Eight short plays compile the “Stranded” series. Most playwrights and directors are from Homer with the exception of Dawson Moore, playwright from Anchorage. They are produced by Christine Kulcheski and Rudy Multz and composed after a writing workshop led by Homer local Kate Rich. Curtis Jackson provided a brief description of the event:
“...it's going to involve eight different plays written by Alaskans, many by folks in Homer, and their plays are about 10 minutes each. And there's a wide range of topics...So all the playwrights submitted their plays to the board, the 10 minute play board, and then they reviewed them, and they kind of went off into a group just to kind of assess, to get a nice mixture of maybe some comedies and more that are a little bit more serious and have a nice mix of different topics.”
2025 is the second year of the show.
One of the shorts, “Strangers on the Shore” is composed and directed by Jackson himself. This story is based on the story of Lauren LeFree, a Homer woman who went missing from a 36-foot troller in August 2024 in Idaho Inlet near Pelican in Southeast Alaska waters.
“…she fell overboard, and they never found her body. I mean, it's my, my nephew's mom, okay? So it's very close to home for me, and as a maritime person, and in the trade like I it's something that we deal with all the time, is the risk, you know, and so you have it hit that close to home, it's very alarming, and we try to figure out a way to kind of talk more about it, but just kind of gets put aside. There's the seafarers Memorial, you know, but it's kind of it. So I wanted to write a play that would eulogize her, but not be super sourful, because that's not her style. She is weird and creepy and strange and funny. At the same time, it's all about how none of it ever makes really any sense.”
Recent Homer resident Easy Hazi described his participation in the upcoming event: “I'm taking part on the most comfortable couch in town, written by Kate Rich. My character’s name is Canick, a homeless guy. And I won't tell more than that, but it's a very interesting piece, and I highly recommend to see that. Yeah, and I'm super excited to be part of this production. This is the peak of the summer for me, making theater art. This is very, very homemade; very Homer homemade.”
Hazi will also perform a lead role as the Scarecrow in the upcoming Wizard of Odds, composed by Michael McKinney and Sally Oberstein and coming up at the end of September on the Mariner stage. He talked a little bit about his background and theater training:
“Last year I took part in this 10 Minute festival play, and that was my entrance to the theater world, which I found so inspiring and such a beautiful art.After this I went to an acting school in Barcelona for the winter…A very dramatic theater school, but a very special method, run by a woman from Chile with everything in Spanish. So when I came I didn't know a single word, and some of the teachers and students didn't know English at all. It was a very immersive experience into the Spanish speaking world and the amazing art of improv theater and just being in the moment. Most of the time, we didn't know what we were about to do before we went on the stage, just whatever came up. It was very interesting.”
Now living in Homer, Hazi grew up in Israel with a native language of Hebrew. He also speaks Spanish and English and provided some details on his personal history:
“I grew up in Israel, but grew up on stories about Alaska all the time. So it was always in my mind. I always knew that I'll come here at some point, and then I did, and I had amazing friends of my mom to stay with. Kate Rich hosted me. She picked me up from the airport the first time I landed in Alaska. I found my path and started to make food and slowly, slowly found the amazing community that lives here.”
Tickets, performance times and more details about the plays included in “Stranded” are available on the Pier One website: https://pieronetheatre.org/.
