The Way Life Should Be

"I love the season well,
When forest glades are teeming with bright forms,
Nor dark and many-folded clouds foretell
The coming-on of storms.

The softly-warbled song
Comes from the pleasant woods, and colored wings
Glance quick in the bright sun, that moves along
The forest openings.

And when the eve is born,
In the blue lake the sky, o'er-reaching far,
Is hollowed out and the moon dips her horn,
And twinkles many a star."

-Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The Kennebec river just down the road in Hallowell

Hullo thair Gentle Readers! Weary travelers! Moxy ladies and dashing gentlemen of summer!

What a pleasure it is to be writing you all again after what has been a truly remarkable year already, spent mostly in the rehearsal halls and theaters of Germany. My latest adventure as a member of the International Forum of the Berliner Festspiele (national theatre festival of Germany) can be read in more detail here.

It is with a warm heart and an easy spirit that I pen you a few lines from the glorious environs of Monmouth, Maine, where I am back this summer working at the Theatre at Monmouth-The Shakespeare Theatre of Maine. I'm acting again this summer and directing a show as well, and could not be happier about the season:

Much Ado About Nothing, Shakespeare's beloved comedy of love found, lost & regained, starring his two wittiest lovers Beatrice & Benedick will open our season. With a late 1940's setting and plenty of swing dancing, this show is not to be missed!

A comedy of, about, and for the theatre, Room Service is the next show to open. The wily theatre producer Miller will have to use every trick in the book and invent a few more to get his new hit show up on its feet. And if he can do it without going to jail or getting kicked out of the hotel he (and all 19 cast members) are living in, his new play might just be a real winner . . .

Noel Coward's classic comedy, Blithe Spirit, is next up; promising plenty of stiff-upper-lip humour and biting sarcasm, as well as ghosts, murder and one powerfully spooky seance. With more withering word-duels than you can shake a stick at, and plenty of twists along the way, this is comedy of manners with the gloves off!

Shakespeare's greatest tragedy, King Lear, holds down the lineup. With a host of unforgettable characters and some of the best poetry in the English language, this tale of parents and children encompasses the world in all its complexity.

And last, but certainly not least, comes James & the Giant Peach, directed by yours truly. We'll be taking Roald Dahl's classic children's story and giving it a circus-y, sideshow-spin with original music and a host of puppets, masks, and more fun than you can shake a stick at.

BONUS: We'll also have a limited engagement of The Compleat Works of William Shakespeare, Abridged, by the Reduced Shakespeare Company. This three-hander goes through the entire Shakespeare canon (sort of) in under two hours, with every gag, joke, cross-dressing moment of hilarity you can imagine and at least forty that you can't. Its gonna be righteously fun!

This season, TAM's 42nd, is also the last season with David Greenham as Producing Artistic Director. Which means that we are pulling out all the stops, throwing everything we've got at it, adding a sixth production into the repertory (!!!), and generally doing everything we can to make this summer as incredibly rich and the work as spectacular as possible.

The company this summer is also bigger than normal: more shows means more actors, and more tech staff, interns, apprentices, volunteers and all manner of other folks helping out. Toad Hall, where the majority of the younger company members are housed (and one very tall, slightly older, blog-tastic Chicagoan) is packed to bursting this year. In addition to Toad Hall, there are numerous homestays and small houses rented, as well as a few apartments to accommodate all sixty-one of us.

One of the real joys of the company this summer is that everyone is so musical! There is a host of guitars and harmonicas and singers and pianists this year, and we had our first jam session last Thursday. Documentation here.

After our first week of very productive rehearsals came to an end, it was time for our first day off, just in time to celebrate my 29th, and Shannon our assistant stage manager's 21st birthday. We had a joint party at the Liberal Cup brew pub down the road in Hallowell and a great time was had by all.


The next day the company was invited to a party at the O'Brien's lake house, which commenced with a dip in the lake, then a hearty feast of barbecued burgers et al, and was followed by one of the most incredible jam sessions any of us had every been a part of. The O'Briens are pretty musical themselves (the living room had four guitars, a stand up bass, a mandolin and a violin sitting around . . .) and with a camp fire in the foreground and the lake in the background, we could've been in a music video, or on an album cover, instead of just relaxing on a Monday. Anybody who got tired of the music could also retire to the hot tub. By the end of the night, there was a family-jam going on, with about thirty of us, half of whom had an instrument in hand. It was a truly exceptional evening.


What a truly remarkable start to the summer! The company is also pretty active, we've had group basketball, softball, soccer and tennis games already, and that's just in the first six days.

I hope this finds you enjoying the start to your summer, and we hope to see you out in Monmouth very soon. Cause man, this is the way life should be.


BBell