Acting Across the Boards

by Debbie Weil
OHA Board member, author, and digital publisher

Acting is equal parts exhilaration and terror. Exhilaration because you are creating a live experience for the audience that makes them think and feel. And terror because you’ve got to remember your lines, remember your cues, and then deliver every nuance of pitch and timing and gesture that the director has called for. There is no safety net. You are under the lights, in the moment and, if you are lucky, in the flow.

I learned this last summer when I was given the chance to tread the boards for the first time as one of the lead actors in Sue Bolton’s lovely ten-minute play, “Hide and Seek.” Working with director Judith Jerome was extraordinary. It felt like a guilty pleasure. As an OHA board member and a lifelong theatre goer, I know something about live performances. But not until I rehearsed (and rehearsed) under Judith’s direction was the curtain really drawn. I began to understand what happens on stage and behind the scenes to make a play come to life.

More recently, I had the chance to attend a rehearsal of the winter play, John Cariani’s Last Gas. Sitting in the audience, a few rows behind Judith who directed the production, I had a far keener appreciation of what was happening on stage. It was a scene that took place on the divided stage set and required almost simultaneous lines between actors who couldn’t see one another. Ah, how well I now understood the difficulty of not being able to “see” the cues for your lines. The actors must have rehearsed this two-minute scene 30 times, improving it every time.

Live theatre is created through the camaraderie and trust of so many players who work together: the playwright and the director, the actors, the stagehands, the tech folks and, not least, the audience. It is addictive. Pardon me for asking, but when are the next auditions for community actors?

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.

WHY must the show go on?

Let's be realistic: it's a TV channel, and not the National Weather Service, that gave this weekend's snowstorm the name "Nemo." Still, a couple of feet of snow, zero degree temperatures, and wind creating sculptural drifts is still pretty dramatic in its own right.

Under such conditions, it's reasonable to ask the Opera House: WHY do you persist? WHY must the show go on?!

"The show must go on" is an idiom, a well-known phrase in show business, meaning that "even in the presence of troubles or difficulties, the show must still continue for the waiting patrons."

On the flip side, for the theater itself, it also has to do with the reality of our professional contracts. Here at the Opera House, we are contracted with our actors and stage managers through this Sunday, February 10. After that, they move on to other contracted jobs and opportunities, most of them back in NYC, a few here in Maine.

This reflects a truth many don't realize about the theater: it's a job. The actors you see in this weekend's production of Last Gas by John Cariani, directed by Judith Jerome, make their living from pursuing the craft of acting. They study their craft in school, practice it every day, and pay their bills by working theater jobs such as this production. The performances they provide us, on the basis of honing their craft, are transformative: moving our hearts and transporting our minds and spirits into lives related to but different from our own.

Actors Equity, the union of professional actors and stage managers,
 cast members of Last Gas: at left, Richard Price as Guy;
at right, Katie Cunningham as Lurene. Photo by Karen Galella.

With the rise of the internet and the wonderful ability of more and more of us to participate in different areas of life virtually--as writers, film critics, photographers, filmmakers, and more--the line between amateurs--those who do something for the sheer love of it--and professionals has been blurred in interesting ways. The work of amateurs in all areas, including community theater, has special meaning and is vital to all of us. And the work of professionals--those who take the risk of making some of these areas which many of us love, be it playing basketball, painting, or acting, their careers--brings a different and special level of meaning to many of our experiences.

So on a weekend like this, when the challenges and risks of putting on a theatrical production are especially large, we can't just reschedule. Our professional cast moves on on Monday, and we can't reschedule! The show MUST go on! 

Catch a glimpse of the incredible craft this particular cast brings to our Maine island community in three final shows: tonight at 7, and tomorrow at 2 pm and 7 pm.

Making Work (& A Play!)

by Linda Nelson, Executive Director

STONINGTON—In a hard working community like Stonington, it is tempting to look at your local theater and think, well, that’s about fun, not work!

For you, as audience members, that’s right. Whether it’s a movie, a concert, a dance, or live theater, Opera House Arts provides a wide range of entertainment for our communities. And this Thursday, February 7, we open what is now our annual live production for the winter. This year, the show is the newest version of Maine playwright John Cariani’s play, Last Gas.

Many people think that when a theater like the Opera House presents live professional theater that it is something  made elsewhere, something that arrives pre-made—which is true for the performances at “presenting centers” like the Collins Center. But at Opera House Arts, we make all of our shows (performance pieces are known as works) right here in Stonington.

We find or write and/or edit the scripts. We audition, hire and pay the directors, actors, and designers—the people who design the sets, lights, sound, and video for the play.

We build sets, and have master carpenters alongside community volunteers who do that. We paint entire scenes on muslin for backdrops, or signs or furniture for specific set pieces. The composers we hire write and record original music; our master electricians climb ladders and cable lighting. We rehearse, rehearse, rehearse. Right now, two days before opening our original production of Last Gas, we’ve got a theater full of people working a 10 to 12 hour tech rehearsal day, programming the lighting cues, adjusting the sound volumes, testing the costumes and sets—getting everything just right.

Then when you, the audience, arrive you enter into a world seeming transformed by magic. Employing sets, lights, sound, and acting, those of us who make theater work aim to transport you from your familiar seat in a dark theater to another place and world.

It’s a lot of work behind the scenes for that magic moment—and it’s very satisfying work to have. During a show like Last Gas—a romantic comedy set in Maine’s Aroostook County, about the hopes and dreams of people who, like us, live in the sweet isolation of the nation’s most rural state—we have 21 people on payroll, with another four independent contractors. Plus, countless community volunteers donate their time and talents to making a show like this possible. Thank you!

OHA is committed to making original “work,” such as Last Gas, for our winter audiences. It’s a financial risk to produce such a large work at this time of year, but we feel strongly that we as rural Mainers deserve to hear our own voices and stories, to see the way we live represented on the stage and screen.

We hope you’ll take a chance, too, and come out to see this new work that we’ve created here during the last five weeks: it runs for only five performances, February 7-10—and then we take everything apart again! Live theater is very much something you have to show up for in the moment: it is here, and then it is gone. No DVR, no home video, only real people here on stage for a very short time.

Want to be a part of all this exciting work and play? For more information on any of the events and opportunities in this column, or for Tosca’s Wish List for how you can participate by volunteering or providing needed materials, please call 207-367-2788 or visit the Opera House’s website at www.operahousearts.org.

A Salute to Our Gracious Hosts!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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