Revelries and theatrics Many bright spots sparkled in 2005 BY MEGAN GRUMBLING

Here it is, our theatrical year: Often political, performed in increasingly common places, and studded with plenty of bright stuff.

SOCIAL WORKS

A whole slew of thespians couldn’t keep their hands out of politics and social issues, and thank god for that.

First, a couple political classics: We had the work of some timeless greats dusted off for topical renaissance, including Ariel Francoeur’s USM production of Aristophanes’s Lysistrata and Michael Toth’s brazenly apropos direction of Shakespeare’s brutal Titus for Two Lights.

We also saw the staging of some new scripts of simply scintillating intelligence and social import. The indefatigable members of activist theater troupe ROIL took their original voter-education show Close to Home to dozens of impromptu stages throughout Maine, in their successful call to strike down the Maine Christian Civic League’s proposed People’s Veto. Cathy Plourde and Carolyn Gage teamed up to present Gage’s original work about homophobia in a Maine camp for girls, Ugly Ducklings; the mounting of the play and the thoughts of the mostly teenage cast also became the subject of a documentary film by Berkeley cinematographer Fawn Yacker. Both AmeriCo Productions and Dan Bernard, along with members of Portland Short Order Comedy, have produced entertaining evenings of political ribbing for audiences at Geno’s and the St. Lawrence, and Caitlin Shetterly produced a few critical mouthfuls in Letters to Ohio and Letters to Katrina. Finally, the Center for Cultural Exchange commissioned a theatrical oral history of Mainers’ responses to January 2004’s infamous Border Patrol sweeps of Portland’s homeless shelters, bus stations, and ethnic businesses. For the show, Obie-winning playwright Marty Pottinger culled from hours of storytelling sessions to create the acute meditation on freedom from fear and harm called home land security.

SITE SPECIFICS

I’m pleased and relieved to report that 2005 found Portland’s theater folk steadily cultivating a handful of alternative theater settings, bolstering the idea that a city’s theater scene is not just known by its Equity houses:

The intrepid and prosthetically-inclined Running Over Productions continued to utilize the down-home creepiness of the Presumpscot Grange Hall to stage their two shows of 2005, Bury the Dead, and Creature Double Feature. (I also give them props for going over to the weird side of audio visual-land with projections of blue and jerky satyrs.)

Since the reopening of Geno’s in the old Skinny space, they’ve speedily turned into everyone’s favorite edgy arts dive joint. In between rock shows, Geno’s has hosted regular gigs by the rambunctious comics the Escapists and AmeriCo Productions’ political cabaret-ers, and also gave a full run to Rodney Nason’s edgy bio-show Lenny, about the controversial comedian Lenny Bruce.

In perhaps the most dramatic theatrical site of the season, Acorn Productions’ Naked Shakespeare Ensemble ferried through rain and trudged through mud to Battery Steele to perform at this year’s Sacred and Profane. I should also mention here that I’ve been horribly remiss in not yet lauding in print Naked’s latest evolutionary leap, its acquisition of composer and musician Denis Nye into the group. Nye’s smart and subtle sonics render everything from thunder and sprite-paths to toiling, troubling bubbles, and are sublime stuff on which to make a scene.

AND THE LUMINOUS

To wrap up, here are some of the bright and otherwise warming points of the year:

The American Irish Repertory Ensemble continued to delight with its ardent explorations of the human (and, specifically, the Irish) heart. In both the heartwarming Dancing at Lughnasa and the black-comic The Cripple of Inishmaan, AIRE’s actors delivered what they’ve become known for — consistently nuanced, witty, and radiant performances.

A fine multi-generational ensemble cast up at the Theatre at Monmouth performed a moving staging of Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath; and Mad Horse gave us some divinely arch bitchery in their sensitive production of Mamet’s Boston Marriage.

And under the direction of Odelle Bowman, the young actresses of A Company of Girls staged a lovely and earnest enactment of Madeleine L’Engle’s liberal-humanist sci-fi classic A Wrinkle in Time. Accompanied by the cosmic atmospherics of the band Tarpigh, and with a collaborative video projection project supervised by videographer Susan Bickford as scenic background, the production was an imaginative and illuminating union of the community’s talents.

Here’s to more of all of it. In the meantime, revel well.

Megan Grumbling can be reached at mgrumbling@hotmail.com