Goin’ back to Deertrees

Bela Blau returns to Maine

By Gibson Fay-LeBlanc

Collected Stories plays Aug. 23 and 24, Same Time Next Year plays August 30, 31, and Sept. 1. Call (207) 583-6747.

INFIDELS: Terri Eoff and David Perry in Same Time Next Year.

When New York City actor/director/producer Tom Sullivan got married four years ago in Harrison, ME, a friend told him to check out the Deertrees Theatre. He did, and was astonished. “I fell in love with it. It was this beautiful theatre with an incredible history, and they weren’t doing any drama.”

Of course, that doesn’t mean they never did. Deertrees’ history of doing theatre goes back to the 1930s, when the number of plays being done in Maine was almost the same as on Broadway. During the summers, Broadway producer Bela Blau brought a play a week to Deertrees complete with casts featuring stars like Ethyl Barrymore and Rudy Vallee. But Blau died suddenly in 1940, and with him went the NYC-Harrison dramatic pipeline. Since then, Deertrees has struggled at times, but manage to stay afloat by filling the theater with regional acts — mostly musicians and comedians.

A few years ago, Sullivan approached the folks at Deertrees, and they agreed to let him do one production. Following the success of the show — A.R. Gurney’s Love Letters, with him playing one of the two characters — Deertrees and Sullivan’s NYC production company, GreenLight Theatreworks, organized and put on the first annual Bela Blau Theatre Series last year. According to Sullivan, the mission of GreenLight Theatreworks and Deertrees’ Bela Blau Series is to do contemporary, cutting edge theatre that challenges and appeals to audiences. “We like dramas that showcase the humanness in all of us, that are more visceral, the kind of work a playwright like David Mamet writes.”

The first summer series wasn’t exactly easy. Sullivan says, “It’s a shoestring budget. We’ve needed lots of volunteers, not to mention a lot of sweat and goodwill. If we’d waited around for a grant [to fund the series], we’d still be waiting.” They put on four productions over the course of a month. The crowds weren’t the biggest the 300-seat theatre had ever seen, but, for a first year, it was success.

Sullivan’s own GreenLight Theatreworks evolved, he explains, because “There were times when I couldn’t find work, so I figured I’d do my own productions. I wasn’t going to take no for an answer.” With GreenLight, Sullivan and groups of fellow actors help up-and-coming playwrights develop plays and do productions in NYC at least twice a year.

The new connection with Deertrees Theatre means that GreenLight has four shows to get ready before each summer’s trip north. Sullivan likes the challenge. “It’s a big undertaking. Last year, I went home and said, ‘I’m only doing three next summer,’ but then after a few months, I said, ‘Oh, what the hell.’ ”

The actors and directors appear to like it as well. “There’s a lodge here that they stay in. The town of Harrison is totally different [from New York City],” he says. Many of them are returning for the second year. David Perry, who had his most recent film screened at the Cannes Film Festival, directed Frank McGuinness’s Someone Who’ll Watch Over Me earlier this month and ran an acting workshop for 8-16-year olds this past week.

This August’s Bela Blau Series began with Neil Simon’s Barefoot in the Park and McGuinness’s Someone, and continues with Donald Margulies’s Collected Stories and Bernard Slade’s Same Time Next Year during the last two weekends of the month.

As for the differences between the theatergoers in Harrison and those in NYC, Sullivan says, “The audience up here sometimes gets fixed on the set, the periphery stuff. [GreenLight’s] all about the work. I have faith in the work.” Sullivan hopes the local audience’s faith in his productions will grow over time.

After this year’s Bela Blau Series is over, Sullivan and the folks at Deertrees have plans to do more fundraising to make things easier. Also, Sullivan adds, “I’d really like to get involved with a Maine playwright, to develop a local play.”

In the meantime, there are two more productions to go. Collected Stories charts the relationship of a professor and a student who becomes famous for publishing a book of fictionalized stories her mentor told her. After doing the show in NYC a few weeks ago, Sullivan listened to the audience on the way out. “You end up choosing sides,” he says, “It’s the question of whether everything is open to artistic interpretation once it’s been aired.” The production features actress Barbara Suter who is also a playwright — a play of hers is being developed by the New York Theatre Workshop, housed at Princeton, alongside one by Tony Kushner (Angels in America).

Same Time Next Year follows two folks, each married with a family, who meet at a lodge for one weekend a year. The underlying issue of what they are doing — cheating on their spouses — is never mentioned. According to Sullivan, it’s the underlying issue of morality that provides the tension for the play.

So far the series is going well. Sullivan says, “We had a better audience [for the first show] than at any time last year . . . We just want the support to continue.”

Gibson Fay-LeBlanc can be reached at riverbetweenus@hotmail.com.