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.

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.

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.

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.

White picket Fences: Dreams -- broken and fulfilled -- not just for Anglo homes

Published in the Portland Phoenix

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.

Fences
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.

• 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.