Historic Nantucket, Summer 2006, Vol. 55, No. 3

Hi s t o r i c

Summer 2006

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Vol. 55, No. 3

Nantucket

T H E AT R E I S S U E :

REMINISCENCES OF ELIZABETH GILBERT

THEATRE WORKSHOP OF NANTUCKET

STAGES PAST

MOUSETRAPPED

Hi s t o r i c

Board of Trustees E. Geoffrey Verney, President Bruce Percelay, Vice President Vice President Melissa Philbrick, John W.Atherton Jr., Treasurer Patricia M. Bridier, Clerk Thomas Anathan Rebecca Bartlett C. Marshall Beale Kenneth L. Beaugrand Heidi Berry, Friends of the NHA Robert Brust Nancy Chase William R. Congdon Richard L. Duncan Polly Espy Nan A. Geschke Nina Hellman Julius Jensen III Christopher L. Maury Sarah B. Newton Anne S. Obrecht Christopher Quick Melanie Sabelhaus Janet L. Sherlund Nancy Soderberg Bette Spriggs Isabel C. Stewart Jay Wilson

Nantucket Summer 2006

Vol. 55, No. 3

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Letter to NHA Members From Executive Director William J. Tramposch

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Reminiscences of 30 years with The Theatre Workshop

By Elizabeth Gilbert

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Curtains Rising: The First 50 Years of the Theatre Workshop of Nantucket

By Jennifer M. Ahlborn

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Remembrances of Stages Past

By Kate Stout

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Overview: Straight Wharf Theatre Sign

By Kate Stout

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Mousetrapped

By Ginger Andrews

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8 DEPARTMENTS

William J. Tramposch Executive Director

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People: Niles Parker

Editorial Committee

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Museum Shop

Mary H. Beman Thomas B. Congdon Jr. Richard L. Duncan Peter J. Greenhalgh Amy Jenness Cecil Barron Jensen Robert F. Mooney Elizabeth Oldham Nathaniel Philbrick Bette M. Spriggs James Sulzer David H. Wood

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NHA News

Ben Simons Editor

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19 On the cover Loring Hayden, Elizabeth Gilbert, and Bruce Johnston in The Fan, 1964.

Historic Nantucket welcomes articles on any aspect of Nantucket history. Original research; first-hand accounts; reminiscences of island experiences; historic logs, letters, and photographs are examples of materials of interest to our readers. ©2006 by Nantucket Historical Association

Elizabeth Oldham Copy Editor Eileen Powers/Javatime Design Design & Art Direction

Historic Nantucket (ISSN 0439-2248) is published quarterly by the Nantucket Historical Association, 15 Broad Street, Nantucket, Massachusetts.

Periodical postage paid at Nantucket, MA, and additional entry offices.

POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Historic Nantucket, P.O. Box 1016, Nantucket, MA 02554 –1016 (508) 228–1894; fax: (508) 228–5618, nhainfo@nha.org For information about our historic sites: www.nha.org

FROM THE EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR

“He Tangata”: The Most Important Thing

O

On the day I assumed my position as the new executive director of the Nantucket Historical Association, my wife and I took a walk across the street to the Town Building. We were married there, thirty years ago to the day. After our ceremony in 1976, we stayed at a nearby guest house; had a celebratory dinner, and then slipped out around Brant Point the next day. We chose Nantucket as a matrimonial “jumping off” point because history and literature had so convincingly defined this little “elbow of sand” as the place from which great voyages began. Given our adventures of the last thirty years, Nantucket was the perfect choice for us.

Though I am a native New Englander (Monroe, Connecticut), I had come a long way to interview for this position in March of this year. I had spent more than ten years living in another special corner of the world—New Zealand: first as a Fulbright Fellow; then helping to build the new National Museum of New Zealand (Te Papa); and, finally, heading the New Zealand Historic Places Trust. While I was not sure what to expect during my March revisit, curving around Brant Point this time already had the feel of homecoming about it.

Geoff Verney, president, and Niles Parker, acting executive director, had organized a full schedule of interviews, tours, and meetings spanning a two-day interview period. (Niles and I had been professional colleagues and friends for fifteen years.) So stimulating were these meetings that by the middle of the second day I had decided to extend my stay several more days in order to get a better feel for the possibilities. Perhaps it is best to list some of the impressions I have had during and since that March visit. To those of you who know NHA well, these impressions will have a familiar ring: The Museum: The new Whaling Museum astonished me. Having helped manage two significant building projects in the United States and New Zealand, I can say that Nantucket’s new Whaling Museum is much more than a significant new element on the community’s cultural landscape; it is one of the finest museums of its kind. My congratulations to all who participated in the development of this world-class museum, and especially to trustee Bruce Percelay, who oversaw the project as chair of the Building Committee.

I applaud, as well, the efforts of those who developed the association’s Research Library.

This facility offers one of the most conducive settings of any such library I know, and its potential to reach out to wider audiences through technology is limitless.

The Board and Staff: I am empathetic to the pressures that such building projects place upon staff and board. Yet, as I have gotten to know colleagues, I have noticed none of that enervation that so commonly follows in the wake of such extensive capital projects. Just the opposite is true. Here the staff and board are clearly energized and eager to address the larger, long-term potentials of the institution. Every stakeholder appears to appreciate that the Whaling Museum and the Research Library represent vibrant beginnings, a high institutional standard for our future work. This work is clearly outlined in the association’s exciting new strategic plan, which envisions an institution with expanded interpretive programs engaging wider audiences. What a time to be at the Nantucket Historical Association!

Our “Human Kin Across the Ages”: In the quiet hours of my interview stay, I walked the streets of Nantucket with the books of Edouard Stackpole and Nat Philbrick in hand, Nantucket Doorways and Away Off Shore, respectively. Each resource transported me beyond the thresholds of homes to the people within. Edmund Morgan, in the introduction to Samuel Eliot Morison’s Builders of the Bay Colony describes the historian’s task: “To explain the past to the present, to simplify without oversimplifying, to bring to life the men and woman who can speak across the ages to their human kin.” Messrs. Stackpole and Philbrick eloquently offer us such introductions, and in doing so we catch a glimpse of the vast potential we at NHA have to expand and relate the remarkable stories of this place. Nantucket is unique in the world, and few places on this globe hold the stories that so capture one’s imagination as this place.

During my interview, and since beginning my duties as your executive director, I have been captivated by the enthusiasm and dedication that characterizes the board, the staff, the Friends, and members of this organization. And, in my regular rounds about the town I have been struck by the community’s depth of interest and pride in this organization. The NHA is clearly not

BILL TRAMPOSCH

just a “cabinet of curiosities,” a place to visit as a last resort on a rainy day; for a rapidly increasing number of people it is perceived as a destination of first choice, a gateway to understanding Nantucket and its significance. The NHA, like Nantucket itself, is a living and thriving place, informed daily by its unique past and adept at applying history’s lessons to current and future civic and cultural decisions.

As I passed by the Brant Point Lighthouse following those March interviews, I had the following thoughts about Nantucket Island, and they, too, will sound familiar: Nantucket is an international treasure, a 300,000-acre National Historic Landmark; yet with such international significance that it would equally qualify as a World Heritage Site; that the community of Nantucket is privileged to have such an astonishing array of cultural and conservation holdings; and that clearly the most important thing is the people I have met on island. They are the association’s greatest resource. So, rather than pennies, I cast the following fitting Maori adage over the railings of the boat back to America: He aha te mea nui?

He Tangata! He Tangata! He Tangata!

What is the most important thing?

It is the people! The people! The people!

William J. Tramposch Executive Director Summer 2006

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eminiscences of 30 years with

hen John and I emigrated to the United States in February 1957 to make our home in Nantucket, my greatest fear was that I would no longer be able to immerse myself in theatre, as had been my custom during my growing-up years in London. Theatre was in my family and “in my blood.” My paternal grandfather owned and operated the Theatre Royal in Liverpool in the late 1800s and early 1900s.

He booked the stars of that era, and entertained the dignitaries who would travel by coach and horses from London to attend performances there. My father played in many productions in his early years, and knew many of the people with whom his father was associating. My mother was a professional musical accompanist. And I danced before I walked,

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Historic Nantucket

the Theatre Workshop

By Eliz abeth Gilbe r t

I’m told! During my years in London during and after World War II, I was dancing and involved in many shows, mingling among the theatrical stars in the early 50s.

Imagine what a sacrifice I thought it would be—to leave this all behind to start a new life, not knowing whether my need and desire for theatre would be fulfilled while living on an island in what seemed like the middle of the Atlantic Ocean!

How wrong I was! Within two months of our arrival here, our real estate agent, Albert Pitkin, had persuaded us not to rent, but to put our worldly savings into a down payment for a little “fixer-upper” cottage on Vestal Street. With fear and trembling we did just that, and started renovating the historic gaolkeeper’s cottage. One day in May 1957, John was chipping the heavy calcimine paint off the master bedroom ceiling with an old bread knife, dressed in bathing trunks and my shower cap, when there was a knock on the front door. Thinking that the only person who would possibly be coming to call was Mr. Pitkin, he called: “Come in, Al,” but nobody appeared. Again he called, but to no avail.

After several persistent tries, there was a soft knock on the bedroom door where John was working, covered from head to toe in white paint chips. There, elegantly dressed and gracious, as always, was the Theatre Workshop of Nantucket’s artistic director, Joseph “Mac” Dixon. He had heard from Mr. Pitkin that we had joined St. Paul’s Episcopal Church choir, and he was looking for volunteers for the TWN chorus. In spite of the bizarre circumstances, he invited us to come to a rehearsal of The Mikado, which was being prepared for production in the fall.

Before we knew it, we were rehearsing at Flo Rand’s shack off Crooked Lane. I sang in PHOTO: Beverly Hall

the chorus and helped to hand-paint all the kimonos. The actor originally chosen to take the lead dropped out, so John became the Mikado himself, and spent the next few months singing and practicing the dramatic opening “thwack” of his enormous fan, which happened each time he appeared on stage in the show! The vocal score was being taught by a resident of Siasconset named Nancy Silsbee, a professional pianist and harpsichordist.

Nancy was driving us home from rehearsal one night in her venerable 1940s car when, after leaving Miss Rand’s driveway and heading toward Madaket Road on Crooked Lane, Nancy was changing gears and suddenly had the gear lever loose in her hand! In rather a panic, she recklessly waved it in the air and said: “Now what do we do?” John took over, put it back in the gear box, and managed to get us all home unharmed! What an adventure! This show was the fifth production of the newly formed Theatre Workshop of Nantucket, and our first of nearly forty more to follow. It opened at Straight Wharf Theatre on October 21, 1957, for only four performances—a long run in those days—and was a resounding success.

In February 1958 John was cast as Leonard Vole in the mystery Witness for the Prosecution, with Shirley Perkins as the female lead. The publicity was done by Genevieve Hall, and included a special-edition newspaper contain-

At left: Mac Dixon, 1991. .Facing page: Clockwise from upper left:: Le Boeuf sur le Toit (1962); Wait Until Dark (1971); the funeral scene in Brigadoon (1961); The Mikado (1957); and (center) a publicity shot for Brigadoon.

From top: “Lady Astor” in Teahouse of the August Moon (1958); Special-edition newspaper for Witness for the Prosecution (1958); Diary of Anne Frank (1961).

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ing photos using our 1934 MG convertible, which we had brought over from England, to accentuate the plot. This was a challenging and “wordy” play. Rehearsals were held in people’s cellars, living rooms—anywhere that was heated, then taken to the stage at Straight Wharf for a few run-throughs before opening night, so that the theatre did not have to be heated for any extended period of time before productions—a challenge in itself. One night, Jane Wallach, Mac’s “aunt,” who was the founder and inspiration behind the organization, and a “grand dame” of the arts, was sitting in the audience, and during a particularly tricky scene suddenly shouted out: “Maccie, won’t he ever learn his lines?” John was totally undone, but pulled it off, of course, by opening night!

Subsequently, we spent many wonderful evenings at Janie and Mac’s home on Orange Street, having sumptuous dinners by candlelight, and afterwards playing Janie’s favorite game, Charades. We were not always enchanted by this game as, without warning and in a loud, commanding voice, Janie would make a show-stopping remark such as the one to John at Straight Wharf. This was sometimes intimidating but always got your attention! At first, as fledglings from London, we were inclined to be intimidated by invitations to these soirées, but if you were invited, you were expected to be there, by order of the Grand Dame! As years went by, Janie mellowed and became much less formidable on those occasions, and evenings spent with them in their lovely home became warm and comfortable.

Teahouse of the August Moon, a delightful play with music set in Okinawa, Japan, presented numerous challenges, as Mac insisted that every detail—the sets, costumes, lighting, and special sound effects—be as authentic as possible, as first produced in New York in 1953. A live goat named Lady Astor was imported from Martha’s Vineyard to appear in the village scenes. Following her arrival on the ferry, she was paraded up Main Street in the back of a truck, accompanied by Mac and members of the cast, as a publicity stunt—a “first” for Main Street! During one of the performances, Lady Astor decided to “deposit” in the middle of the stage, and Bob Clark, one of

the backstage crew, was summoned to come and clean it up. He stole that show! John built a wooden jeep for the set (which never went anywhere but looked very effective), and had great fun learning to be a Sumo wrestler with Zip Dunham, as entertainment within the Teahouse! In the role of Lotus Blossom, the geisha girl, I had to learn the whole play in Japanese. I also had to learn the graceful and precise hand and body movements, use of flowers, ceremonial dances with special ways of using a fan to tell a story, and the traditional Japanese tea ceremony, all within the geisha tradition. It required hours of concentration, control, and rehearsal before it was incorporated into the play, but it was so meaningful— and beautiful, and became one of my favorite roles. Apart from the joy of performing, it provided a unique opportunity to become immersed in an Oriental culture, thanks to the expertise of Whitey Willauer, who had lived in Japan for many years. The production was presented in October 1958, and received rave reviews.

One of the most memorable and powerful plays—and Mac’s favorite of all time—was The Diary of Anne Frank, produced in March 1961. Having been brought up during World War II, I was profoundly impressed by this story of a young girl. Lillian Waine played Anne and I played her sister, Margot. Perhaps the telegram that was sent to Mac and the cast by the then president, Barbara W. Nelson, says it most appropriately: “On behalf of your board of directors and the audiences who have been so deeply moved and amazed by the singular skill of your technical production, by the genius of your direction, by the sensitivity of your interpretation and by the subtle beauty of all the acting, we wish to thank you for a great presentation of The Diary of Anne Frank.” The immense impact of the final moments of the play—when the Gestapo agent knocked three times on the door with the barrel of a gun to come and “get us”—has stayed with me over these four decades, and will continue to do so whenever I hear any similar sound.

Many more indelible memories were created during preparations for the musical Brigadoon in May 1961. I was the choreographer for the show and danced in it as well. I taught the famous sword dance to Danny Morgan after school hours at the North Water Street home of Erica and Grenville Curtis, during the time we lived there and took care of their three children for the winter. We were assisted by their pet mynah bird who wolfwhistled to the music during the lessons! We

were ready to dispose of the bird by spring!

One of the funniest occasions happened during the run of the show. During one scene, the Scottish lass, Maggie (Marie Giffin), was being wooed by the visiting American soldier (Allan Stapleton), seated romantically on a bench under a tree. At the exact moment that he said to her, “Listen to the nightingale…” the steamer was coming round Brant Point and blew its foghorn: “BLAAAAH!!!!” The cast tried to continue but the audience was already in gales of laughter, and the leg of the bench broke because Marie and Allan were laughing so hard, which tipped them onto the stage! Mac ordered the curtain to be closed while order was restored in front of, on, and behind the stage, and started the scene again! That was the only time I remember a show being stopped in the course of a performance—for any reason!

In March 1962, Mac decided to chase away the “winter blues” by introducing a format that heretofore had not been done—two different offerings on the same evening. The pieces he chose to present were polar opposites in content, and stretched both audiences and players. The first one was a just-for-fun spoof of Prohibition in a popular American bar in Paris, The Nothing Doing Bar, named “Le Boeuf sur le Toit.” It was played completely in pantomime—only movement and dance. It was directed by Julia Jelleme, a professional dancer, with unusual décor and costumes by Doris Beer. I was La Dame Décolletée, and shook the town by appearing in an outrageous red dress with a large feather boa, black fishnet stockings, and “attitude!” One of my dance numbers was with Le Boxeur Nègre (James Robertson), who was among several cast members in “black face,” which was permitted in those days.

Well, the whole concept of me playing that part and dancing with that partner in a barroom so completely horrified a particular lady in the audience that she never spoke to me again for the rest of her life! That piece rocked the town—and I loved it!

After the intermission, Mac sobered up the evening with George Bernard Shaw’s two-act Androcles and the Lion, which takes place inside the gates of Rome, behind the emperor’s box at the Coliseum in ancient days. John enjoyed the part of Lentellus, a Roman senator dressed in a toga. I did mean polar opposites! The whole evening certainly chased the winter blues away, and received great reviews, despite the poor, unsuspecting lady!

A truly outstanding occurrence happened

Reminiscences | E l i z a b e t h G i l b e r t

during one performance of the chilling mystery, Wait Until Dark, in 1971, which must be shared. My role of Susie, the blind wife, was both exciting and demanding, and required complete concentration for two and a half hours (unlike movies, there were no “cuts”)! in order to sustain the blindness. A particular scene toward the climax was played in total darkness. Even the exit lights had to be extinguished for full effect. During the blackout, the audience could only hear, not see, the wounded “bad guy” stabbing a large kitchen knife into the wooden floor several times, and dragging himself toward me. A dear friend and neighbor, Margaret Harwood, director of the Maria Mitchell Association, was in the audience, and had become so wrapped up in the plot that she was terrified that I was going to be killed. Feeling so scared, she turned her flashlight on to the stage to warn me of the impending danger! It did spoil the scene, just for a moment—and Mac was horrified.

Margaret was audibly relieved when the lights came back up, but wouldn’t leave the theatre to go home until I had come to sit beside her, and calm her down! The cast of the show used to judge the success of that scene by the number of screams we could extract from the audience! The role of Susie stands out as the most rewarding, and certainly the most challenging. John took my car keys away from me during the whole run of the show, as I had become so truly “blind.”

There are myriad unmentioned memories and anecdotes as we look back on three decades of participation in the Theatre Workshop—seasoned with laughter, love, tears, and frustrations. Of course, the burning of the Straight Wharf Theatre building in 1975 made an indelible impression on the entire community, and caused grief beyond words. However, thanks to the dedication and support of hundreds more people since then, the Theatre Workshop and Nantucket’s commitment to community theatre is alive and well today. “Let’s go on with the show.”

ELIZABETH GILBERT: Upon their arrival in Nantucket in 1957, both Elizabeth and John Gilbert became involved with the Theatre Workshop at the Straight Wharf Theatre under the direction of

from top: Teahouse of the August Moon (1958); with Marie Giffin in a publicity shot for Brigadoon (1961); Wait Until Dark (1971)

Joseph “Mac” Dixon. Since then, Elizabeth has been connected with more than forty TWN productions. She was a member of the board of directors for nineteen years, during eight of which she served as president.

Summer 2006

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Balcony at the Straight Wharf Theatre

CURTAINS RISING: 50

The First Years of the Theatre Workshop of Nantucket

by Jennifer M. Ahlborn

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ake an island thirty miles at sea, make of it a growing summer getaway, throw in some vacationing New York actors, and the stage is set—so to speak—for the organization of a local theatre.

This dramatic spirit, alive on Nantucket, found an outlet in actress Margaret Fawcett Wilson, who moved to the island to care for her father, George Fawcett, the well-known Broadway actor-manager. Having lived in the artists’ colony in Siasconset, which occasionally presented plays at the ’Sconset Casino, Mrs. Wilson recognized an opportunity to establish a theatre on Nantucket. After a year of performances in a boathouse on Commercial Wharf, she purchased a warehouse on Straight Wharf and converted it into a theatre to house the Fawcett Players, her new summer repertory company. The Straight Wharf Theatre opened in 1940.

Mrs. Wilson was far from alone in her endeavor. She enjoyed the support of many community members who helped her raise funds and who participated in the predominantly professional Fawcett Players. By the time the company ceased operations in 1950, Nantucket had developed a “theatre crowd” loath to see dramatic activity die out on the island. These individuals formed the Mac Dixon Nantucket Community Players to stage winter productions; however, they lacked a definitive leader and were disjointed, existing as much as a social center as a theatrical-group. Members interested in developing their avocation sought advice from a lately come, talented young actor and director: Mac Dixon.

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Straight Wharf Theatre

Joseph M. “Mac” Dixon, an Equity actor since the 1930s, had met Jane Wallach, a prominent patroness of the arts in New York, when she sought a dog-walker. A true friendship grew between the two, and Mac was soon—and evermore—regarded as one of the family. Mac had trained with the American Lab Theatre, performed on Broadway, and taught acting and directing at Bennington College. Upon his return from the Second World War, he planned to resume teaching, but the needs of his adoptive family, with the illness of Miss Wallach’s relative, sidelined a new position at Bard College. Mac was hired to care for Mr. Barger, and when the family elected to move to their house on Nantucket, formerly their summer retreat, Mac moved with them.

On Nantucket, Mac’s theatrical background became known, and the Community Players seized the opportunity for professional advice and input into their fledgling desire to establish a formal community theatre. Following Mac’s address to the group, they invited him to spearhead the organization of winter theatre activity to complement the professional troupes performing in the summer.

Mac expected to be on the island for a year, so this proposal was feasible. Jane Wallach encouraged him immediately, seeing it as an improvement in this isolated community’s culture. Moreover, she persuaded New York associates to donate a total of $2,000 toward the formulation of the new Theatre Workshop of Nantucket (TWN). Mac was named artistic director, and others were appointed technical director (the only one to receive a small stipend), stage manager, designer, and costumer. Simultaneously, Mac and Miss Wallach established a board of directors from community leaders with an interest in theatre; Mac began his first acting and movement classes, and rehearsals commenced for TWN’s first production, Heaven Can Wait.

The board’s petition for a charter, “to promote the welfare, culture, education, and entertainment of the Town of Nantucket,” was granted by the Commonwealth on July 12, 1957. TWN had not been idle in the interim, producing three more shows that first winter, each running three nights only. All shows were cast from, staffed, and supported by members of the community.

Mac, buoyed by the excitement of this new venture, decided to continue as TWN’s unpaid artistic director. The new corporation embarked on an ambitious season for 1957, presenting an operetta, The Mikado, and three plays; but by 1959, the organization realized all would benefit from Mac’s pursuing additional study off-island.

He spent the winter of 1960 at New York’s Institute for Advanced Studies in Theatre Arts, and he returned energized and determined to build on the “workshop” mission of TWN. The community responded, and by 1967, nearly 150 people had participated in TWN’s classes.

Mac and the board focused on making the Straight Wharf Summer 2006

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from top: Three by Wilder (1967); She Stoops to Conquer (1962); A Thousand Clowns (1969); HMS Pinafore (1986)

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Theatre a center for cultural and arts education, and before long, it became a year-round enterprise. The theatre had housed a succession of summer professional groups until October 1966, when Margaret Fawcett Wilson sold the building to Sherburne Associates. Wanting the community theatre to continue, she stipulated that TWN be allowed to use the theatre, year-round and rent-free, for a period of ten years. TWN’s first summer season, in 1967, presented an opportunity to prove the organization viable in summer as well as winter, and a Summer Operating Board was organized.

The difficulty of the summer proposal was that then, as now, most Nantucketers worked especially hard during the season to compensate for the leaner off-season. With artistic director Mac Dixon, the playfully nicknamed “SOB” therefore elected to make the summer venture a professional repertory. However, TWN decided to husband resources by reviving winter productions, and actors in the off-season were given the right of first refusal for their roles in the summer. Summer salaries were small and were frequently turned back to the organization by the performers; but even so, TWN had lost the income from leasing the theatre to outside groups in the summer, and the new venture was not profitable. Nonetheless, TWN remained determined to provide Nantucket theatre yearround.

In 1968, TWN began regular meetings, each presenting a lecture on an aspect of theatre. The lecturers, frequently friends of Mac and leading professionals, addressed such topics as world theatre and professional theatre careers. Three years later, a formal program, featuring such instructors as island artist Reggie Levine, was organized to train students in performance, technical theatre, and design. The laboratory classes began to present scenes at the established monthly meetings, which became known as the Wednesday Showcases. From 1972 to 1974, TWN earned grants from the Arts and Humanities Commission of Massachusetts toward the showcases, and new classes addressed such topics as diction, play reading, theatre history, tap and modern dance, and playwriting.

Constantly working to connect with the community, TWN adapted its 1972 winter program to involve island academics. The vocational Coffin School assisted in set construction, and TWN worked with the local schools to plan productions and study the plays. Community businesses underwrote student tickets, and offisland groups were invited to share their skills

with island students.

TWN adjusted its approach to the 1973 summer season as well, due in large part to the presence of a new Equity theatre group: the Nantucket Stage Company, directed by John Wulp and housed in the Cyrus Peirce School.

Facing this level of competition, TWN negotiated with Actors Equity Association to convert to an Equity house for the summer season. This approach proved prohibitively expensive and was discontinued.

Equity expenses added significantly to an already substantial debt: by the end of the winter of 1973, TWN owed various businesses more than $20,000. The organization’s history of fund-raising to date had been a combination of such on-island efforts as the 1960s summer concerts by the island musical society born out of TWN’s 1957 production of An Italian Straw Hat, and off-island benefits held by TWN members in their own communities, such as a presentation from one of Margaret Fawcett Wilson’s Nantucket historical plays at the Harvard Club in Boston. To combat the sizable debt, fund-raising efforts were stepped up. Excess props and costumes were auctioned off, and one resolute company member solicited island merchants door-to-door, convincing most to cancel interest charges and even full balances. The community’s efforts cleared the debt completely by February 1975.

TWN’s new summer competition, though, had established itself as one of six four-star Equity summer stock companies on the east coast. For Nantucket Stage Company, Cape Cod’s Edward Gorey designed sets for Dracula, which went on to win him a Tony Award on Broadway, and Nantucket summer resident Frank Conroy chose NSC to try out two new plays. Hoping to establish a pre-Broadway training facility on Nantucket, NSC entered negotiations with Sherburne Associates and signed a contract to utilize the Straight Wharf Theatre from May through September, starting in 1975.

TWN was to retain winter rights to the performance space, but the loss of the theatre for the summers was a blow. The board was unable to find a replacement space for the 1975 summer season and canceled those plans. The sole silver lining was that NSC planned to repair and renovate the theatre’s interior, and TWN benefited from those improvements during the winter.

In preparation for the renovations, TWN cleared from the building most of its possessions, from costumes and lights to the very seats in the house, and handed over the keys on the morning of April 19, 1975. That evening, at 8:30, passersby sighted a fire in the building and

curtains rising | J e n n i f e r M . A h l b o r n alerted the Nantucket Fire Department; five fire trucks, forty-five volunteer firefighters, 138,000 gallons of water, and eleven hours later, all that was left of the Straight Wharf Theatre was smoldering debris. Despite the suspicious timing and the general feeling that the fire had been set deliberately, a culprit was never identified, and the cause of the fire was officially labeled “undetermined.”

With its home of thirty-six years destroyed, the Nantucket theatre community was in shock. Theatre people, however, are accustomed to new beginnings, and Nantucketers have their own natural resilience, born of the vagaries of fortune throughout the island’s history. The Theatre Workshop’s board held an emergency meeting and agreed unanimously to continue operations. A fund drive was started and open community forums held, and by June those outreaches yielded the donation of a piece of land by a private individual.

Rehearsals were relocated first to a Pleasant Street cellar, and then an interim home was found in the Twin Street Barn, which sufficed for rehearsal and class space. For the planned autumn production of Ten Little Indians, performances were scheduled at Bennett Hall, the gymnasium next to the First Congregational Church that had been constructed and dedicated to the community under the direction of the Reverend Fred Bennett. Experienced carpenters and theatre professionals, such as John Gilbert and Eric Schultz, worked together to design a way to convert the open gymnasium temporarily into a functional theatre. Mac Dixon maintained his usual levelheaded leadership in a time of emotional turmoil, reminding the community, “…theatre is not a building; it is the people who make it a theatre. Anyplace can be a theatre if you have the dedicated people to make it happen, and the Theatre Workshop certainly has that.”

Although TWN purchased the Twin Street Barn in 1976, securing a new permanent physical address, freedom to use the space at will, and much-needed storage space, this naturally added to the financial burden on a theatre organization without its own performance space. Hindering that ultimate goal, the land that had been donated for construction of a new theatre was deemed by authorities to be unacceptable; it was marshy and lacked adequate access.

Perhaps hardest of all for the TWN community, five years after the fire but twenty-five years after first dedicating his attention, and ultimately his devotion, to community theatre on Nantucket, Mac Dixon retired as TWN’s artistic

director in 1980. To help TWN move into its next phase, Mac selected his own replacement: Richard Montfort Cary, a theatre professional who had become a familiar presence in TWN productions.

A new, long-term lease was signed with the First Congregational Church, and Dick Cary headed the refurbishment of Bennett Hall into a permanent theatre space in 1980, happily ending the practice of having to assemble and then dismantle the theatre seats for each production.

Furthermore, in return for undertaking and financing the renovation, TWN received exclusive lease rights and the right of first refusal should the church ever decide to sell the property. Once again possessed of a year-round performance space, TWN reintroduced a volunteer summer theatre program in 1983.

In 1982, TWN created the Armchair Theatre program to introduce community members to new plays and to interest them in becoming involved with community theatre. Continuing today, each monthly Armchair Theatre evening features an organized reading of a play by nominally rehearsed volunteer actors at a community member’s home, combined with a potluck supper.

With attention diverted to finding a new home and reestablishing the community theatre, fund-raising practices had ceased. In 1982, however, TWN assumed responsibility for an established annual antiques show. Sponsorship and direction of this trailblazing antiques show proved fruitful, providing one-third of Theatre Workshop’s operating budget for five years. In 1986, TWN lost the show venue and was unable to secure a replacement location before the event was resumed by the Friends of the Nantucket Public Schools a year later.

Dick served for one year as a volunteer but subsequently requested, and was granted, a salary. He was TWN’s only full-time, paid employee; however, he was director, technical director, and designer for all TWN productions during his term. Nevertheless, his salary, combined with accumulated debt from the aftermath of the fire, resulted in financial difficulties in the early 1980s. Tensions were compounded by artistic differences, and in 1984, Dick resigned.

Island artist S. Warren Krebs was appointed TWN’s third artistic director the following year.

While Warren served as program coordinator and troubleshooter, public relations head, conduit between board and company, actor, and occasional production director, he continued to pursue his career as a painter, and others were frequently hired to direct TWN productions, a practice that has continued since.

from top: Elizabeth Oldham and John KnoxJohnston in Charlie’s Aunt (1990); S. Warren Krebs in Plaza Suite (1984).

Before long, Warren reinstituted classes, garnering a grant from the Massachusetts Council on the Arts and Humanities. Large-scale musicals and dance programs were eventually returned to the TWN schedule, as well.

Warren was partway through his thirteenth season as artistic director when family concerns precipitated his resignation. Although Warren, like Mac, turned back any fees he received for his position, debt was an ongoing problem, and with the prospect of finding another volunteer artistic director quite dim, the board elected in 1997 to operate without an artistic director.

Ginger Andrews, who had served as resident lighting designer and coordinator during Warren’s tenure, remained as staff technical director and lighting designer. That year, she also recruited and managed the “Star Series” that constituted the bulk of the 1997 summer season.

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curtains rising | J e n n i f e r M . A h l b o r n

from top: Company (1985); Pirates of Penzance (1990)

By this time, the Twin Street Barn was showing its age. The board faced the choice of amassing considerable debt by repairing the structure or disposing of the downtown property in a profitable real estate market. Despite the complications of losing its only “home” property, the board sold the barn but restricted the proceeds to the establishment of a permanent home for TWN. Although dedicated to the continuance of TWN, realistically the members of the board— employed full-time elsewhere—were unable to devote the effort necessary to advance the organization’s mission. Ultimately, it became clear that the Theatre Workshop would stagnate without a visible and dynamic leader. With a substantial donation earmarked for an artistic director’s salary, in 2000 the board conducted a nationally advertised search for a new leader.

From hundreds of applicants, the board selected Nantucketer Kate Stout, a former board member and a produced playwright. Joanne Marcoux was appointed production manager to oversee day-to-day production business.

Kate immediately developed the 2001 sum12 | H i s t o r i c N a n t u c k e t

mer season and formed a liaison committee with the landlord, First Congregational Church.

Within the next two years, she also teamed with long-time TWN performer Bee Gonnella to write and present the island’s first murder mystery dinner theatre, Pushing Up Lilies at the Point Breeze, and established an underwritten free performance of every TWN play for island students and seniors.

Unfortunately, those innovative programs developed as TWN’s occupancy of Bennett Hall was ending. The church, expanding its own programs but lacking another activity space, negotiated successively foreshortened seasons for TWN until—ironically, given the group’s original purpose—Theatre Workshop had access only in summer. Kate and the board spread the word that TWN needed a new home, but with the ever-increasing costs of land and property on Nantucket, nothing emerged that was both workable and affordable, even with the equity of the Twin Street Barn proceeds. With reduced income and an uncertain future, the board ultimately was forced to let Kate go in early 2004.

TWN was not the only Nantucket theatre company facing difficulties. Actors Theatre of Nantucket, the professional company founded

by Richard Cary after his departure from TWN, was battling the same declining audiences, and despite celebrating its twentieth anniversary in 2004, Dick announced that Actors Theatre would close at the end of that summer. In a microcosm of the eternal death-and-rebirth of theatre, however, the lamentable departure of a respected theatre group from the island created an interesting possibility for TWN. Actors Theatre had performed for years out of Nantucket’s United Methodist Church, and it seemed that the space might become available.

In order to enjoy greater freedom in scheduling, as well as return to year-round programming and the possibility of hosting classes once again, TWN’s board of directors made another wrenching decision: to move from twenty-fouryear residency in the self-designed Bennett Hall theatre to the physically constrained pair of spaces at the Methodist Church.

Because the recent search for a permanent home had proved fruitless and the prognosis for a long-term tenancy at the Methodist Church was very good, the board determined that the situation was as close as TWN was going to come to a permanent home for the foreseeable future. The decision was made to dip into the Twin Street Barn proceeds to fund necessary renovations and upgrades—including air conditioning—to the Methodist Church

stages. Facing a vastly different production style, given the small size of both stages, and a different theatre-business climate on the island, given the closing of ATN, the board forecast the affordability of a new artistic director and deemed it prudent to hire Jane Karakula, who had served as Richard Cary’s right hand at Actors Theatre and was intimate with both the Nantucket theatre community and the performance spaces at the Methodist Church. This move had the benefit of creating something of a merger between the overlapping families of ATN and TWN. Jane helped oversee the renovations, and TWN unveiled its new space with free performances of Strindberg’s The Stranger, played during Christmas Stroll in December 2004 to packed houses. Now, in the summer of 2006, TWN has embarked on its second summer season at 2 Centre Street, but it has also enjoyed resuming winter productions and classes for both adults and children. Theatre Workshop is recultivating children’s theatre, and staple offerings from the ATN line-up have continued on with TWN, such as the Comedy Improv and Kevin Flynn’s Comedy Nights. Even Bennett Hall has proved an accessible alternative for larger shows, and TWN’s revival production of A Christmas Carol was mounted there in November 2005. In addition, long-time TWN designer Eric Schultz was rehired in 2005 as technical director. An entity born of and sustained by an intrinsic need, the Theatre Workshop of Nantucket has once again landed on its feet and faces an ever-brighter and inspiring future.

Ultimately, Theatre Workshop has been about more than theatre on Nantucket: much as Jane Wallach hoped, it has changed the island’s culture. To fill a void, Nantucketers conceived of a community theatre and worked to realize it, and Nantucketers have ensured that it survived for half a century. “I still think there is a need for theatre,” said Mac Dixon in 1991, “and as long as there is a need for it, we will go on.” Forever may you feel that need, Nantucket, and long live the Theatre Workshop to slake it.

JENNIFER M. AHLBORN earned a degree in English and Theatre Arts from Mount Holyoke College before moving to Nantucket to put them to use. She has stage managed, designed costumes, and otherwise assisted a number of island productions, most of them with the Theatre Workshop, and served nine years on the TWN Board of Directors, three of them as president.

R E M E M B R A N C E S

O F

Stages Past

by Kate Stout

N

antucket has played host to a string of resident theatres. New York and Boston actors began escaping to the island from the sweltering city heat and dark summer theatres in the late 1800s. They gathered in Siasconset, quickly giving birth to the island’s first actors colony. It followed, then, that the nation’s burgeoning summer-stock movement would find its way easily to the island. Coupled with Nantucket’s own population of amateur and semiprofessional thespians, theatre, more than any other medium except, perhaps, the visual arts, has been at the heart of this island’s cultural life since the turn of the twentieth century. While the Theatre Workshop of Nantucket has been around longer than any of those groups, the island’s history has been dotted with others.

Siasconset Casino

at Barn Stages and at Straight Wharf Theatre. From a July 1953 playbill for Candlelight at Straight Wharf Theatre: “Today Barn Stages Company is a thriving, well-loved organization with two fine theatres, three talented directors, a company of 12 Equity actors.”

(Summers, 1900–late 1920s New Street, Siasconset).

By 1900, the island’s summer actors colony was well established in ’Sconset, putting on shows in Union Chapel and the railroad station. The doors of the Casino, a permanent summer performance space, opened officially on August 4, 1900. Tickets were $1, 75¢, and 50¢. The wooden structure had a proscenium stage and an elegantly latticed interior. Among the “greats” of those early summer entertainers were George Fawcett, a silent screen star, and his wife, Percy Haswell, a stage actress; DeWolf Hopper and his fifth wife, Hedda; Frank Gilmore, a force behind the establishment of the actors’ union, Actors Equity Association; and Broadway star Frank Craven.

By the 1920s, the Casino was an established venue. Tony Sarg brought his popular marionette shows to the island’s eastern community from 1922 to 1931. By the summer of 1931, it was called the Nantucket Playhouse. The professional actors summering in ’Sconset staged eight shows in July and August. By 1939, the name had changed again, this time to Nantucket Players, but the gusto for ambitious, live stage shows was undiminished. The Players put on ten plays that summer alone, ranging from Hart and Kaufman’s You Can’t Take It With You to Thornton Wilder’s Our Town.

George Fawcett died in June 1939. To memorialize him, his daughter Margaret and son-in-law, Robert Wilson, formed the Fawcett Players. Their repertoire consisted mainly of original short plays about island life and history. They would move from ’Sconset into town, performing the first year on Commercial Wharf. By the next summer,

Cynthia Young, whose husband Roger did much amateur acting in the early days of TWN: “Barn Stages was a lovely little theatre with seats all around the stage. That was the draw for us: no matter where we sat we had good seats and could hear everything. They [the shows] were just grand.”

George Fawcett 1940, the Wilsons had established their company on Straight Wharf.

Movies replaced live theatre at the Casino in the summer of 1942.

Barn Stages (Summers, 1950–53, 5 N. Liberty Street) Founder and artistic director Vincent Y. Bowditch. An all-Equity company, Barn Stages brought theatre-in-the-round to the island for the first time. In the summer of 1967, drama student Ludlow Ritchie revived the Barn Stages venue for two seasons as Discovery Playhouse.

Mary Bowditch, in a letter to NHA executive director John Welch: “We built the theatre out of [B.] Chester Pease’s old barn in 1949, and opened Barn Stages in 1950. The company of actors was housed in the Tony Sarg house next door.” The Bowditches had purchased the Sarg house at 3 N. Liberty Street from the artist’s widow shortly after Sarg’s death in 1942.

For two seasons, 1952–53, Vincent Bowditch had simultaneous productions

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Actors Theatre of Nantucket (1985–2004) Founder and artistic director Richard Cary, a Nantucket resident and former artistic director of the Theatre Workshop. First seven seasons were held in the ballroom of the Gordon Folger Hotel (now the Point Breeze Hotel) on Easton Street; thereafter ATN moved to the Methodist Church, 2 Centre Street.

Richard Cary: “I wanted to give Nantucket a permanent, semiprofessional theatre. The Folger Hotel was a wonderful, graceful theatre set-up. Being sold out in the early years was not unusual. And when we moved to the Methodist Church [in 1992], we converted the basement into our new

above: Summer theatrical group, circa 1890.

home. What I loved about both spaces was the intimacy. At the Folger, we had the audience on three, sometimes four sides of the stage area. At the Methodist Church, it was a combination of proscenium and in-the-round blocking. I could do deep thrust to the ramp door. The audiences were literally in the room with the actors. When I think of what fine work some of our productions were—Jetti Ames, Jim Nettles, and Mark Cohen in Driving Miss Daisy; Fritz Warren in Mass Appeal; Annie Breeding as Linda Loman in Death of a Salesman—I miss it. But ultimately, with no visible presence, no permanent space, housing [for actors and crew] difficulties, and audiences starting to drop away in the mid-to-late ’90s, the process of making the theatre work was two steps forward and four steps back.

I had a wonderful run at it, my twenty years at ATN.” Jetti Ames played the leading lady in nineteen ATN productions between 1987 and 2004, including ATN’s final show, Nunsense: “Actors Theatre presented “professional” productions, professional in the sense of caliber, not in theatrical union membership.

ATN’s aim was to give Broadway quality: in a wide variety of plays; in casting conscientious, capable, and self-disciplined actors; in

richard cary fine-tuned direction; and in effective sets, props, lighting, music, and wardrobe. ATN’s legacy also includes other programs developed for the community to enjoy, such as children’s matinees with children performing and also matinees for young audiences; Comedy Night with Kevin Flynn; and Improv Night. All this Actors accomplished and the memory will survive.”

Island Stage (Summers, 1993–96. Performance Center (upstairs) at the Methodist Church, 2 Centre Street).

Irwin is a long-time summer resident and theatre professional, principally directing the San Francisco Opera. Linda Knox is Irwin’s close friend and professional colleague. The Performance Center has a tiny proscenium stage.

Kate Stout is a playwright and former artistic director of the Theatre Workshop of Nantucket.

Cofounded by Virginia Irwin, artistic director, and Linda Knox, technical director.

For sixteen years, she was the editor and publisher of the Nantucket Map & Legend.

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O V E R V I E W

by Kate Stout

“Straight Wharf Theatre” From 1940, when Margaret Fawcett Wilson (later Barnes) purchased the building on Lower Main Street for $5,000 to house her Fawcett Players, until it was destroyed by fire in 1975, Straight Wharf Theatre was home to numerous acting troupes, both community and professional. The stage was a small proscenium stage, thirteen feet deep and twenty-four feet wide, and raised about threeand-a-half feet above floor level. On either side of the proscenium was an archway. There was no “backstage.” The back of the stage was the brick wall of the Thomas Macy Warehouse (then the Kenneth Taylor Gallery). All actors entered from stage left. The theatre seated 135, including a three-row balcony. During intermissions, the audience would cool off in the courtyard to the rear of the building, along Still Dock. Straight Wharf Theatre was the longest continuously operating theatre in Nantucket history.

The Fan (1964)

The Sign This sign, measuring four-by-eight feet, was made of fiberboard and wood. It was almost certainly made in-house by a member of the backstage crew. Over the years, many different signs advertised the theatre’s location.

A 1940s photograph shows a free-swinging Straight Wharf Theatre sign, with “Fawcett Players” painted above the door.

A marquee was added to the front of the building and other signage was in use during the 1960s. This sign, with the distinctive masks for comedy and drama, was in use in the late 1940s.

Margaret Fawcett and Robert Wilson resumed their theatrical endeavors at Straight Wharf in 1946 after a three-year wartime absence.

The name was changed from Fawcett Players to Straight Wharf Repertory Company, and the address on all the playbills of the time read “foot of Main Street.” In the summer of 1948, Jacqueline Killen (now Weyand) played the lead in The Beautiful People, and recalls taking her uncle down to Straight Wharf and showing him the sign.

One of the rare remaining signs from Nantucket’s considerable theatre past is this Straight Wharf Theatre sign, currently on display as part of the NHA’s summer 2006 exhibition, “Signs of the Times: Nantucket Signs.” The signs were a gift from Mrs. Florence E. Clifford and her children, Debbi Deeley Culbertson, Dusty Deeley Ramos, and J. Drew Deeley.

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“Repertory Company” A repertory company is a troupe of actors that alternates the performances of more than one play during the course of a season. On Nantucket, this practice allowed visitors to take in more than one show over the course of a short vacation. Virginia Irwin, who was a member of the company of Nantucket Festival Theatre, professionals from New York who leased the theatre space during the summers of 1962–65, remembers opening five plays in twoand-a-half weeks.

Butterflies Are Free (1974)

The Fire The fire was first reported at 8:50 P. M . on April 19, 1975. In spite of the valiant efforts of Nantucket firefighters, Straight Wharf Theatre burned to the ground. Neither of the abutting buildings sustained serious damage.

GINGER ANDREWS has been involved in Nantucket theatre since the early ’70s. She stage managed TWN’s last show at Straight Wharf. “Eric [Schultz] and I had been there that day taking everything out that belonged to the Theatre Workshop. We’d packed up the night before.

The lights were stacked. Everything was unplugged.

Sometime that day or the night before, I painted ‘Mene, mene, tekel upharsin’ on the backstage wall.

Lots of us had mixed feelings about [John] Wulp coming in. The theatre had been a community rallying point, something to call our own.”

ERIC SCHULTZ, at the time of the Straight Wharf fire, was technical director and resident set designer. “Ginger wrote it with my blessing. The meaning was that the theatre was destined to fall. It comes from an old Biblical reference.” The ancient Aramaic warning is found in Daniel 5:25-8, and translates “it has been counted and counted, weighted and divided.” The riddle was handwritten on the wall of Balshazzar’s palace, which burned to the ground that night. Today, it is generally accepted to mean “the handwriting is on the wall.”

REGGIE LEVINE, artist and thespian, recalls the night of the fire: “The first person I saw was Mac [Dixon, artistic director and founder of TWN]. I stood next to him and watched it burn to the ground. It was one of the worst moments of my life.”

Postscript: Was it arson? The official determination was never made public. State police fire inspectors were brought in, as is routine in all fires involving significant financial loss. The Nantucket Police Department and the Nantucket Fire Department have no records of the fire other than log entries. The April 24, 1975, Inquirer and Mirror reported the cause as “undetermined.”

Today, the state fire marshall’s office is required to keep records for only seven years. Whatever report was filed in 1975 no longer exists.

“Playing Tonight”

Set design for The Fan (1964) by Doris Beer

The blank space here allowed the name of each evening’s play to be posted on the day of the performance, ideal for repertory companies. The first play produced at Straight Wharf Theatre in 1940 was Robert Wilson’s original effort, Keziah Coffin. The last theatrical event at SWT, on April 17 and 18, 1975, was given by the senior class of Nantucket High School.

The Theatre Workshop, which was established at Straight Wharf in 1956, ended its 1974–75 season earlier that same week with Noel Coward’s Tonight at 8:30.

Le Boeuf sur le Toit (1962)

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REMEMBRANCE

by Ginger Andrews

Mousetrapped Ginger Andews recalls her Nantucket directorial debut

I

wanted to direct a play: what could be better for a turkey-stuffed Thanksgiving audience than that old chestnut, Agatha Christie’s The Mousetrap? Warren Krebs, TWN’s artistic director, agreed.

Accordingly, I held auditions and enlisted the help of old friends and some new faces.

Eric Schultz would act and do the set. Libby Oldham took a part, and Grace Noyes was a wonderfully supportive codirector. Frederick J. “Fritz” Warren had a magnificent stage presence, although he didn’t learn lines easily, sometimes just exclaiming: “Potroast!”—a leftover from his role in Arsenic and Old Lace—instead. Newcomer Sean Mearns brought an authentic accent and a friend, Min Adinolphi, to stage manage.

The first clue that all was not going to go smoothly was when Fritz, forbidden to drive after a DUI conviction, wiped out on his bicycle after a post-rehearsal celebration at the Chicken Box and cracked two ribs. Like a true veteran (theatrical and Army) he strapped up and carried on, albeit a bit stiffly.

November can range from balmy to blizzard; that fall was cold. So naturally a week before our opening, the furnace blew up.

Bennett Hall, full of half-constructed set, was an icebox. A new furnace was ordered—from Canada. Would they drain the pipes, eliminating the bathroom facilities? How about Porta-Potties on the front lawn? Eventually we had the 220 service for the AC rewired and borrowed space heaters to “take the chill off.” This was a euphemism.

Dress rehearsal was conducted with full overcoats, hats, scarves, and gloves. Their noses running, the actors could barely get their lines out through chattering teeth. The small heaters were inadequate to warm the drafty vastness of Bennett Hall, and the lights,

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Historic Nantucket

Ed Loring in The Mousetrap (1996).

so hot in summer, didn’t help.

I purchased a large roll of heavy plastic.

Grabbing a couple of passing workmen to help set up the big ladder, I tried to reduce the volume of area to be heated. The staples kept pulling out, so the result looked like a giant, ragged oxygen tent, turning backstage into a kind of Siberian outback, but it helped.

Opening night was a great success. We had finally stopped trying to open on Thanksgiving Day, a necessity when our time in-hall was limited to school vacation. Stress over, we could just have fun running it.

An hour before curtain on the second weekend, I was sweeping the stage when Fritz came in. He got as far as the lighting booth, stopped; said, “Ginger you’ve got to take me to the hospital,” and fell flat. Regaining consciousness a short time later, he told the EMTs he was having trouble breathing.

Jim Patrick, of the Nantucket Short Play Festival, had come to usher. Instead, he found himself pressed into service as an actor.

The cast struggled to adapt, and I went off to the hospital with Fritz.

His broken rib had punctured a lung, from which the doctor removed two liters of blood. That accounted for the difficulty in breathing. “Either it will close up on its own or not,” the doctor said. It was of course blowing a gale northeast and no weather for a Medivac flight. Fritz recovered then, but died in his sleep a few months later.

Having punted through Friday night, we regrouped and rehearsed a new Major. Two days later, he dropped out. We set out on the third and final weekend with Major number 3, cue cards up his sleeves.

At the matinée one of the actresses in the backstage dressing room, clad in pantyhose and a sweater set and nothing else, was startled when a man walked in without knocking. “Plumbing,” he muttered, flushing the toilet and turning the taps. Apparently unaware that a play was going on, he reached the “front door” of Monkswell Manor before thinking better of making his debut.

Some parts of doing The Mousetrap were tremendous fun—the nightly ritual of singing “Three Blind Mice”; the endless boxes of clementines; the camaraderie. But somehow I never felt the urge to direct a play again.

GINGER ANDREWS As a small child, Ginger saw her first play at Straight Wharf Theatre, courtesy of her neighbor, Margaret Fawcett Barnes. She disgraced herself by crying and had to be removed, but some years later she saw her second play, also at Straight Wharf, and was entranced, not only by the play, but by a mysterious door that led backstage.

Once through, she was hooked.

P E O P L E

farewell

Niles Parker accepts museum directorship in Maine

NILES D. PARKER

Acting Executive Director and Robyn and John Davis Curator Niles Parker becomes Executive Director of the Penobscot Marine Museum in Searsport, Maine

A

fter seven years as Robyn and John Davis Curator (formerly chief curator) of the Nantucket Historical Association, Niles Parker has accepted the position of Executive Director of the Penobscot Marine Museum in Searsport, Maine.

“Niles was so well liked by people in the community here, and reflected so well on the NHA, that he was crucial to the success of the new museum center, the capital campaign, and so much more,” said NHA president Geoff Verney.

Executive director Bill Tramposch writes, “It goes without saying that I am saddened by Niles’s departure. However, having known and admired him for fifteen years now, I have come to the point of being very proud of his decision. In addition to becoming happily engaged in upcoming capital projects in his new position, he will also have the great satisfaction of knowing that his family is back where they’ve longed to be.”

Parker has always desired to move to Maine in the long term, close to where his wife, Sonja, was raised in Hampden, Maine. He says, “I’m excited about the professional opportunities that this presents

for me, but more than that, this is a great move for our family, as we will be moving to the town where Sonja grew up. We will be close to Sonja’s mother and several aunts, uncles, cousins, friends, etc.

Furthermore, Sonja is descended from Searsport sea captains and some of her ancestors were founders of the Penobscot Marine Museum.”

During his tenure at the NHA, Parker was instrumental in the building of the new museum center (open June 2005); the completion of the $25 million capital campaign; the renovation of the 1800 House as a center for early American arts and crafts; During his tenure at the NHA, Parker was instrumental in the building of the new museum center; the completion of the $25 million capital campaign; and the renovation of 1800 House as a center for early American arts and crafts.

the restoration of the Quaker Meeting House; countless successful exhibitions; and a remarkable slate of new acquisitions,

including donations of the Friends of the NHA to the collection, culminating in their 2005 gift of the Gilbert Stuart portrait of Admiral Sir Isaac Coffin, with the help of Catherine C. Lastavica, M.D. Parker describes his special affection for Nantucket, its people, and its history: “I came to the Whaling Museum as a tenyear-old boy, and had a kind of epiphany that I would end up here one day. When interviewing for my first job in the museum field, I was asked where I saw myself in ten years, and for some uncontrollable reason, I said, ‘Nantucket.’”

Parker and his wife, Sonja, arrived on Nantucket in the summer of 1999 with their two-year-old son Noah. They have moved to Maine with Noah and their two Nantucket-born children, Nicholas (aged 6) and Eliza (aged 3). Parker reflected in parting: “Truly the best part of my time here has been getting to know the people and families that make this place unique.

The connections and friendships that make up Nantucket will be irreplaceable.”

Ben Simons will be acting chief curator while the NHA conducts a national search for Parker’s successor.

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MUSEUM SHOP

Reissued 1917 Calendar on sale in Museum Shop 1917 calendar illustrated by Frank Lloyd Wright’s sister, Maginel Wright Enright Barney, reissued for 2007

Winter

Maginel Wright Enright Barney

Frank Lloyd Wright’s sister, Maginel Wright Enright Barney (1877–1966), was a prominent early-twentieth-century artist whose career spanned more than seventy years.

Her oeuvre includes illustrations for periodicals, classic children’s books, postcards, and calendars. In 1912 Maginel, having married a Barney of Nantucket, purchased a home on Nantucket, “The Anchorage” at 23 North Water Street, to escape the

Spring

oppressively hot summers in New York City. Her illustrated 1917 calendar, originally published by the P. F. Volland Company, featuring charming Nantucket scenes, has been reissued by author Mary Jane Hamilton for 2007. The limited-edition calendar is now available for purchase in the Museum Shop. The dates of the 1917 calendar correspond with those of the year 2007.

Summer

Fall

Winter: Snow blankets Nantucket town as seen from North Water Street. Gabled and lean-to houses cluster below Academy Hill, the site of the 1834 Carpenter Gothic-style First Congregational Church.

Spring: The Jethro Coffin House on Sunset Hill.

Summer: The artist painted many charming glimpses of informal gardens visible on rambles through the streets and lanes of Nantucket. Here, beneath twelve-over-twelve sash windows with both exterior and interior shutters, hollyhocks, English daisies, and bellflowers thrive.

Fall: A ’Sconset street scene.

20 | H i s t o r i c N a n t u c k e t

NHA NEWS

Annual Meeting On Friday, July 14, under a blue and cloudless sky, the NHA held its 112th Annual Meeting under a tent on the lawn adjacent to the Peter Foulger Museum, 15 Broad Street. Board president E. Geoffrey Verney presided over the meeting, which included reports highlighting events of the past year. The Nominating Committee presented the new slate of trustees, which included Nan A. Geschke, who having filled an expired term was elected to her first full term, in addition to beginning her first term as president of the Friends of the Nantucket Historical Association. Elected for a second term were C. Marshall Beale, Robert H. Brust, Melissa D. Philbrick, Melanie R. Sabelhaus, and E. Geoffrey Verney. Joining the board for a first term was William R. Congdon.

Niles Parker, Robyn and John Davis

Curator, gave his heartfelt thanks to the entire staff and all those in attendance for their support during his tenure with the NHA. Niles then had the pleasure of introducing his friend and new NHA executive director, William J. Tramposch, who expressed his delight in being associated with this fine and worthy organization.

Led by H. Flint Ranney, the meeting

concluded with a gam that included RUTHIE GRIEDER, EILEEN MCGRATH, and Above: Annual Meeting; Children’s Discovery NANCY CHASE, who engaged the audience Room Mural; Walden Chamber Players with stories surrounding the hundred-some signs currently on display in the Foulger Gallery. The Signs of the Times: Nantucket Walden Chamber Signs exhibition was made possible by the Players generous donation of island signs to the The music of Franz Joseph Haydn, Gerald museum by Mrs. Florence E. Clifford and Finzi, Benjamin Britten, and W. A. Mozart her children. resounded throughout the Whaling Museum on Friday, May 26, as the Walden Children’s Discovery Chamber Players performed to a soldRoom Mural out audience. Accompanied by a reading of In June, the husband and wife team of poems written by Mary Starbuck, the Charlie and Jan Munro, internationally evening also included a slide show featuring recognized painters with more than forty beautiful images of Nantucket taken by years of experience, unveiled a stunning 18" acclaimed island photographer Cary x 80 1⁄2" mural they painted on the east wall Hazlegrove. of the children’s Discovery Room. Designed Founded in 1997, the Walden Chamber in the primitive folk-art style, the mural Players comprise twelve dynamic artists depicts a fanciful nineteenth-century who play various combinations of string, Nantucket waterfront, replete with breach- piano, and wind ensembles. An anonymous ing whales. “We are so grateful to the sponsor, who has promised to bring them Munros, and are equally delighted they back for another concert in the spring of chose to paint the mural showing so many 2007, underwrote the concert and chamof the historical aspects of Nantucket’s pagne reception. downtown port in its whaling heyday,” said Niles Parker. “This is a wonderful addition to the Discovery Room, and will be enjoyed by people of all ages.”

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NHA NEWS

Original G. S. Hill Painting Donated to the NHA The joys of spring came early at the NHA, when local artist and NHA supporter G. S. Hill donated an oil painting to be auctioned off at the 2006 Wine Festival Auction Dinner. Hill, the first artist ever to paint the panorama, captured the breathtaking view from the observation deck of the Whaling Museum with the sole intent of donating the work to the NHA.

Early American Arts and Crafts at 1800 House

New Staff Peter J. Greenhalgh was hired in

January as the new PR, Publications, and Membership Manager. February new staffers were MARY LACOURSIERE, in the capacity of 1800 House Curriculum Coordinator, and Betsey Braun as 1800 House Program Coordinator. In March, Jeffrey S. Bowen moved to Nantucket from Rhode Island to become the Assistant Membership Coordinator.

The NHA Mission statement “to preserve and interpret the history of Nantucket Island in order to inspire island residents, both yearround and seasonal” flows smoothly into the theme of summer classes at the 1800 House, 4 Mill Street.

Offering over thirty courses, the educational program was dedicated to celebrating and reviving Nantucket’s rich tradition in historic decorative arts and crafts. The restored nineteenth-century house lent itself beautifully to the wide cross-section of classes and talented artisans and instructors, from Nantucket and throughout New England, all experts in their respected fields. Under the direction of NHA coordinators Mary Lacoursiere and Betsey Braun, one-day to three-day classes were offered, and a few met once a week for a month.

Oldest House Kitchen Garden Blossoms In early July, the maintenance and grounds staff completed the new kitchen garden located behind the Oldest House, also known as the Jethro Coffin House, the oldest island residence still in its original location. Featuring a wide array of period plantings, the raised beds attempt to recreate what such a garden would have looked like around 1700.

The reconstruction of the new garden began in May with the building of seventeen raised beds, which had been a common practice in kitchen gardens since the seven22 | H i s t o r i c N a n t u c k e t

teenth century. Period plants were selected via plant lists from the 1700s and then planted in June.

NHA staff member Kathrina Pearl, who is currently completing a certification program in Historic Landscape Preservation at the Landscape Institute of Harvard University’s Arnold Arboretum, researched and designed the garden. “The vegetables grown in settler’s kitchen gardens were reliable food staples such as carrots, parsnips, turnips, beets, radishes, onions, leeks and cabbages, all of which could survive storage

in root cellars over the winter months,” said Pearl. “We’ve planted those same vegetables along with a variety of forty-five herbs, including both medicinal and culinary, as well as lettuces and assorted greens in keeping with the historical theme of the garden.”

THE HERITAGE SOCIETY P l a n n i n g t o d a y f o r t h e N H A ’ s To m o r r o w

T

he Nantucket Historical Association invites you to join

forward-looking donors who have included the Association in their wills. Your gift will help build financial stability to continue the NHA’s mission for future generations.

For information, please contact Judith Wodynski at 508 228 1894, ext. 111, or email jwodynski@nha.org

Hi s t o r i c

Nantucket P.O. Box 1016, Nantucket, MA 02554-1016

Periodical POSTAGE PAID at Nantucket, MA and Additional Entry Offices