A Roman candle: What it takes to set theater folk off

Published in the Portland Phoenix

What is the worst that could happen to a project you have worked hard on — so hard that you’ve fallen in love with it, can’t wait to show people, and are just dying to hear reactions to it? Such are the jitters backstage on the opening night of a play.

And what if you are the diva who has staked her reputation on this of all shows, the first by an unknown, a moving, brilliant work? What if it’s so avant-garde, in fact, that, by the end of the second act, even the playwright himself has begun to laugh and walk out? Such are the night terrors that stalk the stars.

How will you react? As Daedalus, staring stunned as Icarus falls to the sea, or as Sisyphus, who, no matter the certainty of futility, will continue to push that rock uphill? In Light up the Sky, Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Moss Hart takes a swing at the cheapness and false sincerities that pervaded theater in the 1940s. We would now call that environment " Hollywood, " though Broadway is certainly not immune.

And yet the play retains a song of hope, of integrity, of comeuppance to theater types, of whom Hart was among the most celebrated. He may appear himself, somewhat, in the character of the sage playwright Owen Turner (Bob Dunbar), advising the young playwright on the realities of his newfound craft.

The main characters are all divas in their own ways. There is traditional swanning Irene Livingston (Dee Cooke); her mother, matronly superior Stella (Marie Cormier); overwrought and toujours-near-tears director Carleton Fitzgerald (George Dunn); wannabe top-diva Frances Black (Nikki Hunt); and even fiscal-rabbit-from-a-hat man Sidney Black (Scott Jones).

But none is more a spoiled diva than idealistic newcomer Peter Sloan. Sticking madly to his own ideas and keeping none but his own counsel, the playwright character, played with a light and loving touch by J.J. Barnett, remains aloof from all those who have put so much into making his writing real.

As opening night progresses and the play appears to bomb, the close-knit, passionate team self-destructs, leaving Sloan broken and bitter about the two-faced nature of his newfound " friends. " And yet comes the (ironic and to this one’s mind, frightening) awesome power of the least-seen of all theatrical forces: the reviewer.

The play within this play is an allegory, but so is the entire production, illuminating an essential part of the human condition by using metaphors and analogy. How quick people are to leave a ship perceived to be sinking, and how quick they are to leap aboard when its seaworthiness is proved!

Light up the Sky is about the theater world, complete with lessons on the etymology of " drama, " " theater, " and " audience. " There is sage advice from an experienced director, marketing tips from a man who knows his business, and the frustrated, beaten-down voice of the playwright.

Doree Austin is also an experienced director, who brings to the wings a strong background of wide range. The Gaslight’s marketing folks managed to draw a near-full house without so much as a sign outside. And Hart, of course, was ultimately far from frustrated but had his moments.

There are comic moments, well-delivered lines, and strong character exploration in this production. It would have been nice if Nikki Hunt, fresh from high school, had slowed her delivery a bit, but everyone else did a wonderful job in what approached an open-air performance on a hot night, and even Hunt remained a powerful presence on the stage.

The supporting cast, from unassuming Miss Lowell (Lynn Truman) to one drunk Shriner (Gary Wilson) and another more businesslike (Dan Collins), added an air of authenticity to this 1940s period play, topped off by the Irish accent on a Boston cop (Bob Witham).

Perhaps if we were still in the 1940s and ’50s, before entertainment reporters and gossip columnists showed the warts on the nation’s best-loved faces, the comic disbelief would be sharper. As it is, we know the infidelity — personal and professional — that breaks up shows, acts, and lives of the stars, and it is all too real.

Light up the Sky
Written by Moss Hart. Directed by Doree Austin. With Dee Cooke, George Dunn, Scott Jones, Marie Cormier and J.J. Barnett. At Gaslight Theater, in Hallowell, through June 28. Call (207) 626-3698.

BACKSTAGE

• Hey! They rocked the house over there! The Cast — Craig Bowden, David A. Currier, and J.P. Guimont — along with Elizabeth Chambers, Shannon Campbell, Joshua Stamell, and Jeremy J. LeClerc, put on a fabulous festival of short plays and monologues by three top contemporary playwrights. Carefully selected and cleverly juxtaposed theatrical tidbits showed a vast range of humanity: a second try at a first date, and the secret lives of ironworkers, DMV staffers, the Hardy Boys, and a Mamet minister. Their bare-bones approach exposes the true shine of their acting talents. Seek out their work on other stages.

• Jason Wilkins is working on a musical, Naked in Portland, that’s been in the works underground for over a year. A benefit CD is out, a fund-raising concert is coming up (July 24, 7:30 p.m., St. Lawrence, $10) and PSC intern R.J. McComish is on board as director. Word is some of the area’s top actors are being approached right now for parts. The run will be in September and October at the PSC Studio Theater. Watch this space for more.

Organic pest repellent with a hint of garlic

Published in the Current

They call their major piece of manufacturing equipment a “daiquiri machine.” In the development lab downstairs, three blenders sit empty on a countertop, with a bucket of crushed hot peppers and piles of garlic husks on the floor nearby.

This is not any sort of new-style restaurant. The “daiquiris” will be an insect repellent called “Anti-Pest-O,” manufactured from the peppers and garlic and dispensed into 55-gallon drums and shipped off-site for packaging and distribution.

Holy Terra Products has come a long way from the basement of Dr. Jim White’s Cape Elizabeth home, where the corporate headquarters, development lab, product mixing and garden-testing all were 18 months ago.

Their product, still waiting for U.S. Environmental Protection Agency approval, is an all-natural, non-toxic insect repellent that is effective on a wide range of pests, if White’s own garden is any indication. It contains none of the chemicals in most pest repellents and insecticides, and quickly gathered a large following when on the market briefly in 2002.

At the Whole Grocer in Portland, “they were standing in line,” White said.

The company then believed Anti- Pesto-O would be exempt from the EPA regulations, but had to pull the product because of state requirements.

Many stores, hoping it would be back, held shelf space for the product for several weeks, but are no longer.

“We get requests every week,” said Mike St. Clair, a former retail marketing executive at Hannaford Brothers, who joined the company recently to serve as vice president for sales and marketing. “We’re anxious to get to market.”

The company has hired a regulatory consultant in Washington, D.C., to make sure the EPA permitting process goes smoothly. That involves product-safety tests on animals, and on people.

The “ultimate irony” in a year of EPA-required safety research, St. Clair said, is that “in the process of testing, the EPA has allowed us to put (Anti Pest-O) on food products that are consumed directly by humans.”

Now the company is just a few weeks from filing. The regulatory process has been “frustrating and aggravating,” taking a lot of time and including expensive tests.

“It is almost financially prohibitive,” White said. St. Clair said there should be new rules for organic products to make it easier to prove they are non-toxic.

Even getting enough supplies is a challenge. The company had to go all the way to India to find an EPA-approved supplier of a major ingredient, neem oil.

In mid-2002, Holy Terra moved to the Center for Environmental Enterprise, a state-funded business incubator on the SMTC campus. CEE provided a lot of help, including access to public agencies and other businesses that could help. They also connected to marketing classes at USM, which did some research for the company.

USM’s patent office helped the company write and file a patent on Anti-Pest-O, which is still pending.

They were hoping to use some of the CEE building’s basement for production, but ran into problems because SMTC didn’t want to give up the space, St. Clair said.

In October 2002, the company met with a group of investors who agreed to kick in $500,000, some of which is keyed to sales figures when Anti-Pest-O goes on the market.

That cash allowed an April move to the Fox Street Business Center in the old Freightliner trucking building in Portland. The company has enough space for production there and can expand if necessary.

Now they are gearing up to produce an infomercial to hit national airwaves early in 2004. The retail market will be first, including major hardware chains as well as natural-product sections of grocery stores.

St. Clair expects Anti-Pest-O to do very well with a wide range of customers. “They’re interested in finding an alternative to toxic chemicals and toxic solutions,” he said.

The company has also met with the state Commissioner of Agriculture and the Cooperative Extension program at UMaine. “Everybody is extremely interested in this,” White said.

Agricultural buyers won’t come on board until after even more studies are completed. USM and UMaine are just beginning work and may not be ready for two years.

Research will determine how it can best be used in what is called “integrated pest management,” using a variety of methods, including crop rotation and beneficial insects, to reduce the number of chemicals applied to crops.

White has plans to expand the product line, including possibly ncorporating Anti-Pest-O into other products.

The company has maintained its sense of practicality, including a not-too-official memorandum. On a white board next to St. Clair’s desk, his 10-year-old daughter has written this simple to-do list: “1. Make AntiPestO, 2. Test AntiPestO. 3. Get AntiPestO aprooved (sic). 4. Sell AntiPestO.”

The potter at Higgins Beach

Published in the Current

Bill Cox has spent a lifetime of summers on Higgins Beach. He says it’s a break from his pottery at home in Pennsylvania, but he still manages to draw inspiration from the Maine coast, and sell a few pieces as well.

“I’ve always been fascinated by the colors of blues and greens in the ocean,” Cox said. He also looks for colors in the local rocks. “Sometimes I’ll photograph things,” and take the pictures back to the studio to work on recreating the colors, he said.

Cox, 75, is a retired research chemist who now pursues his “serious hobby” of the past 20 years with a scientific passion.

“My real interest is in glaze development,” Cox said. “The chemistry of these temperatures is very complicated.”

He keeps a notebook with formulas for glazes and the results of testing different bases and ways to apply glazes.

“You can put the same glaze on two clay bodies and they’ll look very different,” Cox said.

He sometimes mixes the clay himself, but not usually. More often, if he doesn’t use just a standard commercially available clay, he’ll use Maine materials to put what’s called a “slip” on it – a thin clay mixed with other material on top of a generic clay base.

“Sand imparts texture and color,” Cox said.

He always mixes the glazes according to his own recipes. Finely ground glass is the basis for all glazes, as are differing amounts of clay, feldspar and talc. Other substances add color. Amounts of iron vary the depth of brown or yellow, while cobalt imparts a blue color.

Each substance has a different melting temperature, which affects how the glaze appears after it has been fired in a kiln.

Sometimes he has a color target but usually he is playing with a recipe he has used before.

Cox tries to keep only about a dozen mixed glazes at a time, to prevent his
studio from being too cluttered.

“I’m still fascinated with bowl shapes,” Cox said. “It enables me to show the
glaze both inside and outside.”

They also reveal the glazing process. On Cox’s bowls, places where a slightly too-thin glaze has dripped a bit are evident, as are overlapping areas where the items are hand-dipped.

Cox also keeps records of how he coats his pottery with glazes. Dipping a bowl in glaze quickly results in a lighter color than pulling it out slowly.

Even so, there are some appearances he just can’t recreate, despite all of his notes. He chalks those up to variations in materials from his suppliers and moves on. He is a studio potter, not overly concerned about whether a large number of his items match in the ways that commercially made pottery must.

“The glaze development just goes on and on and on,” Cox said.

He makes some pieces for family members and also sells his work at a gallery in Naples. Much of his work is sold right from his studio in Pennsylvania, but he brings some up each year to sell at the Higgins Beach Craft Fair in August. This year the show will be held Aug. 15 and 16 in a community building near the Higgins Beach Inn.

He also has donated work to support fund-raising efforts of the Friends of Scarborough Marsh, Maine Audubon and the Scarborough Historical Society.

His family is long established in Higgins Beach. In addition to family in the area, his father first came there in 1918. “Ironically he stayed in this cottage when he was a bachelor,” Cox said of the cottage where he now spends summers.

He does not accept commissions. “This is what I do. If you like it, that’s fine,” Cox said.

Fine going up for spill

Published in the Current

The state Department of Environmental Protection has rejected a proposed settlement from the insurance company representing the trucking firm responsible for an April 7 jet fuel spill in South Portland and will now assess damages.

“At this point, we wouldn’t be negotiating. We’d hand them the bill,” said John Wathen, regional director for the DEP. The DEP will determine the amount based on what is expected to be a year-long study on the impact the spill had on the surrounding environment.

Both parties had hoped to reach a settlement, but the insurance company made “an insufficient offer,” according to Wathen, who said before negotiations collapsed that he was looking for “something in the six-figure range.”

Sean Dundon, the environmental-impact insurance adjuster representing the trucking company, expected it to be “less than $100,000.”

The DEP already has taken several aerial photos of the damage to the marsh grasses near the site of the incident in which a fuel tanker truck overturned on Broadway, spilling 6,000 gallons of jet fuel into the street and culverts leading to the Fore River.

The accident occurred right in front of the fire and police station.

In the next two weeks, scientists will be collecting samples from the shellfish and sediment in the area and analyzing them to determine how much fuel remains in the environment and what the spill’s lasting effects will be.

“This is a process. There are a lot of things we’re going to do,” Wathen said. “All of the costs will start going on the tab.”

He said the bill, which would include staff time and lab fees as well as compensation for the environmental damage, could be as much as $500,000.

Dundon said his understanding from the DEP was that the April 7 spill was “much smaller” than the Julie N spill in 1996, which released 180,000 gallons of crude oil into Portland Harbor when a tanker hit the Casco Bay Bridge.

The cleanup cost $50 million, and the DEP fine, $1 million, was finally agreed upon in 2000.

The driver of the truck in the April 7 accident, Michael McCarthy, 43, of Berwick, was given a summons for imprudent speed, a charge carrying a $98 fine.

“There is some (lasting) damage,” Wathen said. It is limited to the cove to which the spill was contained and can be seen in growth differences between marsh grasses in the area and uncontaminated places nearby.

“We’re concerned about shellfish in the mud” as well, Wathen said.

He said the study is worthwhile not only for this case, but also because jet fuel spills are relatively rare. Gathering more information about the impact of jet fuel on the environment could help people dealing with future spills, here or elsewhere.

Jet fuel is far more volatile than crude oil, which can stick on wildlife or other surfaces for months. Much of the fuel evaporated during the days after the spill, and about 40 percent of it was collected during the post-accident cleanup.

Walters jailed on sex charges

Published in the Current

George E. Walters, 42, of Coach Lantern Lane, Scarborough, pleaded guilty June 23 to state charges of unlawful sexual contact and Coast Guard charges of receiving and possessing child pornography. He will serve three years in military jails, followed by 12 years of probation in Maine, and will be required to register as a sexually violent predator in the state’s sex offender registry.

In a plea deal, Walters, who is a first class petty officer with 21 years’ service in the Coast Guard, will also be reduced in rank to the lowest enlisted rank. He will be given a bad conduct discharge from the Coast Guard upon completion of his sentence, during which he will not earn any Coast Guard pay or benefits. He will also not be eligible for any Coast Guard retirement benefits.

Walters pleaded guilty June 23 in Cumberland County Superior Court to three state felony charges of unlawful sexual contact, in a plea deal resulting in the dropping of 12 other state charges: three counts of felony unlawful sexual contact, one count of misdemeanor unlawful sexual contact, six counts of misdemeanor assault, one count of misdemeanor sexual misconduct with a child and one count of misdemeanor violation of condition of release.

He was sentenced to five years for each of the three charges to which he pleaded guilty, for a total of 15 years, with all but three years suspended.

Upon his release, Walters must undergo “sexual abuse and sexual offender counseling/treatment,” according to a court order, which also prevents him from being in contact with any females under the age of 18 and prohibits him from owning or using a computer with an Internet connection.

Walters has been classified as a “sexually violent predator” under the state’s sex offender registration law, meaning he will also be required to register with local law enforcement wherever he lives every 90 days for the rest of his life. He received that designation rather than the less-serious “se offender” designation on the registry because of the age of the victims, according to Deputy District Attorney Meg Elam.

He will serve the three years from the state sentence at the same time as the Coast Guard sentence.

“Our objective was for him to serve this sentence in the (Coast Guard) brig rather than in state custody” at state expense, said Elam, who handled the state’s case.

After he finishes his Coast Guard sentence, he will have to come back to Maine to serve out 12 years of probation. If he violates that probation, he could go back to jail for as much as five years per violation, Elam said.

In conversation during a court recess June 23, Walters was heard to ask his wife to look into transferring his Maine probation to New Hampshire after he gets out.

Elam said he could apply for a transfer, but “it’s not automatic.”

“Our objective … was to be watching him” for a long time, Elam said.

Walters, qualified as a cook but working on the maintenance staff at the South Portland Coast Guard station, was charged by the Coast Guard Feb. 19 with possessing and receiving child pornography over the Internet.

The Coast Guard charges stem from a Scarborough police investigation into allegations of unlawful sexual contact with several victims. In court documents filed by Scarborough police Officer Robert Moore supporting those charges, three victims are named, as are three other girls who, the documents say, suffered “some degree of sexual molestation” by Walters.

The victims, all under 18 and most under 14 at the time of the crimes, were all known to Walters, and the unlawful sexual contact occurred in the Walters home while the girls were visiting one of Walters’ sons. Court documents say Walters repeatedly grabbed, touched and rubbed several of the girls on more than one occasion, despite the girls’ screams and cries for Walters to stop.

He was allowed to post $5,000 bail in July 2002, but was arrested in November 2002 and charged with violating his bail conditions by being in the company of a friend’s 10-year-old daughter on three occasions: at Scarborough’s Scary Hayride at Halloween, at a roller-skating party in Portland and a party at the Walters home.

Moore told the Current at that time that the mere presence of the girl in Walters’ company was a violation of the bail conditions.

Moore said he had no evidence that Walters abused the girl, but couldn’t be sure because the girl’s father wouldn’t cooperate.

In the process of investigating those charges, Scarborough police searched Walters’ home and computer and located a number of image files containing child pornography.

In the court-martial, Walters admitted downloading from the Internet or receiving by e-mail more than 50 images of people – mostly girls under the age of 18 – in situations and poses designed to “elicit a sexual response from the viewer.”

His wife Susan was in the courtroom almost the entire time. The two spoke and hugged a couple of times during breaks in the trial, and traded looks and glances throughout the proceedings.

“I’m supporting him 100 percent on all the charges,” Susan Walters told the Current. “I have since day one.”

At the same time, “I was very surprised there were so many” pornographic images. She said she had known he was downloading some images, but did not know how many.

She and her sons moved to be near family in New Hampshire and have been visiting Walters twice a week since November 2002. “They miss their dad,” Susan said of the couple’s sons.

The family has forgiven Walters for his transgressions. “He’s apologized for doing what he did,” Susan said. In fact, Susan said her husband has become a changed man in jail. “He’s more sensitive, he’s more emotional,” she said.

“I admitted I was wrong. That’s the hardest thing for most people,” Walters told the Current before his sentencing.

Walters’ civilian attorney, Peter Rodway, and his military attorney, Navy Lt. Heather Partridge, did not return multiple phone calls seeking comment for this story.