Musical Fundraiser to Lift Up Local Theater Artist

One warm afternoon this summer, Kat Agudo was on the bus, looking forward to coming home to the place they had moved into a few days earlier. 

Around Agudo, fellow passengers started talking about fire engines rushing into the Towne Point neighborhood. 

Stepping off the bus, Agudo saw the emergency vehicles up close. It was their new place that had gone up in flames. 

The house and shed on Queen Anne Place, where Agudo had just begun renting a room from owner Scott Bahlmann, burned the evening of July 7. The blaze did $350,000 in structural damage while destroying $50,000 in contents, according to the East Jefferson Fire Rescue report. No one was injured. The fire’s cause remains undetermined, while the EJFR report states there may have been a failure or short in the shed’s electrical system.

The belongings Agudo lost included their desktop computer, which contained their original plays, not stored in the cloud; their clothes; a laptop they’d had since graduate school; and mementos and gifts from loved ones. 

A playwright, actor, singer and the audience services manager at Key City Public Theatre, Agudo has been staying with friends and searching for a new rental. Asking for help wasn’t something they found easy to do. 

But earlier this month, Agudo’s fellow performers got together and created an event. It’s a benefit show, with ingredients stirred together to not only help, but also celebrate their friend. 

Key City Public Theatre Artistic Director Denise Winter, musical director Linda Dowdell and singers Brendan and Maggie Jo Chambers, Kyle LeMaire and Morgan Bartholick will join Agudo at the Key City Playhouse, 419 Washington Street in Port Townsend, for “Kat Agudo & Friends: A Benefit Concert,” at 7:30 p.m. Oct. 1. Tickets are available at keycitypublictheatre.org on a pay-what-you-wish basis, with proceeds supporting Agudo’s search for a permanent place in or near Port Townsend. 

Agudo’s face lit up as they listed highlights of the show: songs from “Wicked,” “Kiss Me Kate,” “Les Misérables” and “Bark!,” Agudo’s first Key City musical. “Follow Your Heart” from “Urinetown” is another of the apt songs in the mix. So is “Roxie” from the musical “Chicago,” which Agudo sang in six July performances of the “Broadway at Sunset” dinner theater show at Port Angeles’ Field Arts & Events Hall.

Agudo, who holds a master of fine arts in playwriting from the Actors Studio Drama School at Pace University in New York, came to Port Townsend in 2022 for a Centrum artist residency. They began working at Key City Public Theatre that year, as the professional theater company was emerging from the Covid shutdown. 

“I genuinely really love my job,” Agudo said. But after the fire, they wondered whether they would be able to stay in Port Townsend. Would there be any affordable place to rent? 

Agudo added, without irony, that living in a vehicle wasn’t an option; They don’t own a car.

Dowdell, for her part, has been busy assembling the voices and melodies for the October 1 show. The evening will be all about music, she said, noting that the singers will bring considerable range and warmth to the stage.

There’s a surprise song in there, Dowdell added, about building a better tomorrow—“very on point,” she said. 

The fundraiser starts Key City’s “Harvest of the Arts,” a monthlong lineup of performances that includes “Sips & Scripts” on October 16 and 17. For this presentation, Agudo has just written “That Holy Night,” a short play about Mary and Joseph—as in Jesus’ folks—having no place to stay. 

Without a computer on which to write, Agudo composed the script entirely on their phone. The play is a comedy starring the Chambers couple, Brendan and Maggie Jo, who are expecting a baby in real life. 

Both Agudo and Bahlmann, who is a Saltfire Theatre board member, script adapter and actor, have received other support from the wider theater community. Saltfire turned the August 23 closing night of its production of “The Wind in the Willows” at Fort Worden State Park into a benefit. At the show, more than 210 play-goers showered Bahlmann and Agudo with donations. 

The audience “came out in a big generous way,” according to Saltfire’s Facebook post.

One thing is certain: This is home, said Agudo. You know this “when you find your people,” they added, wiping away tears. 

For the October 1 show, “I just want to bring the community together,” Agudo said, for “an amazing night of joy.”