Published in the Current
John Rich of Cape Elizabeth now makes his home in a combination of a summer cottage and former South Portland store building near Two Lights, next door to the sea captain’s house where he spent summers growing up.
“They say you can’t go home again, but I did,” said Rich, who returned to Cape after a successful career as an international newsman and war correspondent.
Before he managed to make it back to Maine, he spent a lifetime exploring the world. It began after he graduated from Bowdoin College in 1939. He had majored in French and had wanted to become a French teacher. His work on the college newspaper, though, led him to take a job with the Kennebec Journal newspaper, moving on a year later to the Portland Press Herald.
When World War II began, Rich was in Maine, not knowing much about the enemy. “I’d never seen a Japanese at the beginning of World War II,” Rich remembered.
The U.S. Navy was no different. They discovered they had very few people who spoke Japanese, “so they started these language schools,” Rich said. He
joined up, training as a future translator and interrogator, learning the basics of Japanese reading, writing and conversation.
He transferred to the Marines and was soon involved in several invasions of Japanese-held Pacific islands, setting the stage for the atomic-bomb attacks on Japan itself.
After the war, Rich landed a job with International News Service, a wire news service owned by the Hearst Corporation. In February 1946, he went back to Japan.
It was a very competitive environment, with three big wire services each working hard to beat the others. After a couple of years, though, it was time for a change. When the Korean War started, he went to work for NBC radio and headed to the war-torn peninsula.
Combat reporting
The medium of radio was new, and he had unfamiliar equipment.
“I carried the first tape recorder in combat,” he said.
Others had carried recording devices, but none of those recordings could be cut and edited into a news broadcast. “They sent me one out from Hollywood,” he said.
Not only rare, the tape equipment was delicate, too. “It was always breaking down,” he said.
When the U.S. Army blew the pontoon bridge across the Han River in Seoul to prevent the Chinese from taking the city, he looked down and found the tape recorder wasn’t running.
“It had 24 tiny batteries that had to be fitted in,” Rich said. He kept the spares warm by holding them under his coat in an inside pocket. As the blast went off, he was still putting in fresh batteries.
“A story I missed,” he said with a wry grin.
As television began, NBC also began broadcasting video, but it took three days for the film to get from Korea to New York, on a propeller plane.
When the film arrived, video editors would cut it and call Rich. His job was to write the most up-to-date news possible, organized as “something that would kind of fit what they had to show,” he said.
In 1962 the Telstar satellite allowed people to see live television from continent to continent.
“I remember the incredible possibility,” Rich said.
TV went color, too. “The technology just took off,” he said. But journalism’s principles remained the same. “You still need reporters, you still need to get the story,” he said.
Looking back
He loved his job. “It was always exciting,” he said. Korea was his first taste of what would become a long career as a war correspondent.
“Everywhere I went, there seemed to be a war,” he said. He was in Asia for the Chinese Civil War and the Korean War, in Berlin during the Congo uprising, in Paris during the Algerian War, and back in Asia for the Vietnam War.
From 1964 to 1974 he was in Vietnam almost all the time.
“Every morning was a new challenge,” he said. “It was kind of overwhelming.”
He loved it, though, and said if he had his life to do over, “I think I’d do it again.”
It is sinking in now, though, that there is a lot of detail he can’t always remember. “It’s amazing how much you forget,” he said.
But in a storage area near his house is a treasure trove of most of the news briefs he wrote for radio, and a large number of photos too.
In his retirement, though, he didn’t forget how much he liked covering war.
“After I retired, the Gulf war came up,” Rich said. He asked his friend Harry Foote, then the owner of the American Journal, for press credentials to go cover the war.
He then headed to Saudi Arabia. He filed a few stories and got to look around the battlefield of a modern war.
“I saw those fires, my God. And that mile of death” – his voice stopped, as he remembered the oil fields aflame and a road destroyed at both ends to stop
Iraqi forces retreating from Kuwait. The trapped tanks and vehicles were then destroyed by U.S. warplanes.
It seemed like a quick fight to a man who had reported on years-long conflicts in Asia.
“I remember feeling, ‘100 hours and we’re not in Baghdad yet,’” Rich said. “I think that we should probably go and finish up in Baghdad.”
Saddam, he said, did a lot of things he should not have done, including inflicting huge atrocities on his own people. But Rich does not lay that entirely at Saddam’s door. “We let him get away with it,” he said.
Thursday, January 23, 2003
Thursday, January 16, 2003
Laughs and lattes: Triple Espresso entertains and energizes
Published in the Portland Phoenix
When Carole Harris, Portland Stage Company’s marketing person, spoke to her counterpart in Albany, NY, after Triple Espresso ran there, Harris was surprised to learn that the Albany theater had to tighten the bolts on the theater’s seats after each night’s performance: Audiences really did laugh that much, Harris was told. And now the wrenches are at work in PSC’s theater, because people in Portland are literally laughing the bolts right out of their chairs.
When Carole Harris, Portland Stage Company’s marketing person, spoke to her counterpart in Albany, NY, after Triple Espresso ran there, Harris was surprised to learn that the Albany theater had to tighten the bolts on the theater’s seats after each night’s performance: Audiences really did laugh that much, Harris was told. And now the wrenches are at work in PSC’s theater, because people in Portland are literally laughing the bolts right out of their chairs.
It’s fitting, because, in many ways, the three-man comedy/variety show, now playing in cities around the US, got some of its earliest beginnings not far from Portland’s stages.
In mid-January, 1975, a young performer arrived at Tony Montanaro’s mime school in South Paris, to spend three weeks learning the basics of mime. While there, Bob Stromberg met Michael Cooper, now a world-traveling mime and maskmaker based in Farmington, and the pair started an act that swept New England schools in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
Stromberg considers that success as the seeds — the coffee beans, if you will — that were ground, blended, heated, and stirred into Triple Espresso. But where he is today, Stromberg said, was “an inconceivable dream” back then.
When, in 1995, Stromberg met again with some old showbiz friends and decided to write a show combining Stromberg’s own physical-comedy skills with the musical and magical talents of his friends, Michael Pearce Donley and Bill Arnold, a show was born. It was a mix of all their skills and showcased each in the narrative structure of three men reminiscing about the shows they did, together and individually, years in the past. It also raised the issues of their own dreams and youthful antics, seen through the wiser eyes of middle age.
The show opened in Minneapolis in 1996 for a six-week run and then went to San Diego, where a blazing run commenced, including an early stretch where every seat sold out for 11 weeks straight. It’s still playing there. Faced with a scheduled run in Florida, the original three, now known among the cast as “the guys,” held a set of hurried auditions for three men to play characters “the guys” had originally based on themselves.
The auditions were tough. To get selected, actors had to induce laughter in the audience least likely to be amused: the men who wrote the show. “If you’re not laughing, it’s not working,” Stromberg said. Actors also had to follow direction well, to get more nuance into the performance and pack the show with intense comic energy.
Now there are about 20 actors trained to play the three roles in Triple Espresso, and Stromberg, who thought he would have tired of the show long ago, continues to discover new material. “We’re not even close to getting bored with it,” he said.
The actors playing the roles at PSC certainly keep things fresh. Peter Breitmayer, Patrick Albanese, and Rob Elk are enjoying playing the roles originally created by Donley, Arnold, and Stromberg, respectively. “Everybody’s consistently wanting the show to be better,” said Breitmayer before an evening performance. Accidents happen during the performances, leading actors to discover new comic moments. “There’s a piece of all of us in the show,” said Albanese.
Their pieces, and those of their colleagues not on Portland’ stage, are amusing audiences here. The performance skills of all three actors are strong. While they perform what may be considered old standards (a magician moving a knot from one rope to another, a lounge singer playing Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven,” or a folk-singer’s ill-fated sing-along with students), the energy and self-awareness are what brings this show its spark.
There are specific highlights, including what must be the most unusual interpretive dance ever performed to classical-style music, a slow-motion slapstick routine to “Chariots of Fire,” and an elaborate shadow-puppet drama. But the audience brings a variable to this show unlike any other. Aside from a couple of members of the audience brought on stage, unsuspecting people are selected each show to play a role in the storyline. The depth of their involvement depends largely on their personalities, and can liven up a variety of scenes.
Elk is wary, though he might not need to be. “I have a thing,” he said. “I never bring a guy up on stage who’s wearing a Hawaiian shirt.” So be warned.
One last thing — the promotional material asks one question over and over: “What did three guys do in four minutes that got them barred from showbiz for life?” I won’t tell you, but it has to do with six pieces of orange paper. You figure it out.
If you don’t catch it this time, or want to see it again, be aware that PSC is talking about bringing the show back — with Bob Stromberg himself as Bobby Bean — in the summer, when the theater is usually dark. Watch this space for updates.
Triple Espresso: a highly caffeinated comedy
Written by Bill Arnold, Michael Pearce Donley, and Bob Stromberg. Directed by William Partlan. With Patrick Albanese, Peter Breitmayer, and Rob Elk. Portland Stage Company, through Jan. 26. Call (207) 774-0465.
Sugarloaf chief slams Cape parents for party
Published in the Current
Two Cape Elizabeth seniors have been suspended from their athletic teams in the wake of New Year’s Eve parties at the Sugarloaf ski area. The night’s events were called “a nightmare” by the local police chief, who criticized Cape Elizabeth parents for their lack of responsibility and concern for their kids.
Colin Malone, 18, a senior and one of two top scorers on the boys basketball team, and a 17-year-old senior on the boys ice hockey team, have been
kicked off their respective squads for violations of school policy and team rules.
A third Cape teen, a 17-year-old male, was the driver of a car involved in an accident near Sugarloaf in the early hours of Jan. 1, in which alcohol was a factor, according to Carrabassett Valley Police Chief Ron Moody. Four Cape teens were passengers in the car. The driver may face unspecified juvenile charges, Moody said.
Jim Ray, Malone’s coach, said Malone was “dismissed from the team” for “training rules violations.” High school Principal Jeff Shedd declined to comment, citing federal laws on student privacy.
Steve Ouellette, the hockey coach, refused to comment on his player’s situation and referred questions to Athletic Administrator Keith Weatherbie. Weatherbie did not return phone calls from the Current.
Malone’s parents declined to comment. The hockey player confirmed that he was off the team for the season, but declined further comment.
Big night for partying
The parties that caused all the trouble took place New Year’s Eve near the Sugarloaf/USA ski area.
Sugarloaf hosts a large New Year’s party each year, including a fireworks display. A Cape teenager who was at Sugarloaf that evening told the Current many of the kids started there, but when the weather turned bad – it was cold with freezing rain – they went back to hotel rooms and condos kids had rented.
“We had a number of Cape Elizabeth students up here,” Moody said.
Between 75 and 100 kids, all between the ages of 14 and 18, he said, “were up here partying and drinking.”
Around 9 p.m., Moody’s department received several noise complaints from occupants of hotel rooms and condos near the parties, which were in a hotel near Sugarloaf’s base and a condominium complex adjoining the ski area.
One Cape teen told the Current the hotel manager wanted to kick some kids out of a room they had rented, but ended up not doing it. When police
responded, they found a big party in progress. “We found a lot of people in the area with liquor and no adult supervision,” Moody said.
Police recovered between 150 and 200 cans and bottles of beer and liquor. Most of the containers were full, Moody said.
As officers rounded up and identified partiers, “parents were attempted to be called,” Moody said. Many parents refused to come up and pick up their children, he said, citing distance and weather. There was freezing rain that night in the Greater Portland area.
“We became the babysitting service for Cape Elizabeth, basically,” Moody said.
Officers focused on breaking up the party, but were able to identify 30 kids, all from Cape Elizabeth. Many of them had nowhere to stay. “They were staying in cars, in stairwells. It was somewhat of a nightmare,” Moody said.
The Cape teen said that many kids did not have their own places to stay, but were expecting to “crash” with friends in their lodgings.
Parents uninformed, irresponsible
When Moody spoke to parents, most of them thought their children did have a place to stay, despite Moody’s insistence that this was untrue.
“I didn’t get a very good response,” he said.
He also was not impressed by the way the party seemed to have been organized. His investigation indicated that 18-year-olds had reserved condos and hotel rooms, and invited as many people as they could up to the mountain. “Everybody was coming up here to party,” Moody said.
He did not find evidence that parents checked out their kids’ plans for the holiday.
“I didn’t think it was very responsible of the parents to let their kids come here without adult supervision,” Moody said.
And despite the bad weather, Moody, himself a parent, expected more concern from Cape parents. “I would hope that their parents would all come up to pick them up,” he said, but his first preference would have been that the parties never happened.
“My hope is that they would have controlled their children,” Moody said. “I don’t think the parents did a very good job” of finding out where their kids were actually staying, or ensuring that there would be supervision.
“They need to research where their children are going.”
Moody said his community, which has only 325 year-round residents, does not usually have this sort of problem. When large groups visit, which is common, “they come with adults or chaperones,” Moody said.
In this case, because parents were not present, the parties were out of control. So was at least one car. A car one Cape teen was driving, with four passengers inside, “went out of the road, hit a snowbank and tore off the front tire,” Moody said.
“We don’t want to end up with a Tukey’s Bridge situation,” Moody said, referring to a Jan. 13, 2002, accident in which three teenagers died as a result of a drunk teen driver.
“I just think (Cape parents) need to be a little bit more parental.”
Publicity a problem
The school department was unhappy about the press the incident received, particularly the naming of Malone. Superintendent Tom Forcella said the publication of Malone’s name in both the Current and the Portland Press Herald was “unprofessional.”
Both newspapers reported statements from coach Ray, who told reporters and his team that Malone, the team’s second-leading scorer, was off the team because he violated the school’s alcohol policy at Sugarlof over New Year’s.
Ray himself may be regretting speaking publicly. “We were really not looking for the publicity,” he told the Current. “(Malone) has been terribly hurt by this. It’s hurt the fans, the team.”
The Cape School Board met in an hour-long executive session Tuesday with Malone’s parents. The Malones declined to comment after the executive session ended.
A Cape parent who was in the room but was asked to leave when the executive session began expressed frustration that the board had the power to exclude the public from its discussions. He was concerned that the athletes had been kicked off their teams, and had expected “a community meeting” with a lot of adults present to discuss the issue. He was the only member of the public to attend the meeting.
Two Cape Elizabeth seniors have been suspended from their athletic teams in the wake of New Year’s Eve parties at the Sugarloaf ski area. The night’s events were called “a nightmare” by the local police chief, who criticized Cape Elizabeth parents for their lack of responsibility and concern for their kids.
Colin Malone, 18, a senior and one of two top scorers on the boys basketball team, and a 17-year-old senior on the boys ice hockey team, have been
kicked off their respective squads for violations of school policy and team rules.
A third Cape teen, a 17-year-old male, was the driver of a car involved in an accident near Sugarloaf in the early hours of Jan. 1, in which alcohol was a factor, according to Carrabassett Valley Police Chief Ron Moody. Four Cape teens were passengers in the car. The driver may face unspecified juvenile charges, Moody said.
Jim Ray, Malone’s coach, said Malone was “dismissed from the team” for “training rules violations.” High school Principal Jeff Shedd declined to comment, citing federal laws on student privacy.
Steve Ouellette, the hockey coach, refused to comment on his player’s situation and referred questions to Athletic Administrator Keith Weatherbie. Weatherbie did not return phone calls from the Current.
Malone’s parents declined to comment. The hockey player confirmed that he was off the team for the season, but declined further comment.
Big night for partying
The parties that caused all the trouble took place New Year’s Eve near the Sugarloaf/USA ski area.
Sugarloaf hosts a large New Year’s party each year, including a fireworks display. A Cape teenager who was at Sugarloaf that evening told the Current many of the kids started there, but when the weather turned bad – it was cold with freezing rain – they went back to hotel rooms and condos kids had rented.
“We had a number of Cape Elizabeth students up here,” Moody said.
Between 75 and 100 kids, all between the ages of 14 and 18, he said, “were up here partying and drinking.”
Around 9 p.m., Moody’s department received several noise complaints from occupants of hotel rooms and condos near the parties, which were in a hotel near Sugarloaf’s base and a condominium complex adjoining the ski area.
One Cape teen told the Current the hotel manager wanted to kick some kids out of a room they had rented, but ended up not doing it. When police
responded, they found a big party in progress. “We found a lot of people in the area with liquor and no adult supervision,” Moody said.
Police recovered between 150 and 200 cans and bottles of beer and liquor. Most of the containers were full, Moody said.
As officers rounded up and identified partiers, “parents were attempted to be called,” Moody said. Many parents refused to come up and pick up their children, he said, citing distance and weather. There was freezing rain that night in the Greater Portland area.
“We became the babysitting service for Cape Elizabeth, basically,” Moody said.
Officers focused on breaking up the party, but were able to identify 30 kids, all from Cape Elizabeth. Many of them had nowhere to stay. “They were staying in cars, in stairwells. It was somewhat of a nightmare,” Moody said.
The Cape teen said that many kids did not have their own places to stay, but were expecting to “crash” with friends in their lodgings.
Parents uninformed, irresponsible
When Moody spoke to parents, most of them thought their children did have a place to stay, despite Moody’s insistence that this was untrue.
“I didn’t get a very good response,” he said.
He also was not impressed by the way the party seemed to have been organized. His investigation indicated that 18-year-olds had reserved condos and hotel rooms, and invited as many people as they could up to the mountain. “Everybody was coming up here to party,” Moody said.
He did not find evidence that parents checked out their kids’ plans for the holiday.
“I didn’t think it was very responsible of the parents to let their kids come here without adult supervision,” Moody said.
And despite the bad weather, Moody, himself a parent, expected more concern from Cape parents. “I would hope that their parents would all come up to pick them up,” he said, but his first preference would have been that the parties never happened.
“My hope is that they would have controlled their children,” Moody said. “I don’t think the parents did a very good job” of finding out where their kids were actually staying, or ensuring that there would be supervision.
“They need to research where their children are going.”
Moody said his community, which has only 325 year-round residents, does not usually have this sort of problem. When large groups visit, which is common, “they come with adults or chaperones,” Moody said.
In this case, because parents were not present, the parties were out of control. So was at least one car. A car one Cape teen was driving, with four passengers inside, “went out of the road, hit a snowbank and tore off the front tire,” Moody said.
“We don’t want to end up with a Tukey’s Bridge situation,” Moody said, referring to a Jan. 13, 2002, accident in which three teenagers died as a result of a drunk teen driver.
“I just think (Cape parents) need to be a little bit more parental.”
Publicity a problem
The school department was unhappy about the press the incident received, particularly the naming of Malone. Superintendent Tom Forcella said the publication of Malone’s name in both the Current and the Portland Press Herald was “unprofessional.”
Both newspapers reported statements from coach Ray, who told reporters and his team that Malone, the team’s second-leading scorer, was off the team because he violated the school’s alcohol policy at Sugarlof over New Year’s.
Ray himself may be regretting speaking publicly. “We were really not looking for the publicity,” he told the Current. “(Malone) has been terribly hurt by this. It’s hurt the fans, the team.”
The Cape School Board met in an hour-long executive session Tuesday with Malone’s parents. The Malones declined to comment after the executive session ended.
A Cape parent who was in the room but was asked to leave when the executive session began expressed frustration that the board had the power to exclude the public from its discussions. He was concerned that the athletes had been kicked off their teams, and had expected “a community meeting” with a lot of adults present to discuss the issue. He was the only member of the public to attend the meeting.
Cape could delay school project
Published in the Current; co-written with Kate Irish Collins
The Cape Town Council is questioning whether a $9.2 million renovation of the high school and Pond Cove School should be delayed until the economy improves.
With the economy tight, and deficits mounting at the state level, schools are expecting a reduction in aid to education.
“This could not come at a worse time financially when we are expecting further reductions in state aid,” Council Finance Chairman Mary Ann Lynch told the Current in an interview.
But Lynch, who is also the council liaison to the school building committee, said there is no question in her mind that the kindergarten should be moved to Pond Cove School.
“We do need to do that at some point,” Lynch said.
“In the end the School Board may be faced with the question of what is more important – the buildings or programs,” Lynch said. “While there is no question of need, the council has to ask: Would it be more responsible to wait awhile?”
The Town Council and School Board are scheduled to hold a joint workshop on Tuesday, Jan. 21, at 7:30 p.m., in the new Community Center to discuss the renovation project.
Of the $9.2 million, the School Board proposes to spend $1.1 million for a one-story, five-classroom expansion at Pond Cove and $7.7 million renovating the aging high school. The idea is to move the kindergarten out of the high school and into Pond Cove and renovate the high school, including new science labs, an expanded cafeteria, a new gym floor, new roofing and upgrades to the mechanical and electrical systems.
Next Tuesday’s meeting is the first formal report to the council on the scope and goals of the school building projects.
“The focus of the meeting is going to be on the whys,” said Marie Prager, who is both chairman of the School Board and chairman of the building committee.
The goal of the meeting, Prager said, is to “get the town councilors on board” and to show them that “these projects need to be done.”
Lynch said there is still some time between when the council has to decide whether to fund one or both school projects or whether to send the issue out to referendum.
“We do have some time to try to make the most responsible decision for the town and for the kids,” she said. “It will be interesting to see how the other councilors react and a lot of what may happen will depend on what the School Board asks of us.”
At a School Board meeting held Jan. 14, Prager said she would not address specifics of a timetable with the council next week. “We don’t want to push
them,” she said. However, she added, “in the fall of 2004, we need the kindergartners out of the high school, one way or another. If a building isn’t complete by then, it could mean portable classrooms.”
“We need their support before we take it to the community,” Prager said of the council.
Council Chairman Jack Roberts said in an interview that there is a lot of concern on the part of councilors about just how badly the town is going to be hit with reductions in state aid.
“It would be difficult to take on new debt, but it would be premature to say the project is dead in the water. I think it’s more an issue of timing,” Roberts said.
“The meeting with the School Board is obviously an opportunity for them to present the project to the council. An actual decision is still ahead of us, but
it will be based on the overall need and the consequences if we don’t take action,” Roberts added.
Town Manager Mike McGovern said, “I think there are two questions from the council’s point of view.” One is whether the projects need to be done and the other, he said, is when.
At the council’s regular monthly meeting on Monday, McGovern presented a financial benchmark study of where the town stands in overall spending against 50 other towns that responded to a survey conducted by the Maine Municipal Association.
The study showed that Cape is number one in educational spending and in spending on parks and recreation.
“One of the council’s goals was to benchmark our costs with other communities around the state. The study was an attempt to evaluate areas for possible spending reductions,” McGovern said after the meeting. The study also showed that Cape has among the highest property tax burden on individuals in the state partly because the town has virtually no commercial base.
The Cape Town Council is questioning whether a $9.2 million renovation of the high school and Pond Cove School should be delayed until the economy improves.
With the economy tight, and deficits mounting at the state level, schools are expecting a reduction in aid to education.
“This could not come at a worse time financially when we are expecting further reductions in state aid,” Council Finance Chairman Mary Ann Lynch told the Current in an interview.
But Lynch, who is also the council liaison to the school building committee, said there is no question in her mind that the kindergarten should be moved to Pond Cove School.
“We do need to do that at some point,” Lynch said.
“In the end the School Board may be faced with the question of what is more important – the buildings or programs,” Lynch said. “While there is no question of need, the council has to ask: Would it be more responsible to wait awhile?”
The Town Council and School Board are scheduled to hold a joint workshop on Tuesday, Jan. 21, at 7:30 p.m., in the new Community Center to discuss the renovation project.
Of the $9.2 million, the School Board proposes to spend $1.1 million for a one-story, five-classroom expansion at Pond Cove and $7.7 million renovating the aging high school. The idea is to move the kindergarten out of the high school and into Pond Cove and renovate the high school, including new science labs, an expanded cafeteria, a new gym floor, new roofing and upgrades to the mechanical and electrical systems.
Next Tuesday’s meeting is the first formal report to the council on the scope and goals of the school building projects.
“The focus of the meeting is going to be on the whys,” said Marie Prager, who is both chairman of the School Board and chairman of the building committee.
The goal of the meeting, Prager said, is to “get the town councilors on board” and to show them that “these projects need to be done.”
Lynch said there is still some time between when the council has to decide whether to fund one or both school projects or whether to send the issue out to referendum.
“We do have some time to try to make the most responsible decision for the town and for the kids,” she said. “It will be interesting to see how the other councilors react and a lot of what may happen will depend on what the School Board asks of us.”
At a School Board meeting held Jan. 14, Prager said she would not address specifics of a timetable with the council next week. “We don’t want to push
them,” she said. However, she added, “in the fall of 2004, we need the kindergartners out of the high school, one way or another. If a building isn’t complete by then, it could mean portable classrooms.”
“We need their support before we take it to the community,” Prager said of the council.
Council Chairman Jack Roberts said in an interview that there is a lot of concern on the part of councilors about just how badly the town is going to be hit with reductions in state aid.
“It would be difficult to take on new debt, but it would be premature to say the project is dead in the water. I think it’s more an issue of timing,” Roberts said.
“The meeting with the School Board is obviously an opportunity for them to present the project to the council. An actual decision is still ahead of us, but
it will be based on the overall need and the consequences if we don’t take action,” Roberts added.
Town Manager Mike McGovern said, “I think there are two questions from the council’s point of view.” One is whether the projects need to be done and the other, he said, is when.
At the council’s regular monthly meeting on Monday, McGovern presented a financial benchmark study of where the town stands in overall spending against 50 other towns that responded to a survey conducted by the Maine Municipal Association.
The study showed that Cape is number one in educational spending and in spending on parks and recreation.
“One of the council’s goals was to benchmark our costs with other communities around the state. The study was an attempt to evaluate areas for possible spending reductions,” McGovern said after the meeting. The study also showed that Cape has among the highest property tax burden on individuals in the state partly because the town has virtually no commercial base.
Thursday, January 9, 2003
Diversity university - Idea: Alliance for Cultural Theater
Published in the Portland Phoenix
Maine’s thriving theater community lacks one element: ethnic diversity. In addition to Native Americans, Maine has a growing community of non-whites, including Somalis, Sudanese, Cambodians and other Africans and Asians, as well as a fair few Hispanics.
Maine’s thriving theater community lacks one element: ethnic diversity. In addition to Native Americans, Maine has a growing community of non-whites, including Somalis, Sudanese, Cambodians and other Africans and Asians, as well as a fair few Hispanics.
The problem: There is no forum to learn more. I go to Center for Cultural Exchange events and feel like a spectator: Amazingly talented artists and community members show up, do their thing and then — we all go home. Unless you’re a student in the city’s schools, there is no opportunity to really understand the context in which our immigrant neighbors view performance, and the role it plays in their lives.
And while performing arts are different things to different cultures, I still think there is a way to provide context and storytelling around the traditional performing arts of a culture.
An ongoing, working theater company could explore the experience of being a member of a minority group in Maine and in the US, and handle challenging topics of life, work, and politics, much in the way Mbongeni Ngema’s South African story Sarafina! did (and does).
Name: Alliance for Cultural Theater. (Not only concise, it makes a good acronym.)
Funding: ACT would have to be a registered nonprofit organization to take maximum advantage of funding options. A quick Internet search using the terms “Maine theater arts funding” turns up a large number of potential funding sources.
Taking only donors targeting both arts and ethnic diversity, and with recent donations to ethnic and theater projects in Maine, results in a short list of likely candidates: Maine Arts Commission, Libra Foundation, Stephen and Tabitha King Foundation, LL Bean’s charitable foundation (limited to projects in Portland, Freeport, Brunswick, and Lewiston), and FleetBoston Financial Foundation. Other possible donors could be the Maine Community Foundation and the Morton-Kelly Charitable Trust.
Location: There are two professional-grade stages ripe for this exact type of project: the St. Lawrence Arts and Community Center on Munjoy Hill and the Portland Performing Arts Center on Forest Avenue, owned and managed by the Portland Stage Company.
“It would be totally possible, not even in a hypothetical sense,” says Deirdre Nice of the St. Lawrence. “It would be nice if something like that did happen. Certainly the St. Lawrence would be very welcoming to this sort of group.”
PSC Artistic Director Anita Stewart is welcoming, but concerned about the authenticity of the project. “I’d be very leery of getting involved . . . if I felt we were colonizing,” Stewart says. She suggests assembling a group of artists of different ethnicities and cultural backgrounds, and seeing what sprung from that gathering.
Building connections between people and between communities, she said, would be very valuable. “There are not relationships” right now, Stewart says. Maine’s professional theater community has a lot to learn as well. “I should know who the Somali artists in our community are, and I don’t,” she says.
Leadership: Finding a project organizer was the big challenge identified by most people interviewed about the idea of ACT. Several names came up as possible leads, but none of the people could be contacted by deadline time. Portland High School’s theater program was mentioned specifically as a possible location to begin looking for potential leaders.
“I think whoever it is wouldn’t necessarily need to have a lot of experience in diversity issues to begin with, because there are a lot of resources they could tap into,” says Stacy Begin, managing director of the Children’s Theatre of Maine, which has launched a well-received Diversity Series exploring issues of race and ethnicity in Maine.
Value: This part was the easiest to come by. Not only is multiculturalism something of a buzzword these days, but everyone I spoke to shared some measure of desire to learn more about the immigrant experience in Maine.
Attendance: Most attendees at the CTM Diversity Series are white, Begin says, but others are, she said, “coming to see if we got it right.” The series also puts on matinees for local schools. Students from Reiche came and watched The Diary of Anne Frank not long ago, with results that surprised and pleased Begin: “The kids who are immigrants could really, really relate.” It is that sort of cross-cultural dynamic that ACT could build on.
Overall possibility: “It can be done. You just have to be — as we found out — willing to go the extra mile,” Begin says. Promotional materials and casting-call notices must be translated into different languages and posted in gathering spots for different ethnic communities.
Credibility is also an issue. “It’s going to take a while, because you’re going to have to win the trust of the immigrant community,” Begin says. The Center for Cultural Exchange has a lot of connections and resources that could be very useful in that effort, she says.
If such a theater company did grow from within the immigrant communities in Maine, Begin says, she would be especially fascinated to see what they made of their group. “What an education for all of us.”
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