Making the New from History and the Dead

NYC-based actor Jason Martin has a
four octave vocal range. As the star of
The Last Ferryman, Jason has inspired
composer Paul Sullivan to write music
specifically for his voice.

Why does a tiny little theater (say, for instance, Opera House Arts at the Stonington Opera House) on the tip of an island off the coast of Down East Maine commission and create new theatrical and musical works?

Because there are so many important stories to be told, and told well.

Stories to be shared with our community, stories that reflect our rich and unique cultural heritage or a shared humanity in ways that strengthen the ways we understand and act in the world, whether as individuals or together.

And so it is that in the 15th anniversary summer season of Opera House Arts we bring you TWO world premiere productions of work we have originally developed.

The first, R&J&Z by Melody Bates (July 10-20), is an extension of our Shakespeare in Stonington program and will run in repertory with Romeo and Juliet. Once again, you will have the opportunity to be amazed by actors appearing in multiple roles in both shows. And yes, that IS Shakespeare + Zombies--as the title of Melody's play stands for Romeo&Juliet&Zombies.

Per Jansen and Caitlin Johnston
star in this summer's Shakespeare in
Stonington dual productions of
Romeo and Juliet and the new
R&J&Z, by Melody Bates.

But no, this is not just some cheap play on pop culture. Melody has conducted four residencies in our schools over the past two years, teaching Shakespeare and Suzuki acting tools for focus and performance in the classroom as well as on the stage. In her new play, carefully crafted, like the Bard's, in iambic pentameter verse and taking off from Act V of Romeo and Juliet, Melody seeks to deepen our understanding of a culture in transformation: between generations and seeking redemption through the everlasting power of love.

This is a play rich in the lore of Haitian voodoo, in which myths plantation owners sought to create armies of slaves through botanical poisons and drugs, and the mysteries of the Apothecary--the very same mysteries which so fascinated Shakespeare, and caused him to write Juliet into a death-like sleep as part of his most famous tragedy.

And as Melody has written:
"This thing is not unknown in history--
That by some magic, devilish or good,
The flesh reanimates, and walks the earth."

Connie Wiberg, "the last ferryman"
Charlie Scott's granddaugther
and a member of the Deer Isle-
Stonington Historical Society,
speaks to third graders on the
history of the bridge as part of
The Bridge Project, the
educational component of
OHA's commission of
The Last Ferryman.

The second of OHA's new works in development is The Last Ferryman (August 14-24), commissioned by OHA from Grammy Award-winning composer and pianist Paul Sullivan and Maine librettist Linda Britt (Mrs. Smith Goes to Washington). The Last Ferryman re-awakens historical figures and history itself in a celebration of the 75th anniversary of the Deer Isle-Sedgwick Bridge. Like R&J&Z, The Last Ferryman explores a great moment of cultural change--when our beautiful island became, in fact, "an island no more."

OHA and its collaborating artists decided that the best way to truly understand the changes that the bridge brought was to portray life before the bridge,  in addition to the fascinating story of how the bridge came to be. And so The Last Ferryman is told from the perspective of Charlie Scott, the real "last ferryman," who died (some say of heartbreak) two weeks after the bridge opened in June of 1939...

Featuring portrayals of historic island community members, including Frank and Annie McGuire, Raymond Small, Charlie Scott and more, this musical's memorable new score and island flavors are reminiscent of OHA's 2010-2012 hit, Burt Dow, Deep Water Man. Yet the stories told--only 75 years past--speak deeply to the heart of our community's past. And its future.

One Salt Smell of the Sea Once More

Ben Barrows at Opera House Arts
Annual Evening of Poetry

This last Thursday evening, Opera House Arts hosted our now annual evening of poetry. Like those that preceded it, this was a magical, intimate evening, with rhythm word and rhyme filling the soft wooden space of the more than 100-year-old opera house and resonating with the engaged audience of neighbors and friends who attended.

Deborah Cummins, poet, writer, and former chair of the Poetry Foundation, and Maine poet Dawn Potter lead the way. They were followed by a group of five year round island residents, each selecting two poems on the theme of HOME: Celebrating Place & Community, and explaining why they made their selections.

Even in a small, remote village like Stonington, on the island of Deer Isle, where the power of place is strongly felt each day, surrounded as we are by the sparkling sea and the largest archipelago on the coast of Maine, this evening filled us all with a deeper understanding of how a place grabs us, how it becomes home, and all the lovely and terrible things home means to most of us.

Here is a lovely blog post on the evening by OHA board member Debbie Weil.

And below is my personal favorite poem of the evening, read by Ben Barrows, who grew up here and has now returned, after several years working in international development in the middle east, to run his family business: the local weekly newspaper, the Island Ad-Vantages. I was lucky enough to work some with Ben when he was younger, and I was News Editor of the paper, in 2001-2003, and it was a pleasure to have him join us, for the first time, on the Opera House stage.

Maybe one of you will be a reader next year!

Inland

  by Edna St. Vincent Millay
People that build their houses inland,
   People that buy a plot of ground
Shaped like a house, and build a house there,
   Far from the sea-board, far from the sound

Of water sucking the hollow ledges,
   Tons of water striking the shore,—
What do they long for, as I long for
   One salt smell of the sea once more?

People the waves have not awakened,
   Spanking the boats at the harbour's head,
What do they long for, as I long for,—
   Starting up in my inland bed,

Beating the narrow walls, and finding
   Neither a window nor a door,
Screaming to God for death by drowning,—
   One salt taste of the sea once more? - See more at: http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/23585#sthash.9NwHGUc8.dpuf

The Analog World vs. The Digital World

by Linda Nelson

Last Friday, Judith and I took our Board of Directors to Playwrights Horizons, in Manhattan, to see Annie Baker's new play, "The Flick."

We thought it would be appropriate: after all, the play is set in a small New England town's single screen movie theater at a time when the theater is ready to give up its beautiful 35mm projectors and go digital.

The Stonington Opera House is at that same place. In late March, our gorgeous, loyal, hard-working 1941 Simplex 35mm projector will be replaced by a true Digital Cinema system. For the record, digital cinema is not your grandma's DVD's, or even Blu-Rays. To keep doing what we're doing, bringing first run movies to you shortly after they open on our big screen, we need a big, sophisticated system that will allow the movie distribution companies to ship us hard drives rather than cannisters of 35mm film. We will be able to slot the hard drives into a special server, punch in a code to prevent movie piracy, and show the movie according to the schedule pre-booked with the distributor.

But our board didn't love Baker's "The Flick." They found it long and boring: following a couple of working class guys as they clean an old, single screen movie theater between shows, without the action or quick dialogue to which we've become accustomed. Like Baker's earlier plays, especially "The Aliens" which we produced in early 2012, "The Flick" is a masterpiece of working class realism, filled with silences and the power of ordinary, not extraordinary, dialogue. In what I think is an important way, "The Flick" isn't enough of the digital world, in which we all talk quickly and have multiple conversations simultaneously, through our phones and computers and headsets. "The Flick" is about the analog world, the one that happens slowly, in between the others; the one that happens "to" people more than "by" people. And the truth is, many of us have fallen out of love with analog. We want our agency, we want our MTV.

In an essay for the show materials, Baker reveals her own love affair, and then her falling out of love, with celluloid movies: "From age 9 to 19, movies were my greatest happiness. They were the thing that got me through the day. Watching a movie was always, always What I’d Rather Be Doing. I never felt fully present in my life, except when I was watching a movie...The point is, I fell out of love with film and when I tried to fall back in love with it I was shocked to realize that most of our country had fallen out of love with it too. But instead of falling in love with the theater, they had fallen in love with computers."

The cast of "The Flick," the new play by
Annie Baker at Playwrights' Horizons.

Live theater, by contrast, is extremely analog. Real sweating bodies on the stage right in front of us. You never know what might happen: lines might be missed, pants may rip, the actors may laugh or cry. It's unpredictable and never the same, kind of smelly and intimidating to those who have only ever known film and TV. Live theater is an analog experience, and we value and produce both at the Stonington Opera House: live theater + film.

But what about this nearly three hour play? If Baker's mission is to create a dynamic realism in which we are immersed in the experiences and worlds of her characters, and if her characters' world is, in this case, tiny, repetitive, and even grim...then how are we to reconcile being asked to sit through that world? That's what our board members wanted to know, and it's not an unreasonable question. They experienced the same thing as these characters in their lives. They were bored. They were restless--we all were. Mostly, we were uncomfortable: first physically, then intellectually, and finally--if we allowed it to take us this far--emotionally. I think Annie Baker evoked the response she wanted. But without the entertainment factor, will enough audience members be able or willing to follow her there?

In moving to digital cinema, we're taking a bold leap into a new world. Gone will be the craft of splicing together reel after reel of 35mm film, of lacing up and oiling the projector, of flipping on the rectifier, opening the dowser, adjusting the framing knob and the lens focus. It's a pretty tedious world, the world of any handcraft, in which motions and actions are repeated over and over again to ensure a quality experience for the viewer.

OHA's Artistic Advisory Board comprised of theater
artists, meeting on February 23: some of the artists had
more sympathy for "The Flick" than the
governing trustees. Photo by Alicia Anstead.

But it's one that might be worth experiencing, even in its tedium. It's one that is worth remembering -- or at least being enough aware of it to say a proper goodbye. It's one that, like so many others, demands our empathy -- and maybe even some compassion.

Baker says "The Flick" is "about the theater that will always happen between the movies." And our attentiveness to that theater of life could be important to how we move forward, together or apart, into our shared futures.

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.

Stephanie Dodd: "I'm faced with a large decision"

Abby Bray, a student at Stonington/Deer Isle High School, recently interviewed actor Stephanie Dodd, who plays Isabella in "Measure for Measure" running through Aug. 29 at the Stonington Opera House. "Interviewing some of the cast of 'Measure for Measure' was the first time I'd done a formal interview," says Abby. "After some trial and error, it proved both fun and educational. I learned about the characters on a more personal level, and I also learned what attracts people to Stonington." Dodd is a veteran artist at the Opera House where she performed in last year's "A Midsummer Night's Dream." In this interview, Abby asked Stephanie why we should care about her role. She also asked about working in Stonington compared to working in other locations. Give it a click. Then buy tickets! And check back on the Shake Stonington blog for more of entries about all things Shakespeare.

A compromising situation

Yu Jin Ko is a Shakespeare scholar at Wellesley College in Massachusetts and our guest conversationalist for the Talk Back after the production of "Measure for Measure" 7 p.m. Saturday Aug. 21 at the Stonington Opera House on Deer Isle in Maine. He will be joined onstage by director Jeffrey Frace and Opera House artistic director Judith Jerome to talk about the play, the production and Shakespeare's life and times. Recently, I asked Yu Jin (whose name is pronounced Yoo Gin) to answer three questions. You can read the first here; the second (Is this a play about mercy, justice or power?) is below and the third (Is "Measure for Measure" a love story?) will be posted soon. Check back -- and also buy tickets to join us Aug. 21 and bring your own questions!

AA: Is this a play about mercy, justice or power?

YJK: The title sets it up to be a simple morality play about the limitations of absolute justice – about dispatching justice measure for measure. So you expect mercy to be the antithesis that wins the day. But everything is so compromised in this play – the vision of absolute justice embodied in Angelo and then the counter weight of mercy that Isabella and the others give voice to. In the end, you can’t say one element wins out over the other.

Do You Relate to Shakespeare?

Guest blogger Abigail Bray lives in Blue Hill (Maine) and is a student at Deer Isle-Stonington High School. She enjoys writing and will be contributing posts occasionally during the run of "Measure for Measure" Aug. 19-29 at the Stonington Opera House. She also works at Fisherman's Friend Restaurant, a tasty place to eat dinner before or after the show!




As a sophomore in high school, I found reading “Measure for Measure” for the first time a bit of a struggle. Some of the situations were almost easy to relate to while others were a bit harder. I think we all can agree that there is at least one person in our lives who is strict and stubborn, and who decides to fix whatever situation he or she thinks needs fixing, like Angelo did while the Duke was “out of town.” And at one point or another, we all have to choose between helping someone close to us, or staying true to what we believe in, as Isabella was forced to chose between her virginity and her brother’s life.



Other parts of the play are less easy to relate to. Because things have changed drastically since the 16th century, it is now more common for women to have children out of wedlock. Another situation I cannot relate to is Claudio changing his mind and asking his sister, whom he knows to be very virtuous and chaste, to give up her virginity to save him. It is one thing for Isabella to decide; it’s another to put her in the kind of situation where she feels obligated.



Although “Measure for Measure” isn’t one of Shakespeare’s most popular plays, I feel that it helps us compare and contrast the difference in politics and morals of the 16th century with today’s.

Is February too early to think about Shakespeare in August?

By Alicia Anstead

I've been thinking lately about the way the performing arts, and plays in particular, linger in our thoughts long after the curtain goes down. Plays, after all, are completely ephemeral. They happen, and they're gone. Except they're not. Think of the plays you've been to that have stayed with you -- whether because of the play itself (themes of love or death, for instance) or the circumstances in which you saw the play (the friend you were with or the phase you were going through). The poet T. S. Eliot talks about measuring life in coffee spoons. But some of us measure our lives in plays. I do at least.

But that's about what happens during a play or after a play. What about everything that happens before a play? A few weeks ago, Linda Nelson and Judith Jerome announced that Measure for Measure, directed by longtime friend of OHA Jeffrey Frace, is the play for Shakespeare in Stonington this summer. (Mark the dates: August 19-29, 2010.)

I couldn't be happier, in part because the experience starts now. Or rather, it started for me as soon as I heard the news. Immediately I turned to my handy cell-phone app PlayShakespeare.com and downloaded the text. For three days during a conference in New York City, I breathlessly read the play on my phone while riding the train to and from the event. At one point, I was so engrossed I missed my stop and ended up several stations away from my own. Wow, do I love when that happens, even if I'm late for something else.

On this read through, I was struck by the utter strangeness of Measure for Measure. It's called a problem play, but it's more than a problem play. It's a testy exploration of justice, mercy, personal agency and, once again, marriage. (Remember all the messiness about marriage last summer with A Midsummer Night's Dream?! If not, re-visit the blog posts that explore: I do, I don't, I might, I couldn't possibly "aspects" of marriage.) M4M is set in Old Vienna, but the themes of premarital pregnancy, enforcing the letter of the law, a woman's right to her own body and the shiftiness of politicians are all very relevant in the 21st century. Alas.

Thus begins our journey. Seven months before the show, the art has started to work its magic. I'll be checking in from time to time between now and summer with reports, tips and teasers about the play, the production and other related news. In the meantime, I'll be thinking -- and I hope you will be too -- about this question: When does art begin? When does it end? And what happens in the space between?

Well, you can dance

Switching gears now, kids, because, while I'm not done thinking about Shakespeare, I'm moving on to dance for a while. Last week, the giant choreographer Merce Cunningham died at 90 -- if you don't know him, read the comprehensive New York Times obituary by Alastair Macaulay.

Cunningham's death got me thinking about form in dance. A few years back, Anna Kisselgoff -- another great dance writer -- reprimanded me for reading too much story into a dance work. It's about form and movement, she said, not about your silly story-making. (That's a paraphrase.)

But I'm as devoted to narrative as Kisselgoff and Cunningham are devoted to form. So I was thrilled to hear Q2: Habitat choreographer Alison Chase, at the Stonington Opera House in Maine, describe her two Quarryography works as "narrative spectacles."

For more background on the two-year Quarryography diptych, spend some time surfing the Story at the Quarry blog. More succinctly: Chase is working on her second major site-specific choreography at the Settlement Quarry on Deer Isle. She includes professional dancers, some of whom are from her time with the famous dance troupe Pilobolus, of which she was a co-founder. Many others come from the community.

It's that community part that got me thinking about form. We all know professional dancers are trained. Presumably they can move in ways we find pleasing and thrilling. But Joe Fisherman onstage? I'm sorry; I'm thinking he's not going to be my Dancing-with-the-Stars dream guy.

I'm wrong. Chase filled me in: "Those community-and-professional dynamics allow a wider range so that you get a variety of gestural exploration. Because someone isn't a trained dancer doesn't mean they don't have a range of expression. We're always amazed at the power of simplicity. Once we get rolling, it's exciting to see the exchange between non-dancing adults and trained dancers."

In other words, she's not looking for a perfect plie out of Joe Fisherman. She's looking for an "individual expressive quality." And that information helps her shape the overall piece. She finds a dance move where it's least expected and then uses it. Ah, back to form.

That's perfect for Q2 because, as an event, it's happening in an unexpected place: a quarry. Which is where "narrative spectacle" comes in.

"It's about habitat, about who inhabits that space," said Carol Estey, production manager and the Opera House co-founder whose roots on the island go back to childhood. (She's in the picture here rehearsing with Chase.) The people who will "inhabit" the quarry at the sneak-preview-in-development Aug. 7 and 8, and then again in its premiere in 2010 are going to look a little like you and me -- except for those pro dancers in the group. And it's not just because Chase wants to see the unexpected. It's because she has a story to tell, and some of that story comes from the bodies of local residents.

"People have always wanted to perform," said Estey, who is a trained dancer. "People have always wanted to be in things. They realize now they can be, and they don't have to have as much skill as they have to have commitment and desire. They see the possibility."

Forest for the Trees, Part 2

Today, we brought the forest in through the trees.

Too few people get to experience the wild creativity that happens BEHIND the scenes in a theater. With a Scenic Designer, Costume Designer, Technical Director, and tech crew all in residence building out the set and costumes for “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” there are so many types of creativity buzzing around the Opera House it could make your head whirl. Today, another wet Wednesday, we fetched a large (15’) log from our woods, and had long discussions as to how to rig it to fly onto the set—as well as how to rig it to ride in on my pickup to the Opera House! Meanwhile, we also fetched and delivered a special type of sewing machine, since our costumer, Jennifer Paar, and her two excellent high school interns, Hannah Avis and Lily Felsenthal, are busy making horned helmets for our fairies; papier mache ass-heads for our “Asshead Ballet;” and minotaur tattoos for everyone. Don’t you wish YOU worked at a theater?! (Photo is from an early costume prototype from the production. Volunteers get to have all this fun, too, so email me if you want to spend some time with this creative whirlwind.)