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.

A Salute to Our Gracious Hosts!

Every morning before going to the Opera House, my husband makes a sandwich for his lunch.  And you if ask our roommate Zachary, those sandwiches are made exclusively for himself and it is only by cruel chance that he doesn’t eat every single one of them within minutes of their creation.  But, perhaps he wouldn’t tell you this in so many words as he is a ten-year-old yellow Labrador.

Zachary is the loving companion of our gracious host, Nancy Dontzin, who has been kind enough to share her home with us for the entire summer while we work at Opera House.  The fierce battle over the ownership rights of sandwiches between my husband and Zachary is just one of the many memories we will take away from our stay with Nancy this summer.  I will remember eating everyday dinners by candlelight, a habit Nancy says she has held over from living with her grandmother as a young girl, a practice I would like to put in place in my own home.  I will remember chatting with Nancy about family and politics and the great pleasure of conversation with someone who has seen so much of this world.  I will remember playing “monster” with Nancy’s visiting twin grandsons which involved chasing the identical four-year-olds around the house and pretending not to know where they might have hidden...despite the tell-tale giggles from behind a piece of furniture.  I will remember that when Joseph sprained his ankle, Nancy's neighbor, Pat Roth, who happened to be visiting, ran home to bring him an Ace bandage.

I will remember that for an entire summer we were welcomed into a home.  These memories wouldn’t have been possible had we stayed in a hotel or rented a cottage.  For theater people, staying in someone’s home during our brief residencies at the Opera House is not only a great relief to our struggling bank accounts but it also provides us with unique experiences and memories that feed us as artists.  So to Nancy, and to all the wonderful Opera House hosts in Stonington and Deer Isle, I salute you and I say thank you from the bottom of my heart.  This would not be possible without you.

Looking in on OHA - An Eagerly Interested Fly on the Wall

In September my husband, Joseph, and I moved to New York City so that I could begin a graduate program in Performing Arts Administration at NYU.  My goal is to arm myself with as much education and experience as possible so that we can follow our dream of launching a theater company in Rockledge, Florida, Joseph’s hometown. 

One of the first pieces of assigned reading during my first semester was a 2003 New York Times article about the Stonington Opera House.  I was thrilled to see that these women were successfully doing something very similar to what I hope to accomplish in Florida.  I knew I needed to meet these women and come to Stonington and after a few emails, and a lunch we were on our way.

Neither of us had spent much time in New England before moving to New York and this was our first time venturing out of the city.  Naturally, we were swept away with the magic of the island.  It was a cold and dreary weekend but that only added to the depth of its beauty.  And then there was the Opera House.  Despite the cold and the wet, more than 100 people showed up to support their friends and neighbors for “All Shorts,” a festival of short plays written and directed by community members.  The dawning realization that this place was so much more than a theater, so much more than just art, was invigorating.  This is a community and it is important to people.  We knew we could learn here if we could, for a short time, become a part of this community.

So here we are.  Joseph, a scenic designer, has been working 12-14 hour days as he assists in creating sets for three full productions in just under seven weeks.  I’ve been welcomed into the fold of the administrative office where I become exhausted just watching the unstoppable Linda Nelson work.  We are learning more than we could have hoped for about make a theater company go in a small town.  We are learning what it takes to “Incite Art. Create Community.”

And in the end: We are hungry where we are most satisfied

Shakespeare's "Antony and Cleopatra" is not the kind of play that ends after the lights come up and you head out from the theater into the world. It charts a story somewhere between earthly power and godly glory -- and it's impossible to be anything other than awed by its navigation of these worlds. But what is it exactly that makes a play -- or any work of art -- have staying power?

I'm sure the scholars and philosophers of the world can answer that question more eruditely than I. In fact, my own measure of the impact of a work of art is distinctly un-erudite. It's simply this: Does the storytelling continue -- infiltrate your personal thoughts and conversations well after the performance has ended?

For this play, my answer is a resounding yes. And that was true even before I saw the Stonington Opera House production of "Antony and Cleopatra" at the Burnt Cove Church on Deer Isle, Maine. It happened to me in the library reads with the community, when citizen actors dove into the text, querying its lines, marveling at its characters.

But the story kept growing for me. After seeing director Craig Baldwin's production, I recreated the opening scene to no fewer than three people in a week. It went like this: So the audience was outside, and the cast, minus Cleopatra, came over the crest of a hill in the neighboring cemetery, and the company members were singing church music and wearing choral robes, and they escorted us into the church through a installation of funereal kitsch such as fake flowers and plastic crucifixes, and inside was Cleopatra lying on her stomach naked cooing to a three-foot live python in her hands, and when we were all seated, she stood up, put the snake in a cage and pulled the sheet she had been lying on into a halter dress around her body -- except it wasn't a sheet, it was the Egyptian flag.

All three times, the listeners met my description with gasps.

But it didn't end there. I also found myself telling the entire story to both a 9-year-old girl and a theater buddy who hadn't read the play since high school. They both listened with rapt attention -- and when we were interrupted, for instance by the car's GPS giving audio directions -- they were the ones asking me to continue telling the plot. I found myself loving the story more and more with each re-telling of it.

For reasons I can't quite explain, the ephemeral nature of performance fascinated me with "Antony and Cleopatra." It could be that I was acutely aware that the characters are based on real people and real experiences, and history was writ large in the physicality of the performance. It could be that Shakespeare's language is so very poetic and rich in this play -- I texted whole passages to friends -- that I wondered deeply about where poetry lives when it's not being performed.

And now that it's over, the responsibility for and revelation within the production's life slides toward us, the audience. This is where the very fine creative team at OHA -- including the actors, designers, directors and administrators -- steps out of the picture, and the rest of us step into the picture. "Antony and Cleopatra" belongs to us now, and it did the second the performers crested that hill in the cemetery.

What do we take away though? The best performances nudge me to think about my own life -- how my great love affairs have influenced my actions just as Antony's and Cleopatra's did theirs (albeit on a much grander and more global scale), how my tempers play a role in how I treat people and how deeply I respect loyalty and the challenges to it. Here, I am thinking not of Antony and Cleopatra, but of Antony's compatriot Enobarus, who is so broken by Antony's downfall and his own disloyalty that he kills himself.

The best performances also spur us to think about our public lives, and in an election year, "Antony and Cleopatra" offers much information about posturing, branding, best practices and the world behind the scenes of political success and destruction. But also about the role of women in politics -- and in society -- and the worlds and wiles they have to understand.

"Cleopatra is Shakespeare's greatest role for women," a respected Shakespeare scholar recently told me. I believe that. I remember not so long ago in my 30s when I first read Jane Austen. I was an English major in college and graduate school but somehow never got around to reading "Pride and Prejudice." Of course, I fell in love with the book and with Elizabeth Bennett, and I lamented that Austen's and Elizabeth's voices weren't in my head earlier in life to empower me in all the ways great writers and characters do.

Now, there's Cleopatra and Antony -- I transpose their names on purpose even as Shakespeare gives us another order. Their voices and images are with us now, in our heads, in our communities in our collective and private experiences. Antony, the great warrior, statesman and lover. Cleopatra, the queen, the military strategist and a woman of such "infinite variety" that she "makes hungry where she most satisfies."

The play's the thing, Hamlet tells us in one of Shakespeare's other masterpieces. But the play is only one thing. Where it lives in us, where it goes now, is quite another thing.

Yu Jin Ko on Shakespeare's greatest lovers

Shakespeare scholar Yu Jin Ko didn't blink when I asked him to drive up from Wellesley College in Massachusetts to see the Stonington Opera House production of "Antony and Cleopatra." He said: "Yes! It's one of my favorite plays." This will be Ko's third year joining the Opera House Arts Shakespeare festival to participate in post-show audience conversations with the audience. You can read his thoughts from past years on "Much Ado about Nothing" and "Measure for Measure."  Ko, members of the creative team and I will talk with the audience after the performance of "Antony and Cleopatra" 7 p.m. Friday, July 13 at the Burnt Cove Church in Stonington, Maine. The show opens Thursday July 12 and runs through July 22. The following is an excerpt from an e-mail exchange with Ko. 

The Stonington Opera House production of "Antony and Cleopatra" is very intentionally set in a church, and many of the scenes make use of the church as "pulpit" -- even though there is no pulpit in the church. Is "A&C" a good "church" play? 

 It's not a "good" church play -- it's a great church play. The main characters continually assert a spiritual, transcendent dimension to their love, even as they heap disdain on Roman moral attitudes that befit a "pulpit." 

You wrote this about Antony and Cleopatra: "The heart of their world is the world of their hearts." Tell us more about this idea. Are they the greatest lovers in all of Shakespeare? 

Yes, they are the greatest lovers in Shakespeare. (They make Romeo and Juliet look like the young kids that they are.) They love to use the world as their stage, but the world that ultimately matters to them -- the "new heaven, new earth" that they seek -- is the one they create together through their unruly but sublime romance.  

You once mentioned to me that "A&C" is one of your favorite Shakespeare plays. Why?

It's the ultimate fantasy of sorts -- if you can be delinquent on an epic scale, you can achieve sublimity and redemption.   

What scene or character will you most be watching for in this production? Is there a place in the play that has to be highlighted, heightened or done perfectly for the rest of the play to fly?

I love every part of this play, but I'll of course watch Cleopatra most closely.  I like to joke with my students that either they're in love with Cleopatra or they're wrong.

Who is more powerful: Antony or Cleopatra? 

 Cleopatra. He always succumbs to her in the end, and it's Cleopatra who ultimately determines how we view Antony.  

Cleopatra's Snake

When Melody Bates steps onto stage next week as Cleopatra in the Opera House Arts production of "Antony and Cleopatra," she will at some point have with her Figgs, a three-foot, pound-and-a-half ball python. Eventually -- spoiler alert! -- the snake will be Cleopatra's undoing in what is surely the most famous snakebite suicide in literary history.  Bates has been tracking her experience as Cleopatra in her blog, including an entry about Figgs and his provenance. It's no surprise that the OHA creative team -- known for its derring-do -- wanted a live snake onstage for the dramatic finale. But what did surprise me is that OHA artistic director Judith Jerome found the snake in Maine in the Herp Lab of 7th-grade life science teacher Doug Kranich at Millinocket Middle School. Kranich's classroom is filled with reptiles -- teaching tools for a man who loves all things living. Figgs is a recent addition to the collection -- adopted by Kranich from a former student who was moving and couldn't take the snake along. I caught up with Kranich by phone in Texas, where he and another friend were rattle-snake hunting. "How do you hunt for rattle snakes?" I asked Kranich. "In a car," he answered. He and his snake-handling companion have only one thing in mind with the rattle snakes: taking pictures. Krannich and his wife will attend the closing night performance of "Antony and Cleopatra" and escort Figgs back to Millinocket. The following is an edited and condensed version of my conversation with Kranich.

What did you think when you received the request for a snake to be in a theatrical production?

It’s not like any request I’ve ever had. It truly caught my attention. My name is listed on the Maine Herpetological Society website, and we get a lot of strange calls. But this is something I had never heard of before. Judith [Jerome] told me what she wanted, and I had just been given the ball python. I thought: This just might work because these snakes are noted for their docile behavior.

Had you heard of Cleopatra and her dramatic death by snakebite?

Well, sure. Yes, I have. But as far as somebody using a live snake in a play, no, I had never heard of that.

When I saw the pictures of the snake around Melody’s neck, I got a little scared. Tell me why I shouldn’t be scared.

It’s a matter of faith. You’ve got to trust their demeanor. If we wanted to we could find a ball python that might not fit the mold, but generally they’re extremely docile and inoffensive. If anything, they want to hide their heads most of the time. Generally they are very reliable. You know people whose personalities are such that you know they’re not going to bite your head off. This snake is the same way. I know that’s a kind of strange connection, but it’s true.

Isn’t it also true that some animals – a snake or a pit bull – get a bad rap, that if we really understood their breed or were better informed than just from the media, we wouldn’t be afraid of them?

Everything you hear about these animals in the media is negative. Everything. They are represented as evil, as something to create fear, as a mystery, as danger – and it’s totally false in most cases. That’s what we have been conditioned to believe. We always hear about the pit-bull attacks. Nobody cares about them when they’re nice. It paints a bad picture for all of them – it’s the same way with snakes.

How did you prepare the snake for his debut at the Stonington Opera House?

Ball pythons are known for their fasting ability. I know of ball pythons that didn’t eat for a year. That’s hard to believe but they’re fairly heavy-bodied snakes. They have a lot of fat reserves. Having a month without any food is not a problem. I gave Judith all the basic housing he needed and said she didn’t have to worry about feeding because he’s been extra fed for the month. The only mistake you can ever make in picking one up is if you had held mice, and the snake would be misled by the stimulus of a food item because of the scent on your hand.

Why would someone want a snake for a pet? 

When I was a kid, I didn't have dogs and cats. But I loved everything under the sun that was alive. That probably has a lot to do with my teaching because I love life science and everything about it. I liked snakes because they were different. Most people like dogs and cats for their human characteristics--affection, answering to calls, loyalty. Reptiles and snakes in particular don't follow any of that. They don't hear. Even though some people will stake their lives on it, snakes are not affectionate. They don't create bonds with their owners like dogs do -- although that's a very controversial statement. I love them because of their different characteristics. That's what motivated me.

Opera House Arts presents "Antony and Cleopatra" July 12-22 at the Burnt Cove Church on Deer Isle in Stonington, Maine. For tickets, click here. Snake photos courtesy Melody Bates. Doug Kranich photo used by permission of Doug Kranich.   

Cleopatra the Superstar

I've conducted enough book discussions in Maine and elsewhere to know the show-up rate can be discouraging in rural areas especially in summer, especially in the evening. Imagine my surprise when more than 20 locals showed up, however, to discuss Stacy Schiff's biography "Cleopatra: A Life" last week in Stonington. What? Not even Shakespeare himself has drawn that many fans to a book gathering in my time of working with Opera House Arts and its annual Shakespeare production.

But this group was ready to rock. Most of the participants read the book or some part of it or were preparing to read it before the production of "Antony and Cleopatra," which opens July 12 at the Stonington Opera House. Many appreciated the impressive details in the biography. Some found them tedious. We grappled with the grey areas that imaginative biographies exist in: What can we really know about Cleopatra since the source material is so scant? What leeway does a biographer have with the facts? Where do fact and fiction meet in a biography?

In the end, however, it was clear that the attraction -- to the book and the play -- was the merging of legend and reality. Who among us didn't imagine walking down the main boulevard of Alexandria in Cleopatra's day or seeing her barge on the Nile or witnessing her unapologetically blatant glory in affairs with two married men? It was Cleopatra who drew this crowd. They wanted to talk about her, think about her, imagine her, exhume her.

And why? She's a strong woman who lived in a time when a woman could be the richest person in the world, when she could unflinchingly and unquestioned play politics alongside men. And that's not all.

This year's "Antony and Cleopatra" has a superstar, and the book group proved it. Cleopatra is one of the Top Ten Most Famous Women in History -- one ahead of Joan of Arc and second only to Mother Theresa, whom Shakespeare surely would have figured out a way to dramatize had he been born 400 years later. Cleopatra, Joan of Arc, Mother Theresa: There's a lineup for you. They are women who didn't validate barriers, who did't recognize "no" (unless they were the ones saying it) and who changed the world through both action and iconography (or, as we call it today, branding).

It did not escape anyone's notice that most participants in the book discussion were women. (Only two men.) Yes, women are big readers. But they are also -- all these years later -- still looking for role models -- and Cleopatra, though not admired by everyone in our group, is a powerful one when it comes to politics, leadership and -- some might argue -- sexual liberation and strategy. She was a superstar in life. She's a superstar in legend. And I'm pretty confident she's going to be a superstar on the stage at the Stonington Opera House.