Dell’Arte International opened in Blue Lake half a century ago. | File photo by Andrew Goff.

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It’s a common story these days: A social media post sparks an emotional response. Assumptions are made — about intent, maybe, or implied disrespect or facts not in evidence — and the reaction quickly curdles into anger.

Last week, Stephen Gieder received a very angry-sounding voicemail from Emily Wood, director of Parks and Recreation at the City of Blue Lake. She told Gieder that city staff had just been made aware of an Instagram post announcing that Cannifest, the annual weed-themed, all-ages community festival that Gieder organizes, would be held this September in the tiny inland city of Blue Lake.

Screenshot of a Feb. 1 Instagram post from Cannifest.

“That’s not gonna happen,” Wood said on the voicemail. 

She repeated the declaration twice before hanging up. “Cannifest is not going to happen in Blue Lake, and we’ve seen you guys advertising that it is,” she said. “That event needs to go to our City Council for review, so we suggest that you remove all advertisements immediately … or we’re going to have to seek legal ramification here.”

There has been more communication with the City since then, and Cannifest’s prospects inside city limits will likely be decided at a special City Council meeting tonight. More on that below. 

In an interview with the Outpost on Monday, Gieder said he was taken aback by Wood’s voicemail. After hosting the three-day music, art and trade festival in Eureka’s Halvorsen Park for the past few years, he and his fellow organizers had decided to downsize the event this year, for a variety of reasons. He explored a few potential venues, including the Arcata Ballpark and the Blue Lake Casino, but then he met with board members of Dell’Arte International, the world-renowned theater company and accredited fine arts school founded in Blue Lake more than 50 years ago. 

“I kind of fell in love with the idea of being able to utilize the energy of Cannifest [with] the ideas Dell’Arte has and the resurgence of energy there,” Gieder said. 

Dell’Arte has experienced serious financial and organizational troubles in recent years. Battered by the pandemic, declining funding for the arts and rising theater costs, the company hit full-blown crisis mode in 2020 when current and former staffers called out the theater’s leadership for failing to “competently lead the organization” on racial equity matters. 

In 2021, Dell’Arte was forced to close its Master of Fine Arts program, and nearly five years later the organization remains in a precarious position. 

However, a few of the program’s most successful graduates, including Las Vegas-based theater professional Noah Bremer and L.A.-based actress Artemis Pebdani (whose many credits include recurring roles on “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia,” “Scandal” and “Modern Family”) recently assumed leadership roles with their alma mater in hopes of resurrecting the school and saving Dell’Arte from oblivion. With the school still shuttered, their tentative revival plans involve hosting more events on their property, which is located across the street from the Logger Bar and just three blocks from City Hall.

After meeting with Dell’Arte’s board of directors, Gieder was excited about the prospect of Cannifest helping those efforts. He figured the logistics of the festival more or less fit within the parameters of Dell’Arte’s existing Conditional Use Permit for hosting events, and Cannifest could generate some much-needed revenue for the nonprofit. 

“Yeah,” he said. “We thought this could be a great synergy.”

The celebratory Instagram post failed to mention a couple of important details, though — chief among them the fact that Cannifest ‘26 will not include any cannabis sales, licensed distribution or on-site consumption areas. (Gieder said an overzealous state investigator soured the experience for many vendors last year, and besides, he doesn’t see consumption as an essential element of the festival.) 

But, again, the social media post omitted that fact. And Blue Lake, despite the longstanding presence of multinational theater students studying to become clowns, remains culturally conservative in many regards. For example, it has a strict prohibition on commercial cannabis activity.

So when concerned residents forwarded the Instagram post to City Hall, staff likely imagined a pot-smoke bacchanalia with thousands of attendees parking illegally and flooding across city streets. 

“We hadn’t received any formal applications or permits, and so it was a surprise to our office to see [Cannifest] advertised,” Wood, Blue Lake’s Parks and Rec director, said via phone this morning. “Blue Lake itself is so small there really isn’t, in my opinion, anywhere that a special event of that size could be held without the City’s approval.”

Another fact not included in the Instagram post was that Gieder’s backup plan, if Dell’Arte falls through, is to host Cannifest at the Blue Lake Casino and Hotel. To the general public, that’s still in Blue Lake, but Wood said, “Since [the post] didn’t state the Rancheria or the casino, it was presumed the event being advertised in Blue Lake would be somewhere within city limits.”

Over the past week, new Blue Lake City Manager Jennie Short and other City staffers met with Gieder and representatives of Dell’Arte. Gieder has now submitted an application for the event, which the City Council will consider at tonight’s meeting, scheduled to be held at the Skinner Store, 111 Greenwood Road, starting at 6:30 p.m.

Dell’Arte’s Position

Yesterday afternoon, Bremer and Pebdani came by the Outpost’s Old Town Eureka offices to discuss the situation. Bremer is Dell’Arte’s new producing artistic director and Pebdani recently became its new board chair. Before we’d finished asking them our first question, Pebdani interjected.

“Do you mind if I start with a full confession to you?” she said. “We’re scared about our permits.”

Like Gieder, Dell’Arte’s board of directors was initially quite excited about the prospect of hosting Cannifest. 

“So much of what we need to make money are going to be these events,” Pebdani said. “So when Stephen came to us and he was telling us his ideals [and] what he’s done with his community before, they seemed completely aligned with what we want. … We didn’t even consider that it would be a big deal at all. It was just another one of the events that was going to come down the line.”

City staff’s initial strong negative reaction, however, left Dell’Arte’s leadership concerned that an adversarial relationship — not just with the City but also the community — could put their longstanding conditional use permits in jeopardy. 

“That’s the last thing we want to do is to divide anybody,” Bremer said. “We want Dell’Arte moving forward to be a community arts hub, to be a third space for people of different beliefs to come together around art and community. We feel that Cannifest can be an event that allows for that community connection if you think about it in terms of what it actually is, if you think beyond the name and the stigma behind the name for some people. It’s a place for people to come listen to music, have some nice food, be with their neighbors — “

“… and be part of a festival with a proven track record of bringing people in,” Pebdani finished.

Asked why Dell’Arte didn’t approach the City before Cannifest was announced publicly, Bremer and Pebdani said the organization’s tiny staff has been spread thin, and they generally prefer to approach matters in a more organic and personal fashion. 

Bremer arrived back in Blue Lake early last month, and shortly after his return he and Pebdani attended a gathering of the Blue Lake Coffee Club, an informal community meetup that takes place Monday and Friday mornings at the Mad River Grange. There, they chatted with Councilmember Elise Scafani, City Manager Jennie Short and Mayor John Sawatzky.

“And he told us an amazing story about Dell’Arte when he was growing up,” Pebdani said. 

“Yeah,” Bremer said, “this great story about having Dell’Arte come in and do a project with him and the Blue Lake [Elementary] School when he was a kid, and [how it’s] still influencing him today. So awesome. Like, this school that impacted us so much also impacted him, and he’s the mayor. How awesome is that?”

Yesterday morning, Bremer and Pebdani attended another Coffee Club, where a community member showed them photos of Blue Lake parades and community events from the late 1990s and early 2000s, which is when they attended Dell’Arte. It made Pebdani emotional.

“I did start crying at Coffee Club today, just the heartbreak of like, ‘Oh, that that’s not happening right now,’” she said. After a beat, she continued, “Yeah, that’s our duty. That’s what we want to revive.”

After the meeting with City staff last week, Pebdani decided to approach the community for feedback via a Blue Lake community page on Facebook — despite stern warnings from patrons of the Logger Bar to avoid this particular page because of its often heated political rhetoric. 

“Instead, I went straight to [that page] and I put that post, and it was like, ‘Come at me. Let’s see what happens.’”

The post was lengthy, conversational and humble. She introduced herself and Bremer, said they’re doing their “bestest” to help get Dell’Arte’s building, school and organization back on its feet. She explained the importance of hosting community events, especially the annual summer Baduwa’t Festival, which underpins their conditional use permit, though the permit allows for public events across a broad timeline. And she gave some of the backstory to the Cannifest drama and asked people for their opinions:

We want to know what the “People” of Blue Lake think, not necessarily the “City” of Blue Lake.

I’d love to be able to hash some of that out here. I’ve been warned that I might be asking for trouble getting asking for opinions on FB, but here I am. Come at me. I’ll do my best to clearly answer what I can. I do want to be clear that I’m not here to be an advocate for Cannabis rights (even though - Come on, people. It’s legal). I am here specifically for Dell’Arte, to find ways to support and sustain it, and Dell’Arte is here for its community. …

The response, perhaps surprisingly, has been overwhelmingly positive, with the vast majority of commenters saying the event sounds like a great idea.

A proposed map for Cannifest calls for the temporary closure of First Street, H Street and Railroad Avenue while allowing multiple stages enclosed by temporary fencing. | Image via City of Blue Lake.

The Stakes for Tonight’s Meeting

Gieder remains bitter about what he considered a condescending and staunchly anti-weed tone from city staff.

“I’ve been doing [cannabis-related] events all over the country, so there’s lots of haters, always. [But] I hadn’t gotten such, like, hate, really, from a city manager and her minion,” Gieder said, referring to last week’s meeting with staff. “I was kind of like, ‘Wow, I’m going back 30 years here. … This lady hates weed!’”

Bremer and Pebdani were a bit more optimistic about the meeting. Bremer, for example, said Short seemed to be approaching the situation objectively while Pebdani said the city manager seemed open to further consideration.

Gieder envisions the 2026 Cannifest having a main stage inside Dell’Arte’s facilities with two outdoor stages and a target attendance of roughly 1,500 people, or whatever the facility will accommodate. He’s had discussions with folks at Blue Lake Casino about potentially hosting parking for the event, with shuttles to and from the venue. Nothing has been finalized on that front, and the casino remains a backup option should the Dell’Arte scenario fall through, Gieder said.

A staff report for tonight’s Blue Lake City Council meeting asks the council to provide direction on how staff should move forward — namely, whether or not to grant the discretionary permits the event would require, whether to allow for the temporary closure of city streets and, if the event is given the green light, how strictly to enforce the City’s prohibition on cannabis usage. 

“Clearly using cannabis in the streets and open public spaces at Dell Arte would be prohibited,” the report says. It later includes the following passage, with underlines in the original copy:

Staff is not asking Council to weigh in on the details of the permits, nor the conditions that would be necessary should the permits be approved, but instead is requesting Council focus on the nature of the proposed special event and give direction on whether this is the type of event that the City desires to encourage in downtown Blue Lake and how expansive such an event should be.

Pebdani noted that she personally feels like Cannifest, and the unexpected community struggle it has triggered, “pales in comparison to what our full mission is.” But she added that other members of Dell’Arte’s board feel that such struggles have always been central to the mission — that pushing against the often conservative social attitudes in this former lumber town are integral to Dell’Arte’s “Theater of Place” tradition.

Asked how important Cannifest is for the financial survival of Dell’Arte, Bremer said, “Every event is necessary, to be very clear. Things are difficult, so every opportunity for us to generate revenue is very, very important.”

“We’re terrified of losing this permit,” Pebdani added. “I don’t want to add to any vitriol or fear, but the fear is that we won’t be able to have these events that are going to be the thing that saves the school.”

Tonight’s meeting represents an opportunity to communicate outside of the often toxic environment of social media.

“It sucks that this happened so quick and loud, but it’s necessary,” Pebdani said. “Let’s hear what are the majority of our community thinks, not the three people … or however many people who are the loudest.”

Bremer took a step even farther back, remarking on the power of art to change people’s lives and the influence of Dell’Arte, in particular, on the residents of Blue Lake as well as the school’s former international students, who came here from around the world.

“The fact that people know about Blue Lake, California, in Denmark, in Africa, in Indonesia because of the the incredible work that’s been done here,” he said. “And then on a local level, we’ve been in schools for generations. So we’re bringing arts and enriching the lives and expanding the minds and building empathy — like, our mission is not to play it safe. Our mission is to enrich lives and culture and be a positive force for change. So here we are.”

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You can find more information about tonight’s Blue Lake City Council meeting, including a Zoom link for remote participation, by clicking here to download the agenda. 

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