Raindrops drum on the Cessna’s aluminum floats, adding an urgent rhythm to our mission as one by one we ease ourselves out of the plane and into the shallows of Seymour Canal.

Clad in waterproof jackets and rubber boots we splash to shore, but reaching land doesn’t improve anything as far as the rain goes; there is no shelter as we stand on a gravel bar beneath a lowering sky.

Nobody is complaining, however. Our attention has been caught by something more compelling than the weather: Someone has spotted a bear.

A few weeks ago, Perseverance Theatre’s Artistic Director Art Rotch found out that playwright and performance artist Penny Arcade was coming to Alaska for a visit.

“I was amazed she was going to be in Juneau!” said Rotch. “She usually plays in Sydney, London or New York.”

“Penny, and her genre of work, of drawing on material and creating a show in the moment, is pretty unique,” he added. “She was one of the creators of this type of work.”

There is something brave about bluegrass, about the honesty of a group of musicians who stand up on a stage, before a crowd, with nothing but their instruments and a story to tell.

And when it’s done right, a good bluegrass tune will make your pulse quicken and your blood rise up; it’ll be like a ride down a wild, rushing, twisting river.

What makes bluegrass different from, say, a standard country song?

Think hard-driving rhythms, fast-paced improvisations, and high-pitched vocals that wind up and down the melody like an inquisitive strand of kudzu.

When Ishmael Hope’s grandfather died, his family and friends gathered to pay tribute.

As they stood to share their stories, they spoke in a language that had, for thousands of years, served Alaska’s Native people: They spoke in Tlingit.

“My dad said, ‘Man, when an Elder gets up, and speaks from the heart, that is like soul food,’” said Hope.

When his own father, Andy Hope III, passed away in 2008, Ishmael Hope decided it was time to study Tlingit himself.