Radiation sickness: Living a half-life

Published in the Portland Phoenix

Marie Curie was among the first to learn that exposure to high doses of radiation can stunt organisms’ growth and cause premature death. In The Effects of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds, a budding female scientist takes a different route to the same lesson.

Tillie Hunsdorfer (Chelsea Cook) is a bright student whose mother, Beatrice (played by Annette L. Bourque), is jealous of her success. While she doesn’t actually hit her daughter, Beatrice is emotionally abusive and often prevents Tillie from even going to school, instead making her do endless chores around the house. Tillie’s sister Ruth (Andrea Wickham) is allowed to go to school, but seems not to make much of the opportunity.

It becomes clear, though, that Beatrice sees herself in her smart non-conformist daughter, and fears for Tillie’s future. When Beatrice learns the students laughed at Tillie during a science assembly, she turns on her. "They laugh at you, they’re laughing at me," she says, remembering the scorn she endured in her school days, just for being different. That radiation has seared Beatrice, and she in turn irradiates Tillie and Ruth.

Beatrice confesses her feelings in a conversation with Tillie about a science project. Tillie is planting marigold seeds that have been exposed to cobalt-60, a radioactive isotope with the relatively short half-life of 5.3 years.

Beatrice, she tells her daughter, knows all about half-lives. She is "the original half life," she says, and launches into a brief soliloquy offering a view into another world, the inner corridors of "the other half"’s lives: Beatrice has one daughter — the panic-suffering Ruth — with "half a mind," the other — science-brained Tillie — "half a test tube," her house is half full of the droppings of the family’s pet rabbit, and she shares a living space with half a corpse, the elderly Nanny (Ellen Thomas), whom Beatrice cares for to earn extra money.

It is a speech that could be both heartbreaking and pathetic. Bourque, however, only gets to the pathetic part of Beatrice’s character. The play is written to be slow-moving, and Bourque’s Beatrice properly sucks the life out of each scene in which she appears. But even in moments of redemption and openness, Bourque draws only pity from the audience.

Cook’s Tillie is a far more sympathetic character, playing her middle-woman role strongly, and showing the promise of youthful enthusiasm in scenes without Beatrice. When faced with Beatrice, Cook immediately adopts deferential tone and bearing, though keeping sparks alive under the bushel.

Ruth is more stereotypical, and is played well by Wickham, a newcomer to USM’s main stage. First a flighty teenage girl, she morphs into a younger version of her mother, but one more bitter and with less hope.

The characters are complicated and conflicted. It is their depth that earned this play both a Pulitzer and an Obie. Beatrice’s grudging acceptance of duty, dashing her own dreams, is briefly inspiring, when she is made to understand that Tillie’s finalist status in the school science fair is not a chance for people to mock Beatrice but to celebrate Tillie.

In the second act, the effects of the radiation become clear. As Tillie’s marigold experiment showed, seeds with a little radiation were normal; moderate radiation resulted in mutants. Seeds that endured large amounts of radiation were stunted or killed.

Beatrice, boosted by pride in Tillie’s accomplishments at the science fair, starts to heal and face her fears. But her radiation has ruined Ruth, who turns on her mother and destroys what remains of the life in Beatrice’s soul, triggering a rapid decay of spirit and turning Beatrice into a shell of her former self.

While the show is billed as a redemptive story, there is little hope left at the play’s end. Despite Tillie’s claim that "some of the mutations will be good ones," the spectre of radiation sickness lingers in the theater after the lights go up.

The Effects of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds
Written by Paul Zindel. Directed by Minor Rootes. With Annette L. Bourque, Chelsea Cook, and Andrea Wickham. At University of Southern Maine, Russell Hall, through Oct. 12. Call (207) 780-5151.

Backstage

• The Public Theatre in Lewiston recently received two grants: $10,000 from the National Endowment for the Arts to support educational outreach programming, including ticket-price subsidies for students and local community organizations, and student internships at the theater; and a $5000 unrestricted grant from the Shubert Foundation, the charity arm of a company owning 17 Broadway theaters, recognizing general excellence at the Public Theatre.

• Need a great Halloween costume? Check out the Maine State Music Theatre’s costume shop sale October 11, from 8 a.m. to noon, at MSMT’s new building, 22 Elm Street, in Brunswick, across from Hannaford. Most items will sell for $5, and all proceeds benefit the theater. Local theaters can get first dibs by calling Crystle Martin at (207) 725-8760 x15.

• A group of 10 Boothbay Harbor residents has purchased the town’s Opera House and plans to restore it. The 20,000-square-foot building will house gallery space, dance studios, a banquet hall, reception areas, and a 350-seat main theater. The first event, a concert by Jackson Browne, will be November 3. To learn more, visit www.opera-house.org

Standish man found guilty of murder

Published in the Current and the American Journal

A Cumberland County Superior Court jury Tuesday afternoon found Santanu Basu of Standish guilty of murdering Azita Jamshab to get the proceeds of a $100,000 insurance policy.

In closing arguments Tuesday morning, the prosecution told jurors there is “overwhelming evidence” that Basu was guilty.

Basu was listed as the beneficiary on Jamshab’s life insurance policy, which he had sold to her. In addition to Jamshab’s blood in the car Basu rented that day, and a “to-do” list preparing for the murder in Basu’s handwriting, prosecutor Assistant Attorney General Lisa Marchese said Basu had confessed to the crime, in detail, to a friend who then told police elements of the crime that had not yet been discovered.

The defense countered that Basu and Jamshab had instead been kidnapped at gunpoint by Jamshab’s “jealous boyfriend,” Amhad “Khoji” Khojaspehzad, who then murdered Jamshab.

Basu’s actions after the killing, which the prosecution called incriminating, were instead because Basu was trying to protect his family from Khojaspehzad, defense attorney Neale Duffett told jurors.

Jamshab, who lived in Westbrook, was shot to death after stepping out of a rental car – similar to one Basu rented that day – in a gravel pit just over the Windham line in Cumberland March 6, 2002. Her body was found the following day by a Windham man who lived nearby.

Marchese said Basu was “deep in debt and going further,” with high credit card balances and his job in jeopardy.

When Jamshab came into Basu’s office in January 2002 to buy car and health insurance following her divorce, Basu saw his chance. He sold her life insurance and persuaded her to name him as the beneficiary, Marchese said.

“He had all the information he needed to make Azita’s parents the beneficiary but he didn’t because he didn’t want to, because then he wouldn’t get the money,” Marchese said.

Instead, he put himself on the policy and then began to plan Jamshab’s murder, she said. In late February 2002, Jamshab told Basu she was moving out of the area and wanted to cancel the policy.

“Within two weeks Azita is dead,” Marchese said.

After the murder, Basu confessed to a former Navy buddy, but pleaded with him not to tell the police about any of it, prosecutors said.

That friend, Dexter Flemming, told police intimate details of the crime before the medical examiner or police were able to uncover them. Later discoveries supported what Flemming said Basu had told him, Marchese told the jury.

Marchese also described the killing, saying Basu drove Jamshab to the gravel pit in a rental car and told Jamshab to close her eyes because he had a “big surprise” for her.

“She holds out her hand and he pulls out the gun and shoots her,” Marchese said. The first shot was in the hand and arm. Then Basu shot her twice in the chest, and she fell to the ground.

“For some inexplicable reason he needs that coup de grace shot and shoots her in the back,” Marchese said.

The defense story that the pair was kidnapped by Khojaspehzad was invented recently and first told to investigators when Basu took the stand last week, Marchese said.

Khojaspehzad was the secondary beneficiary of Jamshab’s insurance policy and would only get the money if Basu were dead or convicted of killing Jamshab.

Speaking for the defense, Duffett disputed each of Marchese’s claims, saying Basu was not in financial trouble, would not have killed Jamshab for any
money, rented a car to hide an affair from his wife and made the to-do list to plan a “romantic date.”

Duffett said Basu did not dispute Flemming’s testimony about the confession because Basu was trying to cover for Khojaspehzad, for fear his family would be hurt if the police investigated Khojaspehzad.

Duffett said Khojaspehzad was a “jealous lover” who murdered Jamshab in a “crime of passion,” because he feared Basu and Jamshab were having an affair.

Marchese dismissed that explanation as “nonsensical.”

Baring it all: To push honesty over all else

Published in the Portland Phoenix

As Naked in Portland begins, playwright, composer, and lyricist Jason Wilkins strums his guitar and sings a ballad setting the scene: Young artists gather in Maine’s largest city and hope to find themselves. They are, he sings, "experimental people, sampling everything they see, wondering which is ‘the way life should be.’ "

Wilkins’s play is a love song to his own existence, in many ways, with main characters of artists, musicians, struggling creative types, arts critics and vertices of the love polygons that develop among them. (Wilkins is a musician and former theater and music critic for the local daily and the other alt-weekly in town, before the latter began publishing unedited press releases.) A number of the characters make ends meet, not surprisingly, by working in a coffee shop that becomes home to their dreams.

While the "daily specials" remain "regular" and "decaf," the real treats are the clever characters who make the play a rollicking ride through Portland’s art scene. (The Phoenix appears on stage — a nod to its sponsorship of the production.)

A theater critic is present, and begins the music — for this is a musical — with an ode to the hottie artists, the ones who through no fault of their own look like supermodels. (Infatuated, he later tries to diss another artist by making up quotes, gets himself fired, and ends up delivering pizzas. A warning to all journalists, indeed.)

There is a lovely and talented artist (Deni, played by Nancy Brown) with an electric gaze and a stolen heart; a mercurial artist who refuses to change for fame (Janine, Lisa Muller-Jones); a boring but reliable banker (Aaron, Keith Anctil), the love interest of a go-getter art graduate (Donna, Tavia Lin Gilbert); a couple from Presque Isle (Gina, Christine St. Pierre; and Wayne, Ryan Gartley), both of whom want constant orgasms, but only one of whom has figured out how (he works the late shift at the local porn shop). There’s also Donna’s mom, Linda (Monique Raymond), newly divorced and looking for love.

The most fun characters are a sex-crazed art teacher (also Muller-Jones); and the show-stopping Josh (Jeremiah McDonald), the nice guy from Jackman, who cuts loose into ’50s doo-wop and frenetic nude portraiture, drawing peals of laughter from the cast as well as the audience.

The show is a great way to spend an evening, and is performed solidly by some of the best and hardest-working actors in the area. Some of the roughness is Wilkins’s doing: On stage as a guitar player and extra, he gives visual and audible cues to the actors, and occasionally wanders awkwardly around the stage.

Happily, the usually cramped studio theater felt absolutely spacious, with chairs on the floor — not the usual bleachers — and spaced apart a bit. The play was on a raised stage, an excellent modification to the room that I hope will stay for future shows.

The music, composed by Wilkins, had identifiable riffs from "Hotel California," "Stairway to Heaven," and "Should I Stay or Should I Go," and was clearly influenced by the Barenaked Ladies, Led Zeppelin, the Kinks, Catie Curtis, and Cheryl Wheeler, among others. Local folkie Abi Tapia made a cameo appearance — or at least her phone number did — and was possibly a further influence.

The lyrics and dialogue are peppered with universal truths, witty wordings, and heartfelt confessions. Sex is never far from the lips of any cast member. Themes of nudity, bareness, and truth are intertwined cleverly, as in Gina’s plea to herself — and the audience — not to be too judgmental when she drops her robe and takes her first real look at her nude body.

It is this theme that remains constant: honesty to self and others. It carries the show through high and low points to a feel-good conclusion that brings all the jokes and innuendo neatly together. Gina’s character development in this area drives the main plot, while subplots show her the lives she could have had, if her choices were different.

There are a couple of glitches in direction, unusual for R.J. McComish, usually a skilled and sensitive conductor. At one point, when Donna is listening to her mother lament lost love, McComish has actor Gilbert fidget, changing facial expression and body position from time to time, to continue "looking sympathetic."

In a later scene, Deni rushes off stage. The line accompanying her exit is delivered by Gina: "I’ve never seen Deni so upset before." Fine, except she didn’t look upset in the least, just like a person who had a bladder emergency.

Generally, though, the acting was right on, and the laughs came at all the right times. Most remarkably, while humor often relies on stereotypes, there weren’t many to be found here. Wilkins came up with his own sense of comedy and created characters — and found actors — who could pull it all off in a successful portrait of arts life in this mortal city.

Naked in Portland
Written by Jason Wilkins. Directed by R.J. McComish. With Christine St. Pierre, Tavia Lin Gilbert, Jeremiah McDonald, and Nancy Brown. At Portland Stage Studio Theater, through Oct. 5. Call (207) 774-0465.

BACKSTAGE

• Help build a theater! Join the staff, board, and friends of Pontine Movement Theater and New Hampshire Theatre Project to finish construction of seating platforms and a lighting booth. Meet at 9 a.m. Saturday, September 27, at the West End Studio Theater, 959 Islington Street, in Portsmouth, NH.

Standish man tried for murder

Published in the Current and the American Journal

Santanu Basu of Standish is on trial for the murder of his girlfriend to allegedly collect on a life insurance policy. The trial started Monday in Cumberland County Superior Court, with prosecutor Lisa Marchese telling jurors that Basu, 34, had killed Azita Jamshab, 29, a resident of Westbrook, to get money to pay off large debts.

“Santanu executed Azita Jamshab by plotting and planning her death for the insurance proceeds,” Marchese said.

Marchese told jurors Basu made a “to-do” list the day he sold Jamshab her insurance policy, on which he was listed as the primary beneficiary, according to the Associated Press. The items on the list, including ammunition and a rental car, were directly related to Jamshab’s death two months later, Marchese said.

Jamshab, who prosecutors allege was in a romantic relationship with Basu, was shot to death and dumped out of a rental car – similar to one Basu rented that day – in a gravel pit just over the Windham line in Cumberland, March 6, 2002.

Her body was found the following day by a Windham man who lived nearby.

Basu asked a friend to tell police they were together the night Jamshab was killed, Marchese said, and later told that friend he had killed a woman for life insurance money.

Defense attorney Karen Dostaler told jurors the prosecution had to presume that Basu is innocent until they were convinced otherwise. She said the prosecution’s case was based on unsubstantiated theories and urged jurors to “test the evidence” by deciding for themselves if they thought testimony and other evidence was truthful.

Kate Bailey, a friend and coworker of the murdered woman at the Smart Styles hair salon at the Scarborough Wal-Mart, testified Monday that Jamshab had planned to go out to dinner with Basu on the evening of March 6, 2002.

Basu, a salesman for Nationwide Insurance, was Jamshab’s insurance agent, Bailey said. “She was trying to tie up some last minute things for her move” to Las Vegas, planned for the following week, Bailey said.

Jamshab did not turn up at work the following morning, and Bailey became worried. Also worried, Bailey said, was Jamshab’s friend, Amhad “Khoji” Khojaspehzad, who began calling the salon that morning, asking where Jamshab was.

Khojaspehzad denied that he was Jamshab’s boyfriend, but said they had a sexual relationship. Both were divorced, and they and their ex-spouses still lived in Southern Maine and were in the small Iranian expatriate social circle here, said Khojaspehzad, who lived in Windham until earlier this year.

Khojaspehzad was named as a contingent beneficiary on Jamshab’s life insurance policy. Basu was the primary beneficiary, who stood to collect
$100,000 if Jamshab died, according to testimony Monday.

Both men had debts far larger than their incomes, according to testimony.

Under questioning by Dostaler, Khojaspehzad said he had filed to collect on the life insurance “March 8 or 9,” very shortly after Jamshab’s body was found. He knew that the only way he could collect was if Basu was convicted of murdering Jamshab or was himself dead, Khojaspehzad told the court.

He hadn’t wanted to be on the policy and had urged Jamshab to make her parents, who live in Iran, the beneficiaries. Monday he said he would give the money to Jamshab’s family if he received any.

Khojaspehzad last spoke to Jamshab at about 8 p.m., March 6, 2002, he testified. He tried to call several times later and again the next day, but was unable to reach Jamshab.

Worried, he went to Jamshab’s apartment in Westbrook and saw her car there. He broke into the apartment, thinking he might find clues about her whereabouts, but “there was no sign of her.”

From her apartment, he took a videotape he had taken of Jamshab the previous week, in which she called him “honey,” because he didn’t want anyone to see it, Khojaspehzad testified. He also took a note with Persian and Farsi writing on it, again because he wanted to keep it private, he said. He later gave both to police.

The trial is expected to continue all week.

Corpses and darkness: Recurring theater themes this fall

Published in the Portland Phoenix

Dead bodies, darkness, nighttime, ghosts. Now that fall is here and the days begin to shorten, Maine’s theatrical offerings have taken a black turn, bringing more death and despair to the stage than in recent years. Were producers, directors, and actors really that depressed in the spring and summer? Is the state of the arts truly that dismal?

The Phoenix is well aware of Maine’s recurring budget "gap," the skyrocketing costs of Bush’s war on terror, and Ashcroft’s war on the Constitution. They are not calls for despondency, though. Rather, this is a time for the arts to shine, to call out to the masses and ignite our passions, not to darken our hearts with doom and death. This is not to say we need more frilly, happy pieces. We need to be disturbed, alerted, cattle-prodded into action by theatrical performances, galvanized as a community, a society that takes charge of its fate and does not dally in the pits of despair. In the meantime, be sure to catch glimpses of the high notes, like those below.

BEST SPOT FOR A GOOD SHOW

To get a good start, drive to Portsmouth regularly. The Players’ Ring is putting on some amazing shows there. Full of local actors end energy, the performances are always enjoyable and offer a much needed break from the mainstream of theater. (Because how many productions of Proof does Maine really need? We had one last year, two this summer, and one coming up. QED.)

At the Ring, Rhiannon Productions will ask Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, September 25 through October 5. Examining truth and illusion through a Cold War lens (or is it a "War on Terror" lens?), the play follows an evening of self-destruction by professors and their wives.

October 10 through 26 will see Sam Shepard’s A Lie of the Mind, continuing Shepard’s incisive investigations of the American family.

Then comes The Cask of Amontillado, October 30 through November 9. It’s a Halloween tale, adapted from Edgar Allan Poe’s short story, inspired by something he saw in a basement at West Point, before he got kicked out. A wine cask, a dark confined space, the glittering coats of arms of ancestors . . .

Finally for the fall, trading on the Tolkien resurgence of late, from November 13 through 30, The Hobbit brings the One Ring to the Players’ Ring. Oh, and there’s this guy called Bilbo, a cave-dweller called Gollum, and a fire-breathing dragon. Is there any more to say?

Speaking of the Ring, last year’s best original script, Not on This Night, by Kittery’s Evelyn Jones, will return to the Seacoast in late December, with two showings at Seacoast Repertory Theater December 21 and 28. Amid the Battle of the Bulge in World War 2, soldiers try to commandeer a home, finding all the things a home offers, including humanity and love.

BEST STUFF WE USUALLY DON'T COVER

There’s a lot of theater going on at Maine’s colleges. Colby College, for example, will have a number of fascinating offerings, starting with a 10-minute play festival October 3 and 4.

Moving into November, Shenandoah Shakespeare Express will visit the campus to explore what it is to be English, performing Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest November 5, and Shakespeare’s Henry IV, Part One (November 6), along with Two Gentlemen of Verona (November 7).

Colby’s fall season will finish November 14 with a 21st-century reinterpretation of the 17th-century comedy The Man of Mode, exploring the cultivation of wit and manners as opposed to morality.

Also along the cultivation theme is USM’s The Effects of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds, a Pulitzer Prize-winning and Obie-winning play slated for October 3 through 12 in Gorham. Find out what can grow from even a barren landscape.

From November 7 through 16, check out the timeless tale of Shakuntala, an ancient Sanskrit piece revived by Assunta Kent. It includes music and dance to tell the story of a king who finds his perfect match but must elude a curse to win her.

Rounding out the fall semester at USM will be two student plays, Ghosting by Michael Thomas Toth and Goin’ to Graceland by M. Calien Lewis, performed together December 5 through 13 at the St. Lawrence Arts Center. Ghosting is a peek inside the lives of performers in a city theater, while Graceland is a set of character studies linked in a pilgrimage to Elvis’s home.

BEST STUFF WE USUALLY COVER

The Public Theatre in Lewiston earns top billing with two strong and intriguing fall pieces. First there’s Red Herring (October 10 through 19), of which director Christopher Schario says, "Imagine Sam Spade meets I Love Lucy." This 1950s noir comedy will have to be done well to work, but the Public Theatre is great at finding the best actors for the roles.

Then comes The Belle of Amherst (November 7 through 16). Based on the life of poet Emily Dickinson, the play stars Ellen Crawford, who was last onstage in Lewiston in the same show during a break from E.R.

Good Theater has also picked a strong starting pair. First, September 25 through October 19, is Baby, a Tony-nominated musical following three couples, in their twenties, thirties, and forties, each of whom is having a baby. Explore that life change with GT regulars Stephen Underwood and Kelly Caufield, and musical director Beth Barefoot Jones. Second (November 6 through 30) is Loot, by British comic playwright Joe Orton, a black comedy deftly twisting corpses into money and cops into robbers.

Penobscot Theater Company has updated its schedule. No more Moon Over Buffalo; instead put A.R. Gurney’s Love Letters on the calendar (October 1 through 12). It’s a picture of a friendship painted in the letters two people write to each other over the course of their lives. And from November 5 through 23, William Gibson’s The Miracle Worker will take the stage, telling the story of Annie Sullivan and her famous student, Helen Keller.

Mad Horse will have a fascinating production about starting over on September 12, 2001, in The Mercy Seat by Neil LaBute. Facing their true identities, two New Yorkers (played by Craig Bowden and Christine Louise Marshall) dive into themselves. Keep your eyes on the Portland Stage Company Studio Theater October 16 through 26.

Down the hall at Portland Stage Company proper, the season begins September 23 with Shakespeare’s A Comedy of Errors, in which mistaken identities nearly shipwreck a reunion of people split years ago by, well, a shipwreck.

NEW STUFF WITH BEST POTENTIAL

Jason Wilkins’ Naked in Portland is an original musical by a former theater reviewer for the other alt-weekly and currently a reviewer for the city’s main daily. Having crossed the line into being reviewed, Wilkins is mixing love, sex, and art, following three young women "as they learn how to become the people they want to be." Directed by R.J. McComish, who knows how to guide a cast towards even a strange vision, and featuring Lisa Muller-Jones and Tavia Lin Gilbert among others, the show should be worth a look, though it’ll be a challenge to shoehorn a full musical into the cramped PSC Studio Theater (September 19 through October 5).

Emerging from their own secure, undisclosed location are Castle Theater Productions’ Tony Cox and Anthony Pizzuto. After a three-year silence, the 22-year-old Tonys are back with Agency (November 20 through 23) by UMaine-Machias theater professor Lee Rose. It’ll be a world premiere, but in all the hoopla about their personal career developments in the past 36 months, the Tonys — who won’t even be in the show — neglected to say what it is about.

Redemption songs: They're all some never have

Published in the Portland Phoenix

Have you ever done something you really shouldn’t have? Not something small, either, like "borrowing" the boss’s car or taking off your wedding band in a bar filled with attractive singles. Something really, really big, that you’ve known all your life you shouldn’t do. Like threatening a loved one, and following through.

Is it possible to make up for that? Should it be? Who deserves a second chance? Is there anyone who doesn’t?

Admittedly, there are the Ted Bundys and Jeffrey Dahmers of the world, folks the law — and most of society — condemns to never get another shot. Some, like Bundy, are executed legally, by badge-wearing officials reading black-robed justices’ sentences. Others, like Dahmer, meet their fates in murkier ways, killed in jailhouse "incidents" by "out-of-control" fellow inmates, while overworked guards just happened to be looking elsewhere.

Enough about serial killers. What about the people who kill the living, the slaughterers of souls and spirits, extinguishers of dreams and hopes: people who commit domestic violence. (We don’t even have a name for them, like "murderer," and are left with an emotionless legal term. Instead, let’s call them DVers.)

Somehow, society tends to view DVers as lesser transgressors, even though their deeds, too, are destructive, unreasonable, and impossible to forgive. Rather than facing universal condemnation, DVers’ moral futures are muddy. Can victims — can society — forget, even without forgiving, or alternately move on, having done neither, but tolerating the violators’ presence? Or should DVers, too, be cast beyond the pale, like Bundy and Dahmer? Second Chance starts the discussion with a snap.

Written and directed by Kittery playwright Evelyn Jones, the play unravels the twists of fate, allowing the audience to follow the twisting of strings paying out through time from incidents in the past, intertwining lives in unexpected ways.

Starting with a quality facade hiding drugs, alcohol, and egotism, Second Chance moves through the logical conclusion to all domestic violence — murder — and beyond, exploring the vagaries of the DVer’s mind. We follow a search for direction devoid of a moral compass.

(A brief digression: The play itself seems to lack a compass or map. The first scene is in the evening somewhere in New York state; 24 hours later, on a run for the Canadian border, Dennis (Andrew Fling) still hasn’t made it. If he were serious, on a highway and doing roughly the speed limit, he’d have cleared customs by daybreak, regardless of starting point.)

We watch, electrified, as a control freak tries to dictate to a corpse, and later, denying culpability, vows revenge on the attacker of his beloved DV victim.

The most compelling moment of the story is when the veil of hints is swept away in a panic-stricken exchange between a lonely man and two parents (not his) in the middle of the night. "Sit back, on the edge of your seat," as the Host (Jennifer Mason) says in the prologue. This is a ripper of a tale, cleverly told, with all threads tied, though not at all neatly, by the end of Act 2.

The play is beautifully acted, though giving specifics would reveal too much. Dinah Schultze, in her debut as a lead role (Jill), gives a taste of what she can do, and promises — both plot-wise and professionally — power far beyond what we see on stage. Fling, as the DVer, mixes the Jekyll and Hyde well, both shaking and stirring the audience. Thorpe Feidt is a frightening (for this journalist, at least) caricature of those spot-news TV freelancers who appear at the most unusual moments in real life.

There are several elegant touches to the stage management: Stagehands’ faces are shrouded in Eyes Wide Shut maroon hoods; an actor whose character is dead has her body hauled off as if to the coroner. The set itself is pure Players’ Ring, flexible and functional, but unadorned and not distracting. The overhead projector is lovingly jury-rigged to the ceiling, and the swingset’s two beam-embedded eyehooks hold. The makeup also helps, subtly reinforcing the line between life and death.

The music, too, all well known pieces, supports the storyline in clever ways. It is, though, the writing that brings this show to its peak and the audience along, simultaneously willingly and inextricably.

"They make horror movies about beautiful young women materializing out of the dark," Dennis says. If only those beautiful DV victims — for they all are — could appear out of the darkness, reborn and empowered, then the DVers would see real horror begin. In seats before a stage, we look on helplessly. Are we — and they — doomed to have us do the same in the real world?

Second Chance
Written and directed by Evelyn Jones. With Andrew Fling, Dinah Schultze, and Nicole MacMillan. At the Players’ Ring, in Portsmouth, NH, through Sept. 21. Call (603) 436-8123.

BACKSTAGE

• If you haven’t yet, find a way to see UltraLight, Michael Gorman’s homage to his love for his brother, killed by a heroin addiction. Yes, it occupied plenty of space on this page last week, but it’s even better than it was billed to be. Just go.

• Eleventh & Love, Tim Collins’s show offering an international perspective on September 11, will be at the St. Lawrence, September 18 and 19, at 7 p.m., and September 20, at 4 and 7 p.m.

Love and a light touch: What it takes to be your brother's keeper

Published in the Portland Phoenix

Looking out the window of the old Levinsky’s storefront during a rehearsal recently, actor Dave Bennett saw something. He called the others over, and they, too, had a startlingly relevant vision: "There’s a guy fixing up and shooting, in a picture window on Congress Street," said Michael Gorman.

The group has been using the vacant space to rehearse for the Maine tour of Gorman’s play UltraLight, an elegy for his brother, who died at 40 of a heroin overdose. Alone with his pencil and paper, Gorman had control in a way his real life never offered. "It’s about sanctuary of storytelling," he said. "I can say whatever I want."

At its 2000 New York debut, UltraLight found an unusual theater audience: "Recovering addicts started showing up," Gorman said. After the curtain, many of them would express gratitude for the respect and truth in the tale.

The play, whose subtitle is "A True Fishing Story," hooked cast members too. "Every night you’d have to go through a decompression process," said local musician/composer Joshua Eden.

Fishing metaphors abound in the play: lines of love and emotion become tangled in the tides of time. Ultralight fishing uses super-fragile equipment. Eden explains, the hook is lodged carefully in a fish’s mouth, like a needle in a vein, and the fisherman must work cautiously to reel it in.

The loving act of "catching something so you can release it," as Bennett puts it, is crucial to UltraLight, as is the behavior of a hooked fish. Stephen, the heroin-addicted character in the play, is caught by the carefully baited lure of his brother, Jim (played by Bennett).

Stephen (Oz Phillips) tells fish stories — tall tales making himself look good — in an attempt to wriggle out of Jim’s grasp. "Everybody associates lying with fishing stories," said Mike Kimball, who plays the supporting role of a salesman. "A lot of addicts are extremely adept at that."

Stephen ducks, hides, runs, does all the things fish do to avoid being drawn into the open. When Jim’s soul-fishing proves too skillful, though, Stephen enters the raging current and begins a fight for his life.

UltraLight shows the dexterity family members need to overcome denial and avoidance, telling the story of a brother unwilling to part with a segment of his own soul. "A lot of people get left behind that aren’t the addicts," Kimball said.

Touched with love, irony, even humor, UltraLight is a call to arms for families to help their addicts, in a nation whose drug policy criticizes them, marginalizes them, criminalizes them, and fails to extend a hand.

Maine’s jails and prisons are full of non-violent repeat drug offenders. Maine’s towns are riddled by prescription opiates stolen from patients who really need them. Heroin is cheaper and easier to find than marijuana.

And thousands are just waiting for a chance to get clean, said Marty O’Brien of the Maine Alliance for Addiction Recovery. In 2000, 75,000 Mainers tried to get into rehab programs, but there was only room for 15,000.

MAAR is helping sponsor the Maine tour, which runs throughout September, designated as National Recovery Month. "It’s very important to me ... that we convey a sense of hope," said Brian Glover, who is directing the show. "Recovery is real and not just another fishing story."

The play seeks action. "It’s not enough to say that there is a secret hidden in the American family," Glover said. Nor to say that there’s a "fog," as in Dickens’ Bleak House. "You can turn the fan on and blow the shit out," Glover said.

It takes a soft touch. "These are not people separate from us. When you wage a war on drugs you wage it on your own family. You wage it on your community," Gorman said. Many involved with the play know this firsthand, including Bennett: "I recently lost a friend to a heroin overdose. I just felt so helpless. This is about the only thing I can do for him."

Phillips’ role made him ask, "Why am I an actor? What does this do other than please me?" Now, his mission is clear: "Take a stand. Be socially responsible." Of particular importance, not just to the play, but to Phillips himself, is family.

"Maybe call up your brother and see how he’s doing," Phillips said. In fact, this play moved him to do just that. After two years of not talking to his brother, Phillips picked up the phone a couple of weeks ago. His brother is coming to see the play.

UltraLight is at Portland Stage Company, September 4, 5, and 6 at 8 p.m. and September 6 and 7 at 2 p.m. (207) 774-0465; Penobscot Theater, in Bangor, September 12 and 13 at 8 p.m., and September 14 at 2 p.m. (207) 942-3333; and the Grand Theater, in Ellsworth, September 18 at 2 p.m., and September 19 at 8 p.m. (866) 363-9500. Photos of recovering addicts will be on display, and each show will be followed by a group discussion.

Backstage

• Local playwright Cathy Plourde will direct Lysistrata in its October run at Central Connecticut State University. Her adaptation is called Lysistrata: Everything Aristophanes Wanted To Know About Sex but Was Afraid To Ask, adding a new character who draws in the audience and turns the play on its head.

Signing theater: The words are on the tips of their fingers

Published in the Portland Phoenix

As Broadway’s first-ever musical with both hearing and deaf cast members begins to gain popularity, here in Maine, deaf people are still struggling to gain access to theater and other performances.

In New York, deaf actor Tyrone Giordano plays Huck Finn in Big River. He signs his dialogue and songs, while Mark Twain (played by Dan Jenkins, who created the role of Huck in the 1985 version of the musical) speaks and sings the words. The show’s hearing actors, including Michael McElroy as Jim, sign the words they are speaking or singing. This is what Maine theaters should aspire to.

"Interpreting, at best, is second-best," said Meryl Troop, who bears the unwieldy title of Director of the Office of Deaf Services and Multicultural Diversity at the state Department of Behavioral and Developmental Services. She is a certified sign interpreter who has interpreted at Portland Stage Company, Maine Gay Men’s Chorus, and elsewhere around the state. "Theater by and for deaf people would be much more preferable," Troop said.

Brenda Schertz, a USM sign-language teacher, who is herself deaf, agrees. When she saw her first sign-interpreted performance years ago, "I didn’t feel like I got the same experience as the hearing audience," Schertz said, via a sign interpreter.

Big River both includes deaf people and gives all audience members a similar experience. Half of the cast is deaf or hearing impaired. Deaf actors so prominent that hearing audiences know their names are on board: Phyllis Frelich, for whom was written the role of the deaf Sarah Norman in Children of a Lesser God, is now on stage as Miss Watson and Sally. Linda Bove, best known as the deaf resident of Sesame Street, is a consultant to the show.

To help deaf people react emotionally to music, the actors dance while signing, giving visual cues for what hearing audiences could find in their voices.

Yet even in New York, deaf attendance numbers are unable to support a full Broadway show. The trick, Schertz said, is to create a combination that appeals to both hearing and deaf audiences, and then to get the word out to both communities. Big River is proving this is more than possible.

For now, most Maine performances that are accessible to the deaf — which is not many — are signed by hearing interpreters. Some places that do have interpreters are Portland Stage, Theater at Monmouth, Lakewood Theater, and Penobscot Theater. There is demand: "We have some regular consumers, people who are theater addicts," Schertz said.

For their access to theater in Maine so far, they depend on interpreters, who practice a demanding profession, both physically and mentally. Troop once had to figure out how to sign the word "rent" in the musical Rent, when it means not just the monthly payment due to a landlord, but also the tearing of souls.

"Some interpreters are more successful at that than others," Schertz said. And even the best need help. Usually, two or more hearing interpreters and a deaf consultant will work together several times before the show’s opening, usually with a videotape of the show. As the interpreters practice, the consultant will read the signs and stop both interpreter and video to correct an error or suggest changes to improve the signing.

And not all plays are good for deaf audiences. Portland Stage Company canceled the sign interpreting of Tom Stoppard’s Arcadia last season because the mathematical concepts were too hard to sign. A deaf person who has a bad theater experience won’t come back, Schertz said. They feel left out of the hearing world on a daily basis as it is.

Even after the Americans with Disabilities Act became law, sign interpretation at theaters is still "not 100-percent equal access," Schertz said. Usually, the interpreter is way off to the side, relegating the deaf audience to a corner, with a bad view of the stage.

She has seen better success from interpreters standing partway up a main aisle, or on a raised platform above the stage. Both keep the interpreters out of the actors’ space but allow a deaf person to watch both the play and the interpretation at once.

Another way, and one that can open more plays to deaf people, is also in use in New York: Huck’s dad is played by two men, deaf actor Troy Kotsur and hearing actor Lyle Kanouse, side by side, one signing and the other speaking, while both engage in comic charades that add more than double life to the role. More commonly, this is done with what are called "shadow interpreters," people who follow along with each actor, even costumed similarly, and sign their lines.

No matter how theater interpreting is done, Troop has a solemn reminder about the life of the deaf: just as seeing theater is a luxury for hearing people, "I would not interpret for the theater if I did not also interpret where they really need help," in schools, hospitals, and courtrooms.

Special thanks to ASL interpreter Kirsta McElfresh.

BACKSTAGE

• Tim Collins has been hired to perform in You the Man, Cathy Plourde’s play about dating, relationship violence, and sexual assault among young people. Collins’s one-man show Eleventh & Love will come to the St. Lawrence September 18 through 21. He studied in London during college, arriving there on September 10, 2001. The play is based on " the non-American perspectives about the [9/11] tragedy. "

State commissioner says slots could save horse industry

Published in the Current and the American Journal

Maine’s agriculture commissioner says the horse industry here is in trouble and needs a major cash infusion to save it – cash that could come from slots at racetracks.

Robert Spear stopped short of contradicting Gov. John Baldacci’s stand against slot machines at racetracks, but said slots are one way the industry could get a much needed bailout.

Spear also suggested that if the statewide referendum on whether to allow slots at racetracks passes Nov. 4, Baldacci might change his mind.

While the referendum question – called “the Bangor bill” because it was proposed by the Bangor Raceway – gives some money to horse owners and trainers, another bill now on Baldacci’s desk – called “the industry bill” because it was proposed by a group from Maine’s horse industry – would give horsemen and women more.

Spear hinted that if the Bangor bill passes with a strong showing, his boss, the governor, might approve the industry bill, which includes permission for slot machines at off-track betting locations as well as racetracks. The two would need to be compromised before either could take effect.

Both dedicate 1 percent of the slots’ take to combat addiction and compulsive gambling.

The Bangor bill gives 75 percent of the take to the operator of the slot machines, 11 percent to help the horse industry, 10 percent to help elderly and disabled people pay for prescription drugs and 3 percent to fund scholarships at state colleges.

The industry bill would send 28 percent of the proceeds from slots at racetracks and OTBs to the state’s general fund and 17 percent to support the horse industry. It does not specifically allocate a percentage to the operators of the machines.

The industry bill also gives 3 percent of the take from slots at Bangor Raceway to the city of Bangor, if Scarborough’s local ban is not overturned.

If the local ban is overturned, however, and slots are installed at both Bangor Raceway and Scarborough Downs, the two towns would get 5 percent of the tracks’ take. (Scarborough Downs has collected the needed signatures, they say, to put the overturn of the local ban on the November ballot.)

Either bill would be a good beginning to the problems facing Maine’s horse industry, Spear said. “Right now we have a lot of horses leaving the state,” heading to other states with higher racewinners’ purses – some because of slot machines at their tracks.

“We need to find ways to get more purse money into the hands of the horsemen,” he said. The average purse in Maine is around $1,200 a race. In Delaware, where slots at racetracks are allowed, winning a race pays between $3,000 and $5,000, Spear said.

He visited there earlier this year at a meeting of the Northeastern states’ agriculture commissioners, held at Delaware Downs. In addition to a horseracing track, it has a car-racing track, a hotel and a gambling floor. “It looks like a casino,” Spear said.

He was there on a weekend when Delaware Downs had no live racing, but people were there. “The money was coming in through the slot machines. It looked like Las Vegas.”

That cash influx could save racing, he said.

“There’s a lot of history and nostalgia” in the Maine horse industry, he said. A farm census is in progress to gauge the exact size of it, but a University of Maine study commissioned by the Maine Harness Racing Promotion Board in 2000 says the “harness racing industry annually contributes an
estimated $50,724,895 in gross revenue to the state economy.” That includes $27 million in income from outside horse racing, plus $12 million in business spending related to the horse industry and $11.5 million in personal spending by workers in the sector.

“I consider the horse industry very important” to Maine’s economy, Spear said. It also helps Maine’s environment: “It keeps a lot of land open,” especially in Southern Maine.

There are small ways to help the industry, but “until you get some real money out there in the hands of the horsemen” not much will change, Spear said.

Of further concern are actions other states are taking. “I see other states going the route of machines,” Spear said. If they do, Maine’s purses will stay small and horses will leave to make money elsewhere.

A casino also worries Spear. If a casino is approved in November, gamblers may take their money there, cutting tracks’ income even more.

“We’ve got some good breeders in this state. It’s too bad to breed these good horses here and then see them leave the state,” Spear said.

Rabid fox attacks pool swimmers

Published in the Current and the American Journal

A 27-year-old Gorham woman and her 4-year-old son are receiving treatment for exposure to rabies after a rabid fox jumped into a pool with them in Scarborough Aug. 14.

“The night before, around 10 o’clock, we had heard this weird barking sound, a kind of growly bark,” said Janice Reed, who lives on Lane by the Sea, near the Old Orchard Beach line.

It was Reed’s daughter and grandson who were attacked by the fox the next afternoon, as they were swimming in the pool at Reed’s home.

Also the night before, Reed’s husband had seen a fox run “very aggressively” up to the back door of the home. The next afternoon, Reed’s daughter and her daughter’s son were in the new above-ground pool. It was so new there isn’t even a deck around the outside of the pool basin, which stands 52 inches tall.

“She saw this face come up to the top of the rail,” Reed said. Initially she thought it might be one of the family’s cats. “The next instant, this thing was leaping” at her. Reed said she was told that the noise of the two playing together could have agitated the fox enough to attack.

When the fox came at her, Reed’s daughter initially dropped her son, but realizing he couldn’t swim, grabbed him and threw him out of he pool. Screaming, she then jumped out of the pool herself and started running toward the house with the boy.

Reed’s husband and a neighbor heard the screams and came running, to see the fox swimming in the pool. “It managed to climb out,” Reed said.

A police officer showed up on a bicycle and radioed for further assistance, while the fox sat near the edge of the yard, until Reed herself came home. The family’s dogs started barking, which scared the fox off.

An initial check seemed to show that neither mom nor boy had been scratched or bitten, but when the boy was changing out of his bathing suit, they realized he had been scratched on his back and the back of his leg.

When they called the Scarborough police to report that, they learned the fox had been killed by Old Orchard Beach police and would be tested for rabies. The next afternoon, they learned it had tested positive.

The evening after the attack, Reed and her husband took their daughter and grandson to the hospital, where the 4-year-old got the first in a series of rabies shots that are “extremely painful” and expensive – costing over $2,000 for a single shot, Reed said.

They also had to clean the pool out with bleach to kill the rabies, which is transmitted through saliva. “You have this thing foaming at the mouth, and it’s in the water,” Reed said.

She knows there are other foxes in the wooded, marshy area behind her home. She is worried that something more will happen: “Last night and the night before, we have heard the same barking sounds” as they heard the night before the last attack, Reed said Tuesday.

This is a very unusual incident, said Scarborough Animal Control Officer Chris Creps. This year has seen fewer rabid animals in town than last year, he said. Two raccoons, one in the Pleasant Hill area and the other in North Scarborough, have tested positive, in addition to the fox.

So little time: And so much to do

Published in the Portland Phoenix

This year, maybe there won’t be a car accident. Leaving town after last year’s ≤15 Minute Festival, host, headliner, and general name-recognition-lender Margot Kidder broke her pelvis when her SUV rolled over after hitting some rough pavement.

But Kidder, who still struggles to overcome the fact that she is best known for playing Lois Lane in the Superman movies, will be back this year to host the second annual festival, to be held in Belfast next Thursday through Saturday, August 21 through 23.

This year’s seven winners, whose short plays will be performed as the main portion of the festival, include two repeats from last year, Bill Lattanzi of Brandeis University, and Tim Collins, who lives in Belfast but will soon be moving to Portland. Two Mainers, J. Emrich Sharks of Brewer and Amy Robbins of Belfast, also were among the 12 runners-up, and will have their plays performed in staged readings on August 23 during the day.

There is also a new festival overture, composed by Blue Hill resident and world-renowned musician Paul Sullivan.

It is the theater, however, and not the music or the star power, that really drives the festival. "We got so many more scripts, and the quality of the scripts was so much higher" this year than last, says David Patrick Stucky, one of the festival’s founders and mainstays. In fact, the number of submissions, 220, was three times more than last year. Grants and donations were enough to pay the actors and give each winning playwright a check for $100. Stucky knows it’s not much, but says it’s a start.

This year’s theme, "Unstill Life: Moments of Change and Transformation," is a fitting topic for today’s world. The winning plays include a monologue about a woman facing a "death sentence" medical diagnosis, a film noir–style piece, one based on a short story, and an Armageddon-type play. The length constraint means they represent inklings of "life with all the boring bits taken out," Stucky says.

This includes Collins’ work, Puzzles, based on an experience he had in downtown Belfast, where he works part-time in a toy store. He was at work when the Iraq war started, and he was trying to gather as much news as he could, switching from radio station to radio station, tuning in the TV, and trying to be an information sponge, all the while selling children’s toys. This was complicated, he says, by the fact that there was a protest going on outside.

Antiwar and anti-antiwar protestors would stop into the store, injecting their political moods into an environment where Collins was ringing up Thomas the Tank Engine sets on the cash register. "There was so much incongruity, so much weirdness," Collins says.

The antiwar crowd would talk about war as a silly way to stop violence, while others would suggest that those leftist folks had driven to the rally using Middle Eastern oil. "Everyone has a point, but everyone’s a little absurd," Collins says. And he started taking notes, which have turned into Puzzles.

"There’s a huge range of subject matter," Stucky says. The theme of change is the limiting factor this year, drawing some focus into what could be a colossally diverse set of pieces.

The actors now rehearsing for their, well, 15 minutes of festival fame, include not only the over-busy Stucky, but also two disabled actors, who will play disabled characters. The festival’s evening shows will be staged at the National Theater Workshop of the Handicapped. The organization advocates that disabled characters be played by disabled people, and when two of the winning scripts fit the bill, it seemed like a perfect match, Stucky says.

The runners-up aren’t being ignored, either: The Newburyport Players are rehearsing some of them for the staged readings; other groups will perform the rest. "They’re getting the kind of attention that they deserve," Stucky says.

What’s more, most of the authors of these glimpses of life will be at the festival to see their work performed. They will be among the beneficiaries of what Stucky laughingly terms the festival’s efforts toward "saving the theater audience" from over-extended performances. Some playwrights put together a great 15-minute piece, but then write more, to fit the more conventional molds of one-acts or full shows, he says.

Collins agrees. "Some pieces just are what they are," he says. "I think the piece finds its own length." They can be made to "fit in" a bit better, though: Collins’ winning piece last year, Dateline, was incorporated into a solo show made up of several monologues.

The festival itself is in the process of being reworked slightly, to "fit in" better with the lives of the people who run it.

The timetable will be accelerated — next year’s theme will be announced during this year’s festival, and the deadline for script submissions will be February 15, 2004 — and there is a fundraising drive on to allow Stucky and Brown to take time off from their regular jobs next summer to coordinate the festival, instead of fitting it around their existing responsibilities. "We were racing to keep up the whole time, and we still are," Stucky says.

They want to raise enough to hire professional Equity actors to headline the show, though most parts will still be cast locally. Being with top-caliber actors "raises your own awareness of what your own potential is," Stucky says.

Stucky says, "I’d like this to be inspirational for anybody who gets involved."

Collins is already there: "I want to be involved as long as it’s in existence."

The ≤15 Minute Festival runs Aug. 21 through 23 at the National Theatre Workshop of the Handicapped, in Belfast. Winning plays are performed in the evenings (tickets $15); runners-up get staged readings (free admission) during the day on Saturday at the Belfast Maskers Theatre on the waterfront. Call (207) 338-1615 or visit www.15minutefestival.com

BACKSTAGE

• Mad Horse Theatre Company has two new members: actor Craig Bowden and stage manager/production manager Darci LaFayette. Both have worked on a number of Mad Horse productions in the past couple of years and are now part of the full team.

• Attention ACAT, PSC Studio Theater, and anybody else whose furniture makes audiences feel the pain: Free theater seats are available from Arts Conservatory Theater and Studio (100+ seats, and 20 mounting platforms, (207) 761-2465), and Penobscot Theatre Company (132 seats, (207) 947-6618).

Mom told to take down ribbons

Published in the Current and the American Journal

A South Portland mother who has been putting up yellow ribbons around the
city to support her soldier son has been told by the city to take them down.

When the war in Iraq first started, Valerie Swiger’s son Jason, 21, a member of the 82nd Airborne Division, was serving there. Back home, his mother hung yellow ribbons around the city as a sign of support for all of the soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines.

City officials say there is an ordinance on the books that prevents displaying any personal message on public property – including notices about garage sales and missing pets – and while her ribbons have been up for some time, they now have to come down.

Swiger said she never knew about the law, which has been on the books since the 1960s, and told several city officials of her intentions, but none of them ever told her she couldn’t hang the ribbons.

In April, she said, she went to the City Council to tell them about her ribbon campaign. Nobody said a word to her then. She even got a call from
someone at City Hall – she won’t say who – asking if they could have a couple of ribbons to hang there.

Swiger didn’t hear anything but support until City Clerk Susan Mooney called recently to say someone had complained that the ribbons were
getting dirty and tattered. Swiger offered to replace them.

“I feel they should remain up. It’s not over,” Swiger said. She was especially sensitive about the issue because Jason had called the day before to say he was headed back to Iraq.

Swiger said Mooney told her the ribbons couldn’t be placed on utility poles, to which Swiger agreed. Swiger said it wasn’t until the next day Mooney called with the bad news: The ribbons were against the law.

Now Swiger is being told she had violated the law from the first day she put the ribbons up. City Manager Jeff Jordan said police and code enforcement officers do enforce the ordinance, though he said it’s not a “high priority.”

The ribbons violate the ordinance, Jordan said, because they make a personal statement. “We probably should have” told Swiger when she first put the ribbons up, Jordan said. “We might have gotten a bit caught up” in emotion as war began, he said.

He encouraged Swiger to continue her ribbon displays, as long as they’re not on town property.

“They can be put in lots of different places. Just put them on private property,” Jordan said. “Don’t put the city in the position to regulate
content on public property.”

Swiger doesn’t think the ribbons are offensive. “That yellow ribbon doesn’t say Republican. It doesn’t say Democrat. It doesn’t say war. It doesn’t say Bush.” What it does say is, “we respect what you’re doing. Hurry home. We’re waiting.”

District 1 Councilor David Jacobs, who represents the area including Swiger’s home, said he is sympathetic to Swiger, but must stick to
the law. “Even though the ribbons are intended to send a positive message, they are still a symbol of personal expression that’s prohibited by city ordinance.”

He said allowing the yellow ribbons puts the city in a bad position if anyone else wants to put up a sign. “Clearly the city has been looking the other way,” Jacobs said. But that will end now, he said.

Swiger stands firm. “I am not going to take those ribbons down,” she said. Further, she wants a change to the city ordinance that will allow the ribbons. She also wants yellow ribbons to be displayed at public buildings and on the “Welcome to South Portland” signs along roads at the city’s boundaries.

District 4 Councilor Chris Bowring has asked the council to discuss the matter at a September workshop. He wants to see if the language could be modified or interpreted to allow the ribbons.

Swiger said the message is important, and helps keep the soldiers motivated and alive. “I think they deserve a little respect.”

Keep dancing, Sally: Struthers shakes it at Ogunquit

Published in the Portland Phoenix

Starting with a rousing "Yee-haw" from the audience, Always . . . Patsy Cline is a romping love affair of a musical, telling the story of one of the country music star’s most obsessed fans, and the unusual friendship that develops between them.

Louise Seger (Sally Struthers) is a Texas-sized woman with Texas-sized hair and a "Texas-sized imagination" who loves to listen to the music of her favorite singer, Patsy Cline (Christa Jackson). She first heard Cline on the "Arthur Godfrey Talent Scouts Show" in 1957 and immediately fell in love with the singer’s voice.

Indeed, Jackson has mastered the twang, squeaks, and near-glottal-stops that made Cline’s singing so unique. But her performance is limited to an impersonation in a staged retelling of a story. Her singing is indeed excellent. And she hits all Cline’s big songs — there are 19 in the show and three as a sort of built-in encore. Yet her character is never truly developed. The only glimpse we really get of Cline’s inner life is in one short letter, the first she ever wrote to Louise, which appears late in the show.

Perhaps this is because the play is "licensed by the family and estate of Patsy Cline," as the program helpfully informs. There is no mention of — not even a cryptic allusion to — Cline’s rocky love life, including two husbands and at least two affairs. The best we get are stand-alone songs about broken hearts and promises, with no explanation that the reason Cline sang them with such feeling was that she identified all too well with the subject matter.

Fortunately, Struthers saves the play from being a flat set of unconnected songs. It is her narration and show-stealing performance that keeps the audience entertained throughout.

This is very different from how many of us know Struthers today, on television raising money for Save the Children. It is a reminder that Struthers won two Emmy Awards — admittedly, the most recent in 1979 — for her role as Archie Bunker’s daughter, Gloria, on TV’s All in the Family.

Here she plays a Southern woman, complete with a garish fringe-shirt like those an editor of mine in Missouri used to wear. Despite her middle-aged girth, Struthers remains remarkably flexible, and uses her entire body to convey her character’s deep emotions, from a celebration of divorce that nearly lifts off the stage to a "Shake, Rattle, and Roll" seated dance performance that must be seen to be believed.

Her stage presence is what makes this play. And though the Oregon native sometimes makes her Texas accent sound like a Dana Carvey impression of President George Bush I, she carries the stereotype of a fawning fan to a new height.

Chancing to meet Cline before a Houston show, Louise steps in and appoints herself Cline’s manager, then chauffeur, hotelier, and chef. She takes personally every aspect of the show, even conducting the band with a spare drumstick to make sure they don’t rush Cline’s soulful singing.

This is not a band that needs conducting. They play a number of characters as well, from a perhaps-they-do-need-a-conductor local backup band, to musicians in the spotlight themselves. All of them, including the steel player whose name is inexplicably omitted from the program, are excellent, neither overpowering nor undersupporting Cline and maintaining a current of energy throughout the show.

Some of that energy should have gone to the lighting crew. The spotlight operator was regularly late illuminating the stars. There was a strange "moonrise" during "Walking After Midnight," apparently because the light wasn’t lined up properly to begin with. And during some of the slow songs, the lights over the band flickered, not only distracting the audience but no doubt making the musicians’ jobs harder.

Struthers, however, needed no extra energy. Her outrageous antics sent both her and Jackson laughing regularly, and interactions with the audience brought everyone into the show.

The popular appeal of Cline’s music is made clear as she sings in Louise’s kitchen late at night: Louise identifies with every word. The audience left feeling like Louise’s reaction had been made manifest 40 years later: "It made me feel so alive."

Always...Patsy Cline
Written by Ted Swindley. Roy M. Rogosin, producing artistic director. With Sally Struthers and Christa Jackson. At the Ogunquit Playhouse, through Aug. 16. Call (207) 646-5511.

BACKSTAGE

• Thanks to the efforts of a lot of people from across the world, and most notably the teens themselves, the Story Quilt performance by the students in the Theater Project’s International Teen Festival went off superbly, melding tales and traditions to honor many cultures. Complete with an Arabic-speaking fox in a Palestinian fable, an overflowing pasta pot in the Italian tale of Strega Nona, and a practical solution for a too-noisy house, the teen actors amused audience members of all ages, including a little boy who added, from the seats, a second chicken sound-effect to the delightful cacophony.

• At Sanford Maine Stage, Rumors, by Neil Simon, opens August 15, detailing the calamitous evening a group of houseguests have, including gunshots, a car crash, and a visit from the police. Call (207) 324-9691 for tickets to the show, which runs through August 30.

British humor: Like the food, a bit dry

Published in the Portland Phoenix

Alan Ayckbourn is one of the funniest living playwrights in Britain. It is, therefore, no surprise that in a theater named after a region the British plundered, his humor doesn’t exactly hit the mark.

Ayckbourn’s play Relatively Speaking, now at the Acadia Repertory Theatre, no doubt has sent thousands of English audiences grasping at their sides and gasping for air.

And yet at nearly every laugh-line, the Acadia Rep audiences were silent. This is not the fault of the playwright, the director, nor even the actors, who, with a stiff English upper lip, kept on and made at least bearable what, elsewhere, would have been an entertaining show.

The problem was in the audience, and in particular the choice of this play for this audience. New Englanders are a genial lot, to be sure, but when faced with a play whose sole stock-in-trade is a cultural reference to somewhere else, we’re not a barrel of laughs.

Acadia Rep has built a strong reputation over the years as a place to see good, solid, fun summer theater. Ayckbourn’s plays have been well received by audiences before, the theater reports. If this year’s customers are like the overly considerate characters in the play, no doubt Relatively Speaking will be, too.

The plot hinges on people who are too polite to say what they mean, and overreach themselves to assume the best, imagining good things where they in fact have no clue what is happening.

A young man (Greg, played by David Blais), in love with a woman he has known less than a month (Ginny, Kimberly J. Forbes), proposes marriage just before she heads off for a weekend out of town. She says she’s going to visit her parents. Despite unmistakable signs that she is having an affair, he decides to surprise her — and them — by arriving unannounced to ask her father for her hand.

But he’s in for a surprise about his hosts’ identities. And they (Philip, played by Fred Robbins, and his wife Sheila played by Fred’s wife Liz) each suspect the other is cheating but are again, too polite to devise a confrontation about it.

Rather than the old-fashioned Yankee directness, the entire play is saturated with British deference. It requires, therefore, an implausibly large suspension of disbelief.

Nobody asks a pair of unknown arrivals who they are; when Ginny tries to tell Greg what’s going on, she doesn’t say, "they’re not my parents," but, rather, "she’s not my mother."

And what must be one of the funniest lines to all Britons is completely dead here: Fully uncertain who he is or why he has appeared in her back garden, Sheila invites Greg to stay for lunch. This invitation is one most British people could identify with, either as reflective of themselves or someone they know who is so proper they might just invite the bus conductor in for tea after a cheery request for a ticket. And it is also a line next to nobody in the US would ever utter to a stranger.

Nonetheless, the cast does well without much help from audience energy. Fred Robbins is an excellent blustering English country squire, his wife Liz is a dutiful Sheila, Forbes is a strong professional young woman with a streak of noblesse oblige, and Blais’s Greg is lovably missing something. Their awkward interactions are clever, and the actors seem to genuinely believe only what the characters "know" at the time.

Perhaps the crowning moment in this play, however, is the slapstick scene change partway through Act 1. Accompanied by the William Tell Overture, three stagehands, dressed as British removal men (that’s "movers") convert a London bedsit into a Home Counties estate garden. It was the first scene change I have ever seen that drew its own applause.

This is not Ayckbourn’s doing, however, but director Ken Stack’s. The playwright himself appears to falter from time to time in the play, resorting to weather as a conversation topic, as if even he couldn’t figure out where to go next.

He offers hints of hilarity, and of failure, including in this funny-but-not-here comedy a moment when Philip starts to laugh at a newspaper item, but then hems and haws his way to a halt. When Sheila asks what it was, he says, "I thought it was amusing, but it wasn’t."

Relatively Speaking
Written by Alan Ayckbourn. Directed by Ken Stack. With David Blais, Kimberly J. Forbes, Fred Robbins, and Liz Robbins. At Acadia Repertory Theatre, Mount Desert Island, through Aug. 10. Call (207) 244-7260.

BACKSTAGE

• This weekend in Brunswick: Frank Wicks’s Soldier, Come Home on Friday ($10; (207) 729-6606 for reservations); teens’ international Story Quilt at the Theater Project, once Friday, twice on Saturday, and, just-added, once on Sunday (pay-what-you-want; (207) 729-8584).

• What’s J-C got this time? Revenge. John-Charles Kelly, a Maine State Music Theatre regular with a Vegas past, brings the Strip to Brunswick August 11. Lynne McGhee, Ed Romanoff, Joyce A. Presutti, and Ray Dumont will share the stage with three theater critics — but not the Phoenix’s. Call (207) 725-8769.

• The Deertrees Theatre Festival in Harrison hits August 14 and 15 with Vanities by Jack Heifner, a female coming-of-age story for the 1960s and ’70s. You may yawn (another coming-of-age tale?), but the off-Broadway hit made loads of folks laugh. Call (207) 583-6747.

Candidates line up for county charter commission

Published in the Current and the American Journal

Nine local residents have put their names in for candidacy for the Cumberland County Charter Commission, which will be elected in November to find ways to improve county government.

Some issues that seem certain to come up in the discussions, no matter whom is elected, are increasing the size of the county’s governing commission, appointing rather than electing certain county officials and consolidating emergency services dispatching.

Seven are running in District 2, representing Baldwin, Cape Elizabeth, Frye Island, Gorham, Scarborough, South Portland, Standish and Westbrook. Voters will choose two.

Shawn Babine is a town councilor in Scarborough who believes “it’s the perfect time and opportunity” to look at “how we can improve all levels of government.” He wants to look at whether the county should have its own taxing authority, rather than sending bills to the towns, which then impose taxes. He wants the town to have a voice. “As Scarborough is growing, we need to become more involved in regional issues,” he said.

James Damicis of Scarborough also is running. He worked on a project 12 years ago at USM’s Muskie School of Public Service that predicted regionalization would have taken place around the year 2000. Formerly with the Planning Decisions company as a consultant for Scarborough’s Growth and Services Committee, Damicis wants to “make county government more efficient.” He also wants to make it “more visible.”

In Aroostook County, people who are asked where they’re from will say “The County,” while here, “they might not even know the county that they’re in,” Damicis said.

David Bourke of South Portland spent 30 years in private industry and plans to advocate for what members of the public say they want from the county during a series of workshops with the charter commission. He said his experience living in other areas of the U.S. could give him valuable ideas on how to do things differently here. “New England is really behind the times when it comes to” regionalization, Bourke said.

Nancy Larsen of South Portland said she has not had a lot of time to look at the charter. A former city councilor and mayor in South Portland, she said she knows that city’s charter very well but did not know the county doesn’t have one.

John McGinty is a Cape Elizabeth town councilor and a member of the county’s budget advisory committee who has expressed reservations in the past about the county’s budget process. “One of the first things on my mind is to make the county more accountable,” McGinty said. He wants there to be more commissioners. Now, “essentially you have two people controlling a $25 million budget.”

Harold Parks of Gorham spent his career working in public administration, including as administrative assistant to the mayor in Westbrook. He wants to regionalize services, including emergency dispatching. “We have these needs and at the same time we have limited resources,” Parks said. A regional view could help meet those needs with less money.

Robert Reynolds of Gorham, a Portland firefighter, said he believes it is time to consider “regionalization or consolidation of services.” He said 495 municipal entities for a million people is too many. At the same time, “I also want to make sure that there’s no degradation of services.” Now, there is too much fragmentation. “Every community acts as if the world stops at the town line,” Reynolds said.

For District 3, representing Bridgton, Brunswick, Casco, Freeport, Gray, Harpswell, Harrison, Naples, New Gloucester, Pownal, Raymond, Sebago, Windham and Yarmouth, there are three candidates, including Thomas Bartell and Lani Swartzentruber, both from Windham.

Bartell, a town councilor, said he wants to continue his involvement in county government, where he has served on the budget advisory committee and is now a trustee for the Civic Center. He wants to look at what other counties do, both in the state and around the nation. “I’m for effective government,” he said.

Lani Swartzentruber is a Portland attorney specializing in corporate charters and bylaws. She wants to do thorough research on the issues involved in a county charter. She supports smaller, more efficient government with fewer regulations but is reluctant to cut government positions in a state that “needs more good jobs.” And though if elected, she herself would be representing people in Brunswick, she disputed the ability of a Brunswick resident to accurately represent the needs of people in Windham, where she lives. “You can’t tell me that someone who lives in Brunswick” knows what’s best for Windham, she said.

Couple sues over bedbugs at hotel

Published in the Current and the American Journal

Richard and Lyn Alleborn of Wayne, Maine, have sued the owners of the South Portland AmeriSuites hotel, claiming that bedbugs ruined their Christmas shopping trip.

It is an incident state health inspectors say has never happened before in Maine.

The Alleborns checked into the hotel on Dec. 21, 2002. And just hours later, they fled the hotel, covered in bites from bedbugs.

Lyn Alleborn had won a stay at the hotel as a prize for doing good work with her employer, State Farm, according to their lawyer, Tracie Adamson.

The suit, filed in Kennebec County Superior Court, names Ocean Properties of Portsmouth, N.H. AmeriSuites immediately addressed and corrected the problem, according to the state.

According to the lawsuit, Richard Alleborn began to itch over much of his body shortly after he got into bed in his room at the AmeriSuites. His wife then saw a bug on her and pinched it on the bedding, causing the blood-engorged pest to burst in a spray of blood on the sheets, the lawsuit says.

“He was bitten all up his legs,” Adamson said. “She had many bites over her hands and wrists,” as well as elsewhere on her body. “Mrs. Alleborn was literally vomiting, she was so horrified,” Adamson said. Some of her bites started to scar as they healed.

The suit seeks payment for medical expenses as well as compensatory damages. “The medical payments are minimal,” Adamson said.

Even Adamson didn’t know that bedbugs actually existed until she heard the Alleborns’ story. Bedbugs normally hide in mattresses and in the walls, but are drawn out by body heat, Adamson said. “They actually suck your blood,” she said.

After the Alleborns left, the hotel staff disposed of the bedding, mattress and box spring and fumigated the entire room, according to a state Bureau of Health report obtained by the American Journal.

The company that conducted the fumigation agreed with hotel staff that “bed bugs were present,” in what a state inspector called an “infestation.”

No adjacent rooms were affected, and the room had been vacant for 20 days before the Alleborns checked in, the report says. By the time the state received a complaint from Lyn Alleborn, on Jan. 7, the problem had been rectified, and an exterminator had verified that multiple insecticide treatments had killed all of the insects, according to the report.

The report says “the hotel has taken both immediate and appropriate actions to remedy the situation.”

After reviewing state health inspection records, “we cannot recall another incident like this,” said Newell Augur, a spokesman for the Department of Human Services.

A duty manager at AmeriSuites said the hotel had done “more than the state asked” to fix the problem, and referred calls to the hotel’s general manager, Michael Siemion, who did not return several phone calls before the American Journal’s deadline.

Adamson plans to ask for a jury trial in the case. She doesn’t expect it to go before a court for at least a year.

Weaving stories

Published in the Portland Phoenix

Twenty teenagers — 18 from Maine and two Palestinians from East Jerusalem — are still hard at work exploring themselves and weaving a Story Quilt, which they will perform at the Theater Project, in Brunswick, next weekend. At any price, it’s a must-see. Even better, it’s pay-what-you-want.

The show is the culmination of the Theater Project’s three-week teen theater camp, which for the past two years was a Shakespeare festival. This year, renamed the International Teen Festival, it took on an international flavor and included instruction by theater professionals from Poland and East Jerusalem, with classes in improvisation, storytelling, dance, and music. Theater Project mainstay Al Miller made the international connections, and fellow TP regular Barbara Truex composed music along the way.

They brought in Khitam Edelbi, a drama teacher with the Palestinian Counseling Center in East Jerusalem. Edelbi, who taught at last year’s teen camp, helps Palestinian teens write, develop, and perform theater pieces about their personal lives in East Jerusalem. Also joining the group in Brunswick was Robert Wyrod, who runs the "We are the World" Theater Company for orphaned teens and homeless adults in Cracow, Poland.

Wyrod was supposed to bring two of his students, as Edelbi did, but the US State Department’s terrorism sentries barred the way, freely allowing two Palestinian teens to come to the US, but preventing two Polish teens from doing the same. (Thanks for the help in Iraq, Poland!)

The 20 teens "get along beautifully," according to the Theater Project’s Frank Wicks. Any potential differences among them are "just no big deal," he said. "They’re having so much fun."

In the process of theater games and other exercises, the show is still in development. "I think they’re just exploring themselves," Wicks said. "They’re playing with ideas of their own personal stories."

Also, Wicks and Miller are looking for host families to sign up to house more international students next summer. Don’t miss the show, which is certain to be as unique a creation as are the people who are dreaming it up even now. "We’ll see what the kids come up with," Wicks said.

The show runs August 8 at 7:30 p.m., and August 9 at 11 a.m. and 7:30 p.m., at the Theater Project, in Brunswick. Call (207) 729-8584 to reserve tickets.

Leaders look out: Beware Election Day

Published in the Portland Phoenix

There are times when loyalty to a higher ideal must surmount loyalty to a leader, and when those "in the know" believe that the people must be saved from themselves. Witness, for example, the politically divided nation in which we dwell: For many dissenters against war and imperialism, against unrestricted police surveillance and ignored freedom of information laws, loyalty to liberty trumps any fealty to President George W. Bush.

They fear losing the foundations on which this country is built. They join a grand (if not conspiracy, then) alignment, to bring down King Dubya. And yet, as Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar warns, the Bush-backing majority (though their numbers are falling), would take their own revenge on any successful conspirators, sinking the teeth of their ballots into the fleshy political careers of those who would gainsay the nation’s leader in a time of crisis.

Julius Caesar, at the Theater at Monmouth through August 22, is the most politically insightful play performed on Maine stages this summer, and it is brilliantly done.

(Enough about the distance. Monmouth is less than 90 minutes from Portland. You’d drive further to a Boston theater. Save time, see great theater, keep the money in Maine. It’s not that far. Really.)

In brand-new seats in the theater’s beautifully ornate surroundings, the trappings of power never seemed so real. This group of professional actors, most handling more than one role in the four plays TAM has running simultaneously, truly understand Shakespeare, his language and his characters.

The street scenes hearken directly back to the days of the Globe Theater, which it is believed opened for the first time with this show in 1599. Plebians among the audience look up at the aristocrats, catcalling and conferring among themselves. This is the raucous populism that made Shakespeare famous in his own time.

Julius Caesar himself (Mark S. Cartier) is excellent as the publicly adored citizen-king, who humbly refuses the crown thrice and arrogantly throws off the warning of a soothsayer (Jonathan Miller) to "beware the ides of March."

Cassius (Joshua Scharback) is also a victim of hubris — a particularly virulent sort — infecting as it does Brutus (Paul L. Coffey) and the rest of the conspirators.

The lessons of how power works are legion in this play. Brutus is vital to the plot because he can get close to Caesar, yet numbers are important for safety. The manipulation of information is clear, as is the flouting of substantive warnings. It all sounds painfully similar to the newspaper headlines, and yet these words are 400 years old.

Brutus issues a warning Bush and his cronies should heed: "The abuse of greatness is when it disjoins remorse from power."

All of the ensemble cast are top-notch, from Portia’s (Adele Bruni) impassioned wifely plea for her husband’s trust to the dream reinterpretation by Decius Brutus (Dennis A. Price). The staging is courageous, adding tableaux where Shakespeare had none, Caesar’s ghost watching the slaughter that follows his death.

The music (some taken from the Gladiator soundtrack), sound effects, and lighting all combine in a full, rich atmosphere that keeps the play moving and its central tensions close about the audience. Violin notes, as in Eyes Wide Shut, up the blood pressure, as sinister words disturb the miasmic air. Lighting illuminates the harshness and desperation. With the cherubim watching from the ceiling, the suspension of disbelief is complete.

Brutus and Cassius play well off each other, and Coffey, playing Brutus, remains in command of his character’s complex mind, switching immediately from the Quisling murderer to a man who can say with only a touch of comic irony, "Publius, good cheer," as a senator cringes in fright.

It is then that Mark Antony (Jeffrey Thomas) comes into his own with grand eloquence and great emotion. Thomas handles triumphantly the most famous speech of the play, his eulogy of Caesar, not just a tribute to a fallen leader but a call to arms. Ripe with scorn and sarcasm, his voice literally dripping with contempt, it is as if Thomas himself will go backstage and bring forth actor Coffey, out of costume and pleading for mercy.

Yet Antony’s motives are not without impure effect. The slaughter that begins as the factions split and mobs roam the streets is, in part, his doing, too. Caesar’s spirit’s most frightening act occurs when the mob seizes a poet who shares a name with a conspirator. Cinna the poet is beaten and carried off, echoing the fates of people like management consultant Asif Iqbal of Rochester, New York. His crime? He shares a name with a suspected Al Qaeda member now held prisoner at Guantanamo Bay. The innocent young professional finds himself now on a government terrorism watch list.

Julius Caesar
Written by William Shakespeare. Directed by David Greenham. With Mark S. Cartier, Paul L. Coffey, Joshua Scharback, and Sally Wood. At the Theater at Monmouth, through Aug. 22. Call (207) 933-9999.

BACKSTAGE

• Check out Maine’s Civil War history on stage with Frank Wicks’ Soldier, Come Home at Brunswick’s First Parish Church, Friday, August 8, at 7:30 p.m. It’s based on letters between Wicks’s great-grandparents, Philip and Mary Pringle, as Philip fought with the Union Army. To reserve the $10 tickets, call (207) 729-6606.

• A reprise of The Food Chain by Nicky Silver raised some good cash toward better seating at the PSC Studio Theater, but they could still use more, so open your wallets or pay with your behinds.

Donations sought for beach wheelchair

Published in the Current and the American Journal

The story of a dutiful son whose car got stuck in the sand on Willard Beach while he was trying to help his mother get into the water has spurred city councilors to ask for donations to help the city buy a beach wheelchair.

William Scully of Beatrice, Neb., whose mother lives in the area, wrote to Dana Anderson, director of parks and recreation, on June 25, to tell his unusual tale and propose a solution to the problem. On a Sunday morning in early June, Scully wrote, he took his mother to Willard Beach to go swimming.

His mother, 85, has arthritis that makes it hard to walk. “It takes her a long time to get to the water’s edge,” Scully wrote. “So in a moment of lunacy I decided to drive the old Volvo onto the beach close to the water.”

His mother safely out and swimming happily, Scully found the car was stuck up to its axles. A tow truck he called also got stuck, and a second tow truck arrived to help.

“With the help of about 20 people digging and a wide-tire F 150 Ford pickup” the car was freed, but Scully doesn’t want to have to do that again.

In the intervening weeks, he has tried to think of a solution, and rather than build an expensive boardwalk for regular wheelchair access, he found a web site, www.beachwheelchair.com, selling a balloon-tire wheelchair made especially for beach use, able to stand up to salt water and sand.

They weigh about 40 pounds and will be used to get disabled people to and from the beach, rather than having one person use it all day, said Tim Gato, aquatics coordinator for the city.

Gato is looking at two models, which will cost between $2,000 and $2,500 delivered. Scully has donated $1,000. He hopes a chair can get here before summer’s end, but if not expects it will be here in plenty of time for next summer.

Councilor Linda Boudreau read Scully’s letter aloud at last week’s council meeting and asked the public for help raising the remainder of the money needed.

“We will essentially be providing handicap access to Willard Beach,” said City Manager Jeff Jordan.

To tell the truth: Opening eyes and hearts

Published in the Portland Phoenix

Tessy Seward and Caitlin Shetterly don’t want to entertain people with the theatrical performances they produce. Instead, they are returning art to its roots, of disturbing, informing, and creating social change.

"We want people to see things that will move them in a fundamental way," says Seward. Their new venture, Winter Harbor Theater Company, has put on two brief runs of the first act of Tony Kushner’s still-unfinished play, Only We Who Guard the Mystery Shall Be Unhappy. Their last showing of this work will be at the St. Lawrence July 30 and 31. It is a powerful show, brilliantly performed.

But it is not Little Me, or Hedwig, or any of the other shows recently found at the St. Lawrence. Only We has a harsher worldview than even the Cast’s festival, delivering a political and humanitarian message while still exploring the inner workings of the human mind.

In it, an angel (Stephen McLaughlin) welcomes first lady Laura Bush (Tavia Lin Gilbert) to one of Mrs. Bush’s most common photo-ops, a reading to a group of schoolchildren.

But these kids are Iraqi children killed by American bombs in the 12 years since the end of Gulf War I. The angel gently flays Laura’s confidence in her husband’s rhetoric, revealing a human heart beneath her loyal chest.

It is powerfully eloquent, and even "changed" Seward’s dad, a marine-hardware store owner in Hancock County and Vietnam veteran nervous about the political bent of his daughter’s new venture.

Shetterly and Seward, neither yet 30, speak with a youthful idealism, tempered by practicality and pain: Winter Harbor was formed in the cab of a U-Haul truck heading from Maine to New York, to retrieve Shetterly’s worldly belongings at the end of a broken relationship in a broken, post-9/11 New York.

The two, best friends in nursery school who hadn’t seen each other in 21 years, quickly forged a commitment to speaking out. Shetterly, daughter of painter Robert, wanted to respond to the constant US bombing of Iraq, even before war broke out. Only We fit the bill.

Seward wants to be "a force for creating some positive change." She wants audiences to leave the theater and "see the world with new eyes," hoping they undergo "an emotional transformation" and become more compassionate.

There is also a hard line: "A time like this calls for drastic measures. It calls for courage and truth-telling," Shetterly says. Their productions will "get people to that vulnerable place where you’re so alive and open emotionally," that life literally flows through your veins, and perhaps your tear ducts.

Seward admits people may turn away before they even get in the door: "It’s the risk of absolutely transforming their life that’s terrifying." She believes something about theater, about being together in a space both public and private, "makes it okay to feel more than you might feel if you were alone."

There are economic challenges involved in this work, but Shetterly points to the success of controversial playwright Langford Wilson. Grants are in the works and a board is forming.

Tough pieces addressing sensitive issues may turn off donors, but they say they won’t sell out. "We’re going to do something that challenges people," Shetterly says. "We refuse to have anybody tell us how to do our thing."

They are starting slowly but steadily, planning a short run of one show in October, and a full run of another next spring. August 7, will see Cosy Sheridan’s one-woman show The Pomegranate Seed at the St. Lawrence for one night only. Addressing appetite, body image, and myth in modern culture, Sheridan tells her own story of learning compassion.

Seward and Shetterly saw it not long ago, and were both in tears for much of the performance, opening themselves the way they want others to open during their productions. Any trepidation the pair have is masked by an iron determination. Echoing her painter father’s message, Shetterly is adamant about one thing in particular: "I will tell the truth."

Only We Who Guard the Mystery Shall Be Unhappy
By Tony Kushner, with Tavia Lin Gilbert and Stephen McLaughlin. Shows at 8 p.m., July 30 and 31, at the St. Lawrence Arts Center. Free. Arrive early and see painter Robert Shetterly’s Portraits of Americans Who Tell The Truth. Call (207) 775-3174.
The Pomegranate Seed
Written and performed by Cosy Sheridan, at 7:30 p.m., Aug. 7, at the St. Lawrence Arts Center. $10. Call (207) 775-3174.

BACKSTAGE

• Michael J. Tobin has done it again. In a move he says has " guaranteed a secure future " for the five-month-old Cocheco Stage Company, he has closed its Dover, NH, home and will perform on various local stages, though with what is unclear. (Deathtrap had two last-minute cast changes, and was canceled in the middle of tech week. A reprise of Players Ring hit Gender Bender, slated to open July 25, won’t be happening either.) He initially blamed the closing on the landlord, but now says he’s choosing to avoid the responsibility of a permanent lease. It’s happened before: In the mid-1990s, Tobin opened and quickly closed the Portsmouth Playhouse, leaving bills unpaid. (He chalks it up to being " young and business-stupid. " ) A second try was the late-1990s MainePlay Productions in Portland. After moving locations because he wouldn’t up ticket prices to cover a rent increase, Tobin eventually left, claiming there was no arts support in Portland.

Fuel trucks kept out of Red Bank

Published in the Current and the American Journal

The South Portland City Council ruled Monday that the Portland International Jetport may expand, but may not truck fuel through the Red Bank neighborhood to get to a planned storage site.

The jetport’s proposal is to relocate private planes based at the jetport from one side of the main runway to the other, offering them space for hangar storage and opening more room for storage of planes only visiting the jetport for short periods.

Presently the roughly 60 private aircraft based at the jetport are parked on a paved area on the north side of the main airport buildings, according to Jeff Monroe, transportation director for the city of Portland. That location is also where visiting planes park, and it’s running out of room.

“We get a lot of people flying in over the summer,” Monroe said. As many as 30 to 40 planes a week are brought in by people who either own or rent vacation homes in Maine, he said.

The jetport wants to use a portion of a 70-acre parcel between the Red Bank neighborhood and the Fore River to allow plane owners to build hangars for indoor aircraft storage. As part of that complex, there would be at least three above-ground fuel tanks holding a total of 60,000 gallons of aviation gas and jet fuel.

To supply the tanks, the jetport had asked for permission to drive small fuel trucks along Western Avenue and Westbrook Street to get to the new area, at least until the planned Jetport Plaza Road is complete.

If that road is not complete by the time the complex is in use, the jetport argued, the only alternative would be to truck fuel across the airport’s main runway.

District Five Councilor Jim Hughes, who represents the area including the jetport and the Red Bank neighborhood, was worried about putting fuel trucks through a densely populated area and successfully lobbied his fellow councilors to limit fuel trucks to the Jetport Plaza Road.

While a timetable for the road’s completion is unclear – it is now just a short spur leading to the parking lot near the Staples store – councilors were confident that the road would be complete before the jetport space was ready. Hughes said the restriction would virtually ensure the road was built in time.

Mayor and District Three Councilor Ralph Baxter said his “worst-case scenario” was trucking fuel across the main runway.

Councilor-at-large Linda Boudreau was also worried about the dangers that could pose, mixing fast-moving aircraft with fuel trucks.

Hughes argued that limiting fuel trucks puts pressure on Portland, which must grant an easement for Jetport Plaza Road before it can be built. He said the restriction would not only improve safety but would bring the political interests of the two cities into alignment to get the road built.

District Two Councilor Thomas Maietta suggested that if the road was not complete, the private planes could taxi from the new space back to the present fueling point, keeping fuel out of the neighborhood and preserving airport safety.

In other airport business, Boudreau also noted that the next meeting of the jetport noise advisory group will be held Sept. 24. A report will be issued before that, and the meeting will discuss the report, she said.