Actors portray Shakers receiving the gift of dance called spinning. In Shaker faith, dance, song and other art forms traditionally are considered “gifts” from the divine.—PHOTO COURTESY OF LINDA NELSON

Opera House Brings Stonington Residents Together for Art

It’s hard to imagine what the Shaker community of Sabbathday Lake in Maine would have in common with New Orleans’ Own Hot 8 Brass Band.

Paula Wilson (left), a New York actor originally from Hallowell stars as Sister Fanny in “As it is in Heaven,” a musical production inspired by Maine’s Shaker Community at Sabbathday Lake.—PHOTO COURTESY OF KAREN GALELLA

That’s a trick question, the one-word answer for which is right there in the first paragraph.

No, it’s not “hot.”

It’s “community.”

Since the Opera House came back to life in the summer of 2000, its principals have had that word on their lips almost daily. As a result, it tends to be the word they hear loudest in any given sentence.

“It’s just how we’re thinking,” said Judith Jerome, co-artistic director.

Over the past year a public radio interview here, a referral there, evolved into a 2008 summer schedule that focuses on what brings people together, challenges them and keeps them thriving.

July’s schedule this year begins with “As It Is in Heaven,” Arlene Hutton’s musical play about Shakers whose normally placid flock is divided by intergenerational tensions.

Later in the month, the annual Deer Isle Jazz Festival, which the Opera House has hosted since 2001, is a “special edition” focusing on “New Orleans: Culture, Crisis, Community.”

In between, the Opera House will host its annual “Live! For $5” family programs on Wednesday nights, featuring a juggler/comic, a street poet, and a dancer. Storyteller Donald Neufeld will lead local teens in a Summerstage story-making workshop July 19-23, culminating in a 7 p.m. performance July 23.

The Opera House, the Reach Performing Arts Center and Seamark Community Arts will cosponsor the Island Arts Camp for kids July 7-11.

The Opera House will show movies any weekend that doesn’t have a performance scheduled.

Community = Safety

According to Linda Nelson, the Opera House’s executive director, the Shakers strive for an “intentional” community, meaning one that “is what everyone wants it to be, that’s safe for everybody.”

Those words would be likely to resonate for the Hot 8 Brass Band and fellow survivors of Hurricane Katrina.

Or anyone in Stonington, which Jerome said sent truckloads of relief supplies to New Orleans after Katrina. One family still goes to New Orleans to work on building projects every winter.

On Sunday, July 26, the Hot 8 Brass Band will lead a traditional New Orleans “second line parade” (in which the public is welcome to march behind the band as the “second line”) in downtown Stonington at noon. The parade will help to usher in the unrelated Fishermen’s Day festivities.—PHOTO COURTESY OF OPERA HOUSE ARTS

This spring, two members of Hot 8 visited Deer Isle-Stonington schools to play for students. They also talked about the profound sense of their own culture that came to them when they performed for fellow Katrina exiles in shelters across the country.

Bennie Pete, the band’s leader and tuba player, pointed out that he’d learned his music from other New Orleans musicians rather than formal education. “He recommended that the kids go home and talk with their grandparents,” Nelson said.

Such attempts to maintain and nurture a community “is what the Opera House is part of here in Stonington,” she said.

A landmark on the Stonington waterfront since 1912, the Opera House has been used at one time or another for movies, Chautauqua performances, vaudeville, dances, roller skating, basketball and even the seat of town government.

Although it was named to the National Register of Historic Places in 1991, the building was unused and falling into disrepair from 1986 until 1999, when Nelson, Jerome, Carol Estey and Linda Pattie, all active in the New York City arts scene, formed Opera House Arts to buy and begin renovating the building.

“We were interested in doing something in conversation with the community,” said Jerome, who has shared artistic direction with Estey.

Fortunately, Opera House principals were accustomed to grant-writing. Over the years, grant funds have augmented local donations to shore up and modernize the building where needed, as well as support new programming.

A heating system and insulation, for instance, now makes it possible to offer plays, concerts, dance performances, dramatic readings, movies year-round, as well as the economic and community development meetings that the Opera House considers to be part of its mission.

Simple Gifts

Carol Estey will direct a troupe of Equity actors in “As It Is in Heaven,” which premiered at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 2001 and also has been produced off-Broadway. One of the cast members from the New York production will be in the Stonington cast.

Mary Ann Haagen, a Dartmouth College scholar-in-residence and expert on Shaker music, will be the production’s music director. The play is rich in original Shaker music and dances.

The production will be the Opera House’s annual benefit gala on July 2 at 5 p.m., followed by a post-show party with dinner and dessert.

Other performances will be on July 3 and 5 at 7 p.m., and July 6 at 2 p.m.

The Shakers came to this continent in 1774, followers of Mother Ann Lee. Noted for the simplicity of their lives and their belief that God is pure spirit encompassing both male and female, the Shakers deemed men and women to be equal. Procreation was forbidden, so the community could grow only by attracting new members.

The Shakers numbered 6,000 in the mid-1800s. Because of their stability and prosperity, the communities became a refuge for abused women, escaped slaves or just those who needed warmth and food in the winter.

Today, the last Shakers are the four living at Sabbathday Lake in New Gloucester, Maine.

Shakers believe that their songs, dances and art come to them as “gifts” from the divine. The gift of dance was withdrawn, they believe, and none have been performed in living memory. A dozen were recorded in Shaker artwork, however, and those have been recreated in Hutton’s play.

The play is set in 1838, a time when young Shakers began to experience ecstatic “gifts,” some of which they said came directly from the late founder, Mother Ann Lee. The play pits the young women’s ecstasy against the elders’ doubts about the visions’ authenticity and wish to keep the group from spinning out of control.

Estey has visited the Sabbathday Lake community, and will take the production there as a fund-raiser July 7.

Second Line Parade

The headline act at the Deer Isle Jazz Festival will be the Donald Harrison Quartet.

Harrison is New Orleans-based saxophonist as well as a Mardi Gras Indian chief, one of the musicians who wear magnificently beaded and feathered costumes every year at Mardi Gras.

Harrison will be artist-in-residence at Haystack Mountain School of Crafts from July 13 through Aug. 1. His Mardi Gras costume will be on display at Haystack during that time.

The festival will open on Thursday, July 24, with 7 p.m. a screening of “All in a Mardi Gras Day,” Royce Osborn’s PBS documentary on the history of African-American culture in New Orleans.

The Donald Harrison Quartet will perform at 7 p.m. that night.

On Saturday, the Hot 8 will hold a clinic at 1 p.m., followed by a concert at 7.

On Sunday, the Hot 8 will lead a traditional New Orleans “second line parade” (which means everyone is invited to march behind the band as the “second line”) in downtown Stonington at noon, helping to usher in the unrelated Fishermen’s Day festivities.

Looking ahead to August, the Opera house will host an evening of Spanish music with Sam Lardner & Barcelona on Aug. 2 at 7 p.m. “Live! For $5” will feature Balinese music Aug. 6 and a Klezmer band Aug. 20, both at 7 p.m. Poet Daniel Hoffman will read on Aug. 7 at 7 p.m.

The annual, acclaimed Shakespeare in Stonington will be onstage Aug. 14-16 at 7 p.m. and Aug 17 at 2 p.m. “MacBeth” will be directed by Jeffrey Fracé, who has either directed or appeared in most previous Shakespeare in Stonington productions. Music and puppets are said to be involved.

Maine Masters Weekend will be Aug. 22-24, featuring films by Richard Kane and music by Paul Sullivan and Friends.

Reservations/information: 367-2788 or operahousearts.org.