DUMMERSTON — Area residents will remember David Chase, whose play As Fair as You Were will premiere at the Vermont Theatre Company this month, as the founder of Brattleboro Community Television, a "caustic columnist" for the Brattleboro Reformer, and the author of the novel A Peasant of West Brattleboro.
The (sort-of) new play, directed by Eric Morgan Cutler, is set at a lakeside cabin in rural Vermont and revolves around the late-in-life marriage of Maggie and Walt. The wedding brings family members from Boston and New York together in the "quiet you can almost hear," rekindling feuds and forcing them all to examine the way they love.
Chase, who also appeared in a number of shows with the Brattleboro Little Theatre, and the first ever VTC show, Arsenic and Old Lace, now lives in England. He actually wrote the play in 1998, back when he was still a big part of Brattleboro life. "I'd have been happy to have it produced while I was still in Brattleboro, but I couldn't get VTC interested," he notes. "To be fair, I don't think they had the same commitment to new work in those days."
This commitment now sets VTC apart from other community theaters, many of whom rarely venture beyond the standard repertoire. Not only is the company premiering two new works in the same season, but they have premiered two other musicals from local playwright Zeke Hecker in the past.
Michael Jerald, one of the company's main players, is both producing and appearing in the show. "It is a part of our mission as a community theater to provide members of the community opportunities to become involved in all aspects of theater, including writing plays," he says.
"Premiering As Fair As You Were is both scary and exciting at the same time: scary because we don't know if anyone will want to take a chance on coming to see a play that not only has never been produced before, but also is the playwright's first work. We do have two things going for us, however - it's written by a native Brattleborian, well known by many people in town, and it's a good play.
Scary and exciting
"In addition to being scary, premiering a new play is also very exciting - exciting because it's never been done before, so there are no other productions to compare it to," he says. "We can make it whatever we like. We can tell the story however we think is best. And this is just what, with Eric's direction and inspiration, we are doing. It's fun working with Eric because he is constantly asking [the cast] for our opinions and we often figure out acting problems together; but at the same time, he has a wonderful way of helping us see possibilities for our characters that may never have occurred to us."
Bill Pearre, who plays Emerson, the local justice of the peace, has been involved in community theater almost all his adult life. "I've been in three or four premieres. It is always a challenge, and it is always fun to be involved in something new - especially when one has a director who takes it slow and feels his or her way," he says. "When it is all over, and you feel you have done a credible job in portraying your character as the playwright intended, there is also a feeling of pride ... a feeling that doesn't exist when you are the umpteenth person to play Banquo.
"[Emerson] being a Vermonter helps me with his accent and his personality. It also helps that in the play he refers to himself - in a rare moment of self-reflection - as a 'crusty old fart.' His being a crusty old fart from Vermont helps me, as a New Hampshireite, as I explore his characterization. The playwright also describes Emerson as 'almost deaf and blind,' which is a huge leg up on the character."
Setting and character
Since the play is set in Vermont, performed by (mostly) Vermonters, and premiering for a Vermont audience, there is an additional element of communication - a frame of reference shared by all involved. So is the play particularly local, or is the locale more of a setting, a backdrop against which the drama of the characters can be clearly seen?
"The action is populated predominantly by characters coming from elsewhere. They gather for a family weekend at a cabin overlooking a pond in central Vermont. There is some banter that plays up the flatlander/local-folk tension, but the real meat is to be found in the family's array of interpersonal dynamics, much of it fraught with pitfalls," observes Francis Ouhauert, another actor in the show and a recent addition to the VTC stage.
"The pond, its aqueous nature notwithstanding, serves as a kind of touchstone in relation to the family members' struggle through much of the play to find cohesion. This they do not quite achieve, but do arrive at some measure of solace, for which the pond proves emblematic," Ouhauert says.
"The setting of the play and the two local characters in the play definitely add to the ambiance of the show, and the setting has its own role in how the characters coming from the city are influenced by it," comments Cassandra Holloway, one of the play's four actresses.
"Premiering a play adds a diversity of challenges for me," Holloway says. "First, there is my character Ruth. I originally thought she was far less complex than she really is. I am regularly exploring how she perceives herself, how she perceives the other characters, and what she really wants for herself and from these relationships. Secondly, there is the challenge of balancing my vision of Ruth with not only the director's vision but with the playwright's vision. This play is unique because the playwright's vision carries more weight for me than in any other show I have done.
"Thirdly, I have only previously worked with one of the other actors in this play so this adds a level of challenge as well. That said, Eric has given us great tools and direction for not only building stronger characters but also strong relationships between the characters."
A series of firsts
For Eric Morgan Cutler, directing the show is a first in a number of ways. "I have never directed a family serio-comic, and I tend to be a little more comfortable with those types of plays that one can shift to Elizabethan England or an insane asylum, as with Shakespeare or Greek tragedy," he says. "One of the strengths of the play is its voice - the world it creates is really quite clearly defined. It is definitely about us, and about 'now.' These are people that we know, we work next to them and see them at the grocery store, and so they have to fit into that reality.
"The thing that struck me was that David wrote the play with the idea that VTC might produce it someday in the Dummerston Grange, for the local audience. Creating a production with a community theater group, which was written by a member of the community for the community around them - this has such a basic logic to it that I couldn't help but be curious about how it will turn out. Will we be more engaged by something this close to us? Would we rather have the distance that O'Neil or Odets give us - does it matter at all?"
"We seldom know where our ideas or inspiration comes from, but I think there were two things at the root of As Fair As You Were," Chase recalls. "One was a comment I got from a newspaper column I wrote in the Brattleboro Reformer, where I was critical of one of the theatrical seasons and someone challenged me to write a play of my own if I thought I knew so much.
"The other was an off-hand remark I made to Sue Kingsbury, a woman I had played opposite on a couple of occasions. We had a shared a great onstage chemistry and thought we'd like to do On Golden Pond one day, but neither of us wanted to be 70 and 80 for two hours. Almost as a joke, I said, 'Well, I'll just have to write a play for us, then.' Maggie and Walt in this play are the ages that Susan and I were then."
Revising by e-mail
"Apparently at one time there were many, many, many, many stage directions, which David judiciously cut out," Cutler laughs. "When we first started work on the play I was intending, without realizing it, to put forward a 'presentation' of the play - through the rehearsal process the cast has helped unearth the 'production' with a universal theme of loving and having to let go. From their effort to look deeper into the piece we are actually creating a production of David's play.
"Even now, a month away from the opening night, I can see where we have started to evolve from presented words on a page into something that has the potential to be a real 'act of theater.'
"Normally for a premiere the writer is meant to be around to rewrite, cut, or rework scenes, but with David across the pond we have had to rely on e-mails. In a way that is good, because I think this production is about more than premiering an original play, it is about reenforcing the idea that we can - and should - be creating artistic works for the people around us, and thus create shared experiences within the community."
"There's a part of me, of course, that would rather be there sticking my nose into the rehearsals but to be honest I think it's better that I'm not," Chase agrees. "Certainly Eric and the cast will be more comfortable working it out on their own without me there. I mentioned a couple things in our phone conversation early on that I thought were important and Eric was already in agreement, so it's best to let him go.
"Given that Eric is younger than all my children, I was most concerned that he have a sense of the several older characters in the show and not make them caricatures. He seems to be quite sensitive to that, so I've not been concerned. Besides, only if I leave them alone will I learn whether what I saw and wrote gets transferred accurately to the stage. If something important (to me, at least) is missed, then I've not communicated my vision well.
"It's still in the planning stages but it looks as if my wife Susan and I will make it back for the shows," Chase added. "We've not been to Vermont for some time and it will be nice to see folks again. We have no desire to live through another Vermont winter, but we miss spring and summer and the colors in the fall."
"Putting on a premiere for a community theater group is a very delicate, intricate process," says Cutler. "We are all working against the clock, with a host of responsibilities outside the rehearsal hall that need to come first; and to top it all off, we are all coming to the production with different 'languages' and the hopes that within six weeks we can bring it all together and create something that both the cast and the audience can invest in. If you are working on Hamlet you can take comfort in the idea that the play works structurally and that it has something to say that an audience will want to hear. A new work doesn't come with that sense of security, but if one can approach it with a raw, leap-of-faith sensibility, it can prove to be very exciting.
"A premiere also pushes you to work solely in the rehearsal hall," he adds. "There is no history to fall back on, you can't think back on a production you might have seen, or sneak peeks at reviews of other productions - you must work from scratch, and that is a truly exciting - sometimes frustrating - endeavor. For me personally, it has reminded me that theater isn't about creating a perfect, clean show, it is about creating a space where the performers and the audience can come together and experience an act of community."