Performed by Islesford Neighborhood House
Directed by Sonja Moser
Sharing the Stage
When the lights came up, it took a second for everybody to reconfirm their bearings: Islesford Neighborhood House reappeared and Eric, Bruce, Richard and Cory were in the middle of the room as if at any community function. But today, they were in line with a group of professional actors and bowing to a standing ovation.
From Aug. 9-11, the Islesford Neighborhood House was transformed into a Broadway theater, as resident Sonja Moser directed Tennessee Williams’s “The Glass Menagerie.” For Moser, a year-round Islesford resident and the chair of the Theater and Dance Department at Bowdoin College, the experience was both a personal and professional triumph. Moser and her husband, Bill McGuinness, moved to Islesford three years ago from New York City where they were both involved in the theater and filmmaking world. Islesford was a huge contrast, but this summer’s experience helped bridge that gap.
“It made my life here make sense,” said Moser. “It was an unbelievable dream to have these three things that I love and cherish — Bill, this island and theater — come together. Those last two things I never knew how they would come together. There was no way for people to have an idea of who I am and what I do, and see how theater is such a part of my life. And it was amazing for people to see what I do. And it was also rewarding to share a talent and add to the community by sharing that…giving the best part of my self to the community.”
And the emphasis on community was evident: the evening was much more than a presentation of Williams’s prose. While the play requires only four characters and a single setting, Moser incorporated local residents as a parade of Gentlemen Callers, Ballroom Shadows and other characters referenced throughout the play. Local artists and musicians also contributed to the production. Jane Porter created a seaglass glass menagerie; Ashley Bryan painted a portrait of Father and Jeri Spurling played the incidental music.
Yet these decisions were not made simply for the sake of incorporating community members into the cast or making the play a community theater presentation. Of the principal actors, Phil Gates (Tom Wingfield), Kathleen Lewis (Laura Wingfield), Cathrine Grace, Moser’s mother-in-law (Amanda Wingfield) and Christopher Palbicki (Jim O’Connor) Grace and Palbicki are professional actors in Los Angeles while Gates and Lewis are students of Moser’s at Bowdoin. Gwyneth Jones, a colleague of Moser’s, choreographed the production.
“I’m not interested in community theater per se,” says Moser. “There are certain standards that aren’t exercised in community theater. I’m dedicated to it [theater] as an art form. But at the same time, I left New York because I felt that the theater community was only doing it [theater as an art-form] for themselves. In community theater, people felt a much more intense connection to what is happening on stage because they know who is in the production.”
Rather, Moser’s decisions to expand the production helped the audience transcend “The Glass Menagerie’s” sometimes overwhelming regional character to discover the overarching themes of the play. The expanded cast increased the scope of the play, but also enabled more insight into the characters’ thoughts, as the audience shared Amanda’s visions of Gentlemen Callers vying for her attention and Father’s abandonment. Similarly, expanding the set to use the entire Neighborhood House hall was effective in establishing both symbolic separation and incredible intimacy. The physical space between Tom’s narration of the present and the recollection of the past, as presented on stage, provided structure and emphasized the distance and the alienation Tom feels from his family. Yet, the expanded stage also successfully welcomed the audience into the Wingfield sitting room, as both characters and audience members reacted to doors slamming from all sides and could hear the crunch of gravel on the garden path but could not see who was entering the room.
Thus, Moser expands upon the conflict presented by the text (a modernist family saga presented as a drawing-room drama with a cast of four) by visually embellishing but never sacrificing the spare significance of Williams’s text. This raises new interesting dilemmas: there was a wonderful moment when Amanda describes a former beau, The Wolf of Wall Street, who appears and moves across the stage like a gorilla. Immediately, the audience questions not only the truthfulness of what is being said, but also questions the accuracy of what is being seen. Whose memory is that?
Moser felt that exploring these recurring struggles between intimacy and separation, imagination and recollection, nostalgia and an imperfect contemporary life were ideas particularly appropriate for the Islesford community.
“With this play being so much about living in people’s memory, and summer people here relying on the memory of Islesford either when they aren’t here during the winter, or their memory of Islesford as it was in the past… There is so much about the future vs. the past here. But as Tom says, “nowadays the world is lit with lightning! Blow out your candles, Laura.’ It’s a different world now. Having the production wrapped up with the building, the community, but also to have it at a professional level and expand it as an art form, it summed it all up.”
And Moser’s goal of sharing a professional theater production with the community was reciprocated by residents who shared Islesford with their guests. Visiting actors became quite fond of Islesford as residents provided meals, places to stay, and praise for their excellent performances. Gates (Tom Wingfield) has spent the summer on the island, working at the Islesford Dock Restaurant and living in “The Shack” with the other employees. Lewis (Laura Wingfield) always had a dream of being a fisherwoman, so Stephanie Alley took her out to haul lobster traps the morning before the Saturday performance.
“The play really struck a chord with the community.” Said Gates. “Everyone was so enthusiastic. It felt good, having been living there for a while, to do the show for the community and share what we have done.”
“It really felt like an exchange,” said Moser. “I would really love to build on the Bowdoin connection; we didn’t have a stage manager or anybody doing technical things, it would be great to have students come up and it’s very meaningful to have students have an opportunity to work in Maine and to explore a different part of Maine.”
Moser refuses to reveal next year’s anticipated production, “to build suspense,” she says. But many community members are eagerly awaiting her decision. As Islesford resident Hugh Dwelley wrote in a letter to Moser: “We no longer have the excuse to return to Washington to see some good theater. We’ll be waiting for next summer. Can you top this?”
Cyrus Moulton is Fellows Program Coordinator at the Island Institute.