Olympic Theatre Arts casts, rehearses ‘Immigrant Letters’

By Sequim Gazette Staff • July 3, 2019 1:30 am
Kait Saffold, left, and Sharon DelaBarre reading through the letters they transcribed by hand from the script on a set under construction. Photo courtesy of Olympic Theatre Arts
Kait Saffold, left, and Sharon DelaBarre reading through the letters they transcribed by hand from the script on a set under construction. Photo courtesy of Olympic Theatre Arts

Apropos with an expected influx of out-of-towners, Olympic Theatre Arts’ production of “The Immigrant Garden ~ Letters” — set to coincide with Sequim’s Lavender Weekend in July — is cast and in rehearsal.

Cast in the two leading roles are veteran actress Sharon DelaBarre as Louise Beauchamp, an elderly and somewhat eccentric English gardener, and newcomer Kait Saffold as Cecily Barnes, a young and dreamy Washingtonian gardener.

Set in 1910, Caroline Wood”s play sees Barnes passionate about having a flower garden. She finds a catalogue from “Mrs. Beauchamp’s Mystical Flower Seed and Herb Emporium” and sends off to England for seeds. The contact blooms into an exchange of letters between young Cecily and Beauchamp that grows into a friendship transcending time and oceans.

“I love Louise; she starts off saying basically that she’s older so she’ll just do what she wants to,” DelaBarre says. “She embeds character into her flowers, the butterflies in her garden, the toads in the grass, whatever. She’s even given the brook in her garden a personality.”

Saffold says, “Every time we rehearse I feel like it’s a really special project. There’s just a lot of good gems and lessons in there. Even though it’s a period play I feel like it’s really timeless.”

Also cast is Della LaCour, who was born in the same city of Yorkshire, England, from which the character of Louise writes her letters. LaCour plays Helen Curtis, a friend of Louise.

“I have not been on the stage since I was a child,” LaCour says, “but, wow, something told me I needed to go do this. The underlying messages with flowers and life and roots and things — it’s really touching.”

Director Cathy Marshal says the play touches her heart.

“It conveys a heightened sense of relationships, especially inter-generational,” Marshal says. “You’ve got a young woman of seventeen and an older woman who is in her seventies communicating across continents. It’s a lovely idea just being able to be friends and get to know one another even with that kind of distance in 1910. The play is lighthearted in a lot of places, but it’s also real sweet and tender throughout.”

Additionally, Joe Schulz plays Washington arborist John Burrows.

“There are some real basic human lessons in this show,” DelaBarre says. “It’s about flowers and gardens on the surface, but the play is really about human growth and blossoming, and growing into your potential.”

Play details

“The Immigrant Garden ~ Letters” runs from July 12-21 . Performance times are Friday and Saturday at 7:30 p.m. and Sunday at 2 p.m. Pay-What-You-Will night is 7:30 p.m. Thursday, July 18.

Tickets are $15 for the general public, $13 for OTA members and $10 for students with school identification card. Get tickets at the theatre box office (1-5 p.m., Monday through Friday) or online at www.OlympicTheatreArts.org.

For more information, call the theatre at 360-683-7326.