Behind the Scenes at the Opera House: Bridgman|Packer Dance

Bridgman|Packer Dance is coming back to Stonington next week - July 16-19 - and they're bringing two fantastic productions with them. We asked them to talk a little about their new work...

We are excited to be returning to Opera House Arts, bringing Remembering What Never Happened and Truck, two works that we have created since we were at the Opera House in 2013. It is particularly exciting that Opera House Arts is a co-commissioner of Remembering What Never Happened through a National Performance Network Creation Fund Award. We so appreciate the support!

These two works are an expansion of our work integrating live performance and video technology. Remembering What Never Happened looks at the intersection of memory and imagination, at how our memories transform over time. In a departure from past work, our use of video on stage moves from photo realism to a more surreal palette. We interact with video projections of our images that morph and explode into digital re-interpretations of the human body, while scenes shot on location in the Mojave Desert transform into strange and unreal landscapes. Memory becomes a constantly shifting territory as we delve into the changeable nature of time, form, perception, and identity.

Our work Truck is also about transformation, this time of an environment. The work is designed to be performed in a 17 foot box truck, which evolves from an ordinary and utilitarian vehicle  into a re-imagined space. Altered use of a space has always interested us. We lived for years in a loft in NYC that used to be a factory, and we currently rehearse in a studio created in a barn. We are excited that performing in a truck also brings performance to unexpected locations. Truck can be performed anywhere that a truck can be parked. Besides being part of our evening performances at the Opera House, Truck will be presented at several other sites during the week that we are in Stonington. Look for us!

Flying Through Stonington

We are so intensely excited to welcome Kevin the Seagull to Stonington for his starring role in Chekhov's The Seagull. Happily, he seems just as over-the-moon to be joining us. He's begun exploring Stonington, so if you see him around be sure to say hi!

In the mean time, he's documenting his journey on Twitter and Instagram. Even if you don't have accounts with those sites, you can check out what he's up to. If you want to ensure that you get to see him in person (in bird?), making his exciting OHA debut, get your tickets to The Seagull today. Seating is limited and performances are already selling out!

Throwback Thursday

Q2: Habitat Seagulls danced up a storm at the Settlement Quarry in 2009. 

Next week we’re bringing back the best of both the dance and gull worlds… Bridgman|Packer Dance is returning after their successful 2013 production of Voyeur with TRUCK and Remembering What Never Happened. Plus The Seagull by Anton Chekhov will be at breathtaking Ames Farm. Get your tickets for these two spectacular productions today!

Everything You Need Is Already Around You

Per Janson has returned to Deer Isle for not only this year's Island Arts Camp, but also OHA's new Actor's Boot Camp for students 15-22 - a program born from informal gatherings between Per and the OHA interns last year. We asked Per about that process and what this summer holds. Here's what he had to say...

Last summer, while rehearsing and performing at the Opera House, I had the good fortune to work with interns Marvin Merritt, Callie Jacks, and Emma Grace Keenan on the balcony scene from Romeo and Juliet.  In our half-hour and then one-hour rehearsal sessions, we were frequently joined by other interns and members of the acting company for rehearsals and wide-ranging discussions about theatre and life.  They did beautiful work and asked great questions, and I found the experience immensely rewarding. 

This summer, OHA has kindly invited me to lead a more structured, intensive workshop that will include a larger number of students.  The Actors’ Boot Camp is modeled on a similar program that all incoming MFA theatre students take part in at Brown University/Trinity Rep, in which faculty members from various disciplines lead workshops with incoming students, and each of the workshop leaders suggests an “element” for students to incorporate in a collaborative, devised theatre piece later that day. 

I believe I am the only student to have gone through boot camp twice at Brown/Trinity, as I first came in as a PhD student and then transferred into the MFA program.  Both times, I found it daunting, exhilarating, humbling, fun, and simply one of the best experiences of my life.  During both of those weeks, I felt I was learning more quickly than I had in years.  I took part in workshops in physical theatre, acting, movement, playwriting, voice, directing, masks, Chekhov, and more.  My recently acquainted colleagues in the acting, directing, playwriting and PhD programs and I took elements such as "an impossible place," "a great fall," "a moment of wonder," and "a confession" and turned them into quickly-generated collaborative theatre pieces, using only what we had at hand.  Sometimes what we created didn't cohere.  Sometimes it astonished all present.  It was challenging, coming up against our own and each other's limitations and strengths, and hopes and fears, and truly inspiring to see what my colleagues were capable of creating out of thin air.

I am eager to share what I trust will be a similarly challenging and rewarding experience with students this summer, and we have an exciting lineup of workshops in store.  Our work will operate from the premise that everything you need is already around you--just listen, observe, collaborate, and create!  Get ready to surprise yourself, and be surprised by others.

Join us at OHA's Annual Public Meeting to see the culmination of Per and the Boot Campers' hard work, plus tomorrow night on the 2nd floor of Stonington Town Hall at 6 pm for an open rehearsal of The Glass Menagerie directed by Per. 

Behind the Scenes at the Opera House: Kathleen Turco Lyon

We are extremely excited to welcome Kathleen Turco-Lyon back to Stonington. You probably remember her from her visit back in 2011, when she took the stage as both Elizabeth I in Elizabeth Rex and Dogberry in Much Ado About Nothing. Now you'll get to know her as Arkadina in this summer's seashore production of Chekhov's dark comedy The Seagull. But first, you really should get to know Kathleen as...well...Kathleen.

1. Where did you grow up?

The suburbs north of Philly, and of Richmond, VA.

2. How would your elementary school classmates remember you?

Happy, always curious about people, willing to engage… and very good at finger painting! 

3. Name four fictional character with whom you'd be okay being stuck in an elevator. Why them?

All at the same time?  Ok… Gertrude from Henry James’ novel The Europeans.  She’d keep me giggling.  Cerimon from Shakespeare’s Pericles.  She’s a magician, after all, and so intuitive — certainly the elevator wouldn’t be stuck for long.  Polixenes, the King of Bohemia in Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale; he'd bring kindness, calm, and a breath of fresh air to cramped quarters, and  Wilma Flintstone— she’d give the elevator company what-for for getting us stuck in the first place, plus, she’d keep her sense of humor in a less-than-elegant situation… and ever notice what common sense she has?  (Especially with family matters.) And how organized and clean her house is?  Oh, I aspire! 

4. If you were a cartoon character, which cartoon character would you be?

This is a tough one, but I probably have to say Caspar the Friendly Ghost.   I love that he helped everyone, and was kind about it. And he could fly!  And I bet he smells like marshmallows, which I love! 

5. When did you fall in love with theater?

Oh, that’s an easy one; I remember the exact moment: 15 years old.  In the parking lot of my high school getting ready to drive home (I had my learner’s permit) after a performance of Flowers For Algernon. (I played the sister, and had just ONE scene).  I had one foot on the gravel, and one foot in the car, and my body suddenly froze, and out loud I said "Oh, my GOD!"  Because in that moment, I KNEW.  It took my breath away just a little bit, because my next thought was “How can I be 15 and know this is what I want for the rest of my life?”  Truly, it was an unmistakable, unforgettable feeling.  And I knew my biggest love would be for drama. 

The Seagull opens next Friday at the breathtaking Ames Farm. You don't want to miss out on this amazing performance. Why? you ask. Because of everything director Peter Richards says here.  Seating is very limited, so get your tickets today!

Throwback Thursday

Suzanne Nance, Grace Valdez, John McVeigh & Eric McKeever delighted audiences with this 2013 encore performance of the Gala production inspired by West Side Story.

Suzanne and John are teaming up again with musical director Peter Szep for this year’s Gala PLUS two additional performances at the Burnt Cove Church on July 9th and July 10th. The Fat Knight – inspired by Shakespeare’s  most beloved comic creation, Sir John Falstaff – is a wild night of arias, popular standards and more.

Aren't we also touched by grace?

In preparation for our upcoming production of The Seagull, the Opera House staff recently sat down with director Peter Richards to talk about the production and the playwright. Here are some highlights from the conversation…

Anton Chekhov

Why Chekhov?

“Why Chekhov” is not the easiest question to answer, in part because it is such a given in the theatre world. I mean Chekhov is one of the top five writers in the world on most everyone’s list… He’s very very special.

Why is Chekhov so special? Why is he considered a master? Why is The Seagull one of the four masterpieces that he’s written? When properly done, or done with passion, it’s a very special type of storytelling. There are a number of different stories interwoven together that overall make a mosaic of life and reality that is relatable by the audience and in its entirety enjoyable and very satisfying to watch.

What do I mean by stories?

Have you ever been in love with somebody and known that it’s probably not going to work out – and that it’s probably not a good idea for you to continue to love this person? So you want to find a way to not love this person but you’re struggling with that and you can’t – and you try different things and you fail and you try different things and you seek advice from people – well, if you’ve ever lived that, that story is going to be onstage.

If you have ever had faith in an idea or another person that is very special to your heart and then lost that faith and felt kind of lost because you no longer believe in the thing that you felt so passionately about – that story is onstage.

If you’ve had to go through a very tough time in your life where all of the things that you lived for and thought were important don’t make sense anymore in the new reality that you face, and you’ve had to go through the herculean effort of transforming your mind and convincing yourself that actually you have to be a different person in the world – that story is onstage.

All of these different stories are woven together in these plays and as an audience, you can look at the human struggling and to recognize yourself in it. And in this recognition, you get to laugh at them and smile and say “yes, yes look at us: look at humanity, aren’t we doomed? And aren’t we also touched by grace?”

“Let everything on stage be just as complicated and at the same time just as simple as in life. People are having a meal, just having a meal, yet all the time their happiness is being made or their lives are being broken up.”

~Anton Chekhov

Director Peter Richards

Chekhov is not a judger. What makes him so special is that he’s not afraid to show people suffering and struggling, but he makes us look at it with a smile – and it’s okay, because that’s just how we are. So that attitude towards all this turmoil and searching and seeking and struggling is a real gift I think to us as people being able to watch these stories.

The play is about the difficulties that arise in people’s lives when they idealize people, things or times: how humans tend to idealize people and ideas – and what the consequences of that are. When the different idealizations bump into each other comedy ensues, life becomes interesting to watch onstage and this is the stuff of the play.

“An author must be humane to his fingertips.”

~Anton Chekhov

Chekhov shows us a reality that is dark, but he’s approaching that darkness with a light-heartedness that is full of grace.

For people who read his stories and watch his plays, Chekhov’s writing nudges people towards empathy. So, when you leave, there’s something about empathy that is central to how Chekhov sees the world and sees his characters, and I think if people can leave the theatre with that sense towards the characters, it would make me really happy. It’s not an emotion, but it’s a sort of attitude of feeling for these people, even though they are totally flawed.

I think, in the world, when empathy is missing we run into problems, so whenever you can put a thing in the world--like a work of art that encourages an empathetic response--to me that’s a nice opportunity. As a sort of why.