Making Work (& A Play!)

by Linda Nelson, Executive Director

STONINGTON—In a hard working community like Stonington, it is tempting to look at your local theater and think, well, that’s about fun, not work!

For you, as audience members, that’s right. Whether it’s a movie, a concert, a dance, or live theater, Opera House Arts provides a wide range of entertainment for our communities. And this Thursday, February 7, we open what is now our annual live production for the winter. This year, the show is the newest version of Maine playwright John Cariani’s play, Last Gas.

Many people think that when a theater like the Opera House presents live professional theater that it is something  made elsewhere, something that arrives pre-made—which is true for the performances at “presenting centers” like the Collins Center. But at Opera House Arts, we make all of our shows (performance pieces are known as works) right here in Stonington.

We find or write and/or edit the scripts. We audition, hire and pay the directors, actors, and designers—the people who design the sets, lights, sound, and video for the play.

We build sets, and have master carpenters alongside community volunteers who do that. We paint entire scenes on muslin for backdrops, or signs or furniture for specific set pieces. The composers we hire write and record original music; our master electricians climb ladders and cable lighting. We rehearse, rehearse, rehearse. Right now, two days before opening our original production of Last Gas, we’ve got a theater full of people working a 10 to 12 hour tech rehearsal day, programming the lighting cues, adjusting the sound volumes, testing the costumes and sets—getting everything just right.

Then when you, the audience, arrive you enter into a world seeming transformed by magic. Employing sets, lights, sound, and acting, those of us who make theater work aim to transport you from your familiar seat in a dark theater to another place and world.

It’s a lot of work behind the scenes for that magic moment—and it’s very satisfying work to have. During a show like Last Gas—a romantic comedy set in Maine’s Aroostook County, about the hopes and dreams of people who, like us, live in the sweet isolation of the nation’s most rural state—we have 21 people on payroll, with another four independent contractors. Plus, countless community volunteers donate their time and talents to making a show like this possible. Thank you!

OHA is committed to making original “work,” such as Last Gas, for our winter audiences. It’s a financial risk to produce such a large work at this time of year, but we feel strongly that we as rural Mainers deserve to hear our own voices and stories, to see the way we live represented on the stage and screen.

We hope you’ll take a chance, too, and come out to see this new work that we’ve created here during the last five weeks: it runs for only five performances, February 7-10—and then we take everything apart again! Live theater is very much something you have to show up for in the moment: it is here, and then it is gone. No DVR, no home video, only real people here on stage for a very short time.

Want to be a part of all this exciting work and play? For more information on any of the events and opportunities in this column, or for Tosca’s Wish List for how you can participate by volunteering or providing needed materials, please call 207-367-2788 or visit the Opera House’s website at www.operahousearts.org.