New Old Time Chautauqua

New Old Time Chautauqua (NOTC) provides free, educational workshops at each site of our summer tour and sometimes with our Regional Shows during other times of the year.

We coordinate with local community leaders and special interest groups to encourage their participation as workshop presenters as well as participants. With broad community participation we all become learners and teachers.

Often taking place outside, in the vicinity of our performing space — or indoors/under cover, during inclement weather — NOTC workshops usually last from 1 to 2 hours.

The workshops are an important part of the community-building service of

Chautauqua and are an integral part of our philosophy. Through the workshops we make contact with people of all ages and we hope to leave them having mutually exchanged the skills and the inspiration to continue exploring each subject once we're gone.

Workshops have covered topics from the esoteric to the practical—clowning, quilting, juggling, mask making, AIDS education, yoga, tobacco education and smoking-cessation, drumming, appropriate technology, wetlands, recycling, and tooth-flossing. We usually offer from 6 - 8 different workshop subjects in a given day.

We believe that through the mutual exchange of information and ideas, the host community and NOTC are equally enriched.

Trash fashion is the art of fashion design using only recycled materials. Haute Trash fashion designer Rayona Visqueen (a.k.a. Robin Worley) will guide you through designing and creating fabulous headgear. Imagine...a disposable paper chef's bonnet becomes a chic and stylish little pillbox hat, or a pile of plastic six-pack rings becomes a regal tiara. A designer shopping bag may end up as a fancy French beret, and a torn poster may turn into a juggling jester's cap.

Potential participants should take a look at their own trash and discards with a new eye toward the creation of a hat extraordinaire. The most ordinary object becomes utterly fantastic in your new topper! Bring along any items that seem interesting or useful toward the creation of your own recycled crowning glory. Good items for making trash hats include:

Is the hand quicker than the eye, or is the eye simply slower than the hand? Either way, here is your chance to learn magic. Learn a 'knock-your-socks-off' magic trick and more. Kids ages 7 to 70 learn what it takes to fool an audience and how to turn a simple trick into a minor miracle.

If The Flying Karamazov Brothers and Harry Houdini had a child, it would be Joey Pipia. Fast, funny, and amazing, Joey Pipia has performed his rare brand of comedy magic for over twenty years, getting his start as an actual sorcerer's apprentice in New York City at the age of seventeen when one of the 20th century's modern masters of magic took Pipia under his wing.

Pipia is known not only for his original, outstanding sleight-of-hand in the entertainment world, but also as an innovator and inventor within the field of magic.

Samba is an energetic, joyous dance - perfect for those who love to move their bodies. We will focus on basic samba movements while giving thanks to our bodies and thanks for the rich heritage which brings us this dynamic dance.

Explore the exciting music of Brazil through this hands-on rhythm workshop. You will learn basic hand drumming techniques, bell and shaker patterns and right brain/left brain integration. We will learn many traditional African and Cuban rhythms and then weave them all together, creating the musical passageway to happiness.

Joannie with other quiltmakers and quilts

For over fourteen years, the New Old Time Chautauqua has been sponsoring quilting workshops, on tour and at home. The baby quilts that are designed and sewn during these sessions are donated to at-risk infants--children who are medically, psychologically or financially challenged. The quilts are distributed to individual babies, as well as hospitals and care centers. On tour, the quilts are donated to little ones in the host communities.

The recipients may have little to call their own (some even lack parents), but they each have their own "blankee" to keep them warm. The beautiful quilts are made with tenderness, and bring love and comfort to each child.

Recent recipients include: Jefferson Hospital in Port Townsend, WA; DSHS in Lakeview, OR; University of Washington Children's Hospital and the Union Gospel Mission Women and Family Shelter in Seattle, WA; Lower Elwah Tribe in Port Angeles, WA; Children's Health Services of the Red Lake Chippewa in Minnesota; and the Child Development Center in Bay St Louis, MS (a city that was badly damaged by Hurricane Katrina).

Join our resident folksinger as she shares her years of experience in song and self-expression. Bring your guitars, banjos, dulcimers, fiddles, harmonicas, etc... and your favorite folk tunes, sea chanteys, and original songs to share with our beloved "Fort Knox of Folk Music." Be prepared to savor the richness of the river of song.

Faith has been singing since she could talk, and knows a thousand songs of love, labor, protest, men, women and children, plus "outrageous songs so bad they're good." She would love to get an impromptu band going, and looks forward to learning your favorite songs.

Bring your sense of humor, your imagination, and anything that might fit on a paper plate. Help will be on hand for children and adults who want to make masks for themselves and friends using our supplies of paper plates, glitter, glue, feathers, fabric and scraps of anything else that come to hand.