A three-year collaboration of Anita Stewart, Artistic Director of the Portland Stage Company and New York-based novelist Shelley Berc, teacher and playwright, has produced a play of special interest to coastal Mainers – a dramatic presentation of the role of women in today’s fishing industry.
Berc, supported by a grant, came to Maine to conduct interviews. She recorded the stories of more than 30 women from Quoddy to Portland, gathering 800 pages of transcript material.
Imagining the subject as outsiders, the playwrights assumed that they would be speaking primarily to fishermen’s wives, “the person on the shore, looking out to sea,” explained Stewart. Instead, they found women were involved in every aspect of the industry. A fisherman’s wife and a lighthouse keeper’s wife are included but so are a professional clammer, lobsterman, a swordfisherman, an urchin diver, fish auctioneer, fish farmer, a production line worker, a government liaison official – among others.
Six actors (drawn from auditions in both Portland and New York) will be playing multiple characters. In preparation for their roles they will immerse themselves in the video and audio taped interviews with the women they will portray. The actual words of the interviewees constitute the script. “The women are incredibly poetic in their speech patterns, in how they speak,” says Stewart. “And Shelley is an excellent interviewer, she makes everybody comfortable.”
In selecting and organizing the many “amazing stories” gathered by Berc, she and Stewart were looking for a good overview. “We didn’t want to project agenda – no soap box,” says Stewart. “We’ve tried to present an even-handed picture of all facets of the fishing community.” Consequently, not all the stories gathered are presented. “There are probably four more plays in the material we didn’t use.”
Some stories recount a specific event; others are reminiscences or expressions of feeling about the environment, the sea, a storm, a season. The structure of the play is created by the weaving together of all the stories. Beginning with an exploration of who the speaker is, then what her job is, the focus then moves to the larger contexts of family, the state of the industry and finally to danger and dying. All of the interviewees have reviewed the final script and approved with a few small changes.
“There is a musical quality to the pacing,” says Stewart, who trained as a dancer. The stories have different tempos. Conversations, monologues and staccato interruptions blend, ripple and flash.
In addition to collaborating on the script, Stewart is also directing the play. “Character delineation is most important in presenting the softer parts of the material,” she says. “The actors are really excited about the play, inspired by the pride and the passion expressed in the interviews. “There is a feeling among the cast that they need to be as good as possible because the ‘women [respondents] deserve it.’ ”
Women and the Sea goes into full rehearsal at the end of March. Being all-professional, the cast will have no diversions. “Six days a week, eight hours a day, that’s where we are,” says Stewart.
Before she signed on with Portland Stage Company seven years ago Stewart was a freelance designer/ director working out of New York. “I’d travel all over the country to different jobs. Portland was one of my favorite gigs.” The traveling life eventually grew old and she was thrilled to land in Portland. “Living here is worth it [the reduction in earnings]. “It’s a great community and I’m excited to be making work for the people in this city.” She adds that “It’s always a push to run a not for profit in a city this size…just the sheer number of people available for an audience. But this audience is very smart. What they pick up on is truly impressive and that’s what’s important for an artist.”