25 Years Celebrating Community

Opera House Arts' first season's schedule.

by Carol Estey, Judith Jerome, Linda Nelson and Linda Pattie

Twenty-five years ago this July -- a quarter of a century ago! -- a new island nonprofit, Opera House Arts (OHA), held its reopening gala at a restored Stonington Opera House. The nearly 100-year-old theater’s 250 seats were sold out to an audience entertained by CBS daytime soap opera star Ron Raines and Metropolitan Opera diva Lucine Amara among others, and crowned by a bright double rainbow during intermission.

As the founders of that nonprofit, now collectively departed from the organization for 10 years or more, we are awed and grateful at the whole community support that has made these 25 years possible and want to take a moment to remember and cheer on the next 25!

We and the many volunteers and talented artists from the island and around the world who have shared their gifts in community are inspired by and have sought to celebrate the uniqueness, the stories, the people, beauty and talent that characterizes this place.

Graphic designer, artist, actor
and volunteer Bekka Lindstrom
created the original OHA brand.

THANK YOU for the love, passion, dedication, generosity, talent, creativity and hard work so, so many of you have shared – as artists, volunteers, board members, audiences and participants, staff, and new leadership – in support of that historic old building and of OHA’s founding mission: to use the performing arts to foster and promote excellence in ALL the ways we perform our lives: Incite Art, Create Community.

The four of us, along with our community boards and trustees, understood our nonprofit charitable purpose as to benefit, support, and add value to the year-round community.

Looking from the stage as we started to
rebuild the theater.

In 1999 when OHA purchased the Opera House, not only had Russ’s Hill slid through the back sill and wall, its mud covering half of the theater with a happy family of six raccoons claiming residence – you could also see through many of the walls and there was no heating system.

It took five years to make it possible to hold programs and generate economic impact during the 10 months of the year it is most needed. Our community board members asked for and received a predictable schedule of movies to support year-round restaurants and other businesses; as well as community and educational performance programs, from playwriting and readings to movie-making for all ages, throughout the winter.

First year's ballet classes on stage.

Because two of our founders had a background in Performance Studies and all of us were committed to community service, OHA’s mission was based on our shared belief, then and now, that we all perform different roles as part of our daily lives: as parents, teachers, selectmen, friends, athletes, musicians, workers, etc. One way we believed OHA might make a positive difference as well as providing entertainment for the community was to integrate artists who had sought professional training into the island’s daily life, fabric, education and work.

Cue sheet from Dear Fish,
an educational performance
collaboration with Juneau, AK
through the Kennedy Center
National Partners in Education program.

Actors study and practice how to perform their ever-changing roles with excellence. At the heart of OHA’s eight-year arts integrated learning partnership with island schools and the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts was “The Actor’s Toolbox:” ways to become aware of and to practice how to work effectively with one’s body, voice, and imagination, as well as how to concentrate and cooperate. These are learned skills, and this “toolbox” remains a wonderful classroom and warm up practice.

We’ve found these “performance skills” to be very helpful for us all as we navigate community life, share our stories, and bring our differences together in public – sometimes in celebration, sometimes to solve the big challenges we inevitably face.

Early Wicked Good Film Series:
Carol Estey, Linda Nelson, Emmie, Galen, Ani

Some of our fondest memories are of the programs which brought this particular community together on the stage, in the quarry, or in the streets! The very early Wicked Good Student Film Series programs, including students Walker Collin and Travis Fifield and Galen Koch, all now community leaders. The Hot 8 Brass Band and Board Chair Stan Bergen and wife Sue leading a “New Orleans meets Downeast” second-line parade down Main Street to the Fish Pier. Beloved and newly departed friend Rick Weed at “ballet practice,” swinging dancers from his excavator above the Settlement Quarry in Quarryography. School students from Brooklin, Sedgwick, and the island working with composer Maia Whitman Aprahamian to write lyrics for “Burt Dow, Deep Water Man.” Bringing Deer Isle’s last ferryman, Charlie Scott, and community leader Frank McGuire to life in “The Last Ferryman”...and now ongoing creative collaborations between OHA artists and our neighbors at Nervous Nellie’s and more! We feel very blessed to have created such a deep trove of memories and possibilities with so many of you. Thank you.

Amazing local excavator operator
and dearly recently departed friend
Rick Weed brings Cableman alive
in Quarryography.

As our old friend, colleague, and theater warhorse Jean Wilhelm from Eastport would say: Onward!

As we all were then!
Carol Estey, Linda Nelson,
Linda Pattie, Judith Jerome

Teeter Tottering between Beauty and the Storm

Always seek to find the beauty on stormy days...

I grew up as an "American Exceptionalist" -- thinking the U.S. democracy was the best thing since...slice bread? hot tubs? swims in the ocean?! -- to the extent I was an American Studies major in college.

Today I think a lot about our U.S. white culture as a teeter totter that has been slammed to the ground on the side of individualism and is now completely stuck...with our communities dangling mid-air and too many squashed beneath the side on the ground.

It is such a delicate balance, as theorists and theologians far more profound than I, have explored -- between the I and the Thou, the individual and her culture.

The founders sought to balance the rights of the individual with the responsibilities of the citizen in both our Bill of Rights and the Constitution.

The "finger on the scale" that slams the balance down on the side of individualism is that too often we give up citizenship (along with the basic principles of christianity and other religions) for the sake of consumerism.

For the privilege and convenience of getting what we want, whenever we want it.

For pushing ourselves to the front of the bread line even when we are not in need of sustenance.

For always saying "I" comes first and others second.

Our communities are only as strong as we who come together to meet our common needs -- and especially those of the most vulnerable amongst us.

American culture, despite its alleged grounding in christianity, abhors systems thinking. To admit that we have built systems that oppress others (see: slavery; see: sexism) and shape our culture to this day is to break the cult of "American exceptionalism."

If we failed to see this throughout the five assassinations that broke progressive momentum for civil rights and wages for all in the 1960's, then perhaps we will remember that legacy in light of today's political violence.

The politically motivated shooting of public servants -- and the superfluous access to weapons that make it possible -- shows again the U.S. in its most damning light.

We are not exceptional -- especially as long as individual rights are privileged over the common good.

In order to re-balance our teeter totter, all of us that have slid toward the ground side of individual consumerism need to shift our positions.

We'll all need to give something up to achieve a better balance, one that teeters more toward the common than the individual good.

#newblogpost

Pride, Sanctuary, and Why Allies Matter

 

The hand blown rainbow glass gifted
to me by my English teacher upon
my high school graduation.

June Pride. 

This year, we not only remember but activate the true meaning of Pride -- a riotous and righteous fight for our lives as well as a celebration of who we are.

Why does Pride have more relevance and hopefully more impact this year?

Just as in the '60's, when the Stonewall riot launched our marches for equity, and the '80's, when we lived under another repressive Republican regime that attempted to silence us in our fight against a lethal pandemic -- we are fighting for our lives. 

Very simply: fighting for our right to be named, addressed, and respected for who we are, to have sex with whom we wish, and to receive the services and health care to which others have access.

If you already have these rights then this may not resonate with you. You may wonder: what's to fight for? We ask for your empathy, compassion and, most importantly, your solidarity.

I was lucky to receive and feel these actions -- empathy, compassion, solidarity -- from someone as a very young person a very long time ago.

The first adult to whom I came out, in 1976 when I was 15, was my high school English teacher.

She saw my queerness, my loneliness, my distress.

Not because she herself was queer. But because she saw me and my need for support.

There was no one in my hometown whom I knew that could guide me on this path: what would it mean for my future to be queer? to not marry a man? to not have children?

The options to a 15 year-old in 1976 were unimaginable.

The homophobia, particularly in girls sports where we demonstrated our strength and independence, was ferocious.

But like all great teachers: she saw me and went beyond the call of duty, inviting me into her home.

She listened. With curiosity and without judgement.

She provided sanctuary.

A place of refuge and safety. A place I could be who I was without hiding, or fear of reprisals.

I can't make sense of living in a world in which it is illegal to provide sanctuary for those most in need. But here we are, with the current Republican administration punishing "sanctuary" cities for helping legal immigrants.

When I graduated from high school and was approaching the legal drinking age, my teacher gave me the hand-blown rainbow glass pictured above.

This glass is a sign of solidarity: it was the twin to the one she used every evening at her home, which she had opened to me, as she graded papers and watched TV.

I treasure and use this glass and carry it carefully with me to this day.

A reminder of how important solidarity, and sanctuary, are.

We will keep the fight. And hope many of you who do not directly experience the repressions of the current regime will join us.