Want to Understand What Community & Imagination Can Do? Head to the Theater
A Starry Cast and Devoted Crew bring ACT's "Just So" to the Grand This Friday
ELLSWORTH—Matt Cornish strides along the aisles of Ellsworth’s Grand Theater. He looks left. He looks right. He listens, leaning forward, as his cast crowds the stage, waiting for his instruction, his notes, his thoughts.
“Theater is hard,” he tells his cast of over 40 and his musicians and his tech and stage crews. “It’s hard. That’s why everyone doesn’t do it.” He pauses, exchanges a look with music director Nick Roberts. “It ain’t easy.”
As Acadia Community Theater’s (ACT) director of Just So, its spring musical, which will open Friday at the Grand, there’s a lot resting on Cornish’s eye and ear and vision as he brings a musical based on Rudyard Kipling’s short stories to life. And there is a gorgeous weirdness to all of the production, an embrace of the quirk in each animal and each talented actor, dancer, and singer.
The cast members begin the musical in similar khaki outfits and slowly transform into who they are meant to be, using the elements of things found in the setting—which is an attic—and their own imaginations. It’s brilliant. It’s poignant. And it’s a homage to both the power of the imagination and the individual.
In Cornish’s production of Just So, tutus become vines. A ladder and broken umbrella transform into a tree. Coat hangers become a wildebeest’s horns.
Steven Berkoff, on staging Kafka’s renowned Metamorphosis, said, “If you give the audience a bit, they fill in.… If you give a gesture even of an insect, they'll want to play. It’s a need in the audience to use the imagination.”
There’s a pact that happens between the players and each other, but also the players and the audience, an immersion that requires imagination to fill in the gaps, to understand what each gesture, each line, each stage prop, each costume relays.
Acadia Community Theater knows that and uses that pact to create something bigger than the musical. It creates community, connection, and a joint communication that brings a musical to life. Each musical, each gesture, each production is a moment of trust that the audience is going to participate and understand. It’s an active compact and communication that goes both ways.
Oscar Wilde said, “"I regard the theatre as the greatest of all art forms, the most immediate way in which a human being can share with another the sense of what it is to be a human being."
THE COST OF CREATION AND NEED FOR AUDIENCE SUPPORT
Community theater is about a celebration of three things: community, theater, and the people who devote countless hours and time and brain power to sing and dance and create sets and find costumes, to come together to make something. Just So celebrates all of that in every moment and interaction. There’s a cost to that, too. It’s estimated that each musical ACT creates costs approximately $25,000. Just the rights to perform the shows can costs between $6,000 and $8,000. Then there are theater rental fees, costumes, sets that need to be built. It’s a costly art.
As Michael Paulson wrote in a 2023 issue of the New York Times, “There is less theater in America these days. Fewer venues. Fewer productions. Fewer performances.”
Finding support for community theater, live theater, is important to keeping it alive.
“Interviews with 72 top-tier regional theaters located outside New York City reveal that they expect, in aggregate, to produce 20 percent fewer productions next season than they did in the last full season before the pandemic, which shuttered theaters across the country, in many cases for 18 months or more. And many of the shows that they are programming will have shorter runs, smaller casts, and simpler sets,” Paulson wrote.
In Bangor this past month, the Penobscot Theatre Company announced its own budget shortfall of approximately $200,000.
The stressors on community theaters across the country are multiple.
“Costs are up, the government assistance that kept many theaters afloat at the height of the pandemic has mostly been spent, and audiences are smaller than they were before the pandemic, a byproduct of shifting lifestyles (less commuting, more streaming), some concern about the downtown neighborhoods in which many large nonprofit theaters are situated (worries about public safety), and broken habits (many former patrons, particularly older people, have not returned),” Paulson writes.
THE SHOW MUST GO ON
Acadia Community Theater has made it a practice to be scrappy, to practice in parking lots, the gym at Camp Beech Cliff, sidewalks, and schools. It will do everything it can to make sure that the show must go on and does go on. Just So does that beautifully, triumphantly, and quirkily. It is what community theater is meant to be.
There are songs filled with the antics of joy and often humor. Imagine chase scenes featuring a leopard and a jaguar (Cassielyn Willis and Dax Hochman), a zebra and a giraffe (Julia Axtell and Sonia Berghoff). Now, imagine a song accompanying the chase sounding a bit like a sleazy Frank Sinatra serenading that he’d like to take the ladies out to dinner, only the ladies would be his dinner. Now, imagine those animals singing it. All four make for fantastic comedic antics.
David Mamet said, “When you come into the theater, you have to be willing to say, ‘We're all here to undergo a communion, to find out what the hell is going on in this world.’ If you're not willing to say that, what you get is entertainment instead of art, and poor entertainment at that."
Just So embraces Mamet’s theory and shows what’s going on in this world in a way that’s full of antics, humor, poignance, and celebration.
There is a magician who holds the storylines all together (magnetically played by Jacob Sanner whose kindness seems to emanate throughout the theater)and a cooking stove (Brianna Chaples who beautifully shows that excellent chops are not just for knives and chefs) and Elephant’s Child (Molly Dority, whose talent and stage presence grows larger every year). There is also a giant crab (that’s actually a very young and talented girl, Filippa Dilena as the tiny Pau Amma) running amuck refusing to behave. There is a cast of more than 40. It’s a lot to manage, but Cornish and his crew manage it well.
“Really quickly, listen carefully,” Cornish said multiple times Monday night during rehearsal. “I’ll be singing with you by the pit.”
Over and over again, the cast and crew really quickly listened carefully as they refined their steps, beautifully choreographed by Cassielyn Willis; took notes from Nick Roberts (of the Worn Out Souls) and Sonia Berghoff, who combined to lead band and vocals; and worked through cues and moments with the savvy crew led by Technical Director Matthew Hochman and Stage Manager Kate Young.
That’s another part of the beauty of community theater; it brings diverse voices and wants and personalities and ages together.
Kids comfort each other as they wait for cues. Adults give advice, run over songs that might be having troublesome bits or difficult key changes. Tech crew works hard to get the set down, the pieces in appropriate places, and to help the smaller members of the cast run through the set movements.
In Just So, Bar Harbor teacher Renee Quebbeman continues in her return to the stage after 25 years and does so with a zest, confidence, and grace that’s capable of holding anyone’s attention. Quebbeman is Parsee Man. Parsee is both a dialect of Persian Zoroastrian scriptures and an ethno-religious group. Dority is a freshman at MDI High School and has been performing in musical after musical for the past nine years and she again graces the stage here, bringing the Elephant’s Child with a confident and brilliant flare. Returning home from college, where he majored in theater, Sanner dazzles as Eldest Magician, a part once played by John Barrowman. Mark Carignan transforms into a intriguing rhino. Mallory Watkins’s clean voice brings the kolokolo bird’s reluctance and loner nature to life.
The cast varies in ages from 5 to 75, or thereabouts, said Assistant Producer (and assistant to a million jobs) Angel Hochman, who enthuses about each performer with a bit of an appreciative mantra.
“We’re so lucky to have her,” she’ll say. “We’re so lucky to have him.”
In truth, they’re all lucky to have each other, and the community of Mount Desert and Hancock County are lucky to have them all. These are people willing to make live theater happen despite all the news reports of live theater dying—people who are teachers, students, librarians, musicians, studying genetics, running camps, coding, serving lunches, playing Street Fighter—devoting hours and hours and hours of time to make imagination come to life.
So, when you see a group of people working out dance moves on a Bar Harbor sidewalk, singing in the Camp Beech Cliff rooms, or maybe working through lines on the Village Green, it might be cool to thank them. Not just for acting, but for believing in the power of theater, the imagination, and in community.
Just So was written in 1984 by Anthony Drewe and George Stiles and originally produced by Cameron Mackintosh. At the time, Drewe and Stiles were undergraduates at Exeter University, and their musical won the Vivian Ellis Prize. The musical didn’t become a hit until 19 years later when it was performed at the Chichester Festival Theatre. Though ACT is an MDI-based nonprofit and theater troupe, this year’s performance is at the Grand in Ellsworth because of space and time issues at other venues.
CAST AND CREW
Cast
Cooking Stove … Brianna Chaples
Crocodile … Jacob Sanner (Voice), Frances Stockman (Puppeteer)
Dingo Dog … Lucia Dilena
Eldest Magician … Jacob Sanner
Elephant’s Child … Molly Dority
Elephants … Sherri Carignan, Brianna Chaples, Judith Cullen, Anne Dalton, Abby Damon, Bailey DeGeorge, Hallie Hamblen, Nayeli Monahan, Avery Quebbeman, Frances Stockman
Giraffe … Sonia Berghoff
Jaguar … Dax Hochman
Kangaroo … Bailey DeGeorge
King Elephant … Rose Iuro-Damon
Kolokolo Bird … Mallory Watkins
Leopard … Cassielyn Willis
Parsee Man … Renee Quebbeman
Pau Amma … Bailey DeGeorge, Hallie Hamblen, Nayeli Monahan, Syd Schneider, Neveah Walton (Puppeteers); Filippa Dilena (Tiny Pau Amma)
Queen Elephant … Tanja Dalton
Wallabies … Anna Ellis & Matie Little-Donaldson
Wildebeests … Brianna Chaples, Emily Ellis, Avery Quebbeman, Pace Quebbeman, Frances Stockman
Rhino … Mark Carignan
Zebra … Julia Axtell
Ensemble … Julia Axtell, Violet Axtell, Vivian Axtell, Sonia Berghoff, Lina Bodge, Mark Carignan, Sherri Carignan, Brianna Chaples, Judith Cullen, Anne Dalton, Tanja Dalton, Abby Damon, Bailey DeGeorge, Filippa Dilena, Lucia Dilena, Anna Ellis, Emily Ellis, Amaya Giberson, Ezra Halkett, Hallie Hamblen, Dax Hochman, Rose Iuro-Damon, Allie Little-Donaldson, Matie Little-Donaldson, Violet Maldonado, Abby Martens, Nayeli Monahan, Oona Preston-Schreck, Avery Quebbeman, Pace Quebbeman, Renee Quebbeman, Syd Schneider, Frances Stockman, Neveah Walton, Mallory Watkins, Maeve Westphal, Cassielyn Willis
Production Team & Crew
Director … Matt Cornish
Producer … Matt Hochman
Assistant Producer … Angel Hochman
Technical Director … Matt Hochman
Assistant Technical Director … Angel Hochman
Musical Director … Nick Roberts
Vocal Director … Sonia Berghoff
Choreographer … Cassielyn Willis
Stage Manager … Kate Young
Sound Tech … Matt Hochman
Lights Tech … Lorelei “DD” Wehfritz
Costumes … Angel Hochman
Props … Sydney Roberts Rockefeller
Set Builders … Matt Hochman & Samantha Wanner
Set Crew … Matt Cornish, Jacob Sanner
Puppet Builder … Kate Young
Backstage Crew … Angel Hochman, Kate Young, Will Krason
Rehearsal Accompanist … Tanja Dalton Pit
Musicians
Nick Roberts … Keyboard 1/director
John Moore … Keyboard 2
Mike Hamele … Percussion
Christien Breau … Saxophone, Clarinet, Flute
Joani Teach … Clarinet, Eb Clarinet
Amelia McKay … Clarinet, Bass Clarinet
Sam Neel … Bass
Brian Booher … Brass
Phil Kell … Guitar
Acadia Community Theater Board of Directors
Matt Hochman, President
Matt Cornish, Vice President
Erin Cough, Treasurer
Judith Cullen, Secretary
Jonathan Bender, Mood Monitor
Mark Carignan
Angel Hochman
Kristin Holley
Nick Roberts
Sydney Roberts Rockefeller
Patti Savoie
Mia Thompson
Doug Van Gorder
Kate Young
LINKS TO LEARN MORE.
Showtimes at the Grand: May 3, May 10 (Fridays)—7 p.m.
May 4, May 11 (Saturdays)—7 p.m.
May 5, May 12 (Sundays), 2 p.m.
For tickets go to grandonline.org or call 667-9500.
https://www.acadiacommunitytheater.net/
https://www.facebook.com/AcadiaCommunityTheater
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