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

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.

Shakespeare, art and the wig moment

Often in a performance, one moment – one gesture, one monologue, one flash of art – catches my attention and lingers in my thoughts long after the show ends. During our public reads of Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing this summer at the Stonington Public Library, that "moment" occured when community member and citizen actor Larry Estey read Friar Francis’ monologue about fake-killing Hero so that Claudio can learn a lesson about mourning and love.

In lieu of a recording of Rachel Murdy’s fine performance of the role, here’s a performance of the monologue by an actor in California. He looks like a Friar from the Hood, and like the Unabomber and like Emperor Palpatine from Star Wars, but I like the way he animates the language. And I like his dog barking in the background. You can also read the entire scene here.

But back to Estey. He’s a former minister, and his expertise at finding meaning in language was clear as he slowly delivered the Friar’s lines. He wasn’t dramatizing as much as explicating them as he read in a measured, confident style that illuminated the beauty of the cadences and the depth of the ideas. When he was done, our roomful of readers took a collective pause – the effect was striking and penetrating. We knew we had witnessed Estey tapping into a truth, into sentence and solace, as Chaucer called it: the meaning and comfort of art.

A “moment” of a different sort emerged for me during the cast’s performance of the play onstage, and it happened in an unexpected moment: at the curtain call. Craig Baldwin plays two roles in the production – Beatrice (the lead woman) and Borachio (an associate of the play’s bad boy Don John). As Beatrice, Baldwin wears big hair – a wig of blond locks – which he fondles and tosses throughout his performance. As Borachio, he is bald, which is his offstage look, too.

At the curtain call, Baldwin did something that really stunned me: He removed the wig. Not a large gesture, nor one of particular drama. But in that moment, both roles disappeared instantly. It was as if he said: “See? It was all a play. I’m an actor and a man.” It’s not as if we didn’t know all that throughout the performance; there was much made of this point by the creative team throughout the run of the show. But Baldwin’s movements were so elegant and humble in that moment, that the relationship between art and life and the roles we play onstage and off took on new poignancy for me.

Baldwin's action made me think more deeply about Queen Elizabeth I, who wore a wig, and whose Rex-ness was contained in her own body. It's worth noting that Kathleen Turco-Lyon, who plays Queen Elizabeth in both Much Ado and Elizabeth Rex (which ran in repertory with the Shakespeare), shaved her head for the role. It's no wonder (or coincidence) the person Elizabeth connects to the most in Elizabeth Rex is Ned, the Shakespearean actor who plays the women's role and therefore understands the slippery territory of wigs. So the wig is big this year -- in actual architecture and in symbolism. Tracking the wig is like following the crown in Shakespeare's histories. Who wears it wears profound meaning. Taking it off can also be a powerful action.

“The wig removal initially came from me as a sort of tribute to drag performers of a bygone era,” Baldwin later explained to me.

In fact, Baldwin’s thoughts on that moment are worth quoting in full:

It used to be that drag performers would dramatically remove their wig in their curtain call to say: “And all along I was a man!” Some of the famous examples of this can be seen in La Cage aux Folles and Victor/Victoria (which is even more complicated by a woman pretending to be a man playing a woman). It's not done so much any more in drag performance and, in fact, we were worried it might be a little over-the top or “camp” as a gesture. Camp was something we wanted to avoid with the show. I did, however, feel a certain sentimental need (as a gay man myself) to acknowledge the part of this that is a “drag” performance – how it fits into a long history and culture of men playing women. I discussed it with director Cynthia Croot, and she thought we should try it. When we did try it the audience reaction was warm and joyous. It feels like a fun acknowledgement of the cross-gender nature of the performance. As I shave my head bald normally, I think it is particularly visually dramatic in my case to rip off the wig at the end. It always gets a strong reaction. It is not that they don't “know” that I was a man all along. It is that we can all acknowledge together – performer and audience – that something so simple as a wig made the ‘transformation’ of gender possible. It's almost like saying: “What fun we had together pretending that I was a woman!” It is a complicated moment, and almost inexplicable, but it feels satisfying for me and the audience each time, so Cynthia and I decided together to keep it.

I'm grateful they did. We’re at the end of another Shakespeare in Stonington, at the end of our “moment” together with Shakespeare. But if you’re like me, the moment continues. The takeaway for me will be in the ongoing examination between art and life, where we find “ahas” and how they revisit us once we’re back in the real world. The real world? Hmm. Perhaps like gender roles, the difference between life and art may not have as many distinctions as we like to think. It's all very wiggy.

The End Game of "Measure for Measure"

"Measure for Measure" closes Sunday, Aug. 29, after a two week run at the Stonington Opera House on Deer Isle, but I've been thinking about the show since January, when I enrolled in a Shakespeare class taught by Harvard Professor Gordon Teskey. The class was a survey of Shakespeare's works, but students also learned how the events of Shakespeare's life and times shaped his writing. Teskey is a charismatic teacher. Students have organized a Facebook page for him because they love hearing him read Chaucer. I loved hearing him read Shakespeare, too, and there's no mistaking the actor in him, especially because he's one of the most stylishly dressed members of the academy. (The Harvard Crimson fashion columnist wrote a story about him.) This summer, Teskey was teaching in Venice, but he took a few minutes to answer questions about "Measure for Measure" -- a play I find difficult but that he helped me see more powerfully as a story about self sacrifice and as a demonstration of Shakespeare's progressive sense of structure for comedy and tragedy.
Given Teskey's expertise, I wanted him to help us understand more deeply the final scene of the play in which Shakespeare disconcertingly ties up the ends of a comedy that tipped so dangerously toward tragedy. As we continue to investigate this play, Teskey sets us up to consider how we might see the final scene.

Here's Teskey on the final scene of "Measure for Measure":

The most difficult scene technically is the final one. So much happens in it, and there are so many dramatic reversals. The moment when Mariana begs Isabella to kneel with her and beg the Duke to spare Angelo's life -- this when Isabella still thinks Angelo has murdered her brother -- is deeply moving, because Isabella does so. She is at last moved to pity for someone. But so much else occurs in the scene: the unmuffling of the Duke and the humiliation of Lucio as well as of Angelo, the trick with the head of Ragozine, and so on. It is very hard to stage and to keep up the pace, which should be rapid, without confusing the audience. It is thrilling, a little bewildering, funny, emotionally moving, and at the end (perhaps) a little mysterious.

Phillip Owen: "If I ain't around, nothing good is going to happen"

Abby Bray, a student at Stonington/Deer Isle High School, recently interviewed actor-composer Phillip Owen, who plays a guard and a messenger -- as well as the onstage music -- 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." Owen is a veteran artist at the Opera House where he performed in last year's "A Midsummer Night's Dream." In this interview, Abby asked Phillip -- in character -- why we should care about his 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 Abby's interviews with actors.

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.

Who's got the power?

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. The first is below; the second is here and the third is here. You can buy tickets to join us Saturday, Aug. 21 (TONIGHT!) after the show. Bring your own questions!

AA: Who is the most powerful person in this play?

YJK: You have so many centers of power and the source of power is so different for each in this play. Harold Bloom [the literary scholar] suggests that the most captivating character in the play is Barnadine, the prisoner who refuses death because he has been out drinking the night before. He presents a kind of irrepressible vitality that escapes the whole moral system of the entire play. He embodies that superfluidity of artistic energy that Shakespeare always displays in his plays. In some sense, he is the most powerful character. But more conventionally, you’d have to choose among Angelo, the Duke and Isabella. For me, it’s Isabella. She might come across to some as prissy and puritanical. But beyond all of that, the value she puts on her chastity, which she values above her brother’s life, is a value that is integral to her sense of self and takes her out of circulation – erotic and commercial – defining Vienna, a very corrupt and sordid society into which the Taliban in the form of Angelo has moved. Curiously, Isabella is the most powerful character because she tries the hardest and with the most force to define herself away from the categories of selfhood available to her.

Who cares about Shakespeare?

One of the most frequent comments I hear about Shakespeare is: "Why read his plays?" What does a playwright working 400 years ago have to say to us in the 21st century? The language is difficult, the stories are antiquated, the characters are remote from our tech-driven lives and, frankly, who cares?

I love these questions! And "Measure for Measure," which will be performed Aug. 19-29 at the Stonington Opera House, is the perfect play for coming up with answers and addressing these worries and dismissals of the Bard.

Here's the set-up for the story: The Duke of Vienna, seeing that the laws of the land have grown to lax, hands over state duties to his Deputy and goes under cover to watch as his stricter proxy strictly enforces the law. The first person arrested is Claudio, a young gentleman whose fiancee is pregnant. Oops, no pregnancy out of wedlock tolerated! Go straight to jail, Claudio, and prepare to die! But wait: Can Claudio's virgin sister Isabella, who is about to enter a cloister, save her brother's life through pleading with the Deputy? Better yet, will she agree to have sex with the Deputy in exchange for leniency for her brother? And what about the closure of the whore houses in the suburbs? Good for the moral realm, but, ouch, bad for the economy.

O, Vienna, what a tangled web is weaved round your leaders, families and community!

So you think none of this is relevant today? Let's tease out a few themes:

• Fall guys who take the rap for leaders.
• Women who are forced to negotiate life and death issues with sex trade.
• An economy in which the "little guy" (in this case, hookers) gets hurt because of anxieties about the laws, especially concerning the economy. (Hmmm...the word "Arizona" comes to mind.)
• And what about the morality of religion: Is a woman's virtue and fundamentalism more important than a man's life?

It's enough to make angels weep.

But instead of weeping, why not join us tonight for a community reading of "Measure for Measure" -- 7 p.m. Tuesday Aug. 10 -- at the Brooksville Free Public Library. We sit around a table and read the play with the help of volunteer citizen actors like you. Come read about "then" and think about "now." Most important, let's see if we can answer the big question: Who cares about Shakespeare?

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?

"Precious" at the Opera House

Many questions can be raised about our showing of the film "Precious: based on the novel 'Push' by Sapphire" at the Opera House as part of our Alt-Movie Series this week. Why show a film about inner-city tragedy and dysfunction in our rural hamlet? Why show a film which could possibly further negative stereotypes of African-Americans in the nation's whitest state, where few have access to everyday encounters with racial and ethnic minorities? Why show films which detail poverty, abuse and their effects at all?

Because "Precious" is a complicated, beautifully made film which shows the potential impacts of poverty and abuse in ALL of our communities. It is a story which must be told--as Sapphire knew when she published the book on which it is based, "Push," in 1996. “Ralph Ellison spoke of an invisible man, but girls like Precious are our invisible young women—not seen by their own people let alone white society,” says Sapphire.

The character of Claireece “Precious Jones” Sapphire created and whom director Lee Daniels, along with producers Oprah Winfrey and Tyler Perry, faithfully renders is so deeply human and fully realized, not only in her misery but in her imaginative, thoughtful processes, that it is impossible for any but the most pessimistic and politically orthodox critics (of which there have been many, both of the book and now of the film) to not be dumb-struck with empathy and compassion for her story. As Sapphire says, her story and this film are "for all the precious girls" in all of our communities. Let's make them visible, and let's all care enough to take action--as so many do in this film, from school principals to teachers to social workers--to offer them the love they deserve and need to chart their own courses from misery.

BDN sees magic in MIDSUMMER

MAJOR shout out to Emily Burnham, with photographer Gabor Degre, for this awesome story in today's Bangor Daily News.

[BANGOR DAILY NEWS PHOTO BY GABOR DEGRE]