AVALON Blog Post 7: GLASTONBURY TOR

Some places are holy places.

On Wednesday—it might have been Wednesday--we drove west from Stonehenge, following the sun. Mystics say there are ley lines--spiritual energetic paths marked by sacred sites—that run through Stonehenge and Glastonbury. One of these is called St. Michael’s Line, which runs through Skellig Michael in Ireland, Mont St-Michel in France, all the way to Mount Carmel in Israel. Glastonbury Tor is on this line, which follows the path of the sunrise on May 8^th—close to Beltane, the ancient festival day that many cultures still celebrate as May Day.

We arrived in Glastonbury and pulled into a car park on Silver Lane. The sun was on its way to setting as we walked towards the Tor. Past the Chalice Well, where they say Joseph of Arimathea dipped the Holy Grail into a stream, past the holy thorn, where they say Joseph of Arimathea struck his staff into the ground, and it grew into the Holy Thorn, a blessed bush that flowers twice a year, at Christmas and Easter. We went through an old wooden gate and stepped onto the Tor.

Some places are holy places.

Glastonbury Tor was once called Ynis Witryn, the Isle of Glass, in an older tongue. Today the tower of the ancient church of Saint Michael stands at the top of the Tor. That church was built in 1323, but was quarried for stone in the 1500s, leaving only the tower. Before that, another Christian church was built atop the Tor in the 10^th or 11^th century—but that one was destroyed in an earthquake in 1275. Excavations in the past suggest there was a Celtic monastery on the Tor sometime in the 600s or 700s.

And before that? Archaeological exploration in the 1960s found artifacts suggesting a pre-monastery Roman temple, and prehistoric flint artifacts from the Mesolithic era (9600-6000 BCE) suggesting something even earlier. The human-built earthwork terraces that shape the Tor date to the Neolithic, around 5000 BCE, the same time that Stonehenge was built.

What was here, before the Roman armies brought Christianity to Britain? What might it have been? Who first stood in that place and felt it to be sacred? 

Some places are holy places.

According to earth scientists, in the 500s the floodplain around the tor was a lake, and the tor at its center an island. It is certain that this place has been deemed holy for a millennium and more. Some speculate that when it was an island, it was the Isle of Avalon.

My Mom and I stepped onto Glastonbury Tor at twilight. Fairy time, the time that the Scots call the gloaming. In a world that often insists we see things as this or that, good or evil, black or white, friend or foe—it is good to be reminded that Nature plays by other rules. In the gloaming, light and dark mingle in the air--the mingling is its defining quality. At twilight everything has a quality of in-between-ness. We climbed the Tor at twilight.

It’s a climb! It is a steep, aerobic hike of 521 feet above the surrounding plain. My Mom stopped two thirds of the way up, to sit on an old stone bench and look out over the wee glittering town below. I kept going all the way to the top.

It is a very powerful place, is Glastonbury Tor. Is it Avalon? I don’t know. Maybe! Does it matter? Maybe! Is it holy? Yes.

Why would a new religion build its churches on top of someone else’s holy places? There are many reasons, but one is surely: it's effective. If you and everyone you know and all of their fathers and grandmothers and great great aunties as far back as anyone can remember have known a place to be holy…and now there’s a new building there, with new guardians, and they say, this was how it always was, you just misunderstood it before…well, if it is a holy place, and it is your holy place, chances are you’ll keep going there, even after the building changes. And if the new guardians make new rules, over time, you might just accept them. And you might even forget that there were ever other rules.

This is how it is:

And this:

There is a scene in my play AVALON that repeats three times, at beginning, middle, and end. It's the first thing I wrote, before I knew much about what the play would be, and it fell into my head almost fully formed. Because the scene is repeated, it becomes something more than just the words the characters are saying. It becomes something, maybe, like a prayer. Sitting at the top of Glastonbury Tor, that scene came into my mind.

[SCENE: A young woman with a bowl of peaches. Warm from the sun, she peels and slices them and puts the pieces in her mouth. The juice runs down her hands, arms, down her neck so she is sweet and sticky in the sun.  A man watches from the edge of the clearing, behind a giant tree, just so. He is strange and powerful, full of thoughts, comely and distant.

 He comes closer. He is a wizard.

She sees him.]

YOUNG WOMAN

Would you like a peach?

WIZARD

I know what it will cost me.

YOUNG WOMAN

Only the energy to take it from my hand and put it in your mouth

WIZARD

Only the energy to slip the moon from the night sky and put it in your pocket

YOUNG WOMAN

I don’t know what that means. This is only a peach.

WIZARD

Ah, no.

YOUNG WOMAN

It is.

WIZARD

Nothing is ever only a peach.

YOUNG WOMAN : [laughs. Eats a slice of peach.]

WIZARD:  [watches her do this]

YOUNG WOMAN

Well, if it seems to you too costly, I will do it for you.

[She stands, a slice of peach dripping in her delicate fingers. She crosses to him, extends the peach towards his lips. His lips part, so slightly. She pulls the peach back, struck by a new thought]

YOUNG WOMAN

What will it cost me, if I feed you?

The peaches are in the scene because of a typo. The day I started writing AVALON, I wrote myself a first-day poem, a kind of pep talk about what the play would be. As I was writing, I glanced back and saw that in a line where I meant to type “peace” I had typed “peach.” I changed it to peace, but kept going:

The Bard plucks music from the air

The lovers twine and seek and struggle, and find those fair rare moments—here, in, Ca-mel-lot—in which all the world is suspended in a summer dazzle of sunshine, peace, fairness, kindness, happiness

Peaches and apples,

The glamor of the moon

The dazzle of the sun

The moment I saw the word peach, I had a vision of the scene that starts the play. Avalon means Isle of Apples, but there can be peaches too.

[Images: Glastonbury Tor, sun side and night side]

In the Tower and on the Tor, I took photos. A young woman and her mother offered to take some for me. The few folks there shared an interior smile, a feeling of good will, of communion and solitude at once. It's a witchy place, in the best way. I sat in the tower, walked around it, stood in the wind. The horizon glowed in colors that would have seemed impossible, had I not been seeing them with my own eyes.

 [Witchy vibes inside the Tower, and Twilight through the doorway]

I stayed at the top of the Tor while the last stragglers and their dogs wandered gently down. It is a place of power, as my Dad would have called it. I sat in the doorway, quietly opening my own doors to the open doors of the place. The first stars diamonded into the deepening blue of the sky, stark and joyful. I was still sitting there when I saw a man come over the last rise of the hill below me. As I saw him I had an immediate sense that it was time to go. Mom was waiting down the hill and it was dark, almost.

I pulled on my coat and walked out of the tower, heading for the steps. As I started down them, the man I had seen was just getting to the top. With an Irish lilt he asked, “Are you from Portland?”

“I am!” I said, running through my head why a stranger at the top of Glastonbury Tor might guess such a thing…and coming up with an answer. “Did you see my Mom down the hill?”

“I did,” he said. “She’s a wonderful lady.”

“I know!” I said. He paused, debating something with himself, then said, “I like…your energy. I don’t, usually talk to folks like this.”

“I don't either," I said, then continued. "I’m Melody. It’s good to meet you.”

“I’m Ricochet” he said. “Ricochet?” I repeated, not sure I’d gotten it right, but also thinking, that’s quite a name! “Rick O’Shea,” he said again, and I heard it properly that time. Later, when my Mom and I compared notes, we realized we had both had the exact same train of thought about his name. She had talked to him for some time, and learned that he has traveled to sacred places across the globe—Mount Shasta, Taos, many more. A traveler, a pilgrim, a seer.

Back on the Tor, Rick O’Shea asked me, “So, what brings you here?”

I debated with myself—it’s a lot, the writing of this play, the quest of it, the pilgrimage of this trip, the holy sense of going into the roots of our human tree, in search of a true story there…what is the level of explanation this new friend will want to hear?

“I’m writing a play called Avalon,” I said. “It rises out of the stories of Arthur, Morgan LeFay, Merlin, and their companions...My Mom and I are making a sort of pilgrimage to places connected with the legends.”

He nodded. We were silent for a moment, a couple of kindred spirits having a chance meeting at twilight in a holy place, if you believe in chance.

“Do you, do email?” he asked, and since I do we exchanged emails, there on the Tor—it’s the 21^st century, and the gods surely smile on the kind of tech that connects people who’d otherwise go their separate ways—I think the gods must like that.

I said I should be heading back down to my mother, adding, “I think you have the Tor to yourself.” Rick O’Shea smiled and said, “She’s a wonderful woman. She was sitting there on the stone and we had a good chat.” I laughed and said it had been such a treat to meet him, and that I’d write to him. “Come see the play!” I said.

“Maybe!” he said. Another pause.

“Well. Good night. Enjoy…this wonderful place,” I said.

“I will,” he said. After another pause, he added,
“Good luck with your…prayer.”

In the stillness, I thought, that’s what this play is. A prayer.

“Thank you,” I said, and went down the hill.

Some places are holy places.

[Images: There and back again]

NEXT POST in Seeking Avalon:  FOR OUR MOTHERS

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.

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

The Analog World vs. The Digital World

by Linda Nelson

Last Friday, Judith and I took our Board of Directors to Playwrights Horizons, in Manhattan, to see Annie Baker's new play, "The Flick."

We thought it would be appropriate: after all, the play is set in a small New England town's single screen movie theater at a time when the theater is ready to give up its beautiful 35mm projectors and go digital.

The Stonington Opera House is at that same place. In late March, our gorgeous, loyal, hard-working 1941 Simplex 35mm projector will be replaced by a true Digital Cinema system. For the record, digital cinema is not your grandma's DVD's, or even Blu-Rays. To keep doing what we're doing, bringing first run movies to you shortly after they open on our big screen, we need a big, sophisticated system that will allow the movie distribution companies to ship us hard drives rather than cannisters of 35mm film. We will be able to slot the hard drives into a special server, punch in a code to prevent movie piracy, and show the movie according to the schedule pre-booked with the distributor.

But our board didn't love Baker's "The Flick." They found it long and boring: following a couple of working class guys as they clean an old, single screen movie theater between shows, without the action or quick dialogue to which we've become accustomed. Like Baker's earlier plays, especially "The Aliens" which we produced in early 2012, "The Flick" is a masterpiece of working class realism, filled with silences and the power of ordinary, not extraordinary, dialogue. In what I think is an important way, "The Flick" isn't enough of the digital world, in which we all talk quickly and have multiple conversations simultaneously, through our phones and computers and headsets. "The Flick" is about the analog world, the one that happens slowly, in between the others; the one that happens "to" people more than "by" people. And the truth is, many of us have fallen out of love with analog. We want our agency, we want our MTV.

In an essay for the show materials, Baker reveals her own love affair, and then her falling out of love, with celluloid movies: "From age 9 to 19, movies were my greatest happiness. They were the thing that got me through the day. Watching a movie was always, always What I’d Rather Be Doing. I never felt fully present in my life, except when I was watching a movie...The point is, I fell out of love with film and when I tried to fall back in love with it I was shocked to realize that most of our country had fallen out of love with it too. But instead of falling in love with the theater, they had fallen in love with computers."

The cast of "The Flick," the new play by
Annie Baker at Playwrights' Horizons.

Live theater, by contrast, is extremely analog. Real sweating bodies on the stage right in front of us. You never know what might happen: lines might be missed, pants may rip, the actors may laugh or cry. It's unpredictable and never the same, kind of smelly and intimidating to those who have only ever known film and TV. Live theater is an analog experience, and we value and produce both at the Stonington Opera House: live theater + film.

But what about this nearly three hour play? If Baker's mission is to create a dynamic realism in which we are immersed in the experiences and worlds of her characters, and if her characters' world is, in this case, tiny, repetitive, and even grim...then how are we to reconcile being asked to sit through that world? That's what our board members wanted to know, and it's not an unreasonable question. They experienced the same thing as these characters in their lives. They were bored. They were restless--we all were. Mostly, we were uncomfortable: first physically, then intellectually, and finally--if we allowed it to take us this far--emotionally. I think Annie Baker evoked the response she wanted. But without the entertainment factor, will enough audience members be able or willing to follow her there?

In moving to digital cinema, we're taking a bold leap into a new world. Gone will be the craft of splicing together reel after reel of 35mm film, of lacing up and oiling the projector, of flipping on the rectifier, opening the dowser, adjusting the framing knob and the lens focus. It's a pretty tedious world, the world of any handcraft, in which motions and actions are repeated over and over again to ensure a quality experience for the viewer.

OHA's Artistic Advisory Board comprised of theater
artists, meeting on February 23: some of the artists had
more sympathy for "The Flick" than the
governing trustees. Photo by Alicia Anstead.

But it's one that might be worth experiencing, even in its tedium. It's one that is worth remembering -- or at least being enough aware of it to say a proper goodbye. It's one that, like so many others, demands our empathy -- and maybe even some compassion.

Baker says "The Flick" is "about the theater that will always happen between the movies." And our attentiveness to that theater of life could be important to how we move forward, together or apart, into our shared futures.

Titanic: 100 Years Ago, or Yesterday?

by Emily Cormier

Last month the Opera House had a free showing of Titanic by James Cameron as part of their Centennial Celebration Film Series. 100 years ago this April, the brand new luxury liner Titanic sank in the Atlantic Ocean on its maiden voyage to New York City, so the movie was an appropriate choice for the start of the free series--since the Opera House also turns 100 this year.

I had never seen the film, and I dragged my friend Ann along with me to watch what would be an agonizing three hours of drowning: the passengers in the Atlantic, me in my own tears.

I had not expected such an assault on my emotional faculties, and my reaction represents the effectiveness of the film to provoke a specific response. Films are means of communication: all screenwriters and directors have something they want to tell the world. A good film makes the viewer think, forcing them to see the world from a certain perspective for as long as the movie lasts. The hope is that this perspective will last after you leave the theater and remain with you in your daily life. Titanic accomplished this in full.

The class struggle in the film is especially poignant because the sinking of the ship pits the rich against the poor in a life-threatening situation. Those in the lower holds of the ship are separated from the upper class for the entire journey, unseen and unconsidered by their rich counterparts. The wealthy families believe they are entitled to the best treatment, and that their lives are more valuable than those below them.

As the ship begins to sink, the lower class are locked in steerage until all of the wealthy men and women are comfortably ushered on to the life boats. The depth of the class system stretches into the very roots of the human heart, and we are reminded that those class boundaries still exist in our own hearts; we all think of ourselves as better than someone, give our own lives more value than someone else's. But if it came down to it, would you take another's life in order to save your own? Or does that make you just like the first class passengers on the Titanic?

This movie brought me to the edge of my existence, so that I could look at the world as a whole: how thin the line between sophistication and savagery are. When our survival instincts kick in, the money, the manners, no surface civility matters, the only thing we have left is our integrity and true intentions.

What separates us from animals is our ability to choose whether to resist our animal instincts, or to embrace them depending on the situation. We have consciences, and feel the weight of what we do. Though we are animals, survival is not our primary concern. For humans, existence is worth nothing without a reason behind it, and in the case of the move Titanic this reason is love. The central female protagonist, Rose, is willing to give up her privileged spot on the lifeboat to stay with Jack because she has had enough of surviving- she's been doing it all her life. Jack was the one who showed her how to live.

As a whole, this movie was so powerful to me because it represents what I love and hate the most about humanity: the profound mercy and self sacrifice of the people who decided to stay behind and drown rather than take up space on the life boats, and the utter savagery and emptiness of the men who panicked and killed each other to save their own lives.

Emily Cormier is a senior at Deer Isle-Stonington High School. She will be attending Bowdoin College in the fall for English.

Students Speak!

What a whirlwind of a week!

What happens when you bring an expert in classroom management and team building into the classroom? A LOT!

I watched a group of students, known as the “tough group” come together and work as a team, solve problems and show their teacher they had learned the material! What a proud moment for a teacher.

It was really exciting to have Sean Layne, a visiting artist from the Kennedy Center, back with us, leading a workshop for teachers and practicing demonstration teaching in the classrooms. I really loved to hear the student reflections when Sean asked, "Why am I doing this? Your teacher must think I'm wasting time".

What did the students say?

“ It was challenging and I like challenges”. -6th grade

“It helps us learn vocabulary better because it helps us learn synonyms of the words”. -6th grade

“We worked together and cooperated as a team”. -7th grade

“We get to get up and move”. -3rd grade

“It helps us focus”. -3rd grade

“We worked on the length of our sentences”. -6th grade

“It lets us know if we are in symphony with the rest of the group”. -6th grade

What more can we ask for? A group of students engaged, working as a community, being recognized, listening and being listened to and learning more effectively.

The Measure of a Memory: Shakespeare (in Stonington) will always be with us

More than a month has passed since the lights went down on the Stonington Opera House production of "Measure for Measure," and each year I try to reflect on where the play goes once it has been passed from the stage and into our collective memory. Truth is, "Measure for Measure" is not my favorite Shakespeare work. (Don't think less of me for admitting that "Romeo and Juliet" -- perhaps as a symbol of my own longing for youth -- is still at the top of my list.) (Except when "A Midsummer Night's Dream" is at the top of the list; or when "Richard III" is swirling in my thoughts; or maybe when "Macbeth" sneaks into my thoughts; and certainly "The Tempest" is in the mix.)

In any case.

As much as I enjoyed diving into Shakespeare's text this summer, I suspected I'd be done with "Measure for Measure" when it closed. Not true. Although I never made sense of the love liaisons forced at the end of the story, I did come to think more deeply about justice, mercy and forgiveness.

And apparently, I'm not the only one who is seeing these themes echo through Shakespeare's lens at the moment. Our Shake Stonington friend and leading Bard scholar Stephen Greenblatt of Harvard University writes about this summer's Central Park production of "The Merchant of Venice" in The New York Review of Books (Sept. 30, 2010). Although many critics believe "Measure for Measure" is one of Shakespeare's so-called "problem plays," "Merchant" is sometimes also included in that group -- largely because, like "Measure," the comedy is so closely aligned to tragedy that a certain anxiety over form rattles our structural cage.

Greenblatt asserts that the comedic ending of "Merchant" has such "intolerable strains" put on it that it's almost impossible to bring it off successfully. The same is true for "Measure," and I grappled with my own sense of how to read the ending in a story for the Huffington Post -- even as Stonington director Jeffrey Frace accomplished a graceful and nicely ambiguous ending to "Measure" that depended on the nightly mood of actor Stephanie Dodd as Isabella. But Greenblatt's estimation of the NYC production's end echo in my thoughts: "disappointment, betrayal, and recrimination lurk just below the surface." Also true for "Measure." With one exception: the young lovers Claudio and Juliet, who offer some hope for the marriage bed as an equitable one.

In addition to the scholarly insight of Greenblatt's story, I found another resonance from reading his article. As Greenblatt points out, there's much to see about our contemporary life in Shakespeare's works. Namely: the treatment of "the other" -- whether a Jew, a Moor or a couple that gets pregnant out of wedlock.

I suspect the Vienna of "Measure for Measure," with its shifting definitions of justice and forgiveness, will continue to stimulate ideas, as it did again recently when I saw the ArtsEmerson production of "The Laramie Project" at the Cutler-Majestic Theater in Boston. "The other" will always be with us -- in Venice, in Vienna, in Wyoming, in Maine.

And each year Shakespeare in Stonington counters the more pervasive and pernicious sense of "other" by allowing us to come together as a community in the library, in the theater, in media, restaurants and homes to achieve fuller, richer understandings of our inheritance and our responsibilities. The encounter with Shakespeare also allows us to carry these stories in our thoughts and to look to them for guidance. "The quality of mercy is not strained." "Some rise by sin, and some by virtue fall." These plays teach us what the Stonington Opera House already knows: "All the world's a stage."

Photo: Tommy Piper as Angelo in "Measure for Measure" at the Stonington Opera House. Credit: Linda Nelson/Opera House Arts

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.

Pierre-Marc Diennet: "I'm here to live."

Abby Bray, a student at Stonington/Deer Isle High School, recently interviewed actor Pierre-Marc Diennet, who plays Lucio, a "fantastic," 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." Pierre is a veteran artist at the Opera House where he performed "Perdita," a show about his mother. In this interview, Abby asked Pierre -- as Lucio -- why we should care about his character. 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. Coming soon!

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.

Melody Bates/Mariana: "I hope folks will understand I am true of heart"

Abby Bray, a student at Stonington/Deer Isle High School, recently interviewed actor Melody Bates, who plays Mariana (a rejected lover) and other roles in "Measure for Measure" running Aug. 19-29 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." Melody is a veteran performer at the Opera House where she played Hippolyta/Titania in last year's "A Midsummer Night's Dream." In this interview, Abby asked Melody -- as Mariana -- why we should care about her character. 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. Coming soon!

Do You Relate to Shakespeare?

Guest blogger Abigail Bray lives in Blue Hill (Maine) and is a student at Deer Isle-Stonington High School. She enjoys writing and will be contributing posts occasionally during the run of "Measure for Measure" Aug. 19-29 at the Stonington Opera House. She also works at Fisherman's Friend Restaurant, a tasty place to eat dinner before or after the show!




As a sophomore in high school, I found reading “Measure for Measure” for the first time a bit of a struggle. Some of the situations were almost easy to relate to while others were a bit harder. I think we all can agree that there is at least one person in our lives who is strict and stubborn, and who decides to fix whatever situation he or she thinks needs fixing, like Angelo did while the Duke was “out of town.” And at one point or another, we all have to choose between helping someone close to us, or staying true to what we believe in, as Isabella was forced to chose between her virginity and her brother’s life.



Other parts of the play are less easy to relate to. Because things have changed drastically since the 16th century, it is now more common for women to have children out of wedlock. Another situation I cannot relate to is Claudio changing his mind and asking his sister, whom he knows to be very virtuous and chaste, to give up her virginity to save him. It is one thing for Isabella to decide; it’s another to put her in the kind of situation where she feels obligated.



Although “Measure for Measure” isn’t one of Shakespeare’s most popular plays, I feel that it helps us compare and contrast the difference in politics and morals of the 16th century with today’s.

Best Use of Barbies Ever: Or "Measure for Measure" by 10-inch dolls

As preparation for the Stonington Opera House production of "Measure for Measure" -- as well as for the library reads in Brooksville, Brooklin, Stonington and Deer Isle -- I'm re-reading the play. But I've also been surfing the internet for more background information on ideas and productions. To me, this is one of the most complicated of Shakespeare's plays, and I confess that I find it problematic -- and not just because scholars consider it one of the Bard's "problem plays" (which is another way of saying the themes don't fit neatly into comedy, nor can the characters be easily categorized as heroes).

We'll dive into the fascinating background and themes of the play later with the help of a few outstanding scholars and directors.

In the meantime, I want to share a clever two-part YouTube version of "Measure for Measure" featuring Barbie dolls (and created as a project for a Shakespeare class). It's corny at first, seeing the dolls, but actually it serves as quite a good synopsis of the play. It strikes me that there are lots of imaginative ways to approach Shakespeare. My own preference is to enter the story through the text. Others, such as director Jeffrey Frace and the actors at the Stonington Opera House, prefer the platform of a stage. And still others like, well, dolls.

And not just Barbie dolls. Last year, when a boy I know saw the Stonington Opera House production of "A Midsummer Night's Dream," he went home and re-enacted a segment of the play with an old set of toy horses we keep around the house for kids.

Turns out, Shakespeare has resonance in more than simply our thoughts. We are free to reinterpret his stories as imaginatively as we want -- with dolls, puppets, movies, poems, dances. I encourage you to watch the "Measure for Measure" Part 1 and Part 2 Barbie YouTube videos, and I think you'll also enjoy this 9-year-old boy's interpretation of last year's "Midsummer."

Of course, the next question is: How will you adapt Shakespeare to your own favorite storytelling technique?

Check out more information about the Opera House Arts production of "Measure for Measure" Aug. 19-29 at the Stonington Opera House.

Burt Dow Deep Water Man!

With opening night just over a week away, the cast and crew of Burt Dow Deep Water Man are hard at work. Yesterday, I joined sculptor, Michael Stasiuk, who is creating amazing props for the performance, to help paint the puppets for the show.

Like much of the performance, the creation of the props is a truly collaborative effort between people from away, local students, volunteers, and staff. Students in a Deer Isle-Stonington Elementary School art class helped to make the puppets, designed by Michael Stasiuk. Under the direction of Mr. Stasiuk, a team of volunteers is helping to paint and decorate the giant sea-creatures that will share the stage with the human stars of Burt Dow Deep Water Man.

The puppets are being painted in the old Stonington Elementary School with a little help from the soothing guitar music sounding from the boom box. With some masking tape, several cans of paint, and a little help from Martha Stewart (or rather, her glitter), the amazing creatures are taking shape. Mr. Stasiuk mixed paints to capture some of the vibrant and often times clashing, yet miraculously working together colors, in the book by Robert McCloskey (the colors of the whales were described by one volunteer as “just like the colors I wore in the 80s!”).

We antiqued chickens and painted a giant octopus (just to name a few!), helped by the performance’s director and stage manager. After the puppets are initially primed in a solid color, Mr. Stasiuk and the volunteers are using paintbrushes and pieces of foam pillows to color and shade the props, sponging color on top of color, and sprinkling with glitter.

To see these fantastic props in person, buy your tickets to Burt Dow Deep Water Man! As someone who has been fortunate enough to catch a sneak-peek, let me tell you, the stuck-in-your-head-while-you-walk-around-the-house-singing tunes are not to be missed!

Is February too early be thinking 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?

This is the first of 2010's posts on ShakeStonington, OHA's blog devoted to all things Shakespeare, created and edited by OHA's critic-in-residence Alicia Anstead. You can subscribe directly to ShakeStonington, and be alerted to all future updates, by going to shakestonington.blogspot.com.

The Saints Go Marching In

In 2008, OHA brought New Orleans' Own Hot 8 Brass Band to Deer Isle, where their playing brought a packed house to shake the Opera House floor -- and then all of downtown Stonington when they lead a traditional "second line" parade down Main Street on Sunday. Check out this great video of that event, to hear the Saints go Marching in Down East Maine!

Now it's a sadness that our own Patriots' performance was not excellent enough to land them in this year's Super Bowl. But since they couldn't manage it, how about those New Orleans' Saints?! For the first time since their founding in 1967, the Saints are in the Super Bowl, facing off against that old New England nemesis, the Indianapolis Colts.

Why write about the Saints on a performance blog? Opera House Arts has a long-standing connection to the music and culture of New Orleans--in fact, in the summer of 2010 we will be bringing one of New Orleans' legendary clarinetists, Dr. Michael White, to the island to be in a two-week residence at Haystack Mountain School of Crafts, and a featured artist at our 10th annual jazz festival.

The volunteer producer of our jazz festival, acclaimed arts journalist Larry Blumenfeld, is a passionate expert on New Orleans jazz, and recently sent us this link to a New Orleans'Saints Tribute Songs Playlist, including this video of trumpeter Kermit Ruffins' "A Saints Christmas."

Jazz lives in this year's Super Bowl!