Behind the Scenes: Jennifer Morrow

Jennifer Morrow has been working with the Opera House for over ten years – moving from member of the Community Advisory Board to CAB Chair to OHA’s Program Manager to her current position as OHA’s General Manager. Still, we’re willing to bet there are a few things you don’t know about her. For instance, which fictional character’s style does she aspire to? Read on to find out!

1. Where did you grow up?

I grew in Lewiston, New York, just outside of Niagara Falls where my family owned a bookstore.

2. How would your elementary school classmates remember you?

Hanging from trees reading books.

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

– Pippi Longstocking so we could talk style.

– Jane Campion’s Fanny Brawne for sewing tips.

– Hannah Bryant to commiserate about the unforgivable thing Joe Coomer did to artists.

– Lisbeth Salander who would right all wrongs with significant force.

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

Velma from Scoobey Doo- intelligent, mystery-solving, near-sighted, trouble with keeping my glasses on and stronger than I appear – and I used to have a favorite orange sweater until I wore it to pieces.

5. When did you fall in love with theater?

I never have. I like it but we are not in love. We were more attached before I knew how the sausage is made.

Come say hi to Jennifer next week at this month’s Alt-Movie – Still Alice!

Throwback Thursday

Roger Greene and Joshua McCarey in the 2013 “Our Own” production of The Insurgents.

Want to be part of an “Our Own” staged play reading? The community table read of Eugene O’Neill’s Anna Christie is this Saturday from 10 am to noon. Email Producing Artistic Director Linda Nelson at lnelson@operahousearts.org if you’re interested in attending.

Behind the Scenes: Per Jansen

You’ve seen him in Men’s Lives, R & J & Z, Romeo & Juliet, Antony & Cleopatra, and 10 Real Star Acts, but can you say with certainty that you know Per Janson’s go-to fictional quartet for mechanical failures? No? Then you’ve come to the right place.

1. Where did you grow up?

I grew up in a family of six in three places: Toledo, Iowa (pop. 2,300) until age 11; Iowa City (pop. 60,000) until age15; and Seattle (pop. 533,000) until I went to college, all of which helped me to feel at home now in a variety of settings.

2. How would your elementary school classmates remember you?

They might remember me as inseparable from my best friend at the time, Joey Tekippe. We were born one day apart and dreamed of being inventors. We loved Legos, exploring the woods and drainage ditches, and building things. I remember drawing up plans with Joey for a giant robot in whose head we could ride and then getting stymied staring at a pile of two-by-fours in Joey’s basement. We later discovered a shared fascination with fire. When my family moved to Iowa City, saying goodbye to Joey was one of the hardest farewells of my life, but Joseph, as he now calls himself, lives in the same city I do (NYC) with his wife and their two kids, so the tearful goodbye at age 11 was not permanent.

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

Dame Edna Everage makes me laugh and thinks on her feet as few others do, and she’s taking her farewell tour now so I’d want to enjoy her company while I can.

Jane Eyre is one of the characters I most respect and she’d probably regard the stuck elevator calmly (if she understands its function), being accustomed to enduring worse.

As of now, this one may not resonate with many people in Deer Isle/Stonington except Morgan Witham, Dave Hiltz, and the Kyzer sisters, but I’d be happy to be stuck with any of the myriad characters my friend Jesse May comes up with extemporaneously. He’s a wildly inventive, hilarious actor and writer Morgan and I met in college, and hopefully he’ll make an appearance at OHA one day.

For my fourth one, I’ll just say I would NOT want to be stuck with Amelia Bedelia.

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

Probably a hapless schmo from any number of Far Side comics, which I love for their morbid absurdity. Maybe the guy at the doorway to hell, the guy on the desert island, or the guy greeting aliens.

5. When did you first fall in love with theater?

I think I first fell in love with theatre admiring my older brother Tor and his classmates in shows at West High School in Iowa City, when I was in junior high, and feeling spellbound—the theatre teacher there, Kate Hamm, was a great teacher and director (though I never studied with her), and besides my brother, I admired a young actor named Ryan Mead, whom I saw alongside my brother in The Fantastics and The Merry Wives of Windsor. I started doing theatre shortly thereafter, playing Grumpy and the Defense Attorney in a not-often-performed play called The Trial of Goldilocks. In high school in Seattle, theatre was where I felt most at home, because I was lucky to have excellent teachers (Loren Reynolds, Barb Lachman, and Ed Call) and fellow students who welcomed me and captured my imagination.

Per will be joining Morgan Witham on the Opera House stage later this month! Come down and see them and other local community members in the “Our Own” production of Eugene O’Neill’s Anna Christie, directed by OHA Board Member Peter Richards. The staged play reading will be offered on Wednesday, April 22 and Thursday, April 23 at 7p.m.

Throwback Thursday

Local kids learn new skills at OHA’s Arts Camp, 2003.

Registration for this year’s Arts Camp begins later this month! Start planning your summer activities!

Behind the Scenes: Morgan Witham

Whether you’re a fisherman, you’ve been part of any performing arts on the island, or both – you probably know Morgan Witham. Most recently at the Opera House, you might have seen the “Our Own” production of Peter Matthiessen’s Men’s Lives in November that Morgan directed or your kids might have listened to her bang up job as a panelist during OHA’s Grapes of Wrath educational symposia just this week.

But even with as active a community member as Morgan, there are always more mysteries to unfold. After all, can you really say, off the top of your head, you know which cartoon character with whom Morgan thinks she has the most in common? After reading this, you’ll be able to answer that with a resounding yes!

1. Where did you grow up?

I grew up on the island, then spent my last couple of years of high school in Limestone, where I got a chance to appreciate life up in the County.

2. How would your elementary school classmates remember you?

I was the irritating kid who raised her hand all the time and had done the reading- it probably looked like I really needed to go to the bathroom, but I was just that antsy to answer the question. Or more to the point, to answer ALL the questions. I thought school was an unending episode of Jeopardy… and I might have been one of the few under that illusion.

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

Silent Bob from the Kevin Smith movies… there’s much to be said for people who don’t say anything using the mouth part of their faces. His quiet presence wouldn’t add to any incipient claustrophobia. Harry Dresden, from Jim Butcher’s Dresden Files- so we’d have someone personable to blame for the elevator’s failure… except it would probably also mean that there were demons trying to attack us. Meh- might as well have an adventure. In which case, next I would add Holden Caulfield, as the sacrificial chump that gets eaten first, buying us time/distraction, and MacGyver to actually get us out of the elevator. Not exactly My Dinner with Andre, but it works for me.

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

Calvin. See above elevator scenario, which is inked in color. And the demons look AWESOME. And they ate Holden Caulfield… who is not unlike Calvin, which means- did I just subconsciously feed the more irritating parts of myself to demons in a hypothetical elevator scenario?

5. When did you first fall in love with theater?

I was at Cold Comfort Theater Camp at Maine Maritime, and it was the lighting cue to cue for that summer’s production of Bye, Bye, Birdie! All of the campers had been shuffled into the theater to watch the tech happen from the audience. Looking back I bet it was a good dodge for the counselors catch a break from us. Our job was to shut up and be still while other people worked. It was tedious, and painstaking, but as they made all of these slight but critical cue changes, quietly, in the dark- I thought “this is amazing.” There was no pay off in excitement or applause, there was just the methodical process of improving the details, the satisfaction of seeing something being refined, of the rough bits being smoothed out. It was formative- having a chance to be in a space that was so focused, to witness what good flow sounds like, looks like, when a cast and crew just buckle down and make their way, as gracefully as possible, through the fiddly things. It’s when I fell in love with the work of theater.


Morgan will soon be returning to the Opera House stage! Come down and see her, visiting artist Per Janson and other local community members in the “Our Own” production of Eugene O’Neill’s Anna Christie, directed by OHA Board Member Peter Richards. The staged play reading will be offered on Wednesday, April 22 and Thursday, April 23 at 7p.m.

Throwback Thursday

Perry Hunter (left) & Paul Fishman (right), OHA’s earliest volunteers working on the driveway in 2003. 

The Opera House will be closed from today until the evening of Friday, April 10 as we race toward this summer’s grand reveal of the new lobby and scene shop – but we’re still working away down in the front office, so come down and say hi. Tickets for the summer season are now on sale – start your planning!

Behind the Scenes: Robin Cust

Here at OHA, we’re big believers in arts integrated learning, so much so that we’ve made it the cornerstone of our educational partnerships. Thankfully, we’ve had OHA Education Associate Robin Cust leading the charge. This evening’s your chance to get to know a little more about this lovely lady.

1. Where did you grow up?

I grew up just outside of Boone, a university town in the mountains of North Carolina, in one of the most idyllic and beautiful valleys on the planet. The worn and gently rolling mountains of the ancient Appalachian range provided an exquisite setting to commune with nature.

2. How would your elementary school classmates remember you?

That seems so long ago! If I can pull those days from the recesses of my memory, they were probably filled with creativity and humor. So yeah, I guess my classmates might most remember me for my having a creative leaning. I remember my 2nd grade teacher, Mrs. Taylor, giving me permission to excuse myself from the class work to “perfect” my painting of a horse…I scrubbed right through the paper in the pursuit of artistic perfection, and I’m still scrubbing today, only with different tools and materials.

I also remember laughing a lot with my closest friends at really ridiculous stuff …geez…who knows what was so funny. I surely can’t remember the details, but I’m sure it had to do with some bizarre imaginings.

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

John Steinbeck’s Junius Maltby would be a great companion and would find many things to be in awe of or to wonder about while being oblivious to the desperate situation. He would have us enthralled with some interesting flight of fancy for a very short time until The Forrester Family from Marjorie Kennan Rawlings The Yearling, who are constantly fighting and arguing with everyone over every little thing, would take matters into their own hands. They’re not the type of friends you want to invite to a dinner party: they’re loud, violent, wild and mean, and I actually have a soft spot in my heart for them. Guaranteed…we wouldn’t be stuck in that elevator for very long!

I know that’s more than four people…The Forrester Family is big in number and girth, but I also think Mary Call Luther from Where the Lilies Bloom would be an asset. Mary Call is an unflinching and determined young woman with enough grit to bear up under a load of difficulty that would be too much for most adults. She could keep the Forresters productively focused.

I’m not sure what it says about me that I would be willing to be stuck in an elevator with characters who are desperate, intense and completely out of touch!

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

Pink Panther. He’s sly lanky and definitely cool. He doesn’t even need to speak to keep your attention, and even after he’s been through the wringer, he saunters off with that sideways glance and a wink…totally in control and ready for the next hair-raising escapade!

5. When did you fall in love with theater?

Probably shortly after the unfortunate family of raccoons were evicted from The Stonington Opera House. Prior to that I was mildly intrigued by theater, and thought I might someday like to participate.

Want to see OHA educational programming in action? Come down to the Opera House next Wednesday, the 25th, at 7pm for a reprise of The Living Room Project: Grapes of Wrath, starring CAB member Bob Burke and directed by Caitlin Shetterly. This performance is done as a follow up to Tuesday’s educational symposia with the Deer Isle Stonington High School.

Oh, and if you see Robin? Give her a high five!