All's Well That Finally Ends . . .

"Our revels now are ended. These our actors
As I foretold you, were all spirits and
Are melted into air, into thin air:
And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit shall dissolve
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded
Leave not a wrack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep. "

-The Tempest Act 4, Scene 1

Yes friends, our time in Monmouth has drawn to a close. The last two weeks were jam-packed with performances and extra-curricular events. Thanks to the genius of our production manager Daniel Thompson we all had a lot more downtime this summer. See normally we non-equity performers are responsible for changing over the set between each show. This means at least two hours a day (on top of our two-show per day load) of tech work. Enter Daniel, who cleverly devised a system splitting the entire ensemble into three changeover teams, meaning each company member only had changeover duty twice per week, instead of twice per day. The result: a lot more free time for everyone, and a lot more efficiency and positivity in the changeovers themselves. I think I speak for the company when I send a huge THANK YOU to Daniel. Well done sir, well done.


And we all certainly made the most of it: from time in the hot tub well spent to impromptu croquet parties to mountain-conquering, we left no stone uncovered here in the northern frontier.


The high adventure has also not been limited to the great outdoors however. We've had a couple of surprises on stage as well. The first one was two weeks ago right in the middle of our run of King Lear, when a pair of bats made their way into the theater. They were flying about madly, trying to find the exit; but it seems the force of Shakespeare's poetry resounding off the walls must have been interfering with their sonar, because they were only capable of flying back and forth from the balcony to the proscenium and back again. The audience of course was watching this with interest and trying hard not to laugh. Not exactly the atmosphere you want to set in the western world's greatest tragedy. It was mid-way through the second act when this started happening, and Bill (King Lear) was in the middle of his scene with Edgar and Gloucester where he's spouting nonsense and grappling with his sanity. It just so happened that when the bat made a bee-line for the back wall, flying directly over the top of the trio of actors, causing them all to duck and the audience to gasp, Shakespeare had supplied Bill with the perfect retort. He gestured toward the bat and said his next line:

"Well flown bird of the air!"

. . .which brought the house down. We in the dressing room had no idea why the most thunderous laughter of the season had just rang out in the middle of a tragedy, and only found out later about the perfectly matched up line. In the play Lear is referring to an imaginary arrow in his madness-induced state. But it surely made for a magical moment in the theater.


The next week we had a similarly serendipitous experience during Much Ado. The light board had been malfunctioning all night, which first manifested itself with an unexpected blackout in the middle of Beatrice & Benedick's duet scene after the wedding. The lights came back on after about twenty seconds, but it was still a big glitch. That of course put everyone on edge, and since we were already past intermission there was nothing we could do but hope it would not happen again. We had made it all the way up to the final scene of the play without another incident, and then right as the play was wrapping up, the lights cut out again after Don Pedro reacts in amazement to Hero's reappearance. Sure enough after about three seconds the lights came back on, and I had the next line which miraculously was:

"All this amazement can I qualify . . ."

Which of course drew an enormous laugh from the house, who were delighted to have the mishap recongnized. A few lines later, Jared got yet another one in, when he said:

"Come, I will have thee, but by this light . . . (a nod and a smile to the audience, who roared again) . . . I take thee for pity."

As Bill said in the dressing room that night: Shakespeare's always there for you. It's really amazing when those things line up that way, and its one of the beauties of the live theatrical event. Certainly was a lot of fun playing with these surprises as they came along.

And one by one, the shows drew to a close starting with The Compleat Works of Shakespeare Abridged, which led the charge on Wednesday night. Then Lear on Thursday (to a sold out crowd and standing ovations), James Friday afternoon and Blithe Spirit Friday night. Saturday was a solid last matinee of Room Service and our final performance of Much Ado About Nothing that night.


Thus ends the 42nd season at the Theater at Monmouth, the 14 years of Dave Greenham's direction of the theater, and one of the best summers any of us have ever spent. I feel really blessed to have been able to return to Monmouth again and spend another summer immersed in Shakespeare, surrounded by nature, and of course in the company of such amazing and talented people. I hope you have been able to catch a little piece of the energy, passion, dedication and magic that has been radiating out of Monmouth this summer. I sure did, and will be riding this wave for a while.

Till next time, wishing all of my friends and colleagues a safe, productive and fruitful year. It was an honor and a pleasure, and I look forward to our paths crossing again very soon.


All Good Things,


Brian

A Tiny Taste of Our Marvelous Peach . . .

"And above all, watch with glittering eyes the whole world around you because the greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places. Those who don't believe in magic will never find it."

- Roald Dahl

Magnifico! Splendifico! Amazing! Thrilling! Tremendous! Ladies & Gentlemen . . . . James & the Giant Peach! After months of planning, and running the Monmouth gauntlet of producing five other plays simultaneously all the way to the end, James & the Giant Peach took the stage last Tuesday. Having had sixteen rehearsals, which makes it the most-rehearsed play in Theater at Monmouth history, expectations from the rest of the company were very high going into our opening performance. With only a half day of technical rehearsals and one dress rehearsal the morning of our opening, it was anybody's guess whether or not the show was even going to work.

We had begun back in June by conceptualizing the show as a circus/sideshow attraction: i.e. a huge story told by six actors with a trunk full of props and puppets, while their imagination and storytelling filled in the rest of the gaps. As we began the rehearsal process, I was overwhelmed at the amount of creativity and innovation that the actors and the designers brought to the production. What started off as a few sight gags and extra jokes around the edges, morphed into a rollicking hour-long surge of comedy and music and storytelling, with more tech & design elements than you could shake a stick at. So many in fact, that between sound and lights we had a cue every minute-in a fifty-four minute show. Needless to say Natalie, our fearless stage manager, is constantly on her toes even with the support of two assistant stage managers and two board operators.

(Natalie (SM), Xi (Lights), and Rew (Sound) hard at work in our hyper-short tech day)

Its interesting to me that the show intended for a family audience, which is always the last show of the summer to open, is often a cursory afterthought to many theaters and theater-goers. Few people realize that the work done for children is often more technical from both a design and performance perspective than any of the other work that goes on. The precision and crispness that a young audience demands, as well as their willingness to let you know if they are not having fun, makes putting on a show for these little patrons every bit as time-consuming as putting on Shakespeare for the bigger kids.

We certainly had a great time exploring many different Toy Theater elements and small-scale puppetry to solve problems of scale and large action sequences. Introducing a smaller puppet version of the peach and having the actors manipulate the object in wild ways, as well as miniature puppet-versions of some characters, gave us lots of interesting ways to tell the story, that one would otherwise not be able to encounter outside of a theater. As the director, I was most proud of these moments (the 'sharks' as popsicle-fins in the first two rows of the audience, the six different-sized peach puppets, the underwater sequence with the giant octopus) that showed our audience different ways to think about the way a story is told.


But more than anything, the original music in the piece, written by our dazzlingly talented Liz Helitzer was the highlight for everyone. She came up with four original songs utilizing Roald Dahl's imaginitive text, and wove them seamlessly throughout the piece. Each one of the songs is a real ear-worm, and leaves everyone tapping their toes for hours afterward. In rehearsals we would often have the songs stuck in our heads for days, and that was just fine with us. Congrats to Liz on such a huge accomplishment, and to the actors for doing such a beautiful job of interpreting it!


It was also lovely to have my parents visiting last week, up from Texas. They were able to see all six shows in the season, and we had a fabulous day together in Boothbay Harbor, where we went whale-watching and ate very well. Glad to have you guys here!



Now the whole season is up and running, and we Monmouthians have been getting some much-needed rest! August is of course the part of the summer that we look forward to the most, since all rehearsals, technical or otherwise, are over with and we are just acting. Its a real privilege to spend these last weeks enjoying the dog days of summer and performing twice a day. And though the summer is coming slowly to a close, there are plenty of adventures left to be had!

(Cast, Crew, Design & Directing Team of James & the Giant Peach!)

Yours,

BBell

Thy Life Is A Miracle!

"I'll speak prophecy ere I go:
When priests are more in word than matter,
When brewers mar their malt with water,
When nobles are their tailors' tutors,
No heretics burn'd, but wenches' suitors.
When every case in law is right,
No squire in debt, nor no poor knight,
When slanders do not live in tongues,
Nor cutpurses come not to throngs,
When usurers tell their gold i' the field,
And bawds and whores do churches build.
Then comes the time who lives to see't . . . "

-King Lear, Act 3 Scene 6



Lear! Lear is finally upon us! The whole summer long we have been building towards this most excellent tragedy, and last week we pulled out all the stops and heaved it to its feet. What a task! What a play! What an enormous company of actors, technicians and support staff does it take to raise such a production! It took all hands on deck and then some, and even a little help from the elements. The week started off cloudy, and we headed back to Dave & Donna Shaw's for another day at the lake to unwind. Although the weather was less than ideal, we did get a few hours of sunshine, and used them as best we could:

Thanks again to the Shaws!

It was a subdued Monday however, as we all had this colossal play on our minds. Contrary to previous weeks in which our tech rehearsals seemed to drag on and we worried about lines . . . this tech process seemed to fly by. This time around we were worried by much more than lines: the text alone is not the greatest hurdle in producing Lear, but rather the enormity of the events, the improbable heights to which the language soars, the depth and richness of the imagery. Also the brutality and violence of the play makes rehearsing some scenes nauseating for everyone on stage, not to mention the audience. It takes everything every one of us has to even do the play justice, much less do it well. Add on top of that a rather nasty ear infection that I received Monday night, and I was swimming deliriously through tech in a haze of poetry and penicillin.


And before we knew it, we were all emerging from one haze or another as the show was going up on Friday. With something like two full run throughs (both of them sketchy) before opening, there were a host of worries that we all had going into the premiere performance. To add to the tension, a storm was moving into Monmouth right around the time the curtain was rising. Which, in a lot of ways, could not have been a better metaphor for the rough-and-tumble process that Lear had been. As Bill said, putting up King Lear in ten rehearsals is madness; but then again, putting up Lear at all is somewhat mad. Its a play about madness, and so toweringly complex that anyone who tackles it has to have a little bit of crazy in them.

Luckily, we here at Monmouth are not daunted by a little (or a lot) of crazy. We say: BRING IT ON! And boy howdy, it was brought. We all threw everything we had at the opening night performance, and for two and a half hours the misadventures of the Lunatic King and his deceptive daughters raged across the boards at Cumston Hall. When the final scene was played out, and Lear and his daughters lay arrayed in death at the foot of the stage, we held our breath as the lights dimmed. Sure enough, we were met with a wall of applause, peppered in with bravos, and were greeted with a standing ovation when the lights came back up. Somehow, we had made it through this most difficult of plays and the audience had too; it was a glorious night for all.


Over the weekend we settled in to the run of the show and started finding moments we could deepen, and mine for more meaning throughout the play. The houses continued to be very warm as were even the critics: read the Portland Journal's glowing review here.

All of which was a fitting button on the end of Dave Greenham's directorship here at TAM. I'm sure as the crowds and accolades roll in, he's the proudest papa of all.

Though Bill van Horn also has reason enough to be smiling himself to sleep every night. He has climbed the summit of Shakespeare's toughest role and come back down the mountain alive. Hat's off Bill, you deserve it!


Now that all the mainstage shows are off and running, its just our last production, James & the Giant Peach, that we have left to hear from. And hear of it you shall! Till next time, I'll leave you with another beautiful taste of the fool's quality:

"Have more than thou showest,
Speak less than thou knowest,
Lend less than thou owest,
Ride more than thou goest,
Learn more than thou trowest,
Set less than thou throwest;
Leave thy drink and thy whore,
And keep in-a-door,
And thou shalt have more
Than two tens to a score"

-King Lear, Act 1 Scene 4

Foolishly yours,

Brian