shows include Santa Cruz, CA and Eugene, OR, as well as Port Townsend, Bellingham, Mount Vernon and Seattle, in Washington.

• New Old Time Chautauqua •
• 615 54th Street, Port Townsend, WA 98368 •
• Phone: 360/ 385-2212 •

• Email: info@chautauqua.org •