Join the hunt: Chase away lions, wherever they be

Published in the Portland Phoenix

The future of Maine theater is here. The people in Lewiston still haven’t put their Somali neighbors’ experiences on stage, but the Children’s Theatre of Maine has. Lion Hunting on Munjoy Hill is the most important, relevant play on Maine stages this season, a brilliant show that all Mainers should see, the better to understand ourselves and our neighbors, both new and old.

Within the confines of a simple set combining a market, Congress Street, and the Portland Observatory, Portland playwright John Urquhart crystallizes the immigrant experience in Maine, sharply portraying harassment by local teens, police insensitivity and recalcitrance, proud and strong immigrants, overbearing social-service workers, lost dreams, and identity crisis. It is a world white Maine too rarely sees, and often prefers to ignore.

Urquhart based the script on interviews conducted with Portland’s immigrants and lays out their lives in strong, vibrant characters. The actors bring their own experiences to the roles, making them uniquely authentic and powerful, even beyond their clear talents. And the simplicities required by children’s theater do not preclude deep, layered meanings that are great for parent-child conversation.

There are warning bells clanging loudly here. In this play, Portland’s cops are shown as do-nothing buffoons, complete with red clown-noses, who have no desire or ability to help the most vulnerable Portlanders. Social service workers are exposed as dithering do-gooders who want to mold kids into a sad American " ideal. "

Immigrants’ own contradictions are also put on display, from the frustration of Long (Hue Edwards) with her mother’s refusal to label products in English to attract tourist buyers, to the false, but lucrative, American patriotism of Ivan, the Russian street vendor (Eli Doucette).

Small vignettes illuminate other aspects of immigrant life, showing the hardships of interracial puppy love and the sacrifices immigrants must make, leaving respected professions to become housecleaners. These are real: Ask the woman who runs the Vientiane Market what she used to do for work in Bangkok.

This play should open lines of dialogue throughout the city, and open eyes in every neighborhood in Maine. Even a benign lack of knowledge of other cultures can be painful for newcomers to bear. An innocent child’s question, " Where are you from? " turns into a geography lesson, complete with world map. And " What is that ‘S’ on your shirt? " becomes a confession of immigrant vulnerability, because, as the response instructs, " Everyone knows who Superman is. "

Not Asad, the Somali boy who arrived two weeks ago and is played powerfully by 11-year-old Somali-born Mohamed Abdirahman, cast just three weeks before the show opened. CTM Managing Director Stacy Begin said the challenge of finding actors who met the show’s ethnic requirements was not small.

It took weeks to find Mohamed’s family, and, even then, the two weeks of explaining and negotiating had to go through an interpreter. Cultural mores prevented his sister from performing by his side.

The whole casting process took a hurried three months for this play, as contrasted with the usual seasonal auditions casting three or four shows in one weekend. Even so, CMT couldn’t find a Cambodian girl, so they changed two characters to be Vietnamese. And they couldn’t find a Russian teenager, picking instead an Anglo teen, Doucette, with an excellent Russian accent. " I hope it will encourage other kids to (audition), " Begin said.

It should — a recent show’s audience included a smattering of ethnic backgrounds, though, as the play points out, even native-born Americans call themselves something else. Danny (Jared Mongeau) is Irish, but it is the immigrants who worry most about identity, and have dreams far removed from those of their US-born friends.

When violence strikes, the immigrants bond together to make it right, though still cowed by their newness in town. It takes Asad, who wants to help but knows he can’t take on bully white teens alone, to come up with the idea. " Superman only helps white people. We need another superhero on Munjoy Hill, " Asad says. He remembers a time, before Somalia was torn apart by war, when villagers would have to protect themselves against lions by repeatedly scaring them away.

He teaches the kids, who come into their jubilant and powerful own with this task, how to hunt lions. They dress up in hilariously cute costumes and race about the theater empowered, yelling " hunt! hunt! hunt! " until their unity and strength drive away the bullies. But even after success, Asad is wary: " Lions always come back. "

Lion Hunting on Munjoy Hill
Written by John Urquhart. Directed by Pamela DiPasquale. With Mohamed Abdirahman, Jared Mongeau, Catherine Wallace, and Hue Edwards. At the Children’s Theatre of Maine, through April 6. Call (207) 878-2774.

BACKSTAGE

• The free workshop showing of Tim Rubel’s Eggs Over Eric just wound up. A longish one-act with strong interaction and dialogue and excellent emotional moments, it has been entered in PSC’s Clauder competition.

• Michael Tobin, formerly at MainePlay Productions, has started Cocheco Stage Company in Dover, New Hampshire, in what was the Edwin Booth Theater. Shows are already under way, and a full summer season is planned. Watch this space for more.

• Theater in crisis: You can help prevent the next casualty in Maine’s tough theater business from being the Oddfellow Theater in Buckfield. Visit www.oddfellow.com to keep this lively operation going, and get John Baldacci to help, too.

From the stagefront lines: Maine theater folk react to war

Published in the Portland Phoenix

As life for nations on the world stage gets more complicated, and as we get more scenes from the Iraqi theater of military operations, it has become clear how much thespian language ties in to everyday life, how tightly linked life and theater are.

At Cocheco Stage Company, in Dover, New Hampshire, Michael Tobin reports that he got some calls to cancel reservations and others to confirm the show was still on, after war broke out. " One woman challenged me with, ‘How can you perform a show when we have men and women fighting a war, risking their lives to save ours?’ " Tobin says. His reply? " It’s a matter of emotional survival " in the face of non-stop war coverage and in-our-faces violence. Attendance was " near capacity " even when the war was just beginning, which he attributed to the audience’s need to " escape. "

Tobin and Michael Miclon, at the Oddfellow Theater in Buckfield, agree that they want to provide lighter shows just now. Tobin said he would have changed his scheduled show if it had been a heavy one, and Miclon said the theater’s philosophy is to bring people together for laughter and joy, even in hard times.

Actors, too, need their escape. " It’s nice to have something to do to stop sitting in front of the TV, " says Craig Bowden, who is rehearsing for the upcoming Mad Horse show Suburban Motel. He sees hope in this time of turmoil. " There’s going to be a big change in the way the world is because of these events, " he says. " Maybe people will get motivated to take advantage of the freedoms that we have. "

The freedoms to speak, to act, and to assemble are all crucial to a lively theater scene, and are constitutional guarantees that will only continue to exist if defended.

Bowden warns that the role of theater in that changed world may change, too. He took heart that the actors at the Academy Awards ceremony " were sort of humbled, brought back down to reality. " That perspective is important for actors, who both create and reflect reality while onstage. " There’s nothing more real than war, " Bowden says.

Two other Maine groups are going the other way, bringing the reality of war to the stage. Two Lights Theatre Ensemble has submitted La Promise to the New York International Fringe Festival. It was performed at the St. Lawrence in September, 2002, as a thematic anniversary piece for September 11. The question posed by French playwright Xavier Durringer is, " What is just, in times of war? "

It is the story of simple villagers who have their village destroyed by war, and their women raped and people killed. The war changes fighters, too. Zeck was a loving fiancé before he went off to the front. When he returns, he is faced with his bride’s pregnancy, the child conceived by an enemy rapist. The play looks at the role of non-violence in war time and shows the complexities of victim and tormentor within one heart.

Without taking sides, La Promise explores what war means for humans, rather than the video game now on television, where we can see a missile-eye-view of a bunker containing, we are told " 200 Iraqi paramilitaries " moments before its destruction in a much-heralded US " successful strike. " Those 200 people inside, paramilitaries or not, have mothers and fathers, too.

It is to his forefathers that Frank Wicks has turned to create Soldier, Come Home!, a " readers’ theater " piece based on the letters between his great-grandfather, a Union soldier in the Civil War serving in Grant’s VI Army Corps, and his wife back home in Pennsylvania. Preserved in a shoebox, the letters open to a world of war closely paralleling today’s events.

Soldiers far from home sent letters regularly, supplying loved ones with fresh evidence that their father, brother, son or husband had survived another day. And yet the telegraph allowed instant communications of news, letting Wicks’s great-grandfather cheer for the success of the siege of Vicksburg just a day later, despite a distance of hundreds of miles.

Wicks had worked on Soldier off-and-on for 15 years, but was moved to finish it by the events of September 11. Now he wants to perform the play, which has had one-time productions at several locations and continues to tour as interest arises.

" I wish we could be doing this play immediately, " Wicks says. He wants the play to have a full run somewhere, but isn’t sure where or when that might happen.

Now could be the time. The letters have been distilled into the " nugget " of truth and meaning in each, making them more like the dense-but-brief emails now flashing from military bases in the Middle East to homes in Maine and throughout the nation.

Wicks said the letters offer a glimpse at the difficult answers to questions nobody should have to ask: " What do you write when you’re separated? What do you write when you start to worry? "

Cape and S.P. in the Civil War

Published in the Current

Paul Ledman is, in one sense, a strange person to have completed a history of Cape Elizabeth and South Portland during the Civil War. Born and raised in New York City, he has a background in geology and law. When he moved to Maine a few years ago, he got certified to teach science and social studies.

He is now the advanced placement U.S. history teacher at Scarborough High School and is taking history classes at the University of New Hampshire. As part of those classes, he became interested in what is called “quantitative history,” or history based in data and records compiled over time, like census data.

“You could use it as a tool to learn things you may not see” in personal records like letters or even old newspaper reports.

He wanted to “take a town and look at how that town responded to war,” Ledman said. He’s a Cape resident, so he picked his own town. He will be speaking about the results and his book, “A Maine town responds: Cape Elizabeth and South Portland in the Civil War,” at the Cape Elizabeth Historical Preservation Society meeting April 7, at 7:30 p.m., in the meeting room at Thomas Memorial Library.

Using computer databases, he compared the now-public 19th century census data for Cape Elizabeth with the roster of Cape residents who served in the Civil War.

He looked at how enlistments in the Union Army changed as the war progressed and also looked at the socioeconomic data indicating how different groups in town responded to the pressures of war.

In the South Portland City Hall boiler room, Ledman found original documents and photos from before the two towns separated.

“This stuff is incredible,” he said. One of the things that makes the story of Civil War enlistments interesting is that “at that time you could buy your way out of service” with the military, Ledman said. Rich people did not have to serve, but could choose to.

The book tracks the fortunes of the war and the role of Cape residents in it. A young man from Cape was killed at Gettysburg, Ledman said. And Scott Dyer Jordan served on a gunboat on the Mississippi River.

Letters home from those men and other soldiers “give you a human side to the war,” which is enhanced by the data gathering, Ledman said.

Reports from soldiers or newspapers about changing fortunes of war resulted in changes in enlistments, Ledman said. If things were going well, more people signed up. As the war faltered, so did recruiting.

National politics played in as well. After the Emancipation Proclamation, election results show a change of opinion in Cape. “A lot of sentiment turned against Lincoln when he made it about abolition,” Ledman said.

Also, Ledman found some early differences between the areas of town that are now Cape and South Portland. They weren’t as different as they became by the time the towns split in 1895, but farms were smaller in South Portland and there were more small-business people, Ledman said.

Trash costs boost Cape budget

Published in the Current

Citing higher-than-expected waste disposal fees, fuel prices and inflation rates, Cape Elizabeth Town Manager Mike McGovern told the Town Council Monday that their request for a 2 percent tax increase cap was too small, and asked for more for both the town and the schools.

He had previously presented a budget that raised taxes 1.7 percent, but that was based on an assumption of $115 per ton for trash disposal, already an increase over this year’s $110 per ton. The total spending in that budget was up $83,176.

Before Monday’s workshop council meeting, McGovern met with Regional Waste Systems Manager Chuck Foshay, who told him to expect the price to be more like $128 per ton, resulting in additional cost of $46,800 to the town.

“Half the municipal budget increase is already going to extra dumping fees,” McGovern said.

He expressed serious concern that much-needed infrastructure maintenance was left out of the budget. “A smaller tax increase might be preferable,” he said, but asked, “at what cost?”

Cutting things now will make it even worse in the future, he said. “There aren’t going to be any chances for reinstatements” in the next few years. “It really worries me,” he said.

He proposed a municipal budget increase of 2.25 percent, adding $77,000 back into the budget. Much of that would cover RWS fees, and the rest would restore the town’s hazardous materials collection.

Leaving out the hazardous materials money could result in environmental damage from illegal dumping in town, McGovern said. A further $15,000 would be “in play to go somewhere into the system,” if unforeseen expenses arise, he said.

McGovern also went to bat for the School Board, which has approved a budget with a 2.5 percent tax increase.

The school budget is $61,000 above where councilors had asked for. “It’s not really all that much money,” McGovern said.

“Is it realistic to adopt a school budget that is 1 percent less than inflation?” McGovern asked councilors.

The impact of inflation, reduced debt costs, future space needs and school enrollment all need careful consideration, McGovern told the councilors, as many members of the School Board listened from the audience.

There remains a need for kindergarten space, as well as “a significant issue with the aging of the high school,” he said.

Several members of the public also spoke. Three encouraged increased fiscal restraint, and one targeted the county budget as a particular problem.

“I think the spending is way out of control,” said Herbert Dennison. He urged an overall 3 percent decrease in town spending.

Gerald Sherry, a former teacher, told councilors many people in town do not have the proper stickers required for access to the town dump. McGovern later agreed, telling the council he was one of those people.

Patrick Babcock told the council he supported reinstating the hazardous waste collection, but remained concerned about the elimination of DARE, which he called “the only program, I believe, that addresses the issue of substance abuse in the Cape Elizabeth school system.” In a town that has a tendency to overlook the problems its children have with drugs and alcohol, he said canceling DARE was sending the wrong message to children and parents.

Superintendent Tom Forcella and School Board Finance Chairman Elaine Moloney also spoke, saying the schools had cut quite a bit and tried to be “creative” with how money was spent. Forcella defended additional school spending to help marginal students graduate from high school, saying other towns are worse off already.

“In some of those towns, 50, 60, 70 percent of kids just aren’t going to graduate from high school,” he said. Cape has projected that 15 percent of its students won’t graduate from high school without additional help.

Moloney said she is concerned about the long-term impact of low school funding. “Treading water,” she said, is not what the schools want to be doing. She also urged council support of the school building projects.

“You can delay capital improvement, but it never really goes away,” she said.

Susan Spagnola spoke “on behalf of the children,” and asked councilors to approve the schools’ budget request. When coming up with the 2 percent cap, she asked, “did you take into account the quality of education?”

She acknowledged the tough budget times, but said, “this does not mean we should abandon the needs of our children.”

The council will hold workshops on various parts of the budget April 2 and 7, at 7:30 p.m., and April 17, at 6 p.m., to accommodate people who no longer drive at night. The School Board will present its budget April 28 at 7:30 p.m.

Fifth-graders write to local serviceman

Published in the Current

Students in Sally Connolly’s fifth-grade class at Cape Elizabeth Middle School are writing letters to Senior Airman Matt Janson, a 2000 graduate of CEHS now serving in Qatar with the Air Force.

“I think it’s nice that he went,” said one member of the class. “I think he’s being really brave,” another said. The letters they wrote included “positive things,” one student said. Others wrote about baseball season, the snow melting and, above all, “we’re thinking of you.”

They send him letters regularly. Last week’s shipment was on paper headed with the word “spring,” which students colored in. They also sent him Valentines in February, to help keep his spirits up, and many of the kids are closely on top of what he is doing.

E-mail messages from Janson’s parents, now living in Maryland, keep the class up-to-date. The kids know Janson is living in the desert in a tent and loads bombs on airplanes for work, though he wants to be a pilot.

The students are also on top of the war, for as young as they are. They know where Iraq is on a world map and know that Iraqis are surrendering in some places and fighting in others. They watch TV with their parents and have trouble with “foreign names” and “big words.” The kids think there is too much coverage of the war, and that it has become “boring” to watch.

It’s not just a faraway war, either. “My babysitter’s husband is a medic,” said one boy.

They also know there are kids their age in Iraq, who are scared and don’t have food or clothes.

“Nobody wants war,” said one student, who went on to say that it’s important to support the troops.

The students want other classes in the school, and elsewhere, to adopt service members. “I think more people should write letters,” said one student.