March 13, 2015 | Cannon Beach Gazette | cannonbeachgazette.com • 11A
By Erick Bengel
Cannon Beach Gazette
J
enni Tronier, an ac-
tor and employee
of the Coaster The-
atre Playhouse since 2013,
makes her debut as a Coast-
er director this month with
Agatha Christie’s 1946
play, “Murder on the Nile.”
Adapted from Christie’s
1937 novel Death on the
Nile, the play tells the story
of 12 characters — including
a newlywed couple, a jilted
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man tourist and a wealthy,
snobbish old lady — whose
lives intersect aboard a pad-
dle steamer traveling south
along the Nile River from
Aswan to Wadi Halfa.
And, since this is an Ag-
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one dies, people are sus-
pected and blamed and then
it’s up to the one detective
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Tronier said. “It’s hard to
summarize without giving
too much away.”
The show, which clocks
in at roughly two hours and
15 minutes with intermis-
sion, opens March 13 and
runs through April 18. It
contains adult themes and
theatrical gunshots but no
foul language; if it was a
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Fan club
Christie (1890-1976) is
famous for her crime novels,
short stories and plays. Her
name is “synonymous with
the classic murder mystery,”
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Death on the Nile in high
school.
“Agatha Christie is her
own genre, really,” said
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“There are a lot of mystery
plays, but, basically, she’s a
benchmark in theater and in
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times, people will be com-
pared to her work: ‘This is
like Agatha Christie, blah,
blah, blah.’ It’s sort of like
going to the source, to do a
play that she wrote.”
Frank Jagodnik and Liz
McCall, a married couple,
count themselves Chris-
tie fans. “I used to read her
books when I was a child,”
said McCall who plays Lou-
ise, a maid.
Some of the suspicious characters
in “Murder on the Nile” include,
from left , Frank Jagodnik (stand-
ing), Katie Youngs, David Sweeney,
Jean Rice, Ellen Jensen, Mick Alder-
man, Josh Loring and Amie Fipps
PHOTO BY GEORGE VETTER/CANNON-BEACH.NET
Coaster Theatre stages Agatha Christie’s ‘Murder on the Nile’
This is the third Chris-
tie play the Coaster has put
on, and “if there’s an Agatha
Christie, we try to be in it,”
said Jagodnik, who plays the
detective, Canon Pennefather.
“Murder on the Nile”
keeps the audience on its
toes, Tronier said.
“That’s the one thing
about a good murder mys-
tery, is that you’re constant-
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dunnit,” she said. Audience
members should be asking
themselves, “What are the
clues? Where are the red her-
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hint of who the murderer is?”
a lot of human nature,” she
said.
What’s more, Christie
“not only creates unique char-
acters, but then (she) creates
unique relationships between
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Jensen quipped.
In “Murder on the Nile,”
the river and the setting are
practically characters in
themselves, Tronier said.
Christie “brings the roman-
ticism of the 1920s, 1930s
‘Every character is very specifi c,
and every character is defi nitely
unique and motivated in their own
way. It’s a lot of human nature’
Ellen Jensen, “Jacqueline de Severac”
added Mick Alderman, who
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Characters
niless newlywed. Alderman
One of Christie’s strengths also designed the lighting for
as a storyteller is her ability to the play.
create a memorable, well-de-
Trapped in a small space,
veloped cast of characters, the comedy and tension
said Ellen Jensen, who plays among the characters esca-
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lates. Then “they start killing
“Every character is very each other,” Jagodnik said.
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“It would still probably
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tivated in their own way. It’s murder ... just not as much,”
Egypt to life.”
Social signifi cance
Thoughtful viewers may
enjoy Christie’s take on the
social structure of early 20th
century England.
“It’s really common in
a lot of English plays of
this period that some, if not
all, of the tension comes
from class and social stand-
ing,” Tronier said. “English
tax. For the happily married
Amie Fipps, it was playing a
bachelorette.
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who has been living with the
material since December, the
biggest challenge will be “re-
membering it’s brand new to
the audience, and we have to
bring it fresh every time we do
it and not allow ourselves to
remember where it ends. We
have to be in each moment as
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This is true of every play, of
course, but, “in a mystery es-
pecially, it’s more of a distinct
challenge in some ways not to
play the outcome.”
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ence knows the outcome, that
doesn’t mean the entertain-
ment value of the play has di-
Challenges
minished. After all, knowing
Each actor has had to who the killer is can make
overcome at least one chal- for a new experience the sec-
lenge with his or her charac- ond time through.
“Hey, I’ve been enter-
ter. For McCall, it was hav-
ing to act subservient. For tained, and I’ve seen it quite
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aristocratic society was
breaking down ... The lines
between the haves and have-
nots were blurring, and there
were people who liked that
and people who didn’t.”
The Miss Ffolio-Ffoul-
kes character, played by
Jean Rice as “dripping with
silliness and a kind of kook-
iness,” is “very concerned
about everybody’s position
and who is lesser than her —
and she’s not afraid to show
it,” Tronier said.
“Even the Communist
character who wants equal-
ity is still demeaning toward
people who are ‘lower’ than
him,” Jensen said. The class
structure is “so ingrained in
them.”
Festival includes focused drawing of the human form
Festival from Page 1A
down — the painful heartache
songs,” she said.
Compassion
“We hunger for compas-
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from it. We long to know how
to express it more consistent-
ly, more effectively,” she said.
Unfortunately, “we don’t have
a particularly compassionate
culture,” which she described
as a “very competitive, mate-
rialistic, consumeristic culture,
rife with anxiety and depres-
sion” and consequent physical
disorders.
Positioned in the wide-
legged forward bend (also
known as the prasarita padotta-
nasana), the group meditated on
compassion. Then, in the down-
ward-facing dog pose, they
imagined dissolving the tension
caused by their own noncom-
passionate word and “the story
about feeling lame or ashamed.”
“We can apply compas-
sion to the pain we’re causing
ourselves ... That’s one of the
pathways out,” she said. “If
you apply cruelty to cruelty,
you won’t get out. You just go
further in.”
In the back of the hall sat
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“The whole conference has
been very powerful and pos-
itive ... and emotional, too,”
said Leon, who also attended
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sand Resort the day before.
Leon, who works in bank-
ing and may undergo a career
change, found the festival
“very helpful in processing
lots of thoughts and feelings.”
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Redmond, sat near the front.
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class ever.
“I had self-doubts about
singing,” she said. “It was in-
teresting how negativity kind
ERICK BENGEL PHOTO
Linda Kinhan, of Cannon Beach, sketches model Julie “Fig”
Yanko. Behind Yanko, Lila Wickham, left , of Cannon Beach,
and Jennifer Wyman, of Tacoma, Wash., do the same.
Julie “Fig” Yanko, of
Manzanita, models
the Lord of the Fishes
pose for a fi gure
drawing class.
ERICK BENGEL PHOTO
of just came about while I was
practicing. And just being able
to actually practice it, and have
the support and love of every-
one else in the room — it was
really incredible.”
the community hall served as
a temporary art studio, where
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teacher David Kinhan taught a
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Using charcoal sticks and
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Life drawing
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At moments, Marsh asked frame of Julie “Fig” Yanko, a
her listeners — the unsure be- professional model and yoga
ginners and the seasoned yogis practitioner from Manzanita.
— to park their thinking mind
Yanko, wearing skin-tight
somewhere in their body. And, gym wear, rotated her angular
when their mind wandered, body through different yoga
to coax it back to the here and poses on two layers of yoga
now, even if it was only to pay mat, sometimes holding a
attention to the sensations on pose for 10 minutes or more.
WKHLU¿QJHUWLSVRURIWKHLUEDUH Meanwhile, Kinhan circled
skin against the cool air.
the room, moving from stu-
Though mindfulness med- dent to student, pointing out
itation lies at the heart of yoga the shapes, contours, propor-
practice, one need not neces- tions and musculature of Yan-
sarily assume the lotus position ko’s body, and the negative
while om-ing in order to have a space around it.
meditative experience. Making
The human form is “one
art, for example, can be just as of the hardest things that there
rich and rewarding, and can pro- is to draw,” even in a state of
duce a similar effect.
natural repose, Kinhan said.
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ERICK BENGEL PHOTO
Julie “Fig” Yanko, of Manzanita, models for David Kinhan’s yoga fi gure drawing class.
Background from left : Lila Wickham, of Cannon Beach; Kinhan, of Cannon Beach; and
Jennifer Wyman, of Tacoma, Wash.
yoga poses requires even
greater concentration.
“This particular type
of drawing is like a yoga
practice,” said Kinhan, the
younger brother of yoga
festival founder and director
Christen Allsop. “I tell peo-
ple that the whole point of
this class is not necessarily to
make beautiful drawings that
you’re going to put in a frame
and give to your mother. It’s
for you. It’s for you to learn
how to draw.”
While drawing, “you’re
focusing on one thing for a
certain period of time,” said
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teer from Portland who took
Kinhan’s class. “You get into
a whole other world. You
forget about your surround-
ings, which is exactly what
yoga’s supposed to be like.”
‘Trueness of line’
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tive year, the yoga festival,
held March 6 through 8 this
year, typically brings be-
tween 150 and 200 yoga en-
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These include world-re-
nowned yoga instructors,
like Marsh, who give class-
es, workshops, presentations
and lectures at different
locations throughout town.
The 2015 festival had just
under 200 participants, ac-
cording to an early tally by
Allsop, owner of Cannon
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The festival receives
money from the city’s Tour-
ism and Arts Commission,
which collects a portion of
the city’s overnight lodging
taxes. To get funding, event
organizers have to show
that their event attracts
visitors from more than 50
miles away and contributes
to the city’s arts scene. This
year’s yoga festival grant
was for $36,000.
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friend of Allsop, has attend-
ed the festival every year,
and this year marked the
second time she has taken
Kinhan’s class. As Kinhan
called it a day, and Yanko
prepared for Marsh’s work-
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shared why yoga appeals to
her.
“Everybody does yoga
for a different reason,” she
said. “For some people, it’s
internal; other people, exter-
nal. For me, it’s visual.”
Watching Yanko —
whose yoga posture rep-
resents “the ideal,” and
whose “trueness of line”
embodies what many yoga
practitioners hope to achieve
— “it makes me appreciate
what yoga’s supposed to be,”
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er have a yoga body. I will
never have that trueness of
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preciate it in other ways.”