Published in the American Journal
Tara Rich is home. Rich, a Gorham resident and staff sergeant in the 265th Combat Communications Squadron of the Maine Air National Guard, arrived at the Portland International Jetport Monday evening after a long trip from Kuwait.
Rich, 28, was greeted by her mother Patricia, her sister Stacey Rich-Abbott, Stacey’s husband Dan Abbott and Stacey and Dan’s daughter Samantha Abbott. Family members and friends of 12 of Rich’s fellow squadron members greeted their loved ones Monday as well, on two flights into Portland.
Thirteen members of the South Portland-based squadron remain in Kuwait but hope to be home soon.
The unit was sent to Kuwait in February for a 90-day tour. When war broke out, the National Guard extended Rich’s active duty, along with everyone else in the squadron, for a year.
The delayed return was slowed further by mechanical problems on the aircraft leaving Kuwait, Rich-Abbott said. The group was originally supposed to be home Friday, then Saturday, then Sunday. The family, in fact, had planned a welcome-home party Sunday, but she wasn’t there. “We’ll just have a heck of a Fourth party,” Rich- Abbott said.
Rich had e-mailed her sister to say that the Air Force plane they were leaving Kuwait on had mechanical problems, so it turned around after takeoff and the group was forced to stay put until commercial flights could be arranged.
And though the delay was annoying, the group ended up in better conditions: The Air Force plane didn’t have any blankets, and people were sleeping on the floor, Rich-Abbott said.
The commercial flights worked out. As word passed through the waiting crowd that the first plane was on the ground, Rich’s niece Samantha said, “That’s not good enough. They have to be on the ground.”
As she came into view in the terminal, the family’s excitement built even higher. They had been in touch with Rich from time to time, through e-mail and an occasional phone call. It actually helped that the squadron was involved in communications, the family said.
And then Rich was through the door, wrapped up first in a hug from her mom, then her sister and then the rest of the family.
Rich-Abbott said it was good that Rich’s dachshund Zoe wasn’t there, because the dog is quite excitable and might not have been easy to handle in the airport waiting area, jammed with excited people.
Rich’s mother had a printout of an e-mail message in her purse listing Rich’s food requests, though she hadn’t made any specific meal requests for her arrival night.
On the list were haddock, chop suey, cabbage and broccoli. “I’m sure she’ll be wanting a big seafood fest,” Rich-Abbott said.
In a quiet moment before heading off to baggage claim, Rich looked a bit overwhelmed by all the attention and the crowd of well-wishers. “It’s really good to be home,” Rich said.
She’ll have about a month off after a debriefing session today. The first order of business? “A shower would be good,” Rich said.
Wednesday, June 25, 2003
Friday, June 20, 2003
Till death do us part: Even if you're mean and surly
Published in the Portland Phoenix
Written by David Bottrell and Jessie Jones. Directed by Mark Nadeau. With Sheila Shay, John Bolduc, Tom Dix, and Doree Austin. At Aqua City Actors Theater, in Waterville, through June 21. Call (207) 580-6783.
When partners take that pledge on their wedding day, and even more so when children are born into a mutual pledge of love — or at least tolerance — it is easy not to remark upon the actual commitment such a promise entails. Raynelle (Sheila Shay) has been doing the honoring for " 39 years, 39 long years " when her husband Bud dies in the opening moments of Dearly Departed.
She and Bud had turned from each other’s hearts long ago, with " not so much as a warm handshake in 33 years, " but Raynelle and her family remain determined to do right by their deceased patriarch.
The play peeks briefly at the issues involved in the ending of a lifelong commitment and the requisite self-reflections. But it mainly sticks to stereotypical white-trash shallowness and bellyaching about life’s misfortunes. There is precious little mourning for the man who begat so many unfortunate creatures.
The play is an odd one, founded as it is on stereotypes of Southern life and Southern people. It was written in 1991, the first play for either of the pair of Kentuckians who gave the script life.
In the Waterville Opera House’s studio theater, however, the play struggles to survive. The problem is really the surroundings, which are impoverished compared to the beautiful renovations that have been made to the rest of the landmark building.
The seats are not elevated properly, meaning anybody further back than the third row must strain to catch a glimpse of the action. And the chairs are shoddy, at best — some are blocked off and visibly broken, while at least one actually gave way with a loud CRACK during a recent production, overly strained by the contortions of its occupant to lay eyes on the actors.
Worse still, the acoustics are dismal, requiring a massive tandem effort of projection and enunciation to make any words audible. It is helpful that most of the dialogue is delivered from a standing position, with actors in a back-stoop scene standing and sitting to alternately speak and listen.
The atmosphere was made even worse by the audience, who — perhaps as a result of the advanced age of many of them — took every opportunity to converse with each other. Three notes to those who wish to keep their seats in most theaters around the globe: Scene changes, no matter how long, are not your cue to take a turn at a speaking role. Second, actors in rehearsal may need help beginning a line. After the line is delivered, especially during a show, it is not helpful or polite to repeat it. And third, when something comes to mind that you simply must say, realize that nobody in the room is there to listen to you.
And a note to theater managers and ushers: Movie houses expressly ask their audiences not to talk during the movie, and turn up the sound in case people ignore them. In the absence of amplification, it would seem sensible to make a specific request — either in person before the show, or in the program — to refrain from dialogue during the performance.
There are nice touches in this production, including a clever scene in a car, with three hayseed children painted on a canvas representing the back seat. An overbearingly religious woman (Marguerite, played by Doree Austin) bellows each time she speaks of her Lord and Savior or reads from the Holy Book. An entire character (Delightful, the all-consuming daughter, played by Joel Gagne) is included, whose sole purpose is disgusting comic relief, and whose audition must have consisted of an eating contest at a Shoney’s midnight buffet.
The acting is strong, the comedy is funny, and there is poignancy at all the right moments. In particular, the conflicted bitter belle Suzanne (Marty Kelley) and her failed-entrepreneur husband Junior (Tom Dix) are hilarious. Raynelle and her son Ray-Bud (John Bolduc) are perhaps the most " normal " of the characters, allowing room for everyone to identify with someone in the show. The cast’s theater newcomers and old-timers (if they’ll forgive the expression) work well together and play off each other nicely.
The ending, however, drags on. Closing a comedy is no simple task, and for novice playwrights to have done it perfectly would be a real stunner. It is, however, a surprise that the veteran actors at ACAT didn’t adapt it slightly. All the loose ends are gathered, all the bonds retied, but at what price? A play nearly 15 minutes longer than it needed to be, with at least three consecutive endings all tagged together.
A special note: Two of the cast, Kelly Camp-Force (playing Nadine, a pregnant mom of several, none by the same dad) and Tom Kelleher (playing Royce, a vacant and lazy young man whose career aspirations are to stay on unemployment until he can get married, become a father, and go on welfare) just finished the high school academic year. Their strong performances show their theatrical futures will far outstrip the characters they played, though that’s not really saying much.
Written by David Bottrell and Jessie Jones. Directed by Mark Nadeau. With Sheila Shay, John Bolduc, Tom Dix, and Doree Austin. At Aqua City Actors Theater, in Waterville, through June 21. Call (207) 580-6783.
BACKSTAGE
• Best wishes and a speedy recovery to Linda J. Bruce, Waterville Junior High School teacher and drama club leader. Also an actor in productions throughout central Maine, she recently was hospitalized for a sudden, serious condition.
• Summer theater-fruit reminders: The Cast at the St. Lawrence June 19, 21, and 22; Light up the Sky at the Gaslight in Hallowell June 19 through 21 and 26 through 28; Macbeth at Spring Point starting June 25.
Thursday, June 19, 2003
Board worried about more cuts in high school plan
Published in the Current
The Cape Elizabeth School Board is worried that town councilors will use a Monday meeting between representatives of the two boards to try and reduce the $7.5 million budget for the high school renovation – scheduled to go to referendum in November.
On Monday, June 23, from 3:30 to 6 p.m., there will be a meeting of three town councilors and three School Board members at Town Hall “to determine the amount of money that goes to referendum for the high school,” according to School Board Chairman Marie Prager, who was renamed head of the board last week.
Prager was speaking at a School Board workshop Tuesday. She said it did not appear that the joint committee would take public comment, though Monday’s meeting would be open to the public.
The committee will make a cost recommendation to the council by July 9, and the council will act to set the amount for the referendum vote during its regular July 14 business meeting.
The nature of the recommendation worried board members. With three members of each board, a disagreement could result in “no real recommendation,” board member Kevin Sweeney said.
“It seems to me to be a charade,” Sweeney said.
Board member George Entwistle agreed. “It seems like it’s an exercise in creating an appearance of some democratic process that doesn’t exist.”
When the Town Council decided in May to have a committee review the costs, councilors expressed concern that construction costs might have changed in the eight-month-old project estimates and wanted to make sure\ the dollar amount was correct before setting the amount to be sent to voters.
The committee will not discuss a proposed $1.5 million expansion to Pond Cove School, which has already been set for a November vote. It will talk about the $7.5 million proposed for the high school project – costs that initially started $2 million higher.
“We’ve already made the cuts” to get to $7.5 million, said Elaine Moloney, School Board finance chairman and a member of the newly formed review committee.
“There really is no real role for (councilors) to cut further,” she said.
She did say that the cost might go up as much as 3 or 4 percent, because of increasing construction costs.
The councilors are particularly interested in plans to expand the cafeteria, add a sprinkler system, make changes to the lower athletics field and locker room renovations.
All of those are detailed in documents drawn up by the School Board and its architect, Cape resident Bob Howe of HKTA architects in Portland.
High school Principal Jeff Shedd has written a letter explaining the need for a cafeteria expansion and the athletic field reconfiguration, Prager told the board.
The sprinklers, estimated to cost $500,000, are not required by the state fire code, but “our fire chief feels that it’s necessary,” Prager said.
The locker room area will be renovated to provide additional storage space and new locker room facilities, but the exact details have not yet been worked out, Prager said.
Superintendent Tom Forcella told the board the committee would only be able to look at the final dollar amount, and not make changes to the renovation plans themselves. If any plans were changed, they would have to be approved by the School Board.
The Cape Elizabeth School Board is worried that town councilors will use a Monday meeting between representatives of the two boards to try and reduce the $7.5 million budget for the high school renovation – scheduled to go to referendum in November.
On Monday, June 23, from 3:30 to 6 p.m., there will be a meeting of three town councilors and three School Board members at Town Hall “to determine the amount of money that goes to referendum for the high school,” according to School Board Chairman Marie Prager, who was renamed head of the board last week.
Prager was speaking at a School Board workshop Tuesday. She said it did not appear that the joint committee would take public comment, though Monday’s meeting would be open to the public.
The committee will make a cost recommendation to the council by July 9, and the council will act to set the amount for the referendum vote during its regular July 14 business meeting.
The nature of the recommendation worried board members. With three members of each board, a disagreement could result in “no real recommendation,” board member Kevin Sweeney said.
“It seems to me to be a charade,” Sweeney said.
Board member George Entwistle agreed. “It seems like it’s an exercise in creating an appearance of some democratic process that doesn’t exist.”
When the Town Council decided in May to have a committee review the costs, councilors expressed concern that construction costs might have changed in the eight-month-old project estimates and wanted to make sure\ the dollar amount was correct before setting the amount to be sent to voters.
The committee will not discuss a proposed $1.5 million expansion to Pond Cove School, which has already been set for a November vote. It will talk about the $7.5 million proposed for the high school project – costs that initially started $2 million higher.
“We’ve already made the cuts” to get to $7.5 million, said Elaine Moloney, School Board finance chairman and a member of the newly formed review committee.
“There really is no real role for (councilors) to cut further,” she said.
She did say that the cost might go up as much as 3 or 4 percent, because of increasing construction costs.
The councilors are particularly interested in plans to expand the cafeteria, add a sprinkler system, make changes to the lower athletics field and locker room renovations.
All of those are detailed in documents drawn up by the School Board and its architect, Cape resident Bob Howe of HKTA architects in Portland.
High school Principal Jeff Shedd has written a letter explaining the need for a cafeteria expansion and the athletic field reconfiguration, Prager told the board.
The sprinklers, estimated to cost $500,000, are not required by the state fire code, but “our fire chief feels that it’s necessary,” Prager said.
The locker room area will be renovated to provide additional storage space and new locker room facilities, but the exact details have not yet been worked out, Prager said.
Superintendent Tom Forcella told the board the committee would only be able to look at the final dollar amount, and not make changes to the renovation plans themselves. If any plans were changed, they would have to be approved by the School Board.
Kid who couldn’t read makes university dean’s list
Published in the Current
Before Arin Bratt came to Scarborough High School, he had been told he would never learn to read and wouldn’t make much of himself. His dyslexia was too severe. Last June, he left Scarborough High School, after his junior year, and now 18, is about to go into his junior year in college and made the dean’s list last semester.
“He always wanted to go to college,” said his mother, Susan Snow. Too shy to be interviewed himself, Bratt allowed his proud mother to speak for him. When he was growing up, his dyslexia meant he couldn’t read.
“We read everything to him,” Snow said. That included books, magazines and even the encyclopedia. Growing up, his peers made fun of him for being “stupid” or “dumb,” because he couldn’t read.
As a middle-schooler in Texas, Bratt was told that he had “plateaued” – that he would never learn to read and wouldn’t get much further in school.
“That’s when he really dug in,” said high school biology teacher, Ellen Ross, who later coached Bratt on the high school Academic Decathlon team. The family’s move from Texas to Scarborough also played a big role.
He was so determined to read, Snow said, that he quit playing soccer, and the family brought in a high school student who spent hours teaching him to read. After months of work, “he painstakingly got through about two sentences,” Snow said.
“He compensated by memorizing” everything that was said in his classes. He couldn’t really take notes, and it was pointless for someone else to take notes for him, because he couldn’t read them.
He could do math, but it was hard for him to show his work. Near the end of his freshman year, the family called a school conference to discuss whether Bratt would be allowed to take physics the following year with the seniors, instead of biology with the sophomores.
The high school physics class requires calculus, but Bratt had only taken geometry. Everyone agreed anyway, as long as Bratt took calculus at the same time.
“Any one of them could have said no,” Snow said.
“He was bright and quite motivated,” said physics teacher Dave O’Connor. “He was able to formulate a picture of an abstract thought quite easily.”
He did very well in class. “His analytical ability was phenomenal,” O’Connor said. “He wanted to understand things at a fundamental level.”
Bratt also knew that he needed foreign-language experience to get into college. Because of his difficulties learning from books, he planned to study in Costa Rica for a summer, to immerse himself in the language. When 9/11 happened, the trip was cancelled, forcing Bratt to take classes at USM instead.
He took other university classes, as well, particularly in math and science, earning college credit that would later help him skip an entire year of college.
He also dived into the Academic Decathlon team with a passion. “He was very focused,” said Ross, the team’s coach.
He learned so much that not only did he rank third individually in the nation for schools the size of Scarborough’s at the Academic Decathlon, but he also took advanced placement tests in five subjects, doing well enough to earn college credit for them as well.
“I think sometimes he amazed himself,” Ross said.
He was given extra time on the tests because of his reading difficulties, but he had to know all of the material involved, and communicate it clearly.
As his junior year progressed, he became interested in nanotechnology, the science of very tiny machines that involve all the sciences –biology, chemistry and physics.
The University of Texas at Dallas, which Snow calls “a think tank for nanotechnology,” offered Bratt early admission and a scholarship for him to study there. His college dream was real.
Technically speaking, he couldn’t graduate from high school until he finished his senior year. So he dropped out of school and got a GED instead, which required the consent of the superintendent because of his young age.
He started classes at UT-Dallas in the fall of 2002 and had enough college credit in advance to skip his sophomore year and start his junior year in the fall. He is double-majoring in physics and economics.
He still has accommodations for his spelling problems, but continues to make progress in that area. “As he reads more, he learns how to spell in context,” Snow said.
His reading continues to hover between the second- and fifth-grade reading levels. “I don’t think he’s ever gotten above fifth-grade reading level, but he compensates,” Snow said.
And despite his trouble reading and writing, Bratt is working on a book based on his original historical research on the Tripolitan war, a conflict in the early 1800s between the fledgling United States and the Barbary States, home to many pirates.
One of the players in the war was Portland-born Edward Preble, a naval commander.
And while his own hard work may be the source of his success, Snow said Bratt is deeply grateful to the staff of the Scarborough schools. “He feels as though they deserve all the credit,” Snow said.
“The school worked with him on his strengths,” she said. “Anyplace else wouldn’t have been open to that.”
Before Arin Bratt came to Scarborough High School, he had been told he would never learn to read and wouldn’t make much of himself. His dyslexia was too severe. Last June, he left Scarborough High School, after his junior year, and now 18, is about to go into his junior year in college and made the dean’s list last semester.
“He always wanted to go to college,” said his mother, Susan Snow. Too shy to be interviewed himself, Bratt allowed his proud mother to speak for him. When he was growing up, his dyslexia meant he couldn’t read.
“We read everything to him,” Snow said. That included books, magazines and even the encyclopedia. Growing up, his peers made fun of him for being “stupid” or “dumb,” because he couldn’t read.
As a middle-schooler in Texas, Bratt was told that he had “plateaued” – that he would never learn to read and wouldn’t get much further in school.
“That’s when he really dug in,” said high school biology teacher, Ellen Ross, who later coached Bratt on the high school Academic Decathlon team. The family’s move from Texas to Scarborough also played a big role.
He was so determined to read, Snow said, that he quit playing soccer, and the family brought in a high school student who spent hours teaching him to read. After months of work, “he painstakingly got through about two sentences,” Snow said.
“He compensated by memorizing” everything that was said in his classes. He couldn’t really take notes, and it was pointless for someone else to take notes for him, because he couldn’t read them.
He could do math, but it was hard for him to show his work. Near the end of his freshman year, the family called a school conference to discuss whether Bratt would be allowed to take physics the following year with the seniors, instead of biology with the sophomores.
The high school physics class requires calculus, but Bratt had only taken geometry. Everyone agreed anyway, as long as Bratt took calculus at the same time.
“Any one of them could have said no,” Snow said.
“He was bright and quite motivated,” said physics teacher Dave O’Connor. “He was able to formulate a picture of an abstract thought quite easily.”
He did very well in class. “His analytical ability was phenomenal,” O’Connor said. “He wanted to understand things at a fundamental level.”
Bratt also knew that he needed foreign-language experience to get into college. Because of his difficulties learning from books, he planned to study in Costa Rica for a summer, to immerse himself in the language. When 9/11 happened, the trip was cancelled, forcing Bratt to take classes at USM instead.
He took other university classes, as well, particularly in math and science, earning college credit that would later help him skip an entire year of college.
He also dived into the Academic Decathlon team with a passion. “He was very focused,” said Ross, the team’s coach.
He learned so much that not only did he rank third individually in the nation for schools the size of Scarborough’s at the Academic Decathlon, but he also took advanced placement tests in five subjects, doing well enough to earn college credit for them as well.
“I think sometimes he amazed himself,” Ross said.
He was given extra time on the tests because of his reading difficulties, but he had to know all of the material involved, and communicate it clearly.
As his junior year progressed, he became interested in nanotechnology, the science of very tiny machines that involve all the sciences –biology, chemistry and physics.
The University of Texas at Dallas, which Snow calls “a think tank for nanotechnology,” offered Bratt early admission and a scholarship for him to study there. His college dream was real.
Technically speaking, he couldn’t graduate from high school until he finished his senior year. So he dropped out of school and got a GED instead, which required the consent of the superintendent because of his young age.
He started classes at UT-Dallas in the fall of 2002 and had enough college credit in advance to skip his sophomore year and start his junior year in the fall. He is double-majoring in physics and economics.
He still has accommodations for his spelling problems, but continues to make progress in that area. “As he reads more, he learns how to spell in context,” Snow said.
His reading continues to hover between the second- and fifth-grade reading levels. “I don’t think he’s ever gotten above fifth-grade reading level, but he compensates,” Snow said.
And despite his trouble reading and writing, Bratt is working on a book based on his original historical research on the Tripolitan war, a conflict in the early 1800s between the fledgling United States and the Barbary States, home to many pirates.
One of the players in the war was Portland-born Edward Preble, a naval commander.
And while his own hard work may be the source of his success, Snow said Bratt is deeply grateful to the staff of the Scarborough schools. “He feels as though they deserve all the credit,” Snow said.
“The school worked with him on his strengths,” she said. “Anyplace else wouldn’t have been open to that.”
Historic Cape house now part of bank suit
Published in the Current
A historic Shore Road house that has been under construction for some time is now at the center of a dispute between its owner, Darrell Mayeux, and Fleet Bank, which is requesting a judge put an additional lien on the property to cover money Fleet says Mayeux owes the bank.
The house, at 878 Shore Road, is mortgaged for $1.7 million to Fleet, but the mortgage itself is not part of the dispute.
Instead, Fleet and Mayeux are arguing over the terms of a $4 million loan Mayeux took out in August 2000 at the recommendation of a Fleet personal financial advisor.
At the time, Mayeux had a Fleet-handled investment portfolio worth more than $20 million, according to documents filed in Cumberland County Superior Court June 13. The loan was offered as a way for Mayeux to diversify his holdings, which were mostly stock in Fairchild Semiconductor, where Mayeux was a senior executive. He retired in August 2001.
According to court documents, Mayeux borrowed the money in August 2000, using his existing stock as collateral, but ran into trouble as the stock market tumbled, dramatically reducing the stock’s value.
To help cover the loan, Fleet sold – with Mayeux’s permission – 200,000 of Mayeux’s shares of Fairchild stock in late 2002.
Mayeux filed suit to stop a second sale, of 200,000 shares, in April 2003, but was unsuccessful, the documents state. The bank sold the shares, raising $2.2 million.
Now the bank is claiming that the sale of those 400,000 shares did not raise enough to pay off the loan, and wants liens placed on the Shore Road house, as well as Mayeux’s primary residence on Highland Road in South Portland, to cover the remaining $240,000 outstanding balance, plus $30,000 in attorneys’ fees and collection costs.
The bank is doing so for fear Mayeux will sell the two properties, and possibly other homes he owns in Falmouth and California, leaving Fleet with no way to recover its money.
Mayeux, for his part, filed a counter-suit claiming the bank mishandled his finances and botched its attempt to cover its losses. The counter-suit alleges Fleet failed to tell Mayeux when the value of his investment portfolio was dropping precipitously, sold shares it was not authorized to sell and incurred both unnecessary bank charges and capital gains tax on Mayeux’s behalf.
Mayeux’s filing also requests that a lien only be placed on the Shore Road house, because Fleet’s own assessment is that the property is worth as much as $3.5 million. The suit says the house is on the market for $3.8 million and is expected to sell for $3.6 million.
It also says “an informal offer of $3 million has been made” by an unnamed potential buyer.
The house, thought by many to be a John Calvin Stevens design, was originally designed by prominent local architect Austin W. Pease and built sometime before 1910, according to Earle G. Shettleworth Jr., director of the Maine Historic Preservation Commission, who spoke to the Current in October. It was almost original as recently as 1998, but recent renovations have dramatically altered the historic character of the house, Shettleworth said.
The counter-suit also claims Mayeux does not have enough cash to pay as much as $1 million in capital gains tax owed as a result of Fleet’s sales of the Fairchild shares, and may have to “restructure” his finances.
A historic Shore Road house that has been under construction for some time is now at the center of a dispute between its owner, Darrell Mayeux, and Fleet Bank, which is requesting a judge put an additional lien on the property to cover money Fleet says Mayeux owes the bank.
The house, at 878 Shore Road, is mortgaged for $1.7 million to Fleet, but the mortgage itself is not part of the dispute.
Instead, Fleet and Mayeux are arguing over the terms of a $4 million loan Mayeux took out in August 2000 at the recommendation of a Fleet personal financial advisor.
At the time, Mayeux had a Fleet-handled investment portfolio worth more than $20 million, according to documents filed in Cumberland County Superior Court June 13. The loan was offered as a way for Mayeux to diversify his holdings, which were mostly stock in Fairchild Semiconductor, where Mayeux was a senior executive. He retired in August 2001.
According to court documents, Mayeux borrowed the money in August 2000, using his existing stock as collateral, but ran into trouble as the stock market tumbled, dramatically reducing the stock’s value.
To help cover the loan, Fleet sold – with Mayeux’s permission – 200,000 of Mayeux’s shares of Fairchild stock in late 2002.
Mayeux filed suit to stop a second sale, of 200,000 shares, in April 2003, but was unsuccessful, the documents state. The bank sold the shares, raising $2.2 million.
Now the bank is claiming that the sale of those 400,000 shares did not raise enough to pay off the loan, and wants liens placed on the Shore Road house, as well as Mayeux’s primary residence on Highland Road in South Portland, to cover the remaining $240,000 outstanding balance, plus $30,000 in attorneys’ fees and collection costs.
The bank is doing so for fear Mayeux will sell the two properties, and possibly other homes he owns in Falmouth and California, leaving Fleet with no way to recover its money.
Mayeux, for his part, filed a counter-suit claiming the bank mishandled his finances and botched its attempt to cover its losses. The counter-suit alleges Fleet failed to tell Mayeux when the value of his investment portfolio was dropping precipitously, sold shares it was not authorized to sell and incurred both unnecessary bank charges and capital gains tax on Mayeux’s behalf.
Mayeux’s filing also requests that a lien only be placed on the Shore Road house, because Fleet’s own assessment is that the property is worth as much as $3.5 million. The suit says the house is on the market for $3.8 million and is expected to sell for $3.6 million.
It also says “an informal offer of $3 million has been made” by an unnamed potential buyer.
The house, thought by many to be a John Calvin Stevens design, was originally designed by prominent local architect Austin W. Pease and built sometime before 1910, according to Earle G. Shettleworth Jr., director of the Maine Historic Preservation Commission, who spoke to the Current in October. It was almost original as recently as 1998, but recent renovations have dramatically altered the historic character of the house, Shettleworth said.
The counter-suit also claims Mayeux does not have enough cash to pay as much as $1 million in capital gains tax owed as a result of Fleet’s sales of the Fairchild shares, and may have to “restructure” his finances.
Friday, June 13, 2003
Wonder and light: Fairy tales about fairy tales take flight at MSMT
Published in the Portland Phoenix
Hans Christian Andersen
Written by Maury Yeston. Music and lyrics by Frank Loesser. Directed by Charles Abbott. Musical direction by Edward Reichert. With Ken Barnett and Amy Bodnar. Maine State Music Theatre through June 21. Call 207-725-8769.
Since the 1952 hit movie Hans Christian Andersen, starring Danny Kaye, there have been several failed attempts to put the musical live on stage. Twice in the 1970s, the London Palladium theater produced adaptations of the movie, based on famed composer/lyricist Frank Loesser’s original music. And in 2000, the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco put on a rewritten version that failed to do justice either to the familiar tales or to the musical genius of a man who wrote for Bob Hope, Bing Crosby, and Broadway.
Critics loved the music in each version, but were nonplussed by the storytelling — not Andersen’s fairy tales, of course, but by writers’ explorations of the meaning and inspiration for his work.
Now in its third incarnation, Hans Christian Andersen is on the boards at Bowdoin College’s Pickard Theater, home to the Maine State Music Theatre, and is finally just right, if the opinion of Loesser’s widow means anything.
" I think that he would be very pleased, " said Jo Sullivan Loesser, only three hours before opening night last week. " I happen to think it’s some of his best work. "
And given previous criticism, it’s a positive sign that, as Jo said, " the only thing that’s the same is the music. " The rest has been totally rewritten by Tony Award–winning Maury Yeston, whose Broadway show Nine was up for eight Tonys last weekend, including best revival of a musical, which it won.
" I have been thinking about this for 15 years, " Yeston said. He wrote a version of it then, and revised it three years ago. Now, after further work, it’s set and going.
Kaye’s Andersen was a cobbler who told stories to amuse children but yearned to become a " serious " writer. Now we know better — that Hans (played here by Ken Barnett) was an aspiring writer facing tough competition in the age of Honoré de Balzac and Victor Hugo. Yeston’s script nods to the original: Now, the cobbler is Andersen’s father.
" I love the stories of Hans Christian Andersen. No one has done what this man did, " said Loesser. And no one has done what Frank did, either: " I think he captured his writing completely. " In the famous song " I’m Hans Christian Andersen, " Loesser’s lyrics bring out the wonder of inanimate objects, the sense of desire and humor in an interaction between a table and a chair, who come alive in music as surely as trees and rocks and earth do in Andersen’s tales.
The story for this production is about the coming of age of the man whose stories we grew up with. And rather than just sticking to the truth, it takes on its own life as a fairy tale about the king of the genre. And just as Loesser broke new ground in musical storytelling, so here does the character of Andersen open new doors in balletic narrative.
Yeston’s research revealed that Andersen printed his first story in 1835, the same year the Royal Danish Ballet was founded, and, shortly afterward, ballerinas started dancing en pointe. " Suddenly he found his voice, and suddenly romantic ballet was created, " Yeston said.
Andersen loved from afar Jenny Lind, a Swedish soprano born in 1820 who became famous in the 1840s. To simplify the plot and to further explore the parallels of Andersen’s life and the Royal Ballet, Yeston changed Lind to the fictional ballerina Jenny Starhaven (Amy Bodnar), the belle of the ballet ball.
A chance ticket to a Starhaven show changes Hans’s world, drawing him into working backstage at the ballet and later to writing a libretto, to impress Jenny and win her heart. The reality of the writing life serves as a backdrop, with a group boarding house offering a strong contrast to the privileged life of a ballerina.
From the beginning of the show, Andersen’s tales and Loesser’s songs about them are given new layers, new meanings that unfold like flowers meeting the dawn of a new day.
A late-night vision of Jenny gives Hans new energy and inspiration, as well as an idea. While Andersen might have claimed he saw a group of young ducks and developed " The Ugly Duckling, " here Hans seizes onto Jenny’s confession that she has not always known she is beautiful for the kernel of the story he writes about his love.
Yeston’s genius is to have this insight and to pair Loesser’s song of the story with a silly, fun dance (choreographed by Ginger Thatcher) including both ballet and tap style performances by duck-dancers complete with scuba-divers’ fins on their feet.
And though Yeston and Loesser never met, they work together as if old friends, bringing music, story, and character into a rich concert of life. The most successful song in the 1952 version was " Thumbelina, " which Kaye’s character invented to make a group of children smile. Here, a desperate Hans devises the tale to avoid eviction from his lodgings. Other songs serve to move the plot along as well: " Inchworm " scolds a bean-counting businessman, while " The Princess and the Pea " is an on-the-spot answer to a friend’s query about what Hans has been up to all day.
It is a magical experience for an audience, held voluntarily and pleasantly captive in the (blessedly) air-conditioned theater. The old familiar tunes take flight on the wings of Yeston’s plot, and with the top-notch performers at MSMT the songs reach deep from the souls of the on-stage characters to the cores of the people watching, bringing both laughter and stunned silence out of nowhere, as if the audience members themselves are in the cast.
The modern world has its own part in the show: Two characters (played by Lori Johnson and Seth Belliston) wear rollerblades every time they appear on stage, artfully gliding among the other cast members and embodying the flow of mind and heart through this tale. And without giving too much away, ultraviolet light is used to magical effect.
Which moves directly into costuming: Most designers are hard-pressed to work in regular light. Jimm Halliday handled the normal stuff with great skill, even conning a young boy into tails and culottes, where he seemed happy enough. And then Halliday explored other spectrums of light, other definitions of darkness.
The set, too, defied convention. Literally a frame of stories surrounding and supporting the play, the bookends fold back and reveal the life bustling beneath the pages. Intricate details were not ignored, and costumes, set and choreography married each other in polygamist festivals of color and movement, especially in the underwater scenes.
" We wanted to go somewhere that would give us a good production, " Jo said. Yeston agreed that they had found it: MSMT’s crew " can accomplish in three weeks what takes most people three months. " Yeston also raved about MSMT’s newly purchased rehearsal space, calling it " better than anything you can get in New York. "
Producers from all over the US and Europe have been badgering Jo and Yeston for months. " We’ve had to sort of fight them off " and make them wait until the show was ready, Jo said. She is finally allowing two English producers to see it, but not on opening night.
They have also had inquiries from Germany, Switzerland, and Sweden. Jo is considering a run in Denmark, too, Andersen’s home country. A theater just outside Copenhagen, in Malmo, might be just the place to catch this show again soon. When the Loessers went to Denmark in the 1960s, Frank was given a hero’s welcome, with " Wonderful Copenhagen " — the opening number in this performance — played everywhere they went, like " Hail to the Chief " for the US president.
But this script, this score, these roles will also see humbler stages. Jo envisions high school performances nationwide, and though she immediately gets her back up when people ask for the rights to Loesser’s work, she welcomes schools with open arms.
There will not be a Broadway production, however. " We don’t need to, " Jo says candidly. " We would rather play the country. " Just as Andersen’s stories continue to do.
Hans Christian Andersen
Written by Maury Yeston. Music and lyrics by Frank Loesser. Directed by Charles Abbott. Musical direction by Edward Reichert. With Ken Barnett and Amy Bodnar. Maine State Music Theatre through June 21. Call 207-725-8769.
Wednesday, June 11, 2003
State healthcare plan moves forward
Published in the Current and the American Journal
The governor’s healthcare plan is now out of committee and looks likely to pass the full Legislature later this week.
It is a plan the head of Maine Medical Center says is worth a shot, while the head of the Greater Portland Chambers of Commerce says the insurance piece of it is unworkable.
“I believe that the governor’s initiative is admirable, bold, courageous, necessary,” said Vincent Conti, president and CEO of Maine Medical Center, the state’s largest hospital.
The governor’s overall plan, called “Dirigo Health,” is in two parts: controlling health care costs through regulation and an insurance plan, confusingly called “Dirigo Health Insurance,” which would create a subsidized pool to being insuring some of the 180,000 Mainers who now do not have health insurance.
Following intensive work and deal-making between lawmakers, healthcare providers, insurance companies and businesses, a deal worked out Monday night tweaks the insurance portion of the plan to save what some believe may be the more important part: healthcare cost containment.
In particular, the deal includes a safety net in case the insurance plan doesn’t work: After three years, the state will have to report on whether numbers of uninsured people are dropping and whether insurance premiums are going down because people are using their insurance to go to the doctor before they get critically ill. If the plan isn’t working, the state will have to propose major revisions that will work.
Conti of Maine Medical Center has his doubts about the insurance piece of the plan, but is supporting the governor’s package because of its broader reform goals. He said the health care system in Maine, “if not in crisis now, is pretty much heading toward a train wreck.”
With an aging population in Maine needing more healthcare, demand is growing, at the same time advances in medical technology are making health care more expensive, Conti said.
The governor’s plan would ask hospitals to hold down their per-patient costs and would improve the existing healthcare planning system in the state, removing political pressures from decisions on where new facilities will be built. Decisions would be based on which facilities could offer the best clinical outcomes because of proven expertise.
The state would augment an existing database now run by the Maine Health Management Coalition, compiling statistics on healthcare costs and treatment
outcomes, to give the public more information about how much modern medicine costs.
The second part, the health insurance plan, is intended to fix the healthcare payment system, in which 180,000 Mainers do not have health insurance. Because they lack coverage, they tend to wait until they are very ill and then go to what Conti calls “the single most expensive place in the universe” to get healthcare: the emergency room.
They can’t pay their bills, and the money must come from somewhere else. This cost-shifting is made worse because Medicaid and Medicare payments pay just 80 percent of the actual cost of care provided to their patients.
All of the unpaid money must be made up from the only remaining source: privately insured people and their insurance companies.
That drives up the cost of healthcare bills to private insurers, which in turn ups premiums for insurance coverage. Fewer people can afford insurance, and so more become uninsured, raising the specter of a vicious spiral in which, eventually, nobody will be able to afford health insurance.
Dirigo Health Insurance would be a state-assembled pool of uninsured people who would have access to – and some state funding to pay for – a state-designed health insurance plan provided by the private insurance company that bids the lowest in a state-run auction.
The plan has come under criticism because it would require employers and employees to purchase health insurance at or close to market rates, which are too high for many to bear.
Godfrey Wood, president and CEO of the Greater Portland Chambers of Commerce, has proposed moving forward with the healthcare system reform piece of the plan right away, and working through the summer to fine-tune the insurance segment.
Wood said more than half of the funding for the governor’s plan would come from individuals and employers, who are not now paying anything toward health insurance premiums, leaving workers and families uninsured.
He said “very few” businesses would sign onto the Dirigo Health Insurance plan because it wouldn’t be much cheaper than existing health insurance.
“It’s a very rich plan at a very inexpensive price,” projections he does not think are realistic. “Individuals can’t afford it now. Businesses can’t afford it,” Wood said.
The governor’s healthcare plan is now out of committee and looks likely to pass the full Legislature later this week.
It is a plan the head of Maine Medical Center says is worth a shot, while the head of the Greater Portland Chambers of Commerce says the insurance piece of it is unworkable.
“I believe that the governor’s initiative is admirable, bold, courageous, necessary,” said Vincent Conti, president and CEO of Maine Medical Center, the state’s largest hospital.
The governor’s overall plan, called “Dirigo Health,” is in two parts: controlling health care costs through regulation and an insurance plan, confusingly called “Dirigo Health Insurance,” which would create a subsidized pool to being insuring some of the 180,000 Mainers who now do not have health insurance.
Following intensive work and deal-making between lawmakers, healthcare providers, insurance companies and businesses, a deal worked out Monday night tweaks the insurance portion of the plan to save what some believe may be the more important part: healthcare cost containment.
In particular, the deal includes a safety net in case the insurance plan doesn’t work: After three years, the state will have to report on whether numbers of uninsured people are dropping and whether insurance premiums are going down because people are using their insurance to go to the doctor before they get critically ill. If the plan isn’t working, the state will have to propose major revisions that will work.
Conti of Maine Medical Center has his doubts about the insurance piece of the plan, but is supporting the governor’s package because of its broader reform goals. He said the health care system in Maine, “if not in crisis now, is pretty much heading toward a train wreck.”
With an aging population in Maine needing more healthcare, demand is growing, at the same time advances in medical technology are making health care more expensive, Conti said.
The governor’s plan would ask hospitals to hold down their per-patient costs and would improve the existing healthcare planning system in the state, removing political pressures from decisions on where new facilities will be built. Decisions would be based on which facilities could offer the best clinical outcomes because of proven expertise.
The state would augment an existing database now run by the Maine Health Management Coalition, compiling statistics on healthcare costs and treatment
outcomes, to give the public more information about how much modern medicine costs.
The second part, the health insurance plan, is intended to fix the healthcare payment system, in which 180,000 Mainers do not have health insurance. Because they lack coverage, they tend to wait until they are very ill and then go to what Conti calls “the single most expensive place in the universe” to get healthcare: the emergency room.
They can’t pay their bills, and the money must come from somewhere else. This cost-shifting is made worse because Medicaid and Medicare payments pay just 80 percent of the actual cost of care provided to their patients.
All of the unpaid money must be made up from the only remaining source: privately insured people and their insurance companies.
That drives up the cost of healthcare bills to private insurers, which in turn ups premiums for insurance coverage. Fewer people can afford insurance, and so more become uninsured, raising the specter of a vicious spiral in which, eventually, nobody will be able to afford health insurance.
Dirigo Health Insurance would be a state-assembled pool of uninsured people who would have access to – and some state funding to pay for – a state-designed health insurance plan provided by the private insurance company that bids the lowest in a state-run auction.
The plan has come under criticism because it would require employers and employees to purchase health insurance at or close to market rates, which are too high for many to bear.
Godfrey Wood, president and CEO of the Greater Portland Chambers of Commerce, has proposed moving forward with the healthcare system reform piece of the plan right away, and working through the summer to fine-tune the insurance segment.
Wood said more than half of the funding for the governor’s plan would come from individuals and employers, who are not now paying anything toward health insurance premiums, leaving workers and families uninsured.
He said “very few” businesses would sign onto the Dirigo Health Insurance plan because it wouldn’t be much cheaper than existing health insurance.
“It’s a very rich plan at a very inexpensive price,” projections he does not think are realistic. “Individuals can’t afford it now. Businesses can’t afford it,” Wood said.
Friday, June 6, 2003
A healthy summer diet: Including luscious theatrical fruit
Published in the Portland Phoenix
It’s summer in Maine, and there’s so much to do. Make sure one of those things on the to-do list is to not just eat but sit back and enjoy a good, fresh piece of locally grown theater fruit.
Here, hand-picked for you, are this summer’s ripest and freshest, juicy with passion and alive with color and light, direct from my to-do calendar to yours, starting right away, and moving through the season between the muds, with a different taste each time:
First, the starfruit — the top items of each month. If you can only manage a few theatrical antioxidants in your diet, don’t miss these.
• June is already here. If you only can make room for one production, get going early and whet your appetite — maybe you’ll crave more. The all-out gem of the summer, not to be missed, is " Hey, We’re Acting Over Here, " a festival of short plays hosted by the Cast, made up of Craig Bowden, J.P. Guimont, and David A. Currier. These three are theater geniuses we’ll hope to keep around Maine for a long, long time. They’ll be on stage performing David Mamet, David Ives, and Christopher Durang, alongside some of their most talented friends and colleagues, including Joshua Stamell. It’s at the St. Lawrence Arts Center, in Portland; curtain is at 8 p.m. June 19, at 3 p.m. and 8 p.m. June 21, and at 3 p.m. June 22. Tickets $10, available at the door.
• In late June and early July, Maine’s newest theater company, the Stage, will put on its first performance in a historic outdoor venue at Fort Preble. Macbeth will star the Stage’s founders, Seth Rigoletti and Miranda Hope, who view the play’s theme of violence begetting violence as cathartic and enlightening in these troubled times. Find them at Spring Point, in South Portland, June 25 to July 12 (except July 4). Curtain is at 8 p.m. on Wed. through Sat. Tickets are free, but call (207) 828-0128 for reservations and updates in case of bad weather.
• A late July highlight will be Winter Harbor Theatre speaking out again, with a reprise of their stunning production of Tony Kushner’s antiwar play Only We Who Guard The Mystery Shall Be Unhappy. If you missed this brilliantly written and powerfully performed show in April, now you get a second chance. Again the audience and actors will be under the gaze of Robert Shetterly’s portraits of Americans Who Tell The Truth. It’s at the St. Lawrence Arts Center, in Portland. Gallery opens at 7 p.m., curtain is at p.m., July 30 and 31. Tickets free, available at the door.
• August will see the fourth annual Deertrees Theatre Festival, a collaboration with New York City’s Greenlight Theatreworks to bring to Maine four plays from New York. This year we’ll get Ira Levin’s Dr. Cook’s Garden, a thriller about the happiest and healthiest small town in Vermont; Vanities, Jack Heifner’s 1960s and ’70s coming-of-age story; the Tony-winning Art, by Yazmina Reza, about male friendship, intellectual honesty, and what defines art; and Driving Miss Daisy, by Alford Uhry, the Pulitzer- and Oscar-winning drama set in the antebellum South. All shows are at Deertrees Theatre, in Harrison, start at 8 p.m. and cost $16. Call (207) 583-6747. Dr. Cook’s Garden shows Aug. 7 and 8; Vanities shows Aug. 14 and 15; Art shows Aug. 21 and 22; Driving Miss Daisy shows Aug. 28, 29, and 30.
And now for the rest of this summer’s luscious fruit salad, in chronological order by starting date:
• A sure-to-succeed play about a failing show is Light Up The Sky by Moss Hart at the Gaslight Theater. Theater insiders fear their show will flop and begin to self-destruct. Then they realize the play is a dark-horse success. Where is the line between commercialism and art? It’s at the Gaslight Theater, in Hallowell, June 19 to 21 and June 26 to 28. Call (207) 626-3698 for times and ticket prices.
• The Theater at Monmouth’s summer season will be alive with Shakespeare, comedy, and classics. Shakespeare lovers will adore Two Gentlemen of Verona, Julius Caesar, and The Compleat Wrks of Willm Shkspr, abridged by Singer, Long, and Borgeson. Also, TAM favorite Janis Stevens will have a one-night performance of the one-woman show written for her, Vivien, about actress Vivien Leigh. All shows are at The Theater at Monmouth, in Monmouth. Call (207) 933-9999 for show times. Tickets are $18 to $26. Two Gents shows July 5 through Aug. 23; Caesar shows July 25 through Aug. 22; Compleat Wrks shows Aug. 12 and 19; Vivien shows Aug. 5.
• Deertrees Theatre has several other productions, besides the festival listed above. They include Susan Poulin’s show Franco Fry or Pardon My French, a thoughtful exploration of her Franco-American heritage; and Exceptions to Gravity, by Avner Eisenberg, who, it is said, was once arrested in France for " buffoonery in public. " Both shows are at Deertrees Theater, in Harrison. Call (207) 583-6747. Franco Fry shows July 18. Tickets $14. Exceptions to Gravity shows Aug. 9. Tickets $16.
• The Maine Shakespeare Festival will move this year from the riverfront to the Bangor Opera House, but budget troubles have forced the cancellation of the two scheduled Shakespeare performances as well as one musical. Now, they will perform only The Fantasticks, and will offer matinees for the first time, as well as indoor plumbing. At the Bangor Opera House, in Bangor, July 24 through Aug. 9, on Thursday through Saturday. Tickets range from $17 to $25 (donate an extra buck to help keep them alive). Call (207) 942-3333 for prices and times.
• If it rains during the first two weeks of August, you can find an indoor seat at a play about that very predicament. Acadia Repertory Theater will put on Relatively Speaking: A Summer Comedy, by Alan Ayckbourn, a top English comic playwright. The play is described as what people do " when their seaside summer holidays were spoiled by the rain and they came to the theater before trudging back to their landladies. " It’s at Acadia Repertory Theater, on Mt. Desert Island. Curtain is at 8:15 p.m., Tues. through Sun., from July 29 through Aug. 10. Tickets $20. Call (207) 244-7260.
• Frank Wicks of the Theater Project will see another in a string of intermittent performances of his play Soldier, Come Home, a readers’ theater piece based on the letters to and from his great-grandparents, written between 1859 and 1865, as his great-grandfather served in the Union Army. At First Parish Church, in Brunswick. Curtain is at 7:30 p.m., Aug. 8. Tickets $10. Call (207) 729-6606.
• Two bickering sisters wait through the summer for the whales to migrate as they have for years in The Whales of August, at the Lakewood Theater. David Berry’s play takes a poignant look at family, dependency, and aging in the soft light of summer. At Lakewood Theater, in Skowhegan. Curtain is at 8 p.m. Aug. 14 and 21, at 8:15 p.m. Aug. 15 and 16, at 6:45 p.m. Aug. 17 and 19, and at 2 p.m. Aug. 20. Tickets $17 to $22. Call (207) 474-7176.
• And, all summer long, the Players’ Ring, in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, will keep things alive with their usual edgy, rough, bright, and unheralded style. Every weekend, July 4 through August 23, will see a new performance by a variety of local actors. Locally written one-acts are represented, as are well known plays and playwrights. Visit www.playersring.org for more details on the shows, and call (603) 436-8123 for times and ticket prices.
Friday, May 30, 2003
Tell me lies: Hiding from truth at dinner
Published in the Portland Phoenix
Written by George S. Kaufman and Edna Ferber. Directed by Rachael M. Burr. With Helen Brock, Roland Goodbody, Dann Anthony Maurno, and Anne F. Rehner. Theatre on the Rocks, at the Players’ Ring, through June 8. Call (603) 436-8123.
How far will you go to keep up appearances? Or, more precisely, what would you do to keep others from popping the balloon of your illusions about yourself? Are you, like an unseen English peer and his wife in Dinner at Eight, " just like everybody else, only plainer? "
In the play’s world, everyone knows the troubles the others have seen, but don’t want them to know they know. Dinner at Eight peers into the world of how the other — well, not quite half, so let’s say two percent — live. Society women swoon over their engagement calendars, hoping to stay near the top of the social kettle. Their servants aspire to higher goals and better lives, while neighbors and lesser relations know, and keep, their places.
Millicent Jordan (Helen Brock) is impressed by the superficial — say, those who have an office in the Empire State Building (no matter how big, nor what its business) — and wants others to know about her connections, however tenuous, with the rich and famous of New York and even England.
Here is the stuff of gossip columns: One businessman is trying to protect his family company from going under, while another is scheming to take it over; a doctor is having an affair with a whiny trophy wife; an actor trying valiantly to reclaim the star status of his youth; a below-stairs romance is blossoming despite a jealous co-worker and the prior marriage of one partner.
The stories are intertwined cleverly, with strong voices coming through to make sure the audience isn’t lost, and with a more audience-like element on stage in the bodies of Hattie and Ed Loomis (Susan Norris and Jeff Kaplan). The Loomises are quite happy with their lot as middle-class working people, and bemused by the pretenses of their relations. They are also certainly not about to argue over a free meal, even if they were a last-minute addition to the guest list.
The play is a comedy, though a sad one, with unrequited love, lost hope, and true desperation mixed in with the laughably superficial concerns of Millicent.
The casting is genius, with each person selected for his or her strengths and pushed to perform them. And most cast members have more than one part, in a slightly different stratum of society. The recurring faces in different scenarios lends additional power to the theme, " there but for the grace of (insert name of deity) go I. " Brock herself takes a social demotion from flitty rich housewife to nurse, while the man who plays a butler (Steve Erickson) also plays a hotel bellboy.
Of further note is Tim Robinson’s performance. He stepped in to fill the role of Dan Packard when Bruce Allen took ill and was hospitalized a day before the show was to open. Despite still acting with script in hand, Robinson has excellent stage presence and is able to remain a strong performer.
It is fitting that this play should be presented so charmingly in the rough, arty space at the Players’ Ring theater, a historic building long past its original prime, but now gunning hard for a rebirth as an arts and cultural space. The building has no hidden aspirations, instead celebrating its past and its future.
There is an undercurrent of self-reference in the play itself, both to the world of theater, and to the Ring, mainly by happenstance. Perhaps this is the reason for the selection of this script over others that could have been more engaging.
In one scene, an aging widow (Anne F. Rehner) wants to sell a theater on 42nd Street but can’t find an interested buyer, to which a failing businessman (Roland Goodbody) replies that he has long wanted to become a playwright. In another scene, a doctor (Paul J. Bell) predicts the fortunes of the Ring’s current air-conditioning-fund drive, saying " in the future, buildings will be artificially cooled. "
It is too bad that while the pieces are all strong, from acting to costumes and set to lights, the sum of the parts really doesn’t sing the way this play could, or any other play could with this cast. It is possible — and understandable — that everyone was distracted by worry for Allen, who does not have any life-threatening condition, we are assured. But director Rachael Burr should have spent more time on an overall direction for the play than in making sure its details were taken care of.
In fact, the play as a whole is truly remarkable only for its three-hour length, thanks in part to protracted set changes (some nearly three minutes!). Perhaps this production itself wants a higher station in life but could not find a way there this time around.
Written by George S. Kaufman and Edna Ferber. Directed by Rachael M. Burr. With Helen Brock, Roland Goodbody, Dann Anthony Maurno, and Anne F. Rehner. Theatre on the Rocks, at the Players’ Ring, through June 8. Call (603) 436-8123.
Wednesday, May 28, 2003
Survey says fees at fort, prosecute parents
Published in the Current and the American Journal
A survey conducted by a Portland market research firm owned by a Cape Elizabeth woman shows that Mainers overwhelmingly support a $5 annual admission fee at Fort Williams, as well as prosecution of parents who “knowingly allow their minor children” to host parties with alcohol.
The survey, conducted by Critical Insights, owned by Cape resident MaryEllen FitzGerald, is part of a semi-annual statewide poll the company undertakes with two purposes. The first is to allow companies to purchase small numbers of questions in a statewide poll without commissioning an entire survey alone. Those questions, and their answers, are shared only with the clients.
The second purpose is to ask people a series of “general interest” questions over time that shows trends in opinion throughout the state. Those questions are created by the company’s staff, and results are made public to promote the firm, FitzGerald said.
She herself comes up with some of the questions, and for the past few years has added a question about parental responsibility for underage parties with alcohol. The question asks if parents who know about such parties should be prosecuted.
A “yes” answer to the question has gotten overwhelming support every time, and in the latest survey was supported by 82 percent of respondents.
FitzGerald said she added the question in response to “the ongoing conversation” in Cape Elizabeth about parents and teenage parties. Cape Police Capt. Brent Sinclair agreed with the survey’s respondents. “Absolutely they should” be prosecuted. When Cape police have enough evidence, “we do issue them a citation.”
Two percent of the survey respondents didn’t give an answer to the question. As for the 16 percent of survey respondents who said parents should not be prosecuted, Sinclair said, “those are the 16 percent of kids we’re dealing with.”
He warned that whether parents know about what their property is used for is immaterial, if a person gets drunk and gets in an accident on the way home. “In the bigger picture, it’s a huge liability for the parents,” Sinclair said.
This year, for the first time, FitzGerald also added a question about a Fort Williams admission charge, using the model proposed by Town Councilor Mary Ann Lynch of a $5 annual fee per vehicle.
The question included a preliminary statement by the questioner, to set a context for the question. The exact wording was: “With the current state budget shortfall, towns across the state are looking for ways to lessen the impact of the budget cuts on their communities. You may have heard that the town of Cape Elizabeth was considering charging a once-a-year fee of $5 for admittance to Fort Williams Park. Taxpayers in the town contribute $30 per household through their taxes to the maintenance of the park, where all visitors (including tour buses) are currently admitted for free of charge. Do you support or oppose charging a once-a-year fee of $5 per vehicle for a pass giving unlimited access to Fort Williams?”
Seventy-four percent of respondents agreed, with people living in Southern Maine supporting it less than people in other areas of the state.
Lynch said she had seen the survey and liked what she saw. “It confirmed my anecdotal gut feeling,” she said.
And though the survey was not just of Cape residents, she said it showed that “people outside of Cape Elizabeth recognize that it’s a resource that needs to be cherished – by paying for it.”
Also in the survey were questions about statewide and national issues.
Nearly half of all Mainers think unemployment and the economy are the two most important issues for the state, and look to Gov. John Baldacci for leadership to solve those problems.
Mainers are split on a casino, with a statistical dead-heat in the response to a question asking whether the respondent supports or opposes “the idea of building a casino in Maine.” When the question was asked again with language close to what is proposed to be on the ballot in November, support climbed to 57 percent.
The survey also included a question on a proposal co-sponsored by Rep. Larry Bliss, D-South Portland, to decrease the voting age to 17. Most people did not agree, with 77 percent opposing it and only 20 percent favoring it Three percent of respondents either did not know or refused to answer.
A survey conducted by a Portland market research firm owned by a Cape Elizabeth woman shows that Mainers overwhelmingly support a $5 annual admission fee at Fort Williams, as well as prosecution of parents who “knowingly allow their minor children” to host parties with alcohol.
The survey, conducted by Critical Insights, owned by Cape resident MaryEllen FitzGerald, is part of a semi-annual statewide poll the company undertakes with two purposes. The first is to allow companies to purchase small numbers of questions in a statewide poll without commissioning an entire survey alone. Those questions, and their answers, are shared only with the clients.
The second purpose is to ask people a series of “general interest” questions over time that shows trends in opinion throughout the state. Those questions are created by the company’s staff, and results are made public to promote the firm, FitzGerald said.
She herself comes up with some of the questions, and for the past few years has added a question about parental responsibility for underage parties with alcohol. The question asks if parents who know about such parties should be prosecuted.
A “yes” answer to the question has gotten overwhelming support every time, and in the latest survey was supported by 82 percent of respondents.
FitzGerald said she added the question in response to “the ongoing conversation” in Cape Elizabeth about parents and teenage parties. Cape Police Capt. Brent Sinclair agreed with the survey’s respondents. “Absolutely they should” be prosecuted. When Cape police have enough evidence, “we do issue them a citation.”
Two percent of the survey respondents didn’t give an answer to the question. As for the 16 percent of survey respondents who said parents should not be prosecuted, Sinclair said, “those are the 16 percent of kids we’re dealing with.”
He warned that whether parents know about what their property is used for is immaterial, if a person gets drunk and gets in an accident on the way home. “In the bigger picture, it’s a huge liability for the parents,” Sinclair said.
This year, for the first time, FitzGerald also added a question about a Fort Williams admission charge, using the model proposed by Town Councilor Mary Ann Lynch of a $5 annual fee per vehicle.
The question included a preliminary statement by the questioner, to set a context for the question. The exact wording was: “With the current state budget shortfall, towns across the state are looking for ways to lessen the impact of the budget cuts on their communities. You may have heard that the town of Cape Elizabeth was considering charging a once-a-year fee of $5 for admittance to Fort Williams Park. Taxpayers in the town contribute $30 per household through their taxes to the maintenance of the park, where all visitors (including tour buses) are currently admitted for free of charge. Do you support or oppose charging a once-a-year fee of $5 per vehicle for a pass giving unlimited access to Fort Williams?”
Seventy-four percent of respondents agreed, with people living in Southern Maine supporting it less than people in other areas of the state.
Lynch said she had seen the survey and liked what she saw. “It confirmed my anecdotal gut feeling,” she said.
And though the survey was not just of Cape residents, she said it showed that “people outside of Cape Elizabeth recognize that it’s a resource that needs to be cherished – by paying for it.”
Also in the survey were questions about statewide and national issues.
Nearly half of all Mainers think unemployment and the economy are the two most important issues for the state, and look to Gov. John Baldacci for leadership to solve those problems.
Mainers are split on a casino, with a statistical dead-heat in the response to a question asking whether the respondent supports or opposes “the idea of building a casino in Maine.” When the question was asked again with language close to what is proposed to be on the ballot in November, support climbed to 57 percent.
The survey also included a question on a proposal co-sponsored by Rep. Larry Bliss, D-South Portland, to decrease the voting age to 17. Most people did not agree, with 77 percent opposing it and only 20 percent favoring it Three percent of respondents either did not know or refused to answer.
Friday, May 23, 2003
Not just tall tales: Les Acadiens lends truths to folklore
Published in the Portland Phoenix
Les Acadiens
Written by Stacy Begin. Directed by Pamela DiPasquale. With Joshua Stamell, Peter Carignan, Elizabeth Enck, Haley Carignan, and Sawyer Hoops. At Children’s Theatre of Maine, through May 25. Call (207) 828-0617.
It’s not every play in which, on opening night, at the top of the second act, a young actor gets caught up in a stage-fight and breaks his arm. For real. But if it is to be any play, Stacy Begin’s Les Acadiens, exploring the repercussions of risk-taking against social norms, is a good one for it to happen in.
Chased out of Canada by the English, some Acadiens came south across the St. John River in the 18th century. The rest were deported, heading to French lands in what is now Louisiana. They became the Cajuns. The ones who remained up north, however, managed, at great peril, to establish themselves anew in Maine.
And the way Papa (Peter Carignan) tells the story, to cross the river to Madawaska, the tall Acadiens put the shorter ones on their shoulders. When the river became too swift and deep, the tall ones were swept away, and the short ones just barely made it to shore to begin a new life.
" And that is why we are all so short! " Papa proclaims. In a recent performance, an unexpected child’s query from the audience drew as many laughs as the scripted story: " Really? " she asked her parents.
It is moments like these that make Les Acadiens a gem of a play. Based in part on Begin’s own Franco-Canadian heritage (and no, she isn’t very tall), the play looks closely at a time when many French-Americans came of age, but before most of them started truly demanding equal treatment with their Yankee coworkers and neighbors.
The early 1940s were a time of great transition in American society, and French millworkers in Maine towns were not immune. Papa stuck with the old ways — in which fathers worked at the mill until their bodies or spirits were too broken to continue, at which point their oldest sons picked up the mantle.
For Maurice (Joshua Stamell), however, a new world beckons. A year from getting his high school diploma, Papa makes him drop out and head to the mill. In an exchange fraught with youthful optimism and adult pragmatism — " Who needs education, ah, when you have the mill? " — Maurice gives in, grudgingly, and starts to learn to count paper plates " hot off the presses " in batches of 250.
The stories his father told — and that he has learned to tell to his younger siblings — become the undoing of this pattern. Maurice’s Acadien heritage shows through as he rebels against an authoritarian force pushing him against his will. Abuse from the Yankee millworkers who beat down and blacklisted his father does not deter Maurice, who enlists in the Army to avoid becoming just like Papa.
The play abounds in touching vignettes, lovingly crafted by the playwright and faithfully executed by actors both telling the story and performing it, as visions in the minds of the audience. It is these moments, and subtle character elements, that make this a sentimental look at the way things used to be, without being overly sappy or bitter about it.
True-to-life ironies also abound, with Mama (Elizabeth Enck) wanting Maurice to stay home and work in the mill, which is " safe, " despite frequent small fires and worker-disfiguring accidents. It is the distance to which the Army will remove Maurice that makes his mother worried.
The acting is very strong, both from the children and the adults in the cast. Enck and Carignan do well with their French accents, and Marie-Jeanne (Haley Carignan, one of Peter’s two daughters in the show) and Clement (Sawyer Hopps, complete with arm cast) are delightful as young children who idealize both their father and their older brother, despite the contradictions between the two men. Both have mischievous streaks that get them in trouble, but also — particularly in Marie-Jeanne’s case — prove profitable.
The costumes in the play, designed by the ever-resourceful Pamela DiPasquale, are a magical mixture of impoverished drabness and fanciful color, showing the contrasts between reality and the folk stories, as refugees turn to sprites and back again. Lights help, too, and award-winning playwright John Urquhart, this play’s lighting designer, makes transition from fable to reality clear but not too stark.
It is, however, the folktales that make this show an enchanting one for all ages, and bring a sense of historical parallelism otherwise hard to portray. Il y avait une fois — there was a time . . .
Oh — and Sawyer Hopps’ broken arm? After a visit to the emergency room and a weekend off, he’s back on stage going strong, with his plaster cast signed by the acting cast.
Les Acadiens
Written by Stacy Begin. Directed by Pamela DiPasquale. With Joshua Stamell, Peter Carignan, Elizabeth Enck, Haley Carignan, and Sawyer Hoops. At Children’s Theatre of Maine, through May 25. Call (207) 828-0617.
BACKSTAGE
• Seacoast Repertory Theatre’s Senior Moments Group will put on a new original play, Dearly Departed, May 31. The group, actors over 55, will show a comic-but-serious look at aging and death.
• Some younger actors, 18 high school students from Brunswick, Bath, Freeport and Topsham, have also written their own play, Voices in the Mirror, showing May 30 through June 1 at the Theater Project. They’ll present teenagers’ views of the world.
Friday, May 16, 2003
The quiz of life: It's multiple-choice at Mad Horse
Published in the Portland Phoenix
Written by George F. Walker. Directed by Andrew Sokoloff, Brian Hinds, and Lisa Muller-Jones. Mad Horse Theatre Company, at the Portland Performing Arts Center Studio Theater, through June 1. Call (207) 347-5218.
It’s hard to keep the door closed against a loud world that keeps pushing. Mad Horse Theatre Company takes four looks — two a night — into the lives of the people who try to keep that world out of their little rented motel room.
The four plays are all by George F. Walker, a Toronto taxi-driver turned playwright who continues to display theatrical genius on the page as he explores the darker sides of modern living. In these four one-hour plays (intermission is between plays, rather than mid-show), some of Portland’s best actors beautifully lay out the desperation and cluelessness so many feel when faced with societal reality.
" Bad luck binds all the unfortunate of the Earth together and makes us unfortunate " may be the defining line of these plays, which explore how bad it can get, and then where " down " is from there. They are the people who have failed what one character calls " the quiz of life, " and probably haven’t studied, though, as they enter the room, they realize it might have been good to do so.
The plays are well written and keep actors and audience in sync despite the discord of the stories. In Criminal Genius, for example, a father/son criminal duo (played by Brian Shorey and J.P. Guimont), unwilling to harm other people, botch their mission and end up sucked into a murderous family feud.
The deep ironies are laughable but are tempered by the tragedies taking place in these characters’ lives. In Problem Child, R.J. (Brian Hinds) and Denise (Lisa Muller-Jones) are a couple who have lost custody of their baby daughter and are trying to get her back. It is a look into a scene that takes place all over Maine and throughout the nation, as people who have had a child behave in ways that make them — at best — questionable parents, but who still have that most important element of parenthood — deep-rooted love.
The acting, as audiences have come to expect from Mad Horse, is excellent, with honest emotion, hilarious cluelessness, rising frustration, and heartbreaking desperation all laid bare on the stage.
The characters have depth and all the actors find the voices reaching out from within criminals, druggies, and alcoholics; the sounds made by lovers, parents, and children the world over. These sounds, though, are wrenched from deep down and twisted through the wringer of what life has done to these people, who are either too weak or too distracted to have noticed before.
These are all strong actors who, with good scripts and excellent direction, bring the audience in to be flies on the wall of a room in a cheap motel where all of these wondrous and terrible things occur.
Directing is a challenge in this production like few others, as it has four plays and three directors. Further, each play has at least one character who appears in another play, making communication between directors vital to the plausibility of character development.
For example, Bob Colby plays motel manager Phillie in Criminal Genius and Problem Child, a hilariously pathetic alcoholic who has discovered over time that it is hard to clean the rooms drunk, and so takes Wednesdays off the bottle. His character is consistent throughout both plays, a testament to his acting skills as well as the clarity of direction from Hinds and Mad Horse artistic director Andy Sokoloff.
These plays also clearly portray the " normal " people from the outside world who appear, as if characters in a play, from time to time in the lives of the underdogs playwright Walker is focusing on here.
Helen (Elizabeth Enck), a social worker with the power to decide the fate of a child now in foster care, is as smarmy and condescending as we all fear those state-employed Solomons are in real life. The saving grace for her, and a sign of Walker’s strong writing ability, is that she shows glimpses of the same pathetic nature as the couple she is interrogating. Her self-righteousness appears to come not from any innate superiority, but from having overcome something she isn’t talking about.
These are the subtleties on which these plays depend, and they are all here. Comedy or tragedy? It depends on the moment.
Suburban MotelWritten by George F. Walker. Directed by Andrew Sokoloff, Brian Hinds, and Lisa Muller-Jones. Mad Horse Theatre Company, at the Portland Performing Arts Center Studio Theater, through June 1. Call (207) 347-5218.
BACKSTAGE
• The Stage at Spring Point is a new nonprofit theater company and will present Macbeth in an outdoors venue June 25 through July 12, with the support of the South Portland recreation department.
• The Stage’s educational arm, the Young Actors Institute, is accepting applications through May 20 from high-school thespians who want to deepen their theatrical experience this summer. Call (207) 828-0128 for more info.
• Props to the folks at L/A Arts for putting on a show by a Somali playwright now living in the Twin Cities. Omar Ahmed’s play Love in the Cactus Village is about arranged marriage and love in an African family. Canadian television was there, as was a National Geographic photographer and more than 600 locals of many ethnicities. Did Mayor Larry Raymond show up?
Wednesday, May 14, 2003
Bank robber nabbed at Super 8
Published in the Current and the American Journal
A man who allegedly robbed a Portland bank Saturday was arrested Monday at the Super 8 Motel on Larrabee Road in Westbrook. Steven Conway, 34, who gave police an address in Cape Elizabeth, was scheduled for arraignment Tuesday on a charge of armed robbery.
Portland Police Deputy Chief Bill Ridge expects the state charge to be dropped and a federal bank robbery charge to be filed against Conway.
“Robbing a bank is at the same time a state crime and a federal crime,” Ridge said. The federal charge “has far more severe penalties.”
On Saturday just after noon, a man walked into the Key Bank branch at 400 Forest Ave., Portland, “displayed a firearm and demanded money,” Ridge said.
An undisclosed amount was loaded into two paper bags, and the man left. As he walked down a nearby street, a dye packet concealed in one bag exploded, marking the stolen bills. The man left that bag, and police were able to recover “a large amount” of cash from the street, Ridge said.
“He eluded the police at that point,” Ridge said. Nothing more was heard until Portland police got a call at 8 a.m. Monday morning from a desk clerk at the Super 8 Motel on Larrabee Road. That person had money in the cash register “that appeared to be tainted with red dye,” Ridge said. The clerk said the man who had passed the money was still in his room.
Portland and Westbrook police responded, as well as the FBI. Just after 11 a.m., the clerk called the room to ask for the occupants to pay for another night or to leave.
“Mr. Conway and a woman who was with him” came out of the room. Conway had some red-tainted bills on him, Ridge said. The woman was questioned and released as a witness who was not involved in the crime.
A man who allegedly robbed a Portland bank Saturday was arrested Monday at the Super 8 Motel on Larrabee Road in Westbrook. Steven Conway, 34, who gave police an address in Cape Elizabeth, was scheduled for arraignment Tuesday on a charge of armed robbery.
Portland Police Deputy Chief Bill Ridge expects the state charge to be dropped and a federal bank robbery charge to be filed against Conway.
“Robbing a bank is at the same time a state crime and a federal crime,” Ridge said. The federal charge “has far more severe penalties.”
On Saturday just after noon, a man walked into the Key Bank branch at 400 Forest Ave., Portland, “displayed a firearm and demanded money,” Ridge said.
An undisclosed amount was loaded into two paper bags, and the man left. As he walked down a nearby street, a dye packet concealed in one bag exploded, marking the stolen bills. The man left that bag, and police were able to recover “a large amount” of cash from the street, Ridge said.
“He eluded the police at that point,” Ridge said. Nothing more was heard until Portland police got a call at 8 a.m. Monday morning from a desk clerk at the Super 8 Motel on Larrabee Road. That person had money in the cash register “that appeared to be tainted with red dye,” Ridge said. The clerk said the man who had passed the money was still in his room.
Portland and Westbrook police responded, as well as the FBI. Just after 11 a.m., the clerk called the room to ask for the occupants to pay for another night or to leave.
“Mr. Conway and a woman who was with him” came out of the room. Conway had some red-tainted bills on him, Ridge said. The woman was questioned and released as a witness who was not involved in the crime.
Friday, May 9, 2003
Living and loving well: Choosing An Infinite Ache
Published in the Portland Phoenix
If " marriage is what brings us together today, " in the words of the Princess Bride minister, it can also be what drives us apart tomorrow. The mooring lines of love, affection, and attraction that cause people to merge their lives can loosen, if untended, allowing the ship of life to run aground.
If " marriage is what brings us together today, " in the words of the Princess Bride minister, it can also be what drives us apart tomorrow. The mooring lines of love, affection, and attraction that cause people to merge their lives can loosen, if untended, allowing the ship of life to run aground.
In the waning moments of a brutally difficult evening out — seen by the young man as a first date and by the young woman as a favor to a friend-of-a-friend who is new in town — a vision appears. What if, instead of an exit with a promise to " call you sometime, " a person who has drunk too much didn’t walk out of your life forever, but, instead, became your life’s partner? So begins An Infinite Ache, penned by a 29-year-old man in the throes of unrequited love. The brilliantly written script looks forward into the imagined future and sees Charles (Pierre-Marc Diennet) and Hope (Ann Hu) as their lives and loves develop and change, all the way through grandparenthood and Hope’s death.
Committed couples — and those considering lifelong partnership — will find themselves, and perhaps a glimpse of the future, in these characters.
It is up to the actors, working with a single set location and little off-stage time for costume changes, to unlock the power and wisdom in the play, and Hu and Diennet do so powerfully. To make the point that minutes can represent weeks, even decades, watches and clocks are taken off, put away, and left entirely alone until the play’s end. Even a repeatedly missing camera reinforces the inability one has to tangibly capture any particular moment.
Hu and Diennet carry well the challenging script’s rapid changes in plot and emotion. Hesitancy about cohabitation and marriage morphs into proposal, and rejection is followed by acceptance, marriage, and a baby. Life takes its terrible and dreadful course, as well as its pleasant and joyful one, and the couple endures tragedy, child-rearing, infidelity, divorce, reconciliation, sickness, and death.
Themselves young, if accomplished, actors, Hu and Diennet impart a wisdom greater than their years as a fight over laundry becomes an announcement of unexpected pregnancy and deep emotions bubble to the surface, dreams and hopes of youth clashing with the responsibilities of adulthood.
Watch for a fight they have while she packs to move out. It quickly transforms into her unpacking the suitcase instead. Here, Charles’s impassioned speeches, answered by Hope’s wordless changes of action and meaning, are bolstered by excellent stage management, making sure all the props are in the right place at the right time.
As the two age and grow in Charles’s imagination, the deepest elements of the two characters are exposed, culminating in abrupt and frank true confessions of realizations that only slowly dawn on the members of any real-life partnership as it matures. It is a play, and a performance, that brings forward the pressing issues of love and commitment, which are simultaneously under siege and triumphant in today’s world. The anguish and pain are as visible as the happiness and joy, and the limits of the Yiddish word " bashert " — fated or meant to be — are tested by the firm independence of two people who badly long for each other.
The lessons they learn and articulate are lasting ones: Always communicate, even if it’s a small thing; be honest, even if it hurts; and sometimes partners must agree to disagree and move on. The ultimate lesson? That the choice to spend time and share a life with another is a choice made wholly of love.
An Infinite Ache
Written by David Schulner. Directed by Janet Mitchko. With Ann Hu and Pierre-Marc Diennet. At The Public Theatre, through May 11. Call (207) 782-3200.
BACKSTAGE
• Winter Harbor Theater’s first show went off very well at the St. Lawrence April 28 through 30, with a scene from Tony Kushner’s yet-to-be-finished Only We Who Guard the Mystery Shall be Unhappy, performed by Tavia Lin Gilbert and Stephen McLaughlin. Gilbert played a convincing and powerful Laura Bush, visiting a group of Iraqi children killed by American bombs. Slowly self-destructing as she comes to terms with the effects of US policy on the kids, she turns her husband forward and back through the lens of Dostoevsky’s The Grand Inquisitor, in which evil and good are flip-flopped and eventually left intertwined. It was a masterful piece, a strong performance, and a promising beginning for the theater company, whose goal is to challenge people — including themselves — intellectually and emotionally.
• New Hampshire Artist Laureate Marguerite Mathews’ theater company, Pontine Movement Theater in Portsmouth, is showing an actor-created performance based on 32 poems by New Hampshire summer resident Ogden Nash through May 11.
• The Players’ Ring is having a special showing of Lose Some Win Some by Noah Sheola, winner of the F. Gary Newton Playwriting Competition. The show runs May 8 through 18, with a benefit performance May 9 for the theater’s air-conditioning fund. In the play, Santa has been locked in the basement, forced to compete in a high-stakes game show. If it’s like most New England basements, he could use some fresh air.
Friday, April 25, 2003
The go-to gang: PSC's dramaturgy and education interns
Published in the Portland Phoenix
Perhaps you actually read the programs when you go to the theater. Maybe you even read a bulletin board in the lobby, with a little more information on the play, the playwright, and the setting or topics, and you appreciate the historical authenticity of the performance. At Portland Stage Company, those are wonderful snacks for the public brain, but there is real meat around too: Hanging next to the bulletin board at PSC is a resource guide, and there are copies available for $5 from the box office, the concession stand, or by subscription.
They include information on the history of the play, detailed research and write-ups on themes in the play — even ones just barely touched on or alluded to. The guide is the result of exhaustive work, online, in libraries and archives, and in interviews with people who know a lot more about specific topics than the rest of us (like nuclear physics, say, for Copenhagen).
The elves who put together all this information, used by teachers and students, as well as both serious and casual theatergoers, work in an office they call " the Nerdery, " home to PSC’s five education and dramaturgy interns and their fearless leader, intern alumna Lindsay Cummings. When it comes to learning more about anything that’s in the script, this group is the go-to gang.
Set designers want to know about period architecture, actors want to know what has happened to their characters before the play’s action begins, directors need help planning loosely scripted dance performances, or audiences just ask the question: " What’s it about? " For all of those and more, the answers come from the interns.
Three of them, James Kittredge, Corey Atkins, and Alicia Reid, are the directing and dramaturgy interns, working closely with the directors of each show at PSC. They take turns being the primary dramaturg and learning about directing by watching the rehearsals. It’s a fun job, but a lot of work. A dramaturg basically performs the role of " a surrogate audience member in the rehearsal process, " says Kittredge, giving feedback on what’s working and what’s not.
But when a question comes up, it’s their time to shine. The dramaturg’s job, based on an 18th-century German theater reviewer, is also described as " applied theater history and criticism, " Cummings says.
Reid is working closely with director Ron OJ Parson on Fences, now running at PSC. One character performs a spiritual atavistic dance in a closing scene, and neither Parson nor the actor, Charles Michael Moore, knew really what to do. They had an idea of what they wanted — incorporating elements of African and Native American dance traditions — but didn’t know how to get there. So they turned to Reid. She went to the Center for Cultural Exchange to look at videos of different dances, and talk to dancers in the Portland area.
She also chanced to walk past the doors of MECA one day not long ago and see that Oscar Mokeme, of the Museum of African Tribal Art, was performing. She introduced herself and talked to him, too, before going back to the theater to talk with Parson and Moore about what the dance should look like.
The dramaturg also gets to work with the director to make sure all of the actors know the basic situation of the time and place in which the play occurs, what Atkins called " the solid framework that a play is built around. "
For Tom Stoppard’s Arcadia, earlier this season, Kittredge had to research two different time periods, as well as do historical and ethnographical work, particularly learning about a 19th-century system of sending messages by the way a woman holds and uses her fan. " I always like learning new things, " Kittredge says. " It’s really neat to influence the production process. "
In addition to helping out their colleagues, R.J. McComish and Jennie Wurtz do different forms of research. McComish helps pick the new scripts that PSC receives, including the Clauder competition entries. Immersed in new theater writing, he keeps track of what’s come in that really sings, and what could use some work. From this vantage point, he helps plot the direction of PSC’s performances into future seasons, and he calls the job a " scarily perfect " fit.
Wurtz, for her part, puts together the resource guides, the program insert material, the bulletin boards, information for press releases and grant requests, and anything else that allows readers " to have a context for what’s happening " on stage, she says. It’s a job she loves — " you don’t ever get bored " — and has helped hone her research and writing skills.
" Theater doesn’t end when the lights go down, " says Wurtz. It ends when the experience stops, when people stop thinking about it.
Wednesday, April 23, 2003
Column: Live in Maine? Pay me
Published in the Current and the American Journal
I’m 29 years old, I hold a master’s degree, and I live in Maine. The state should pay me to stay here.
In November 2001, the State Planning Office issued its “30 and 1000” report, saying that the two keys to improving and stabilizing Maine’s economy, income level and state tax revenue are having 30 percent of adults over age 25 with a four-year degree, and spending $1,000 per worker on research and development into new products and possibilities.
Evan Richert, who was director of the SPO when that report came out, spoke in Cape Elizabeth recently and continued his push toward that goal.
In terms of the 30 percent goal, he said about 23 or 24 percent of adults in Maine now have four-year degrees, up from 19 percent in 2001.
As for research and development money, it can be hard to come by in a state with a big budget crunch. The Maine Technology Institute, which provides seed money for R&D, is losing 10 percent of its funding under Gov. John Baldacci’s proposed spending for 2004-2005.
There is a lot of talk, but little action yet, about spending a few million to retool the state’s technical colleges into community colleges, and the UMaine system is also looking for money to spend on R&D, even as its budget belt tightens.
But there is an easy way to move closer to the “30” benchmark: Help the Mainers who already have four-year degrees.
We’re already looking to other states for opportunities, especially those of us who are young. It’s cheaper to live in other states, and incomes are higher too.
Why should we stay in Maine, and why should people move here from elsewhere, when the cost of living is substantially similar, wages are much lower and there are fewer good jobs?
I would like to feel that the state recognizes my presence here as contributing to its economic well-being both now and in the future. Right now, I feel unappreciated by the state that is my home.
The simple solution is money, but how do you allocate it fairly?
One way would be through the state income tax. The state and individuals already use the income tax to exchange money. If I paid too much, the state gives it back; if I didn’t, I write the state a check.
Maine should add a box to the income tax form: “Check here if you are over the age of 25 and have a four-year degree.” Checking that box would permit a taxpayer to add, say, $500 to the standard deduction amount. For single filers, that would bump the amount of money exempt from taxes up from $7,550 to $8,050.
Married filers would go up from $6,775 to $7,275 per person. If the state wanted to, it could require a photocopy of a college transcript be filed with the return – most of us have one somewhere, and I’d find it if it meant money in my pocket.
The tax rate on taxable earnings after the first $16,950 is 8.5 percent. By offering an increase in the standard deduction, the state would be losing in tax revenue 8.5 percent of that $500, per person with a degree, or $42.50 a head.
If one-fourth of the 1,275,000 people in Maine have a degree, there are just under 320,000 of us. It’s a rough estimate, but that would cost $13.6 million in lost revenue for the state. That’s far less than the $43 million being allocated for R&D, and less than the $50 million to assist students in paying for higher education. It would be about 1 percent of what the state now collect in income tax – just over $1 billion – and less than 0.2 percent of what the state spends.
That $42.50 wouldn’t hurt the state budget much, or permit me to buy a lot, but it would say Maine’s government was thinking about me and valued my presence here. If Maine is trying to up the number of folks with college degrees, it should look at keeping what it has as a starting point.
I’m 29 years old, I hold a master’s degree, and I live in Maine. The state should pay me to stay here.
In November 2001, the State Planning Office issued its “30 and 1000” report, saying that the two keys to improving and stabilizing Maine’s economy, income level and state tax revenue are having 30 percent of adults over age 25 with a four-year degree, and spending $1,000 per worker on research and development into new products and possibilities.
Evan Richert, who was director of the SPO when that report came out, spoke in Cape Elizabeth recently and continued his push toward that goal.
In terms of the 30 percent goal, he said about 23 or 24 percent of adults in Maine now have four-year degrees, up from 19 percent in 2001.
As for research and development money, it can be hard to come by in a state with a big budget crunch. The Maine Technology Institute, which provides seed money for R&D, is losing 10 percent of its funding under Gov. John Baldacci’s proposed spending for 2004-2005.
There is a lot of talk, but little action yet, about spending a few million to retool the state’s technical colleges into community colleges, and the UMaine system is also looking for money to spend on R&D, even as its budget belt tightens.
But there is an easy way to move closer to the “30” benchmark: Help the Mainers who already have four-year degrees.
We’re already looking to other states for opportunities, especially those of us who are young. It’s cheaper to live in other states, and incomes are higher too.
Why should we stay in Maine, and why should people move here from elsewhere, when the cost of living is substantially similar, wages are much lower and there are fewer good jobs?
I would like to feel that the state recognizes my presence here as contributing to its economic well-being both now and in the future. Right now, I feel unappreciated by the state that is my home.
The simple solution is money, but how do you allocate it fairly?
One way would be through the state income tax. The state and individuals already use the income tax to exchange money. If I paid too much, the state gives it back; if I didn’t, I write the state a check.
Maine should add a box to the income tax form: “Check here if you are over the age of 25 and have a four-year degree.” Checking that box would permit a taxpayer to add, say, $500 to the standard deduction amount. For single filers, that would bump the amount of money exempt from taxes up from $7,550 to $8,050.
Married filers would go up from $6,775 to $7,275 per person. If the state wanted to, it could require a photocopy of a college transcript be filed with the return – most of us have one somewhere, and I’d find it if it meant money in my pocket.
The tax rate on taxable earnings after the first $16,950 is 8.5 percent. By offering an increase in the standard deduction, the state would be losing in tax revenue 8.5 percent of that $500, per person with a degree, or $42.50 a head.
If one-fourth of the 1,275,000 people in Maine have a degree, there are just under 320,000 of us. It’s a rough estimate, but that would cost $13.6 million in lost revenue for the state. That’s far less than the $43 million being allocated for R&D, and less than the $50 million to assist students in paying for higher education. It would be about 1 percent of what the state now collect in income tax – just over $1 billion – and less than 0.2 percent of what the state spends.
That $42.50 wouldn’t hurt the state budget much, or permit me to buy a lot, but it would say Maine’s government was thinking about me and valued my presence here. If Maine is trying to up the number of folks with college degrees, it should look at keeping what it has as a starting point.
Thursday, April 17, 2003
White picket Fences: Dreams -- broken and fulfilled -- not just for Anglo homes
Published in the Portland Phoenix
Written by August Wilson. Directed by Ron OJ Parson. With A.C. Smith, Cedric Young, Mimi Ayers, Clifton Williams, Charles Michael Moore, and Robert Lee Taylor. At Portland Stage Company through May 4. Call (207) 774-0465.
BACKSTAGE
• Be sure to get a glimpse of some of Maine’s newest theater work at Portland Stage’s Little Festival of the Unexpected April 23 to 26, including work by John Cariani and Laura Shaine Cunningham, as well as Women and the Sea by Shelly Berc.
When plays are in previews, in a sense they’re still under construction, but finished enough to let people take a tour and see how it goes. After some preview performances at Portland Stage — usually the Wednesday before opening night — the audience gets to weigh in, asking and answering questions about the play and its performance, to help the director better understand what more needs to be done.
Performing August Wilson’s FENCES, with its all-black cast, before a Maine audience is an act of faith in itself, and allowing people to talk to the director about it afterwards is courageous. FENCES is not a play about race per se, but more about, as the New York Times series was titled, how race is lived in America.
It’s a piece of August Wilson’s 10-play cycle about each decade in the 20th century, and looks at the life of a 1950s black man who was one of the best Negro League baseball players ever, but who was left behind as black baseball fans went to watch the slowly integrating major leagues. So Troy Maxson (Cedric Young) becomes a garbageman to provide for his wife and family.
But Troy and his family situation are more complicated than that. An ex-con with a wandering eye, Troy wants to be settled down, and fights for control of his family and the world immediately around him. A small victory comes when he asks his boss why the white men get to drive and the black men have to haul the garbage cans: Troy gets the driving job but finds it lonely. His family longs for his love and attention, but his mind is often elsewhere, searching for peace.
At the director’s talkback session after the play, about a dozen members of the all-white audience stuck around to talk to Ron OJ Parson, a friend of August Wilson, and whom Wilson specifically asked to direct this play in Portland. Also present was PSC artistic director Anita Stewart.
Parson asked about the general feeling people had of the play, and the audience members talked less about race than humanity. Parson himself likened the play to the movie Gangs of New York, which taught him that white people could be prejudiced against other whites, not just blacks.
Language and history also come into this play. Black-to-black vernacular, both in the 1950s and today, includes the word " nigger " used in the way whites — and blacks, too — might say " man " or " dude. " And though the audience remarked upon it, none of them could bring themselves to utter the word, even in an discussion of its artistic value. It remains a word that has political power and a racial charge many want to avoid.
Troy’s story illustrates the personal impacts of other major historical trends, though they may be ones white Maine teachers don’t touch in school — Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in baseball, but the change destroyed the Negro League, where stars like Robinson, Satchel Paige, and Hank Aaron had honed their talents. Other Negro League standouts, like Troy in this play, were left behind and resentful. To the day he died, Troy kept a baseball bat outside and a batting-practice ball tied to a tree, to ease his tension and bring him back to his ball-playing days.
The audience talked with Parson and Stewart about various elements in the play, and how they identified with some of the emotions and some of the characters in Wilson’s script. " Theater to me is like a painting, " Parson said. " Everyone is going to see something different. "
But none of them remarked upon the one major feature of the set that even regular PSC fans rarely see: The back of the actual theater space is visible to the audience this time, bricks and all.
FencesWritten by August Wilson. Directed by Ron OJ Parson. With A.C. Smith, Cedric Young, Mimi Ayers, Clifton Williams, Charles Michael Moore, and Robert Lee Taylor. At Portland Stage Company through May 4. Call (207) 774-0465.
BACKSTAGE
• Be sure to get a glimpse of some of Maine’s newest theater work at Portland Stage’s Little Festival of the Unexpected April 23 to 26, including work by John Cariani and Laura Shaine Cunningham, as well as Women and the Sea by Shelly Berc.
• The " best friend of the St. Lawrence, " Bob Lipps, has lived on Munjoy Hill all his life and his 50th birthday is April 25. The party starts at 7 p.m., and costs $10, which will be donated on Bob’s behalf.
• Stacy Begin, managing director of the Children’s Theatre of Maine, has written Les Acadiens, based in part on her own Franco-American upbringing. It opens May 9 and explores the life of a 17-year-old boy in 1942 Waterville.
• Check out local theater geniuses Craig Bowden and J.P. Guimont and the excellent theater thoroughbreds at Mad Horse Theatre Company’s production of Suburban Motel, a comedy about four different events in the same seedy motel room, starting May 8 at Portland Performing Arts Center’s Studio Theater.
• Sharpen those pencils: Cocheco’s Michael Tobin is accepting original plays throughout 2003 for jurying and performance next March.
• BlueSky Theater is a new nonprofit company formed to encourage Seacoast youth and adults to create theater together. Call Linda Finkle at (603) 926-0700.
• A tip o’ Shylock’s hat to Merrill Bank for supporting the Penobscot Theatre Company/Maine Shakespeare Festival’s Shakespeare-in-schools program. If you want them to come to your school, call (207) 947-6618.
Fake drunk driving crash raises concerns, awareness By Kate Irish Collins Staff Writer It’s a weekend night in Scarborough. A group of three freshmen girls are making plans to hang out together and watch a movie. One of the friends says she has been invited to go to a party by a senior boy she’s had a crush on all year. Cut to the party where a group of kids are smoking pot and drinking. Beth, the freshman girl, and Andy, the senior boy, sneak off together and go to an upstairs bedroom. This is the scenario that was enacted by a group of high school students at a Scarborough High School teen forum held Tuesday. The forum was designed to make parents and members of the community aware of risky teen behaviors from drinking to smoking marijuana to casual sex. “These things are happening in Scarborough every weekend,” kids in the theater troupe told parents. More than 50 attended the forum and principal Andrew Dolloff and other organizers said they were thrilled to see so Teens talk about drug use and sex By Rich Obrey Staff Writer It’s the calm between the storm in Cape Elizabeth, as boys basketball coach Jim Ray prepares to appeal his dismissal before the school board. Ray, a teacher at the high school for 18 years and head coach of the varsity team since 1994, was fired as coach at the end of March. High School Principal Jeff Shedd evaluated Ray and did not recommend to school Superintendent Tom Forcella that Ray be rehired – a decision Forcella accepted. Bruce Smith, the attorney for the board, said Wednesday morning he was scheduled to meet with members in executive session later in the day to discuss the case. “After the meeting we may have a better idea of what’s going to happen and when,” he said. Representing Ray during his appeal will be longtime Cape resident Gerald F. Petruccelli, an attorney with a practice in Portland, who also works as adjunct professor at the University of Maine Law School. Asked what would be the crux of Ray’s appeal, Petruccelli said, “In general terms, we think this decision (to fire Ray) was wrong. We also think that it was the result of a process which I will suggest in a number of respects was not as well-designed or operated as it should have been.” “The process” has been at the center of the controversy ever since most Cape residents first learned of Ray’s firing by reading a help wanted ad for a new coach in the Maine Sunday Telegram. “Budgets” see page 10 “Crash” see page 10 Margaret Palmer focuses on her juggling skills at last week’s Gym Dandies community performance. Staff photo by Rich Obrey The fake accident scene. Staff photo by Jeff Inglis “Teens” see page 10 Supt. Tom Forcella. Cape coach appeals firing as super explains actions “Forcella”
Published in the Current
Despite last-minute “concessions” required by adults nervous about causing unnecessary anxiety, a fake drunk-driving car crash that “killed” two kids and “injured” five in Cape Elizabeth made its point.
“At first it was going to be a surprise,” said Katie Tammaro, one of the student organizers and an accident victim. They had approval and assistance from town and school officials.
“Under a week left, that was changed on us,” said another student organizer, Alex Weaver.
In a meeting with high school Principal Jeff Shedd, it became clear that an explanatory letter would have to go home with all students in advance. “It had been a surprise everywhere else” the program was conducted, including Deering High School, Old Town and Wells, Weaver said.
A local lawyer had also called the Cape Coalition – the group of parents and students organized in town to address substance abuse who organized last week’s crash – to express concern that a surprise event would cause “unnecessary trauma or unnecessary anxiety.”
Weaver said they had expected hurdles and challenges, but were not prepared for feedback on the event two days before it happened, before people had a
chance to see it unfold.
In the end, advance notice may not have made much difference. “It worked anyways, and we’ll never know,” said Tammaro. “People were still captured and were very emotional,” Weaver said.
At the accident scene
One student, who asked that her name not be used, was in tears.
“There’s so many kids that do this (drink and drive) and don’t even think about it,” she said.
She had known about the event beforehand, but was unexpectedly overcome by emotions, memories and fear. “I thought I’d be fine with coming up
here” to see the accident, she said through her tears. “This really affects you.”
“It’s so scary,” she said. “People just don’t think that this sort of thing can happen. They think Cape is small – they can make it home” after being out drinking.
Superintendent Tom Forcella was at the crash scene. “I’m hoping the kids get the message,” he said. “Not drinking, versus not drinking and driving. A designated driver is not enough.”
“It was scary. I felt it was real,” said Tammaro, who had been inside one of the cars. She was showered with glass, but not injured, when rescue workers cut the roof off the car she was in.
During the school day, to drive home the point that every 15 minutes a person in the U.S. dies in an alcohol-related accident, student volunteers were pulled out of class, handed a tag with a time of death and given a black shirt to wear. Now considered “dead,” the student was not supposed to talk all day.
At lunch, however, a table filled with black-shirted people played blackjack.
After school, the “dead” students and their parents wrote letters to each other to describe their feelings. The letters began, “Today I died. I never got the chance to tell you…”
The morning after
At a school-wide assembly the following morning, the two students who had “died” in the accident, and their parents, read their letters aloud.
Many seniors were not there to hear. Attendance was not mandatory, but the lack of seniors didn’t worry Tammaro, as long as the younger students were there.
“Those are the people we’re going to affect the most,” she said.
Weaver said he had feared more would skip the assembly. “There were a lot of naysayers,” he said. “When it actually came (to the event), a lot of those same people were there.”
Derek Roy told his parents, “Of all the thankless things you have done for me over the years, not a single one went unnoticed.”
His mother said, “We’re relieved that we told you that we love you because yesterday morning was the last time that we saw you.”
Chris Owens, who had played the part of drunk driver in the accident, read his letter. “Many of us have chosen to drink,” he said. This time was different: “My friend is dead.” He backed away from criticizing teen drinking, saying “I don’t want to intrude on your lifestyle,” but asked students not to drink and drive.
Then Emily McConnell got up to speak, to tell Cape students about her own experience, when her brother Nathaniel and two other teens were killed when their friend, driving drunk, flipped a car off Tukey’s Bridge in January 2002.
“I woke up on the morning of Jan. 13 to hear my mother screaming, ‘Nathaniel and Crystal are dead. Nathaniel and Crystal are dead.’”
“At 18 years old I had to help write my brother’s obituary,” she said. At the funeral home, “I tried to stroke his cheek, but it was cold.”
“Now we have two lives,” she told the audience. “The one before the accident and the one we are left with. Nathaniel and Crystal are dead.”
Weaver closed the meeting. “Cape Elizabeth has had a tragic history” with its youth and substance abuse. “Many people have learned to expect a tragedy like this every couple of years.”
A number of students have told Tammaro the program made them think about the consequences of their actions, not just for themselves, but for others.
The assembly hit home. “The place was dead silent the whole time (McConnell) was talking,” Weaver said.
Coalition organizer Bob Flynn said parents have told him they have been talking about the issues with their kids, and some are getting more involved with the Cape Coalition as well.
“We’d much rather it be something like this than have it be an actual tragedy,” Weaver said.
Despite last-minute “concessions” required by adults nervous about causing unnecessary anxiety, a fake drunk-driving car crash that “killed” two kids and “injured” five in Cape Elizabeth made its point.
“At first it was going to be a surprise,” said Katie Tammaro, one of the student organizers and an accident victim. They had approval and assistance from town and school officials.
“Under a week left, that was changed on us,” said another student organizer, Alex Weaver.
In a meeting with high school Principal Jeff Shedd, it became clear that an explanatory letter would have to go home with all students in advance. “It had been a surprise everywhere else” the program was conducted, including Deering High School, Old Town and Wells, Weaver said.
A local lawyer had also called the Cape Coalition – the group of parents and students organized in town to address substance abuse who organized last week’s crash – to express concern that a surprise event would cause “unnecessary trauma or unnecessary anxiety.”
Weaver said they had expected hurdles and challenges, but were not prepared for feedback on the event two days before it happened, before people had a
chance to see it unfold.
In the end, advance notice may not have made much difference. “It worked anyways, and we’ll never know,” said Tammaro. “People were still captured and were very emotional,” Weaver said.
At the accident scene
One student, who asked that her name not be used, was in tears.
“There’s so many kids that do this (drink and drive) and don’t even think about it,” she said.
She had known about the event beforehand, but was unexpectedly overcome by emotions, memories and fear. “I thought I’d be fine with coming up
here” to see the accident, she said through her tears. “This really affects you.”
“It’s so scary,” she said. “People just don’t think that this sort of thing can happen. They think Cape is small – they can make it home” after being out drinking.
Superintendent Tom Forcella was at the crash scene. “I’m hoping the kids get the message,” he said. “Not drinking, versus not drinking and driving. A designated driver is not enough.”
“It was scary. I felt it was real,” said Tammaro, who had been inside one of the cars. She was showered with glass, but not injured, when rescue workers cut the roof off the car she was in.
During the school day, to drive home the point that every 15 minutes a person in the U.S. dies in an alcohol-related accident, student volunteers were pulled out of class, handed a tag with a time of death and given a black shirt to wear. Now considered “dead,” the student was not supposed to talk all day.
At lunch, however, a table filled with black-shirted people played blackjack.
After school, the “dead” students and their parents wrote letters to each other to describe their feelings. The letters began, “Today I died. I never got the chance to tell you…”
The morning after
At a school-wide assembly the following morning, the two students who had “died” in the accident, and their parents, read their letters aloud.
Many seniors were not there to hear. Attendance was not mandatory, but the lack of seniors didn’t worry Tammaro, as long as the younger students were there.
“Those are the people we’re going to affect the most,” she said.
Weaver said he had feared more would skip the assembly. “There were a lot of naysayers,” he said. “When it actually came (to the event), a lot of those same people were there.”
Derek Roy told his parents, “Of all the thankless things you have done for me over the years, not a single one went unnoticed.”
His mother said, “We’re relieved that we told you that we love you because yesterday morning was the last time that we saw you.”
Chris Owens, who had played the part of drunk driver in the accident, read his letter. “Many of us have chosen to drink,” he said. This time was different: “My friend is dead.” He backed away from criticizing teen drinking, saying “I don’t want to intrude on your lifestyle,” but asked students not to drink and drive.
Then Emily McConnell got up to speak, to tell Cape students about her own experience, when her brother Nathaniel and two other teens were killed when their friend, driving drunk, flipped a car off Tukey’s Bridge in January 2002.
“I woke up on the morning of Jan. 13 to hear my mother screaming, ‘Nathaniel and Crystal are dead. Nathaniel and Crystal are dead.’”
“At 18 years old I had to help write my brother’s obituary,” she said. At the funeral home, “I tried to stroke his cheek, but it was cold.”
“Now we have two lives,” she told the audience. “The one before the accident and the one we are left with. Nathaniel and Crystal are dead.”
Weaver closed the meeting. “Cape Elizabeth has had a tragic history” with its youth and substance abuse. “Many people have learned to expect a tragedy like this every couple of years.”
A number of students have told Tammaro the program made them think about the consequences of their actions, not just for themselves, but for others.
The assembly hit home. “The place was dead silent the whole time (McConnell) was talking,” Weaver said.
Coalition organizer Bob Flynn said parents have told him they have been talking about the issues with their kids, and some are getting more involved with the Cape Coalition as well.
“We’d much rather it be something like this than have it be an actual tragedy,” Weaver said.
Thursday, April 10, 2003
Signs of the times: Theater painter Roland Borduas, 1908-2003
Published in the Portland Phoenix
Roland Borduas, born in Biddeford in 1908, spent summers at his father’s cottage in OOB, making signs for local businesses. He didn’t know then that he would end up painting show cards and posters for theater and movie houses in New York and in Maine. He describes his work simply: " I used to paint posters in Old Orchard Beach, " he said.
Roland Borduas, born in Biddeford in 1908, spent summers at his father’s cottage in OOB, making signs for local businesses. He didn’t know then that he would end up painting show cards and posters for theater and movie houses in New York and in Maine. He describes his work simply: " I used to paint posters in Old Orchard Beach, " he said.
One man told him he should head to New York because he was such a good artist. " My father didn’t want me to go to New York. I was 20 years old and I’d never left home, " Borduas said. A friend who lived in the city assured Borduas’s father that the young man would get to church every Sunday, so his dad relented. (He fulfilled his promise, too — Borduas was involved in church activities for his whole life.)
Borduas was close to show business from the get-go: His friend was an acrobat in one of the troupes set up by then–Police Commissioner Theodore Roosevelt to promote fitness among the men on the police force. And his friend’s wife was a Tiller Girl, one of the predecessors of the Rockettes.
Shortly after arriving in the city, he picked up a copy of the New York World to check out the help-wanted section. " There was an ad in there on a Sunday for a banner man for a theater, " Borduas remembers. His friends told him not to apply because the market was tight; they didn’t want Borduas to get discouraged. He went anyway, and had to make a sample poster. On his application he said he was from OOB, figuring folks might know that town better than Biddeford.
" Wednesday, I got a call. I had the job, " he said. After a week of work, his boss, Joseph Jowett, asked if he ever went fishing or hunting. As it turned out, Jowett loved Maine and had been several times to hunt and fish in the state’s wilderness, and had hired the young artist as much for his talent as for his connections to the Pine Tree State.
The job was hard. Much of the work was promoting movies, and turnaround times were fast. " If they said ‘Charlie Chaplin,’ I had to remember the name of the picture he was in, " as well as whether it was sound or silent. " I was young and I had a good memory then, " said Borduas.
He worked around the New York area for several years, painting for theaters, movie houses, and businesses, until a doctor told him to go " somewhere with a lake " to relax for a month. Borduas went home to Old Orchard instead, and kept working. The man who owned the Palace Ballroom hired him to promote events there. " I got to meet a lot of the big orchestras, " Borduas said, and painted portraits of their leaders and stars.
He also worked at the Ogunquit Playhouse, and remembers that when Ethel Barrymore came to do a show, " she came down one Saturday and ordered everyone out of the theater so she could rehearse. " It made his job a bit harder: " I had to make the poster that day on the hood of an automobile, " he said.
He was about ready to head back to New York when the State Theatre opened in Portland. The regional manager, Arthur Morrow, hired him to do the posters. He ended up working for the Strand, the Jefferson, the Empire, and the Maine Theater as well.
To keep his income up, Borduas also " made cards " for local businesses. He opened his own shop and kept trying new things. " I was the first one to do silk-screen work in Maine, " he said. He also made the first airplane banner in the state.
He continued to paint for theater and music halls for years, including the Lycaeum Theater on Stevens Avenue. " I used to do the stage scenery when they’d have a play, " Borduas said. He made signs for a play in Biddeford, too, and knew the actors. " I never thought that guy would play a duke, " he said of one old friend who made it up on stage. He loved watching theater, and used to sit through auditions to see how different people did.
And even after he retired, he kept painting. He took watercolor lessons with local painter Sarah Knock and painted over 50 scenes of the homes of his family and friends, to give them as gifts. But he was a sign-maker, not a showman. " I did a lot of work for orchestras and I never learned how to dance, " he said.
Author’s note: Roland Borduas died March 2, less than two weeks after the interview for this story was conducted. His work can still be seen in St. Patrick’s Church in Portland.Opinion: Live in Maine? Pay me
Published in the Current
I’m 29 years old, I hold a master’s degree, and I live in Maine. The state should pay me to stay here. In November 2001, the State Planning Office issued its “30 and 1000” report, saying that the two keys to improving and stabilizing Maine’s economy, income level and state tax revenue are having 30 percent of adults over age 25 with a four-year degree, and spending$1,000 per worker on research and development into new products and possibilities.
Evan Richert, who was director of the SPO when that report came out, spoke in Cape Elizabeth recently and continued his push toward that goal.
In terms of the 30 percent goal, he said about 23 or 24 percent of adults in Maine now have four-year degrees, up from 19 percent in 2001.
As for research and development money, it can be hard to come by in a state with a big budget crunch. The Maine Technology Institute, which provides seed money for R&D, is losing 10 percent of its funding under Gov. John Baldacci’s proposed spending for 2004-2005.
There is a lot of talk, but little action yet, about spending a few million to retool the state’s technical colleges into community colleges, and the UMaine system is also looking for money to spend on R&D, even as its budget belt tightens.
But there is an easy way to move closer to the “30” benchmark: Help the Mainers who already have four-year degrees. We’re already looking to other states for opportunities, especially those of us who are young. It’s cheaper to live in other states, and incomes are higher too.
Why should we stay in Maine, and why should people move here from elsewhere, when the cost of living is substantially similar, wages are much lower and there are fewer good jobs?
I would like to feel that the state recognizes my presence here as contributing to its economic well-being both now and in the future. Right now, I feel unappreciated by the state that is my home.
The simple solution is money, but how do you allocate it fairly?
One way would be through the state income tax. The state and individuals already use the income tax to exchange money. If I paid too much, the state gives it back; if I didn’t, I write the state a check.
Maine should add a box to the income tax form: “Check here if you are over the age of 25 and have a four-year degree.” Checking that box would permit a taxpayer to add, say, $500 to the standard deduction amount. For single filers, that would bump the amount of money exempt
from taxes up from $7,550 to $8,050. Married filers would go up from $6,775 to $7,275 per person.
If the state wanted to, it could require a photocopy of a college transcript be filed with the return – most of us have one somewhere, and I’d find it if it meant money in my pocket.
The tax rate on taxable earnings after the first $16,950 is 8.5 percent. By offering an increase in the standard deduction, the state would be losing in tax revenue 8.5 percent of that $500, per person with a degree, or $42.50 a head.
If one-fourth of the 1,275,000 people in Maine have a degree, there are just under 320,000 of us. It’s a rough estimate, but that would cost $13.6 million in lost revenue for the state.
That’s far less than the $43 million being allocated for R&D, and less than the $50 million to assist students in paying for higher education. It would be about 1 percent of what the state now collects in income tax – just over $1 billion – and less than 0.2 percent of what the state spends.
That $42.50 wouldn’t hurt the state budget much, or permit me to buy a lot, but it would say Maine’s government was thinking about me and valued my presence here. If Maine is trying to up the number of folks with college degrees, it should look at keeping what it has as a starting point.
I’m 29 years old, I hold a master’s degree, and I live in Maine. The state should pay me to stay here. In November 2001, the State Planning Office issued its “30 and 1000” report, saying that the two keys to improving and stabilizing Maine’s economy, income level and state tax revenue are having 30 percent of adults over age 25 with a four-year degree, and spending$1,000 per worker on research and development into new products and possibilities.
Evan Richert, who was director of the SPO when that report came out, spoke in Cape Elizabeth recently and continued his push toward that goal.
In terms of the 30 percent goal, he said about 23 or 24 percent of adults in Maine now have four-year degrees, up from 19 percent in 2001.
As for research and development money, it can be hard to come by in a state with a big budget crunch. The Maine Technology Institute, which provides seed money for R&D, is losing 10 percent of its funding under Gov. John Baldacci’s proposed spending for 2004-2005.
There is a lot of talk, but little action yet, about spending a few million to retool the state’s technical colleges into community colleges, and the UMaine system is also looking for money to spend on R&D, even as its budget belt tightens.
But there is an easy way to move closer to the “30” benchmark: Help the Mainers who already have four-year degrees. We’re already looking to other states for opportunities, especially those of us who are young. It’s cheaper to live in other states, and incomes are higher too.
Why should we stay in Maine, and why should people move here from elsewhere, when the cost of living is substantially similar, wages are much lower and there are fewer good jobs?
I would like to feel that the state recognizes my presence here as contributing to its economic well-being both now and in the future. Right now, I feel unappreciated by the state that is my home.
The simple solution is money, but how do you allocate it fairly?
One way would be through the state income tax. The state and individuals already use the income tax to exchange money. If I paid too much, the state gives it back; if I didn’t, I write the state a check.
Maine should add a box to the income tax form: “Check here if you are over the age of 25 and have a four-year degree.” Checking that box would permit a taxpayer to add, say, $500 to the standard deduction amount. For single filers, that would bump the amount of money exempt
from taxes up from $7,550 to $8,050. Married filers would go up from $6,775 to $7,275 per person.
If the state wanted to, it could require a photocopy of a college transcript be filed with the return – most of us have one somewhere, and I’d find it if it meant money in my pocket.
The tax rate on taxable earnings after the first $16,950 is 8.5 percent. By offering an increase in the standard deduction, the state would be losing in tax revenue 8.5 percent of that $500, per person with a degree, or $42.50 a head.
If one-fourth of the 1,275,000 people in Maine have a degree, there are just under 320,000 of us. It’s a rough estimate, but that would cost $13.6 million in lost revenue for the state.
That’s far less than the $43 million being allocated for R&D, and less than the $50 million to assist students in paying for higher education. It would be about 1 percent of what the state now collects in income tax – just over $1 billion – and less than 0.2 percent of what the state spends.
That $42.50 wouldn’t hurt the state budget much, or permit me to buy a lot, but it would say Maine’s government was thinking about me and valued my presence here. If Maine is trying to up the number of folks with college degrees, it should look at keeping what it has as a starting point.
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