Thorne at home with a crowd

Published 3:00 pm Wednesday, December 28, 2005

Writer, actor and aspiring filmmaker, Ned Thorne is also a singer-songwriter with a Pegasus performance.

The Big Apple is calling Ned Thorne and, come January, he’ll be a part of it, fulfilling his dream of working in films.

It’s not the actor’s life for Thorne. He’d rather be behind the camera, figuring out what makes a story work.

“I love acting, but I don’t want to do it. I just enjoy directing more,” he said. “I just felt more in control calling the shots, really.”

His myriad talents are well known on the island. After focusing on photography, filmmaking and writing at Bainbridge High School, Thorne attended Whitman College in Walla Walla, where he honed his skills and earned degrees in theater and English.

He’s also a poet and singer/songwriter, who will take the Pegasus Coffee House stage at 7:30 p.m. Dec. 28.

“It’ll be me and my guitar. Hopefully, my brother John will be in town and join me,” he said. “There might be another friend of mine guesting.”

Solo or not, Thorne is comfortable in front of a crowd, as a singer or an actor.

His first stage role came at age 12, when he performed in the Bainbridge Performing Arts production of “Dr. Doolittle.” He turned toward filmmaking while in high school.

Thorne began writing when he was 5 years old. He credits his double major with giving him “a better foundation for good story telling and good judicious thought.”

In New York, he said, “I’ll have that story background in thinking analytically and creatively like I got at Whitman.”

One of the things Thorne appreciated most about Whitman was the ability to actually put on plays he wrote. He also learned “proper screenwriting” there.

The college made the theatre “universally available,” he said. “There are eight theater productions a year done by the department. Everybody has an opportunity to use the theater,” even non-theater majors.

Thorne has been back on the island since graduating last May and, per usual, he is staying busy. He finished a job two days before Christmas and has a couple of other commitments to fulfill before he heads to New York.

Thorne has assembled “a whole lot of new stuff” for his Pegasus performance, which was open mic organizer Norm Johnson’s idea. Thorne calls his music “indie folk rock with some chagrin.”

“A lot of indie folk rock, I don’t like. It’s just singer-songwriter stuff. Some of the songs I like more than others,” he said. “It’s a hobby. I pick up my guitar every day and I like to be organized, so I write it down. I wrote a few songs in high school, but mainly when I got to college.”

Next up is a role in the Bainbridge Performing Arts’ January production of Steve Martin’s “Picasso at the Lapin Agile.” Thorne will play Albert Einstein, who has a fictitious meeting with Pablo Picasso in 1904 at the famous Left Bank cabaret.

His Pegasus audience may note Thorne’s shaggy look, the byproduct of playing Einstein.

“They won’t let me cut my hair,” he said.

Once the play ends, Thorne will pack his bags and head east. He is awaiting details of a film job there and then, he said, “it’s time to go.”

When he returns to Bainbridge for visits, he hopes to find most of life just as he left it.

”I’m always kind of wary of too much being developed and open spaces being built on,” he said.

The irony of moving from a bucolic island to one that never sleeps isn’t lost on Thorne. Coming back to Bainbridge, he acknowledged, “will be a breath of fresh air.”