Day 1: Rehearsing Orlando and the pleasures of gender

by Judith Jerome

Tiresias, the Greek seer who, among other things, foretold Oedipus’ troubles, gained hard-won wisdom from the gods in several ways: he was blinded, and thus became a seer; his ears were reamed out in compensation, such that he understood the song language of the birds; and his sex was changed from man to woman and back again—giving him particular understanding of the pleasures of gender. Surely Virginia Woolf had the story tucked somewhere in her mind when she wrote Orlando: A Biography.

What an extravagant love song it was! And Sarah Ruhl’s stage adaptation condenses, distills the song, retaining Woolf’s language, but creating another kind of melody, quick and funny and something else I haven’t got words for yet. In the first read-through the actors read round-robin, each taking only a single line. Director Natalya Baldyga quipped that it would keep them on their toes—it also created a kind of ensemble, group reality to the story that seemed fitting to me. It is us. In the happy gender elastic world we live in it is us, and in the pleasure of that round-robin moment I wanted the play to always be done like that.

Woolf’s love song was written to her lover and friend Vita Sackville-West, and it is sexy! Certainly in the mouths of this fine group of actors, and through Ruhl’s distillation. I adore Woolf but tend to think of her as a sort of gorgeous heady, asexual creature, at least in part because she was a troubled “person to whom things happen,” as she wrote (and Parul Seghal recently reminded us in the NYT Magazine http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/08/magazine/the-forced-heroism-of-the-survivor.html?_r=0). Be not prepared for headiness here, my friends! 

Director Natalya Baldyga liking what she hears. And Per Janson, back again!

Back, too, Jason Martin (The Last Ferryman), plus stage manager, Lindy Lofton, Natalya, and the backs and sides of other actors you will meet, Barry, Liz, and Jade.

   

Behind the Scenes at the Opera House: Michael Gorman

Hello all! We are very excited to close out our week with a visit from playwright Michael Gorman to our blog. You may remember Michael's work from the production of Biffing Mussels in 2009. We're thrilled to be showcasing another one of his plays, UltraLight, as the final Community Staged Reading of the spring season. Dates for the show are below, but first, spend a little time getting to know Mike!

1) Where did you grow up?

I grew up in a small rural central Massachsetts town called Warren located in southwestern Worcester county. My mother came from a farm family that grew up in Warren. My father came from Boston to take a job teaching history in the local high school. There were six of us kids, born within eight years -- Irish Catholic! Our greatest joys were  playing and working in the woods and fields, athletics (my dad was also a coach), and reading. (Only 3 television channels) Hard work and education were always at the center of our lives.

2). How would your elementary school classmates remember you?

My elementary school classmates would probably remember me as quiet but smart. The quiet part probably playing into the appearance of being smart! I was always writing as well as reading, taking my notebook down into the woods or to bed with me at night, determined to express something profound or poetic about the world. Nature was my obsession. They probably also remember me as being kind, I believe. Being an artist, I have always been sensitive to the situations of others. And being a middle child, I have always tried to include others. As an adult, I have embraced the fact that I am an "extroverted introvert"-- a reality that has probably naturally inclined me toward both the writing and performance of plays.

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

Muley Graves from The Grapes of Wrath because he would just crouch in the corner and wouldn't say anything.

Bartleby the Scrivener from Herman Melville's story because he would be as silent as old Muley unless you asked him to do something, and then he would just say "I'd prefer not".

Carolyn Chute, the great Maine novelist, because I could just talk with her and her husband Michael for days about everything.

Michael Chute, Carolyn's husband, because we have our own silent non-literary communication and both like to smoke the occasional cheap cigar.

Whoops! Carolyn and Michael aren't fictional, but they are kind of mythical. Does that count? :)

4) If you were a cartoon character, which character would you be?

I don't know who I'd be. I did play a cynical and somewhat cavalier rabbit once in a play my brother and I wrote for a Halloween event, so maybe I could be Bugs Bunny in an episode that the Coen Bros. wrote.

5) When did you fall in love with theatre?

I fell in love with theatre through my studies in Landscape Architecture before I finished my degree in literature and through reading plays. I was always trying to put people into my landscape designs, rural or urban, and raise their interaction to the level of some kind of poetic performance. When I transferred to Clark University to pursue my degree in Literature, I took a class in theatre and started reading plays and said WOW, I can do this. Writing plays allowed me to find my natural voice which was as much that of a visual artist as that of a writer. In theatre, you can make a lot of things happen at once. I liked that. The plays that interested me most, other than the absurdists, (Beckett, Pinter, Ionesco) were the plays coming out of the downtown theater scene in NYC. One theatre, in particular, kept coming up--La MaMa e.t.c.--and I knew one day soon I would have to knock on that door.

Don't miss Gorman's stunning UltraLight on Wednesday, May 18 at 7pm and Saturday, May 21 at 2pm at the Stonington Opera House! Directed by Dave Bennett. Suggested donation: $10. 

What's the Matter?

By Joshua McCarry

What happens when a science teacher, a teaching artist, and an 8th grade class learn about phases of matter through dance and theater?

Ideas COLLIDE!  Imaginations EXPAND!  Particles move in different and unpredictable ways.  

Last month, I got the chance to collaborate with DISES Science teacher Mickie Flores to create an original play which follows a water particle on a dizzying adventure through matter- solid, liquid, and gas- not to mention a storm cloud, a melting icicle in New York City and a cup of hot cocoa in Alaska. 

The project, entitled What's the Matter?, integrates the arts with science to form an understanding of the molecular structure of the world around us.  Much of the work was student-led; with the class writing an original script, composing a soundtrack with DISES music teacher Beth Kyzer, and crafting a set made of Wordart.  

Visual art skills and molecules collide as the set is built for What's the Matter?

8th grade musicians at DISES worked with original scores and scripts to accompany a 

water molecule's journey through matter. 

Students demonstrate their understanding of the content using dance to explore the 

movement of liquid particles.  

8th grader Katie Hutchinson displays her artwork for the show.  

Gas molecules expand- and so does a smile!  

Make New Friends - Be An OHA Housing Host!

By Lily Felsenthal

In May of 2015, I moved to Deer Isle. I am a native of Washington, D.C., but I came by way of Chicago, where I’d been living for more than four years while I was in college. I was a life-long city dweller yearning for fresh air. This beautiful place seemed the perfect adventure. As OHA’s intern coordinator that summer, I was housed through the Opera House with Nancy Dontzin, a long-time friend and supporter of the organization who would shortly become a good friend of mine.

It was thrilling to be in a new place, learning the ropes of a new organization, but there were times when it was overwhelming, and having a home base was crucial. Even as the summer season kicked off and my schedule got busier and busier, Nancy and I tried to squeezed in lunch together when we could, and she was even able to meet my parents when they came up to visit.

“We housed a dancer for a month,” Bob Lasky told me. “He became a member of the family and, when he left, he was sorely missed (especially by our two dogs).”

This, to me, is the beauty of OHA’s housing program. It’s an absolutely vital part of what makes us able to bring in artists from all over the world, and it has the added bonus of creating opportunities for wonderful friendships between artists and community members.

The population of our little island doubles in the summers. The population of the Opera House seems to grow exponentially. In a few months, we’ll welcome actors, dancers, visual artists, musicians, composers, set designers, interns, and stage managers, and many of them will need places to stay.

That’s where you come in! If you enjoy meeting new people and have space to spare, consider becoming an OHA housing host. The time commitment is totally up to you - there are many wonderful artists here for many different stretches of time, some for weeks or months, some for just a few nights, and we will work around your schedule. If you are interested in becoming an OHA housing host in any capacity, email me, Associate Producer Lily Felsenthal, at lfelsenthal@operahousearts.org or call us at the office and ask for me.

Comic Intensification

This residency with poet and writer Jefferson Navicky is very quiet compared to the last. And wry. I think of Wesley McNair’s locution that in poetry it is not comic relief but comic intensification.   

Jefferson applied for a Harbor Residency to write a bear play, about a bear who wanted desperately to become an actor. It was just an idea, but he wrote the Opera House about it and talked about it in his Skype interview. For weeks beforehand he thought he should begin it, before the residency—but he never did.  So it goes in the world of making art. So the bear goes back into hibernation.

Instead he revised two pieces he has been working on: a novella, and a short story called “Bird Baiting” that he read to us on the last day of his residency. The story comes from a dream. He says it felt like a dream that was given to him so he wanted to do something with it.

We talk about dreams, about reading our own work like a dream—Jefferson: with care, so that the whole thing doesn’t come tumbling down. I am thinking about Wes McNair again, as his term as our beloved Poet Laureate come to a close. Wes said something like if you get stuck you are not feeling the work deeply enough, entering it fully. When Jefferson gets stuck he asks Sarah Yanni, his wife, to send him writing prompts. Maybe this is a more John Cage approach of randomness—or maybe Sarah provides his way in. He tells us that responses to her prompts are sprinkled through this story he reads to us—but I can’t pick them out. I wonder if others can?

Here is a poem by Jefferson Navicky, a response to the ‘Bio’ we all have to grit our teeth and write now and again.

Anti-Biography

            You make my life sound so exciting! I’m excited just to hear about my life, just the way you say it, the way you articulate my phrases…it makes me think…who the fuck is that? Because that’s not my life. I didn’t do those things. Or if I did, they were so long ago I don’t even remember them - curse the internet and its digitally ubiquitous memory! And those people never said those things about me. Or if they did, they were talking about some other person who punches the time clock with my card.

            Me? I just ran out of eggs this morning. And I typed too much last night so that now my wrist hurts. When did I get so feeble? I don’t know what to have for dinner tonight. I never do! I put it off every night, hoping my wife will say, ah fuck it, let’s go out! My hands smell weird, like cheese, I guess, or that stuff that gets wedged and grows between your toes.

            Isn’t it funny, it’s like I watch myself walking down the street today. And I say to myself, hey great shoes, buddy, I like those pants, where’d you get them? You look like a tree frog who’s got a nice tailor. In a good way. You look NPR sexy.

            And then I think about my father. Specifically when he brought my brother and me back to his hometown. We visited all his family, including Uncle Al, the octogenarian who may or may not have been a real uncle. My brother, nine years old, sat in a chair and Uncle Al started talking to him, only him, as the rest of us silently watched. “You look good. Your family’s handsome. Great kids. How you been?” Stuff like that. My brother looked like he might cry. My father realized what was happening and interrupted. “Uncle Al, that’s my son. I’m over here.”

            You hear that?

            That’s not me. It may look like me, may sound like it’s me, but it’s not.

            I’m over here.

Being There At The Birth

By Judith Jerome

Being there at the birth . . . witness to the birth, the wedding vows, you become responsible. You own that baby, that marriage; you see them in a different way. Invested. Engaged. These words come to mind in regard to the February 29^th launch of the new harbor Residency Program, but feel too weak.

I’ve come in late to the birth of this baby, named “Women in Combat,” working title. The actors have already been working for 6 days, and Julia Sears, the director, and Maggie Moore, dramaturg and co-creator, have been researching and collecting stories for several months, but they are thick now into the over and over questions, brainstorms, and decisions that follow and form the original impulses that led them into this room, and to what they are making.

Movement – the audible/visible heartbeat, flat hands against the chest. They are working with movement and sound, trying things. Again. Again.

No language. Or it’s a different kind of language, they are discovering. Expletives, names. What is sound? What kind of sound? What visual? What takes us there? How do you tell this story? Make it mean? Make us know something we haven’t known before.

I have always loved the simple cyc, the white curtain at the back of the stage, with its many possibilities for absorbing, reflecting light, for carrying projections—watching it ripple like water, like breath--but soft, white, sensual, I have never seen it used like this—in this moment it explodes!

Brainstorming character arcs. Jay is the scribe; they are working on his character, the throughline of Lampido, a combat medic. He says the day wiped them out. I just watch, but coming in to rehearsal I am immediately taken in, engaged in their thinking together, as they throw out ideas. Gooood listening.

Absent language. When does movement show pain, the impact of a bullet, when does a sound do it better? We think of storytelling as a verbal art, but when does an image or a lie tell it better? A gesture? Music tell it better?

Flip charts, dense with notes, hang on a ladder. Jay is making notes on another as they talk.

Everyone is so smart.

You, too, can be there at the birth. Working rehearsals are open to your considerate witnessing. You may have missed being witness to the beginning in this first Harbor Residency, but there are four more to come. Check in with the OH, and come in!