OTA hosts holidays from stage, screen

Just like the holidays, these performances designed to warm hearts and get you in the season’s festive mood are for a limited time only.

Just like the holidays, these performances designed to warm hearts and get you in the season’s festive mood are for a limited time only.

Olympic Theatre Arts in Sequim opens its “second stage” season with “Holidays on Stage and Screen,” a musical revue set for Dec. 12-14.

Director and soprano Jaie Livingstone has assembled songs from holiday musicals like “White Christmas” and from the silver and small-screen holiday specials like “The Carpenters’ Christmas Together,” “Holidays with the Boston Pops” and childhood favorites like “Charlie Brown” and “Rudolph.”

Livingstone is joined on stage with some of Sequim’s most familiar voices, including Joel Yelland, Karen Pritchard and Lee Harwell — no strangers to OTA audiences.

“We’ve got the music that will warm your heart and cheer your soul,” Livingstone said.

Performances are at Olympic Theatre Arts, 414 N. Sequim Ave. and are slated for 7:30 p.m. Dec. 12-13, along with a 2 p.m. matinee on Dec. 14.

Livingstone said she reached back to her own experiences growing up to develop the theme for this year’s show.

“I grew up in the TV generation … we watched all the Christmas specials, all the Pops concerts from Boston, all the movie musicals,” she said.

Two years ago, she was asked to direct the music for OTA’s “Little Shop of Horrors” but OTA’s stage was going to remain unused for two months before the show went up. So she pitched a holiday fundraiser to the board and they went for it. That show had four singers and a keyboard/piano player. This year’s show has Livingstone joined by eight singers, plus a four-piece band and two ballroom dancers.

“No, this year’s show has much more production behind it,” Livingstone said. “The musicianship of these players is phenomenal. The voices are great. A lot of people talk about talent, but I prefer to acknowledge a singer’s skill. It’s hard work to memorize a song, movement, emotion and put it out there every night.”

The cast includes musical “faces” familiar to locals, from Broadway and Bordeaux buddy Joel Yelland, Karen Pritchard and Lee Harwell, plus recent imports to Sequim with impressive credits like baritone Ray Chirayath, mezzo Cathy Marschall and mezzo Tina Ryan. Add to the mix a pair of Sequim natives, Jennifer Horton and (in his stage debut) Ryan Macedo.

In addition, Darrell Plank, Rich Crowell, Rick Marschall and LeRoy Davidson provide the music and dancers Carol Hathaway and Jeff Stauffer add to the mix.

And, of course, they aren’t the only ones making the show happen.

“There’s a lot of people behind the scenes who are putting a lot of effort in and without them we wouldn’t have a show,” Livingstone said. “We’re using the set from ‘Harvey’ and our team of decorators is dressing up the whole theater for the season.”

While the show doesn’t exactly follow a straight storyline, it does span many generations. Only three songs in the show were written before 1934. There’s everything from Irving Berlin, to the Carpenters and Tim Burton, along with the songwriting team behind “Frozen.”

And it’s not just Christmas music. That’s by design. Livingstone said.

“There are a lot of concerts around this time of year by some wonderful ensembles … and I like to include music that is familiar and some that is not so,” she said. “The criterion for a song being included allowed us a niche of songs … things from Christmas specials and musicals set in winter or at the holiday time or that mention Christmas themes. There are shows or movies represented that are set in winter or on Christmas, but the song we’ve chosen is not specifically on the topic. ‘Seasons of Love,’ from Rent — that’s a great song, with a beautiful message any time of year. ‘Rent’ happens to be set on Christmas Eve.”

The show, of course, is set in a season with a giving theme, but Livingstone said she and other OTA folks — the vast majority of them volunteers — are getting a lot from their own audiences.

“It is a great feeling — not for the applause necessarily, but for seeing the smiling faces on the audience as they leave the theater after the show,” Livingstone said, “(and) to watch the growth of the performers. It’s a joy.”