By Linda Chin
DO NOT MOVE STONES – Performed live at the Settlement Quarry, Deer Isle, Maine in August 2021. Anna Fitzgerald and Marvin Merritt IV, Co-writers and Co-Directors, Lemmons, Composer, Angie Stemp, Costume Designer, Alexander Turanski, Set Designer, Oliver Randall, Videographer, Jay Michaud, Audio Engineer, Ian Cust, Audio Technician.
In the last nineteen months, theater companies across the country have been beleaguered by the parallel pandemics of coronavirus and structural racism. Theatres cancelled performances and painfully pivoted into unfamiliar virtual territory, furloughed staff and filled out applications for relief funds, crafted COVID safety compliance and diversity, inclusion and equity plans. Sadly, the casualties have started to mount; Watertown MA’s New Repertory Theatre suspended operations for the 2021-22 season, and NYC’s The Lark Theatre, a leader in incubating new plays and championing playwrights of color, is closing after 25 years. For many theater artists the lack of employment opportunities, increased responsibilities on the home front, and weight of everything going on in the world has resulted in creative pauses.
As the saying goes, from crisis comes opportunity. Enter performing artists Anna Fitzgerald and Marvin Merritt IV, who graduated from Harvard into a pandemic and changed their plans of moving to the world’s cultural capitals (think NY, LA, Berlin) and looking for work with established theater companies to founding a new theater company in Deer Isle, Maine (Merritt’s home, population 1908). The company’s purpose is stated simply on its website: ISLE Theater Company bridges communities through storytelling. The company’s goals of supporting artists and communities, and values of collaboration, diversity, and access are not stated as words on the page, but evidenced in their actions, and what/who/how they stage. In January 2021, the creative partners co-produced, co-directed, and acted in Gruesome Playground Injuries, by Pulitzer Prize-nominated Rajiv Joseph. Building a base of support from individual sponsors, local and community partners, and expanding their team with affiliated artists Aislinn Brophy, Ruva Chigwedere, Lemmons, and Susannah Yezzi helped lay the groundwork for a second production.
ISLE brought together over 25 artists and technicians from on- and off-island, compensated them fairly, and made performances free-of-charge. Beyond eliminating the financial barriers to participating in theater experiences, the company defines access in other ways. Gruesome was staged and shot in Deer Isle and made available on-demand, garnering thousands of views to date. Offering streaming and utilizing innovative in-ear techniques are definitely not as daunting for digital natives, but for Anna+Marvin, it was not just a response to the need “to pivot” when live performances were curtailed. Rather, dual access modalities stem from the values of access and cultural equity instilled in childhood; growing up in isolated rural America (Anna in western PA, Marvin on Deer Isle) arts, cultural, and live theater experiences were extremely limited and out of financial reach. Holding children, family, and elders in high regard is also part of their upbringings, so giving people of all ages access to the benefits of live theater is important. Gruesome has mature themes, and (with the help of parental control settings) was not available to children, but for ISLE’s second work, a family-friendly production accessible to audience and artists of all ages was key.
So in the midst of a pandemic, a small theater company with big aspirations emerged from a tiny, misty harborside town and DO NOT MOVE STONES was born. And as if that wasn’t a daunting enough task given the multiple barriers of producing theater during COVID, they found an epic outdoor venue to safely mount a live production of their new play – the Settlement Quarry in Deer Isle, Maine where Merritt played as a child. Instrumental to the success of this project were collaborations with Island Heritage Trust (which manages the historic site) and the Reach Performing Arts Center (RPAC), a youth program based in the local high school (which are Merritt’s alma maters and provided young cast members). The 1000+ audience members who attended the three performances (hailing from every New England state and beyond; some crossing the bridge from the mainland for the first time) hiked a quarter-mile trail to get to the “theater” (some opting for golf-carts arranged by the producers), and were rewarded not only with an immersive, family-friendly production, but breathtaking views of Webb Cove, Isle au Haut and the Camden Hills.
The granite bowl nestled in giant spruce trees is the perfect place for a wedding, or even 50 weddings – which the mythologists among us will recognize as the number of Danaus’ maiden daughters who fled Egypt to avoid marrying their cousins. In writing DO NOT MOVE STONES, Fitzgerald and Merritt adapted playwright Charles “Chuck” Mee’s Big Love (based on Aeschylus’ The Danaids) to suit their venue and vision. When Mee, an award-winning playwright and lecturer at Columbia created The (Re)making Project website in 1996, he was the first playwright to put full downloadable copies of his work in the public domain. Those who want to perform his plays as written are instructed to go through the licensing process, but the plays are available for people to pillage, radically reconstruct, and make their own. Mee, 83, was invited to Deer Isle but couldn’t attend, and will be watching the video version from his home in NY when it premieres on October 23 – a prospect that fills the young playwrights with excitement and some trepidation.
Interestingly, ISLE’s digital offerings – the gift of access to theater via the internet – is an extension of Mee’s populist perspective. There is certainly no comparison between watching a video of a play with the experience of seeing live performance in the company of strangers. And it is hard to imagine that any video could do justice to the Settlement Quarry’s majestic scale, of being surrounded with its sounds and smells. But the opportunity to see a performance by gifted storytellers on video that I couldn’t access otherwise (especially if it has high production values) fills me with excitement. In the unfinished version I previewed, DO NOT MOVE STONES was lushly photographed. I do wish there were more portraits than landscapes. But overall it captures the joy of actors in their element, doing what they love, and the beauty of nature, with all its grandeur and imperfections. It celebrates what it means to be human.
The digital on-demand version premieres on Saturday, October 23, at 7:00PM ET. The link to register is https://www.isletheater.org/registration. The on-demand viewing period ends November 13.
