Energy. Ambition. Love. Grace. - Part IV GRACE

In celebration of Cherie Mason: an exemplar of the Opera House mission to use the performing arts to create excellence in all the ways we perform our lives. 

   

Part IV of a 4-part series on the life and distinguished career of Cherie Mason, based on a 2016 interview with Judith Jerome, founding co-artistic director of Opera House Arts.

Part IV: GRACE

And then the Stonington Opera House reopened in 2000. It was at a Christmas party that Cherie Mason met the Ohags, as we called ourselves, four women who had rebuilt the Stonington Opera House. “We were just chitchatting. When did you come to the island?—the usual chitchat. And then said I was a member of SAG—and somebody almost dropped their glass! I said yes, SAG and AFTRA. And they said—Oh if only we had known! We just did a play and a series of Radio Shows—and you would have been in them! So, that was the beginning of my life at the Opera House. Which has been wonderful.”

In 2008, to our great fortune, Cherie joined the board of directors of Opera House Arts because, she said, “That’s where the decisions are made; that’s how you get to know an organization.” And then in 2011, at the age of 84, she became a member of Actor’s Equity Association, the last of the three unions available to her as a performing artist. A string of initials trail her name: PhD, SAG-AFTRA, AEA. “The theater has always been in my bones. But I think I’ve become—I don’t know, now that I’ve become Equity, I’ve gotten some kind of a new infusion. I’m really disappointed if I’m not in a show, or I’m not cast in something during a season. I really want to work. I want to use the muscle. And I didn’t always feel that way. But as I did more and more pieces at the Opera House, that became more and more part of the fabric of my life. At times it’s made me discontent with living here and not being near New York, or near a place where I can see theater all the time.”

The first big show Cherie was in at the Opera House was Shelley Berc and Anita Stewart’s documentary play, Women and the Sea. The great Mary Grace Canfield, who is best known for playing ‘Ralph Monroe’ on the television show Green Acres, was also in the play and when I ask Cherie what she most remembers from Women and the Sea she says: “Mary Grace Canfield said to me during one of the rehearsals: ‘Get yourself to New York and get an agent!’ Which just made my heart—what a wonderful thing to say!”

In Elizabeth Rex she wore an Elizabethan costume that weighed twenty-five pounds. In July. No air conditioning in the Historical Society’s new barn. “I think that show is the apex of what has been done at the Opera House, in terms of acting, in terms of the location, with straw on the floor, and the audience on benches, like I imagine it was for the Globe. It gives me goose pimples just now, thinking of it. A friend on the board of the ART in Boston said it was the finest thing he’s ever seen anywhere. In any city, any theater. He was just spellbound. I felt that way, too. And I loved my part—I was part of it, but not too much.

The Ghosts in Ten Real Star Acts, with Jeff Brink and Larry Estey

We talk and laugh away the afternoon, randomly remembering other shows: “As It Is is Heaven—I wept every night on that last line, talking to the girl who went astray. It was so moving. So well-written. . . . The Julia Wars were fun, too, of course, with Lillian Hellman and Mary McCarthy. I had this glass of scotch—it was Pepsi-cola, or something. Smoking. I loved doing that . . . And I broke myself up every night in Ten Real Star Acts! with my entrance, coming in behind Esther who had her hands tied behind her back. I wanted a different hat, though. The only one they had in the wardrobe department was that little bonnet—I didn’t think that was funny enough. I wanted a big, broad-brimmed hat, with a scarf tied around it—like the ladies wore in automobiles! I thought that would be so funny . . . SMATWAFS I tap danced on to the stage. And I was flirting outrageously with Danny Hadley. That play was written by Nancy Hodermarsky. It was just topnotch. Dee and Phil Miller got so into it . . . I wore a peignoir in Portrait of a Madonna . . . And, well, I’m the poster girl in R & J & Z, aren’t I? 

Zombie Lady Capulet

I remember Linda [Nelson] saying, ‘Cherie, I’ve got the best picture of you—but I can’t use it; it’s too gruesome.’ And then she did use it! That has to be a moment that is rare in acting—when you walk out on an empty stage, you’re the only person on the stage, and you’re doing this thing that you know is just going to stun people! It’s such a power play. The gasps! And then all the people teasing me. And then of course that photo became Ken’s and my Christmas card . . .Duck Variations: Well you can’t do any better than that. I just adored that thing we did together. It just seemed to work, didn’t it? . . . I loved the music in The Last Ferryman. Paul wrote the piece for me because I couldn’t sing—so I sang/talked. And then when I did my bit with the children, when I fell, and came back in with two black eyes and my arm in a sling—Pam Getto’s son Luke’s eyes just popped. I had to not look at him because it just broke me up. In Much Ado About Nothing I wore my hair down for the first time, to try and look a little younger. That was quite a nice part I had: doing the maid.”

Cherie and Aryeh Lappin in rehearsal

 In true Elizabethan fashion most of the women’s roles in this production were played by men. I ask Cherie if she remembers the first time Aryeh Lappin, who played Hero, the ingénue, had to take all his clothes off behind a screen that momentarily concealed the two of them. Cherie doesn’t remember—but I do. Mostly actors dispense with modesty, but Aryeh, who was maybe 25 at the time, was a little shy about getting naked with Cherie, and checked in, to see if it was all right. Cherie said yes, very sweetly: “I like it. It isn’t often I get to see a naked young man these days.”

“Did I really say that?! That’s really funny. Oh I’m proud of myself if I said that.

That’s where I’m Anni’s daughter, right?”

Really, all those turns in Anni’s daughter’s career are not so anomalous. Cherie was always performing her heartfelt self, with such splendid, glorious arrogance, made of energy, ambition, love, and grace. When we perform we put our bodies, our live selves out there on the line. We fill ourselves with the glorious energy of play. It’s always an offering. How lucky the Opera House has been that one of Cherie’s turns brought her here. 

Energy. Ambition. Love. Grace. - PART III LOVE

In celebration of Cherie Mason: an exemplar of the Opera House mission to use the performing arts to create excellence in all the ways we perform our lives

Part III of a 4-part series on the life and distinguished career of Cherie Mason, based on a 2016 interview with Judith Jerome, founding co-artistic director of Opera House Arts.

 Part III: LOVE

Cherie and Ken Mason had met at the Ludgin Agency. Just look at the two of them; how could they not fall in love and marry? That they were married ad execs (and both also artists) posed no career problems in the beginning. But then Ken made a decision as seemingly contrary to his advertising career as Cherie’s had seemed to her theater dreams when she went into advertising. He joined Quaker Oats, in a non-advertising position, and in a very short time became the first non-family president and CEO of the company. Then there was a conflict of interest. At McCann Erickson Cherie was on the General Mills account—a competitor of Quaker Oats. Ad campaigns for new programs and products were top secret, so she, not unhappily, stepped down from her job.

Cherie doesn’t say that she was tired or disillusioned with advertising, but surely the field didn’t glow with the same edge of newness that it had once had. “So I said, now I’m going to go full circle, back to where I started. And since we don’t need the money, necessarily, I’m going to see if I can get a job acting.” In advertising Cherie regularly held auditions for commercials and hired actors, so the agents in Chicago all knew her. “I asked one of the top ones—am I crazy? Tell me if you think I shouldn’t do this—but I’d really like to take a fling. She said, ‘Cherie—you’ll be great’. So—I did it!”

Cherie got work at once, in both radio and television, and shortly got her SAG-AFTRA card. She did voiceovers, and lip-synching, including a series of 'the beautiful girl in the bathtub' commercials. [Perhaps this was the Calgon woman—‘Calgon, take me away?’ Cherie can’t remember now.] “And I did a lot of animated work. I love doing animals and funny voices. I love comedy. In fact, I really think of myself as a comedian.” Like her old heroes, Paul Lynd, Cloris Leachman, and Charlotte Rae. Indeed, even in the most serious role, Cherie can subtly, suddenly, elicit a welcome burst of audience laughter.

She also did a great deal of work for Public Television in Chicago, WTTW, fundraising and otherwise. That’s when she got her first contact lenses. It was the beginning of the use of cue cards, and her glasses reflected the studio lights. 

The only live theater she did in those years was a play for the National Theater of the Deaf. “The one speaking part was to be played by the wonderful comedienne, Nanette Fabray.” Fabray herself had a hearing impairment and did a lot of work with the deaf, including narrating NTD’s first show, an “NBC Experiment in Television,” titled The Cube. But for this later play, Fabray fell ill. The producers called Cherie, who took it on with relish.

But Cherie couldn’t have just this one line of work. “With the extreme energy that I was born with, I had to have something in-between. So I became a representative for Defenders of Wildlife.” Here her use of performance and persuasion took a new turn, which involved a great deal of public speaking. “Oh yes. Oh my. Speaking to the bear hunters of Wisconsin at their annual meeting,” for example. “I gave my talk about how the bears were more valuable to them live than dead, for tourist reasons—and I was absolutely shunned at the coffee break. No one would stand near me. But this was par for the course. Later a man brushed by me, and said, ‘You make a lot sense, lady.’ It made the whole trip worthwhile.

“One of the great problems in wildlife protection is the use of the steel jaw leghold trap; it’s not used as widely as it once was because the wearing of fur is not as important as it once was. But I was on my way to a speaking engagement in Springfield, Illinois—and at the Chicago airport something jammed the conveyor belt, and it stopped suddenly. All the alarm bells went off.” The box in which Cherie had packed the demo traps broke open and steel jaw leghold traps spilled out all over. “And they came from everywhere, the police. And here I am with my traps. And so—I held the traps up. There was a woman who happened to be standing near in a fur coat, and I pulled her into it: Lady, this is where you fur coat comes from. Well, they hauled me away, made me stop. But not until I got a few good words in.”

On Pine Island 

Meantime,“Ken was finishing a book he was working on, and he wanted ‘time to think,’ as he always said. I could do wildlife work from wherever I was. And we were both tired. We had worked very hard all our lives, and we wanted to go now and do something that we just wanted to do. Looking back on it, it was probably foolish and intemperate: We moved to an isolated island in a lake in Minnesota, about 30 miles south of the Canadian border, with no electricity, nothing.” They had bought Pine Island some years before, as a vacation retreat, but now they moved on to the island fulltime. Transport to the mainland in in summer was by boat and in winter was by snowmobile. “We brought three enormous rafts over, with everything we owned—so when we had this unexpected fire, we lost everything—that was a lesson in life.” [And another story for another time.]

 Not wanting to be too sensible or temperate on this next move, Cherie and Ken settled on a bridged island: Deer Isle in Maine, in 1982. Cherie continued wildlife work. It had become “a very significant part of my life. I grew to really love that work. Horribly hard work. And I’ve continued it to this day; it is primary in my life.” I both hope I will and hope I won’t get Cherie when I phone, because her answering machine message changes regularly and alerts us to new environmental challenges. “Did you know?” they always begin, in that absolutely affirmative voice that has been winning people over for decades.

In Maine Cherie sat on the boards of the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife for 5 years, and on the Maine chapter of The Nature Conservancy. It was she who initiated, later with the support of the Sierra Club, the successful efforts to establish the Rachel Carson Wildlife Refuge in Wells, ME, winning a $900,000 federal grant to preserve the wetland. Over the years she gave talks on Rachel Carson all over the state. Between times she wrote two revered books for young people: Wild Fox and Everybody’s Somebody’s Lunch, and recorded an audio version of Wild Fox.

Locally, Cherie, with Dud Hendrik and Lloyd Capin founded Island Heritage Trust, now in its 30^th year. She worked on the Conservation Commission, and for fourteen years had a regular radio show on WERU. In the beginning it was called “The Environmental Notebook,” but as consciousness of environmental issues built, she shifted her focus to where she felt there was the most need, and changed the name of the show to “The Wildlife Journal.”

Cherie’s environmental work was honored in 1993 when she was awarded the Tambrands Environmental Women of Action award in Washington DC. And in 1999 Unity College presented Cherie Lee Mason an honorary doctorate of humane letters.