1. Janis Carper applies face paint to a young adventurer as several friends watch at Fishtrap’s big Read Finale.

This year’s Big Read honored the work of the late Ursula Le Guin, winner of the National Book Award as well as multiple Hugo and Nebula awards for Science Fiction excellence. Le Guin was a writer and poet extraordinaire. One of Fishtrap’s early supporters and a frequent teacher of Fishtrap workshops, she seemed at home here. So it was especially fitting that The Big Read explored worlds of her making and imagination.

The Big Read Finale at Cloverleaf Hall took its cue from Le Guin’s exploratory zeal. Le Guin’s hallmark “Earthsea” series crafted a magical yet oddly familiar world of islands and oceans, inhabited by wizards, dragons, and people who lived simpler lives in a non-industrialized world. The Finale followed this lead, inviting participants to invent whatever character they wished to become, and create their own world to live in. As Le Guin said, “All of us have to learn how to invent our lives, make them up, imagine them.”

Participants started by completing a questionnaire that helped them invent a character they would play for the evening, complete with questions that included the characters name, appearance, age, eye color, hair color, and height along with character strengths and flaws, companion animal and plans for self defense along the journey. Then participants described the world they were in and defined their quest, —and they were off! Drawings of dragons festooned Cloverleaf Halls’ darkened walls. People in wizard hats, scarlet capes, and fur-fringed Earthsea garb drifted across the room. On closer inspection, you might recognize them as someone you knew, but for that night there was a far-away look in their eyes.

They got real-world help along the way from garb lent by the Joseph Charter School drama department, and Janis Carper who face-painted emblems and images to enhance each character. At the end of the evening, the Earthsea adventurers checked in with Debbi Wahl, as they completed the journey.

The World Premier of a short film by Lorrie Fischer’s fourth and fifth-grade class about the OK Theatre’s history provided another highlight of the evening. Directed and filmed by Fishtrap’s Cameron Scott, the movie recounted the theatre’s opening, early years, and success as a community hub. Fischer’s class acted in, and helped write the drama.