Newburyport’s Theater in the Open celebrates 39 years

This summer Theater in the Open (TITO) is celebrating its 39th season of community theater with an expanded Summer Arts Workshop and top-notch performances ranging from Shakespeare’s　“A Midsummer Night’s Dream”　and Sophocles’ “Antigone” to “Snow White: A Through The Looking Glass Panto.”

The icing on the cake is that TITO recently was selected Curators of the Gatekeeper’s House by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts’ Department of Conservation and Recreation (DCR) confirming that for the next 20 years, Theater in the Open will remain in the same headquarters they have occupied since 1987. It also means that they will continue to offer their youth arts education programs and free outdoor performances at Maudslay State Park.

“We are thrilled that DCR selected us as Curator for the Maudslay Gatekeeper’s House and happy to see our partnership with DCR continue for the next 20 years,” Executive Director Kelly Shea Knowles said. “Knowing that our headquarters will now remain at the Gatekeeper’s House - a place that is so beloved and familiar to so many members of this community - allows us to take positive steps forward in terms of strategic growth.”

Artistic Director Edward Speck “couldn’t be happier.”

“For 30 years young people have been coming to this little house on the edge of the woods to learn about theater, dance and visual arts,” Speck said. “Some have become artists, others are now doctors or computer programmers. All of them found a home here at the Gatekeeper’s House where they were supported, listened to, and encouraged to grow.

“I was one of those young people two decades ago, and to know that this house will be welcoming area youth for the next two decades is quite literally a dream come true. I am eternally grateful to DCR, and to all of our wonderful supporters, who dream the dream with us.”

TITO’s long-term commitment to the community began back in 1979, when Anna Smulowitz started a theater and workshop for children - The Newburyport Children’s Theater.

Over the next decade, there were theater performances, a summer workshop, and an Arts Festival held at Maudslay State Park; Theresa Linnihan was named “artist in residence” at Maudslay, and the Gatekeeper’s House became home base for the theater group, which in 1988 became The Children’s Theater in Residence at Maudslay State Park.

“The mission of Theater in the Open is perfectly captured in our name,” Knowles said. “We connect art with nature, performing out of doors in open public spaces. There are no walls, no stage, no curtain to separate artist and audience. What’s more, our outdoor performances are free to all, ensuring that the art we create is accessible to everyone, a gift to this community that enriches the cultural landscape.”

This year the Summer Arts Workshop has been expanded to nine weeks and two campuses – Maudslay State Park and neighboring Arrowhead Farm.

“Dick Chase is the owner of Arrowhead Farm,” Speck said. “His family settled it over 300 year ago and Dick really wants the community to enjoy Arrowhead Farm as much as possible. He said, ‘It’s not a farm if there aren’t kids running around and screaming.’ We’re now renting a field that abuts Maudslay State Park.”

This summer Chase will have plenty of kids running around both on his farm and the abutting park, where the TITO Summer Arts Workshop students aged five to 14, will have drama time in the afternoons and in the mornings art and dance time taught by professionals.

“We live in a community where there are theater, art, and dance professionals of every stripe,” Speck said, “and the fact that we can collaborate with them both as educators and also as artists is to me what makes TITO and our community unique.

“Right now we are working on ‘Antigone’ with singers, musicians, and dancers as well as visual artists. The term ‘community theater’ can sometimes be a pejorative one suggesting it is not professional, but in this community of professionals artists it means professional grade productions and educators.”

Discover the quality of the performances yourself. Just go to one of the many free TITO shows this summer. A perfect example is “Snow White: A Through The Looking Glass Panto,” a silly, surprising, playful panto, free to all on June weekends.

“This time around we’ll be following the adventures of Snow White as she takes a peek at what happens through the looking glass,” Speck said. “Prepare for puns, princesses, passion and improbable plots with some of your favorite fairy tale and literary characters.”

Once a month bring the kids to Family Hour In The Open.

“Bring the kids, the dog and the picnic blanket out to beautiful Maudslay State Park,” Speck said. “One Saturday of every warm-weather month, we will be joined by many of our good friends in the community to present storytelling, song, dance, fairytale-theater and a fun group activity, all right here in the park and all entirely free. Come make a friend, sing a song, take in some sun and get to know your park better.”

Then, there is classical theater. TITO re-imagines ancient Greece in Maudslay State Park with two classic works — a comedy and a tragedy.

“Our talented ensemble will perform these two plays in repertoire throughout July and August,” Speck said. “We invite you to spend a summer weekend at Maudslay. Simply bring a picnic blanket and your imagination and join us for both ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ and ‘Antigone.’ All performances are free to all.”

But that’s still just the tip of the TITO iceberg. There’s Circus Smirkus: Midnight At The Museum, “Poe” in The Ellen T. Brown Memorial Chapel at the Oak Hill Cemetery in Newburyport, Maudslay is Haunted, and “Through The Wardrobe: A Winter Wonderland Panto.”

For a more information and a current schedule, go to www.theaterintheopen.org,
call 978-465-2572 or email info@theaterintheopen.org.

Myths in the forest at Maudslay

Theater in the Open takes on two classic plays this summer
By Terry Date Staff writer, Daily News, Newburyport

The setting’s trees reflect Antigone’s nature — wild, solid and grounded.

The setting’s wall reflects her nemesis — an unyielding, constricting and imposing local power structure.

These timeless forces play out in the Greek tragedy “Antigone,” said Aisha Delilah, the 21-year-old Haverhill actress who plays the title character.

Theater in the Open, the drama company in residence at Maudslay State Park for 30 years, is presenting Sophocles’ “Antigone” and Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” in July and August.

A Theater in the Open member since she was 13, Delilah said that she brings physicality and a sense of weight to the role of Antigone, conveying her passionate, impulsive and committed nature. Stephen Haley directs both plays with a cast of 20 actors. Artistic director and actor Edward Speck said that the productions explore divergent visions of the world in ancient Greece.

“The audience sees two plots derived from the same mythological moment, two stories that use that mythology — in very different ways — to express cultural values,” he said.

Speck plays Creon, the ruler of Thebes, in “Antigone.” He said that his character’s fatal flaw is an insistence on following the letter of the law.

“In his absolute belief in his own rightness,” Speck said.

Creon ultimately learns otherwise — “through blood and tears.”

Audiences are transported in these productions. Actors reach back in time, and observers can almost reach out and touch the enduring human dramas.

They are set on the Moseley estate in the nearly 500-acre Maudslay State Park, home to gardens, meadows, stone arch bridges, carriage roads and a reflecting pond.

Speck said that proximity makes the drama personal. The audience members, on lawn chairs, benches and blankets, sit as close as 6 inches from the action.

And the natural setting complements the action. In fact, the grounds become characters in the plays, he said.

“We are performing under 100-year-old trees with gnarled trunks that put us in the mythical past,” Speck said.

The troupe couldn’t decide between performing a tragedy or a comedy this summer, so they are doing both. They present approaches to power that pertain as much today as they did more than 2,000 years ago, Speck said. “Antigone” performances started last weekend; “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” begins next weekend.

Both plays will be part of a new free festival that Theater in the Open will host the weekend of Aug. 12-13. The event will start Saturday morning at 11 with Family Hour in the Open, an interactive hour of exploration and performance. At 2 p.m., the actors present their spring production, “Snow White: A Through the Looking Glass Panto.” Sunday afternoon, the myths embody the grounds. “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” plays at 1 p.m., followed by Antigone at 4 p.m.

There will also be games and light refreshments both days.

If you go

What: “Antigone” and “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”

When: “Antigone” on July 15, 16, 23 and 30 at 4 p.m. and Aug. 13 at 5 p.m.; “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” on July 22 and 29 and Aug. 19 and 20 at 4 p.m. and Aug. 13 at 1 p.m.

Where: Maudslay State Park, Curzon Mill Road, Newburyport. Follow the Theater in the Open flags from the parking lot.

How much: Free. Parking is $5 for Massachusetts vehicles, $10 for out-of-state cars.

More information: 978-465-2572 or www.theaterintheopen.org

Newburyport group wants show to go on at state park

Boston Globe
James Sullivan

NEWBURYPORT — The pastel walls inside the gatekeeper’s house at Maudslay State Park tell the four-decade story of Theater in the Open. Posters from past shows — “Mother Goose,” “The Wind in the Willows,”

“Alice in Wonderland ” — hang above the old theater seats that rim the living room where the company rehearses.

Known as the Forester’s House, it’s an enchanted home for Esme, the toddler daughter of artistic director Edward Speck and his wife, Cailin McFarland. Since the late 1980s, when then-governor Michael Dukakis established the state park here, Theater in the Open has made its home at the gateway to the former Moseley estate, with an office and a residence for the artistic director under the same roof in the 1903, two-story residence.

This month, however, the theater’s board of directors will learn the fate of its bid to become the property’s official curator. Members have known for years the day would come when they’d be obliged to submit a competitive proposal for the Department of Conservation and Recreation’s ongoing Historic Curatorship program. The deadline for applications was Jan. 12.

The curatorship program seeks private partnerships to ensure continued maintenance of landmarks on state property. The DCR puts a premium on bidders’ plans for preservation, with benefits to the community being secondary.

The original agreement with DCR involved upkeep and maintenance in lieu of rent. The agency has calculated a fair market value of $515,000 over the course of a 20-year lease, to be paid into the preservation and improvement of the property.

Theater in the Open, with its popular summer workshop for children and its year-round slate of productions, has provided a beloved cultural diversion for generations of families. Speck and Kelly Shea Knowles, the theater’s executive director, said they’re reasonably confident about their bid.

“We’ve made massive improvements to this house,” said Knowles, sitting in the kitchen after a December matinee of “A Nutcracker Panto!,” a whimsical version of the classic holiday tale performed for students at Firehouse Center for the Arts, also in Newburyport.

Besides knowing the building “inside and out,” she said, “We provide an immense public benefit that directly benefits DCR, as well. We bring a lot of folks to Maudslay, and a lot of our kids fall in love with the outdoors.”

One of them was the young Edward Speck, known to most as Teddy. As a boy growing up in Amesbury, he was a regular in the theater’s summer program. At 14, he was entrusted with fashioning a Dr. Seuss-style ax from papier mache for an Earth Day production of “The Lorax.”

“The adults said ‘good job,’ ” Speck said, “and I still remember the power of that.”

Soon he was acting alongside the young adults in the company, some of whom were living in the gatekeeper’s house. The creative atmosphere grabbed him and wouldn’t let go.

“I had a wild dream of living here,” he said, showing a visitor around the house.

After studying philosophy at the New School in Greenwich Village in New York, he returned home and to the theater. Now 34, Speck was named artistic director in 2009.

When he moved in, the gatekeeper’s house was in some disrepair. It needed a new furnace and gutters, and the old stucco was crumbling.

At the time, Speck said, the theater was in the red. “I learned how to make stucco,” he recalled, “and I trapped 12 squirrels.”

The theater community rallied to work on the restoration. “The former artistic director came back and stared reglazing the windows,” Speck said.

Under the guidance of founder Anna Smulowitz, Theater in the Open began as the Newburyport Children’s Theater in 1979. Theresa Linnihan, who’d been involved from the beginning, moved into the house in 1987 as the organization’s first artist in residence. Knowles, a former marketing professional, assumed her “dream job” as Theater in the Open’s executive director in 2014.

State Senator Kathleen O’Connor Ives recently submitted a formal letter of support to DCR on behalf of Theater in the Open. The Newburyport Democrat said she appreciates that the theater presents shows free of charge: “You can see high-quality performances in this inspiring setting. The organization attracts so many different demographics, across generations and classes.”

The possibility that an interested party could outbid the theater for the gatekeeper’s house is one reason the senator believes terms of the curatorship program should be reconsidered.

“I would urge the state to look at this on a case-by-case basis, not have a regimented formula that would put an organization like Theater in the Open at an objective disadvantage,” said O’Connor Ives.

The organization has thrived in recent years. With a typical staff of 30 or so, the summer camp has grown to accommodate an average of 250 kids each year. Maudslay Is Haunted, the theater group’s annual Halloween tour in the woods, has become a local tradition, and Theater in the Open has added programming such as a February vacation workshop. The summer workshop expanded last year for the first time to a second campus on adjacent land belonging to the Arrowhead Family Farm, which dates back to the Colonial era.

When the farm’s proprietor, Dick Chase, heard his neighbors were looking for more space, he was quick to offer his land.

“It’s a family farm,” he told Knowles. “We’re supposed to have kids running around.”

Dance and art classes were held there last summer, and “Farmer Dick” had the children picking squash and sharing fresh raspberries.

Now, with the possibility of losing the gatekeeper’s house looming, Knowles and Speck have discussed the possibility of moving the whole program to Arrowhead. If their bid is not accepted, Theater in the Open will have 60 days to move out.

“It would be a very sad day to walk out these doors,” Speck said. But after years of impermanence, he said, there’s a clear upside: “This is the best opportunity we’ve had to plan our future around this house. We can find another home, but we don’t want to.”

Edward Speck and Kelly Shea Knowles on stage at the property used by Theater in the Open in Maudslay State Park.