AVALON Blog Post 4: Tintagel

A Castle above the Sea(Origin Stories)

It is the day before the day before three days before today, which is to say, five days ago, which is to say, time is not real, I don’t think, at least not the way we pretend it is. We are in Tintagel, and it is Magic.

There is a story about a man and a woman and a wizard and a baby, and the baby’s sister, who was just old enough to watch from doorways. It is King Arthur’s origin story, and it’s complicated. Here on the far west coast of Cornwall is Tintagel, and Tintagel is the castle where it happened, they say.

This is Tintagel today:

It's pronounced Tin-TAA-jell, like this. This has taken me some getting used to, as I have pronounced it TIN-ta-gell' in my head since I was about 8. But I've come to like it. Tin-TAA-jell.

Once it was a castle. 1600 years ago or so. Then one day the middle part of it fell into the sea, the stones fell down, where rooms were was changed to only air, the whole thing became a dream of a building. A once and future castle. The English Heritage trust is building a new foot bridge, a wonder of cantilevers, which will have a tiny gap between the two sides, right in the middle. I think about stepping across that little gap, and it gives me vertigo.

Which is the point.

The marriage of past and future happens in midair, with nothing beneath our feet.

The day before all those other days—it was the fourth morning of our trip--we woke up in Glastonbury and drove to Tintagel. We hiked down the hill towards the beach, then up the cliffs to where the bridge will eventually cross. There’s an old church there—Saint Materiana’s. A mere 900 years old.

Inside is a Roman milestone bearing the name of Emperor Licinius, who died in 324. And outside is a crocus, just opening her petals in the early spring sun.

We followed the long winding shale path down towards Merlin’s cave, and the beach. We couldn’t go all the way down—the construction has closed off the path. This is what it looked like:

This is what it sounded like:

My Mom sat on a bench and drew a little bird who paid her a visit. She is such a wonderful artist. You should tell her so in the comments. I climbed the old stone steps to stand very dramatically on the hill facing Merlin’s cave

Merlin was a middle aged wizard, an old-young man when Arthur was born. A druid, a mystic, a bard, a savant, a wild man of the woods. Magician, counselor, wise man: the first wizard of them all, who gave us Prospero, Gandalf, Dumbledore, Schmendrick the Magician, if you read Peter Beagle, which you should. At Tintagel in the dead of night, Merlin gathered a baby boy in his arms, and carried him out through the cave to the sea. Climbed into a little ship and sailed away. To keep the boy safe, they say.

There won’t be access to the beach and Merlin’s Cave until the Heritage Trust finishes building the new bridge. Instead of walking into it myself, I must rely on Laura on TripAdvisor, who states: “If this cave was Merlin’s he would have made it better.”

To me it felt like a place both wild and good—which doesn’t equal safe.

Before we left the little town of Tintagel I bought a wee Cornish piskie in a wee Cornish shop. “Put me in your pocket or purse for good luck!” said the sign—and who am I to not spend £1.50 on good luck? Then we had Cornish pasties in The Cornish Bakery with Calum:

Calum made me an espresso shot for the road, and had the other half of it himself. I said to him, “You’re a bit of a Merlin, aren’t you? …I mean, you look like what I imagine Merlin might have looked like.”

He grinned. “I used to have a beard,” he said. “Then I suppose I did.”

He’s a part of a group called the Warriors of Tintagel, dedicated to dark age reenactments. They have battles; it looks quite excellent. When Calum heard why I was there, a wistful look came over him. “We just had a show, last Monday…If I’d know you were coming we could have done something today. I wish I’d known.”

Very gentle and earnest, for a possible wizard.

We said thank you and got in the car and drove. We were headed into Wales—and if you’ve read my second post, you know what came of that! But while we were leaving Tintagel, and the sun was hanging soft and gold in the Western sky, it was spirits we were thinking of, not ghosts.

The spirit of a king, of a wizard, of a small girl playing on a tiny beach, of a land, of a story, of a time.

This is what it looks like, at Tintagel, if you go:

Melody Bates
Tintagel, Now.

NEXT POST in Seeking Avalon:  DISPATCH FROM NELLIEVILLE 

AVALON will have its world premiere in August 2019, produced by Opera House Arts and staged in a site specific production at Nervous Nellie’s Jams and Jellies on Deer Isle. All text, photos, and video ©2019 Melody Bates. Learn more and support her work here.

Avalon Blog Post 3: AVALON (disambiguated)

AVALON (disambiguated)

A guest post from Judith Jerome, Production Dramaturg for AVALON

Avalon. Frankie Avalon. The Avalon Ballroom. Mists of Avalon. I’m just starting to let my brain storm. But wait, the computer is in front of me: 110 businesses, songs, bands, places, films, games, novels, boats, etc. are listed in Wikipedia as containing the name Avalon.  The Wiki heading is: “Avalon (disambiguation).”

 Yes. The disambiguation revealed is the power of the name, and behind it some felt sense, some memory shrouded in mists, a dream, lingering cultural resonance, centuries old. That place. Whatever it was.

I used to teach a class I called “Red Circle Stories.” It was about identifying and performing the personal stories we tell again and again, or even if we hold them secretly, tell them only to ourselves, we have circled them in red in our own minds. Stories of mystery. Stories we know as well as we know the backs of our own hands, and yet don’t know at all. Stories that reassure us that I am I, but also that are always on the verge of disarming us/I. Stories we tell in the hope that this time we will learn something new.  

Shakespeare’s stories are like that. They are our western European cultural dreams; that’s why they have lasted for almost 500 years. None of the history plays started whole cloth with William himself. He told stories already circling in the cultural imagination. Every telling is a new telling. What will we learn about ourselves this time?

The stories of King Arthur and Camelot are the same and, crucially, Avalon is their backdrop. The stories came out of Avalon; the world once was Avalon. Maybe.

One text behind Melody’s seeking Avalon is Rianna Eisler’s The Chalice and the Blade, which opens out an archaeological pre-history that tells the loss of a partnership social order, its defeat by a dominator model. Similar in some ways to the mists Marion Zimmer Bradley sought to lift in her 1983 novel. Psychoanalysis teaches us that the dissolutions/psychoses we fear are ones we have already been through; I think it must be the same with our Avalons, our Shangri Las, our Xanadus. Pre-historical truth or no, somewhere we know something about Avalon and long for it again.

Right now Melody is seeking Avalon in places. Geography, buildings, rocks, dirt, mosses, and trees. So much is held there, so much to learn, and some of us are just beginning to understand this different kind of learning . We write emails to trees and grant personhood to Lake Erie.

Maybe we will collect all the different tellings, with their many layers of cultural agenda, as Melody says it, as we go toward August’s performances. I have not looked these up on Wikipedia but I’ll bet there are way more than 110, and way more fun to come up with them ourselves.

Melody standing in ancient Cumbria's Pine Lake, wearing an 

"AVALON Volunteer Fire Co." shirt she found at a thrift store in Brooklyn.

NEXT POST in Seeking Avalon:  TINTAGEL

AVALON will have its world premiere in August 2019, produced by Opera House Arts and staged in a site specific production at Nervous Nellie’s Jams and Jellies on Deer Isle. All text and photos ©2019 Melody Bates. Learn more and support her work here.

AVALON Blog Post 2: A Ghost Story for Saint Davy's Day

It’s 7:30pm and it’s midnight in Wales.

It’s midnight and dark forest and perhaps witches? Or ghosts? Or strange troll-type creatures with a malevolent glint in their eye? Anyway it’s very dark and we should have stopped sooner to book our lodging for the night…but we didn’t.

The dark is different in a land without big cities throwing light pollution into the sky. The night is different. What’s that they say on Game of Thrones? The night is dark and full of terrors. I mean, at least in Wales it might be. We left Tintagel around 4pm, and drove north. Thinking we’d stop around 6pm to get our bearings and look along our route to book a place to stay for the night. But then there wasn’t a good place to stop, and we just kept driving. And it just got darker. And there were no cities, or towns, or streetlamps…just a road, and the dark. And what you imagine to be in the dark. I suppose this is why medieval cities had walls.

A sign ahead has a bed symbol with an arrow pointing right. This means lodging, we think? We turn off the "A" road we’ve been on, onto the deeper dark of the exit road. Into the woods. Deeper. We were probably in the woods before we turned…but now we’re really in them. We drive a mile. Another mile. Nothing but the night around us. Then, at last, a building, some lights ahead.

We drive so slowly up to it, getting a look. No one stirring. A few lights on. I turn into the empty parking lot. There’s an odd greenish-blueish light set up on the side of the lot, casting a sickly glow on the looming trees. I do not have a good feeling about this place. Nor does my Mom—but neither of us says anything. This place may be the only place, and the only place would be better than none. Even if it’s run by trolls and highwaymen.

“I’m going to get on my phone and see if there’s anyplace else near,” I say. I have just enough slow internet service to get online and search. One pops up. 12.5 miles away. 24-hour front desk. Free wifi. Perfect. I book a room. It takes forever, but finally goes through. We pull out of the creepy lot, by its creepy lodge, and drive towards our new stop for the night.

“I didn’t like the look of that place,” says my Mom.

“Me neither,” say I.

It’s a hairy drive on dark lanes and then through a quaint little town before we get to our spot, but we get there. The Cwrt Bleddyn Hotel and Spa, which is apparently also a Ramada, which seems strange but we’re not asking questions at this point. They don’t have a room with two beds, the lovely concierge Charlotte says “but I can upgrade you, no charge, to our largest heritage room.” We’re grateful. There’s a beautiful willow tree out front and a fountain, and lots of cars which means lots of folks, and hopefully not trolls. Charlotte says, “Breakfast is in the restaurant from half six to 10. The spa and pool are just outside and you can use them all day tomorrow if you like.” She gives us the keys. “Room 35. Past the bar, down the steps, through the door, up to the top.”

We get lost. I go back to the desk. Charlotte walks us through to the correct staircase. It’s spiral. We go up.  

Three flights up with our bags. Two doors. I open the one on the left with our key card.

It’s big, but…eh, I don’t know. Odd. A small-ish bed. Strange yellow lighting. A bathroom with slanted roof and no windows. It smells a bit damp. We’re on the third floor and there are exposed rafter beams. This is an old, old building.

We are both making the best of this. Then my Mom says, is this room 34?

No it’s 35, I say, holding up the key envelope, on which Charlotte wrote “35.”

“I think it’s 34,” says my Mom. I’m so tired. How could we be in 34 if the keys to 35 opened the door? I open the door to look at how it’s numbered on the outside…and it IS 34.

“I guess…I’ll try the keycard on the other door.”

The other door doesn’t have a number. On it is written “The Catherine Parr Room.” It opens with our key card. 'I guess our keys open all the doors?" I say. "Maybe we should try all the rooms."

Room 35 is giant. The whole rest of the top floor. Beautiful old wood and leather furnishings, not damp at all. Giant bed that we’ll be quite comfortable sharing. Fabulous. I took a picture:

Giant bathroom too. Bathtub seven feet long, I make a note to avail myself of it later. The john is actually a John. As in, made by Edward Johns. I look it up later—it’s a vintage blue dolphin loo with cistern and pull chain. People lose their minds over them in the antique markets. This one is there just for…using. Perhaps by Queens? Anyway here’s a blurry picture I took of it. It’s blurry because it feels funny to take a photo of a toilet, and I was laughing at myself:   

  

The toilet’s an antique and the tile is a bit Alice in Wonderland via Tom Petty, but it’s all good. Except…Well, the only thing that’s not quite right about the bathroom, I guess I would say,

Is the gaping hole in the wall leading to the totally creepy dark crawlspace.

I suppose a gaping hole in the wall leading to a totally creepy dark and dusty crawlspace that maybe has paint cans or construction equipment or maybe something more exotic, who knows because I’m not going in there…anyway I guess you could call that, a bit unusual. I didn’t take a picture.

There’s a plywood board and a large standing mirror to one side. “Let’s just, cover it up,” suggests my Mom. She is very wise. We do this. No problem. Head downstairs for a drink at the bar to soothe our jangled nerves.

Mom has a stout that’s brewed 10 miles away. It’s fruity and delicious. I order a Jamesons. Neat? Ice? Water? Asks the bartender. “Uhh..ice?” I say. I am not an accomplished drinker. But my Grandpa John drank Jamesons. An Irish chap across the bar pipes up. “One cube!” he says. “What’s that?” I say. “One cube! One cube of ice—Jamesons is a sipper” he says. “One cube,” I say to the bartender. “Jamesons is a sipper.”

We’re sipping our beverages and the stress of the night and the troll hotel and the dark wilderness roads is beginning to melt away. Charlotte finds us at the bar. “I’ve printed out a bit of history of the hotel for you,” she says, handing us a few pages of lore. Henry VIII used to come to this place when it was a hunting lodge, they say. That’s why our room is named for Catherine Parr—the wife who survived, more luck to her. They say Captain Morgan—of the rum, and the piracy—did too, and the Oak Room on the first floor is paneled with wood carving from one of his pirate ships. And most likely it is—I took a picture of it: 

 

A debate about whiskey breaks out. The Irishman opines further about Jamesons. A woman’s voice cuts in from a table opposite the bar. “Scotch is bettar,” she says, drily. “What’s that?” says the Irishman, jovially. “Scotch is Bettar,” she says in a fine loud brogue. “Why would ya drink anythin else?”

I try to perform diplomacy. “I’m both, I’m both: I’m Irish and Scottish, it’s fine!—Jamesons tonight, I’ll have a scotch next time.”

It’s no peace accord, but the jokes are good-natured and the ancestral rivalry quiets down as we finish our drinks and head back upstairs. Up three flights of the spiral staircase, back to the Catherine Parr room at the top.

I take a bubble bath. It’s quite nice. My Mom is already asleep when I get into bed. Want to get a good night’s sleep. Long day of driving tomorrow, if I'm up early enough I might take a dip in the pool the next morning before we head out. Sleep mask on. Turn out the light. Settle into the big comfy pillows.

But I don’t fall asleep.

Something…feels odd.

I would like to take a moment for a brief aside here. I think it is pertinent to say that ghosts leave me alone. I have never seen a ghost. A few times, maybe, I’ve had a sense of presence, once or twice definitely beneficent, once maybe a bit unsettling—never malevolent or downright scary. I don’t have ghost stories. My husband has seen ghosts. His mother Carolyn, who has lived on Vinal Haven and North Haven, has some blood curdling tales of her experiences in houses there. But so far, ghosts leave me alone.

So for me to feel something…well, that might mean something, no?

I’m lying there in the dark with my sleep mask on and something feels not quite good. I shift in the bed. My Mom, who does not talk in her sleep, shifts on her side of the bed and mumbles something, an unintelligible phrase. A moment passes and she says something else, indecipherable. A third time, a soft ripple of phrases that mean nothing I can understand. I take my sleep mask off.

I look around me in the dark. There is some bleed from the skylights—oh, right, our room has skylights. It’s very posh, if it weren’t for the giant exposed rafters that you have to watch you don’t bonk your head on…and of course, the feeling that something else is in the room.

Or in the crawlspace?

I think of the open hole in the bathroom wall, improvisationally covered with board and mirror. The bathroom door is open. I think, I’m going to close that door.

I get up. I close the bathroom door.

I mean almost. The whole place is carpeted, bathroom too, and the carpet won’t let the door close all the way. Almost, though. Maybe that’s good enough?

I get back in bed. Something is still….around.

Lying on my back in bed, I feel stronger measures are needed. I am making it up as I go, here in Wales where there are perhaps unfriendly spirits in the Catherine Parr room, and truly should we be surprised if a hunting lodge of the British aristocracy including a dude who had several wives killed and a notoriously blood-thirsty pirate—would it be a shocker if it turned out they did some bad deeds here, too?

I invoke our ancestors. I raise both hands, palms out, to summon. I invoke my family spirits gone on before. In my head—or was I speaking? I was speaking somehow. This is heightened stuff, in the dark in Wales. It would be silly if there weren't SOMETHING IN THE ROOM.

I say their names. My father’s name, my grandparents on both sides. My great grandparents that I knew. All my people. I call them in. Watch over us tonight, I think-say. Protect us as we sleep.

I am not making this up when I say I could hear something else listening. Not my ancestors, I mean. Something else.

But I also felt a bit safer. The grandmothers were there. The grandfathers. The way-back kinfolk. Spirits of good will and protection. There was a tent of energy around us. My Mom was still asleep.

I pulled my sleep mask on and hoped for the best.

*****

8am the next morning: pouring rain making a tattoo on the skylights, grey light waking us up. Safe in our bed. “How did you sleep?” I asked my Mom. “Pretty well,” she said. “I mean, okay.”

“Do you ever talk in your sleep?” I asked her. I didn’t think she did, but what do I know. “Talk in my sleep?” she replied. “No.” “You did last night,” I said. “Really?” she said. “What did I say?” “I couldn’t understand it,” I said. “Weird!” she said. “Are you going to try the spa?”

I did. I grabbed my suit and went down to check it out. It was cool. Like, a little Roman bath in the middle of the Welsh countryside. I took a picture of it:

I swam a lap, dipped into the hot tub, tried the steam room, sat in the sauna for a minute. Lovely. Nipped back upstairs to get our bags, we had a bit of breakfast (included in our booking price, how nice), and headed to the front desk to check out.

There are two women there, neither of them Charlotte. “And how was your stay?” asks one “Oh, lovely,” we reply, basically at the same time. “Oh good,” say the women behind the desk.

There’s a pause. They’re printing our receipt. I ask,

“Do you…have ghosts here?”

The women look up sharply. “No.” says the older of the two, decisively.

Another pause. The younger asks, “Why? …Did you see something?”

I am immediately certain that they have ghosts. More certain than I was last night, when it could have been my imagination. Immediately, 100%, unequivocally, quite, certain.

“Didn’t see anything,” I say. “I felt, a presence. Presences.”

“What room?”

“35.”

“Ah.”

We wait.

“Well, there’s only been a few times, when someone said they saw something. But it’s always in Room 35.”

“Ohhhhh,” we say.

“Yeah, there was one time someone saw a woman in the window, walking…And another time, there was a man in the window below…”

“Uh-huh,” we say.

“But you didn’t see anything?”

“Nope.”

“Well, hope you enjoyed your stay!”

We leave. I snap a last photo as we walk to our car:

When we stop for lunch, I google the hotel. I type “Cwrt Bleddyn ha…” and my phone auto-finishes. Haunted. The place is haunted as all get out. Glasses rising from the bar, staff touched by unseen hands, someone playing a piano that doesn’t exist, ghosts all over the joint. We drive towards Glasgow, and speak no more of it.

Happy Saint Davy’s Day. Wales has ghosts.

AVALON will have its world premiere in August 2019, produced by Opera House Arts and staged in a site specific production at Nervous Nellie’s Jams and Jellies on Deer Isle. All text and photos ©2019 Melody Bates

NEXT POST in Seeking Avalon: AVALON (disambiguated)

SEEKING AVALON, by Melody Bates: Post 1

February 24, 2019

Coventry, England

It’s 3am in Coventry and I find myself thinking about Time.

Which, to be honest, is not an ideal use of the 3am hour. But here we are, in jet lag country!

Isn’t it an odd and interesting thing that we can talk about time as a place? Here we are: 3am. Do we talk about place as a time, ever? My Mom and I left JFK airport 24 hours ago and my brain is running on fumes and I can’t come up with an example…but I wonder if we do. Comment, please, if you can think of other ways that we mix up time and place in how we talk about them.

Mixing up time and space is surely something that theatre does. All storytelling does, I think. We take a story about something that happened elsewhere, elsewhen—and we make it happen again, now. That’s the magic trick that a play does. As I have been doing the archaeology of AVALON—trying to unearth the roots of these legendary figures, these stories that are buried in so many layers of other people’s agendas, I have been ruminating on the idea of the “once and future king”. Of how one of the things we do when we tell a story is to take a once and future thing, and make it a now and right here thing.

We landed in London on Saturday morning. Over the next two weeks I will be traveling through the UK and Northern France with my mother Eloise, visiting sites associated with Avalon, Camelot, and their legendary inhabitants. From Glastonbury Tor to Tintagel, to the ancient standing stones of Orkney, to the enchanted forest of Broceliande in Brittany, I’ll be trying to mix time travel with place travel, and writing about it here. I’ll be posting about my play AVALON, and any inspiration for it that I find along the way. I’ll post pictures too, promise. And even, perhaps, jokes. If we’re lucky and I hear any good ones.

3:55am, an even less ideal place for wakeful blog-writing. But…here I am. Vibrating with anticipation of the extraordinary places I’ll be seeking out in the next two weeks. Standing, perhaps, in places where long ago, Merlin walked. Morgan LeFay wandered through the woods. Arthur met Guinevere. The Knights of the Round Table rode out to seek the Grail. Places where real people lived, before they became legends.

I’ll leave you tonight with a short excerpt from the prologue of AVALON, spoken by the Player Queen:

How many folk have strayed through these lands, think you? How many stories do we stand upon? Past reckoning it is: to tell each soul who hovered here, whose heart turned the flips of first love here, or broke here, who strove here against great odds, who tilled this soil, who wore the crown, who washed the pots. 

Honestly, how does anyone tell a story?

                                                     

Answer: No one tells a story honestly. But we mean to do it dishonestly. With dishonest honesty, by your leave…

Excerpt from Avalon ©2019 Melody Bates

Image: Melody Bates dreaming of Avalon in an apple tree with a draft of her script under her head. 

This photo was taken by Siouxsie Suarez on the grounds of Nervous Nellie’s Jams and Jellies during the June 2018 workshop of AVALON. Sculptor Peter Beerits a co-creator of the work, and the play will be staged in his multi-acre art installation.

Why Visiting Actor Neil McGarry Loves 'A Christmas Carol'

We're so excited to have actor Neil McGarry for our special LIVE! FOR $5 showing of the one-man 'A Christmas Carol' this Saturday!  All Island students are welcome FREE.  <-- Click here to find out more. 

Actor Neil McGarry

We were curious "Why does Neil love this play?" Here's what he had to say.  It's beautiful...

I love this story so much, and have, since I was young. I'm fairly sure I came to it first with Mr. Magoo's version. There was another animated version too, it had Alistair Sim's voice and, on a black and white TV, the images seemed designed to look like pencil sketches. 

I remember reading it on my own in the 4th grade,  devouring every film version that came my way. In 5th grade I was cast in my first play, and was playing the lead in the 5th Grade Christmas show. My teacher, Mrs. Porrazzo at Hyannis West Elementary, for reasons known only to her, used the Scrooge/Marley from the novel scene as the audition piece.

In 8th grade I discovered the great actor, Albert Finney, in the movie musical Scrooge. 

from left to right: 'A Christmas Carol', Neil (in character), Alistair Sim, Albert Finney

When I was seventeen I was cast as Scrooge by the extraordinary John Sullivan at Barnstable High School. John was an art teacher and Drama Director at BHS for over 30 years and went on to mentor many other students who have gone on to become professional actors, writers, directors and animators. He is an amazing person, fun, incredibly funny and a truly gifted teacher. This was in his 2nd year as Drama Director. I was seventeen and, indeed, filled with drama. 

John Sullivan, inspiration and mentor

My parents, who, rightly so, were not overly delighted with their son’s choice of profession (“There are so many things you do better Neil” they would say) were worried. I would leave the house to go to school and then not come home ‘till 11:00pm, staying after school to build sets and rehearse. When asked where I was, my scruffy, gruff, hormonal, filled with teenage angst response was “I was at rehearsal.” 


We opened the show and Mum and Dad came to the opening. It was one of those special performances that sometimes happen for young actors. And, truly, it was years before I did anything that was as good. 


Back in those days the stage would be rushed by well wishers after the curtain call. I remember stumbling and suddenly, my father had me. He just held me and held me. He was a good hugger and I had a lifetime of great hugs from him but that one was ... well, I still don’t have words for it. He then handed me to my mother, who held me no less lovingly, and who then whispered in my ear, “If you decide to do this, you’ll be okay”.

There have been many actors who have brought A Christmas Carol to life. Charles Dickens’ himself, Sir Laurence Olivier, Reginald Owen, Alistair Sim, Lionel Barrymore, Jim Backus, Albert Finney, Paul Scofield, George C. Scott, Patrick Stewart, Simon Callow - famous ones that I know and love and not famous ones that I know and love too. 

1st row: Charles Dickens, Sir Laurence Olivier, Reginald Owen, Alistair Sim,
2nd row: Lionel Barrymore, Jim Backus, Albert Finney, Paul Scofield,
3rd row: George C. Scott, Patrick Stewart, Simon Callow, Neil McGarry

However, returning to the show now for the fifth year, I am remembering my mum and dad, how much they loved Christmas, how much they loved their 10 children.  They took great pleasure in this story.  They were brilliant, beautiful people.  They never went to college and had no time for pretension, and they suffered through an awful lot of my early work.  In my 35 years on the stage, A Christmas Carol was their favorite. 

This is for them, Neil and Margaret McGarry, for their belief in me, their belief in all 10 of their children, their very deep belief in the season and their belief in what this story stands for ... and for letting me know I’d be ok. 

Wishing you all the happiest of holidays!

Thank you for coming! - Neil

Back to school!

As the seasons change, OHA changes too: shifting from the summer flurry of live performance into the other half of our identity as a community gathering space rooted in the belief that access to and participation in the arts offer transformational potential. Throughout the fall and winter months, we’ll be teaching in area schools, partnering with other island organizations to host family-friendly celebrations, hosting artist residencies, and filling our screen with new movie releases and alternative films in the historic Stonington Opera House. 

Over the course of a nine-year highly structured, arts education partnership between Opera House Arts and our school district, we have leveraged the artistic strengths of the Deer Isle-Stonington community to provide embedded arts and integrated learning opportunities to students of Deer Isle-Stonington Elementary and High Schools. Over the past two years, we've expanded that partnership to include work with a number of schools off the island, and developed an extra-curricular program for the island's youngest actors.

We call our education program Creative Stages. Using three separate but complementary programming branches it expands upon our existing partnership to include four more schools as well as students who fall outside Hancock County public school system.

Led by Opera House Arts staff and teaching artists, Creative Stages lays the groundwork for continued growth in youth arts education in the region.

Why offer Creative Stages?

For students who live in rural communities, opportunities to access the arts through education are increasingly difficult to arrange. In a report published in 2011, the President’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities observed that regular access to arts education, both in arts-integrated learning as well as direct participation in the arts, leads to improved student achievement in academics, problem solving and creative/critical thinking, and social competencies, including collaboration, tolerance and self-confidence.

Over the past four years, school budgets in Hancock County have come under tight scrutiny: the Deer Isle-Stonington budget alone has decreased by 10% or $710,106 between FY 2014-15 and FY 2017-18, while the overall student population has grown. As budgets decline, arts in schools are reduced and threatened. By providing arts partnership programming at no cost to the region’s schools, Opera House Arts ensures that students in our community not only receive a well-rounded, arts-inclusive education, but are also empowered with the tools to effectively communicate and express themselves, and develop critical thinking and collaborative skills.

So, what are the Creative Stages?

The Creative Stages program works on three different fronts: in the classroom, on the stage, and in the community. OHA uses multi-year partnerships with island and peninsula schools, in-depth collaborations with other island non-profits, and national contacts within the performing arts to offer a holistic approach to arts education, with opportunities for students of all ages, as well as the community at large.

DISES student Hallie Hudson performs
"Patience" by Marilyn Singer at
OHA Voice 2 Voice performance

In the classroom, OHA offers a series of arts-integrated learning programs, at both the elementary and high school level: Curricular Performance Units (grades K-8) provide deeper arts-integration in classroom learning, and Voice 2 Voice Poetry Declamation Contest (5-8) connects students in five schools through poetry and oral performance. Additionally, OHA’s teaching staff work with administrators and teachers in the Deer Isle-Stonington High School to curate and produce the Arts Toolkit Challenge: a week-long full-school arts program that culminates in the performance of original theatre pieces devised by students around a single question.

On the stage, OHA teaching artists provide performance opportunities for actors of all ages, from the afterschool program  PlayPen Youth Theatre (K-5), to our summer internships, serving students in high school and college with embedded learning in the midst of a busy theatrical season, to our Staged Reading Series that offers community actors the chance to work with and learn from professional actors and directors.

In the community, OHA works with local residents to provide learning through performance opportunities with the Staged Reading Series, which provides non-professional artists the chance to work with and learn from professional guest actors and directors, and through the Harbor Residency Program education component. The Harbor Residencies, now in their third year, provide professional working artists with access to time and space to generate new work, and asks that each resident offer a learning opportunity to the community, free of charge. To date, these workshops have taken the form of school visits, playwriting workshops, rehearsal observerships, and master classes.

What's new this year?

This year, we’re thrilled to be building upon the successes of our education programming. In January we’ll be back with The Stonecutter for year two of the PlayPen Youth Theatre, an artistic collaboration of the Opera House, the Island Community Center and The Reach Performing Center that is offered to the region’s youngest actors (ages 6 – 10). Following PlayPen, we’ll be working on the Voice 2 Voice Poetry Declamation with elementary school children from five area schools in a series of poetry workshops that will culminate in a special assembly at the Opera House where finalists from each school recite their selected poems.

We’re also building on our now ten-year-old partnership with the Deer Isle-Stonington Schools through a series of Curricular Performance Units, created in partnership between classroom teachers and teaching artists. The first installment took place in October, with a week-long education residency between Belfast Flying Shoes, Deer Isle-Stonington’s Elementary School and the Brooklin School. 95 students in grades 3 and 4 explored the traditional, participatory, New England dancing called contra dancing, learning to move cooperatively and respectfully. The week culminated with a delightful family dance at the Stonington Opera House.

Stay involved!

Want to learn more about our programs? Have some ideas about how you could collaborate with us?

Reach out to OHA's Education Associate, Joshua McCarey, and start the conversation!