Page 16 • December 2018 • Mt. Olive Life
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Pax Amicus Castle Theatre By Stefanie Sears
hat is a place where you can view such great variety theatre starring Winnie the Pooh and Piglet as well as Edgar Allen Poe and Hamlet? The Pax Amicus Castle Theatre, also known fondly as simply The Castle, is
where! Former West Morris Regional High School tenure English teachers Stan Barber and Bob Findlay were eager for a change in their lives, so they founded the not-for-profit Pax Amicus Castle Theatre in 1970. They will be celebrating the theatre’s 50th anniversary in 2020. Pax Amicus Castle Theatre serves it purpose as an overall arts center with very little limitations. They offer Broadway musicals, great dramas and classic melodramas, contemporary comedies, productions for younger audiences, Shakespeare with the Castle Shakespeare Repertory, an incorporated professional Shakespeare program that began in 1995, and Generation Next, a theatre program for teenage participants. “You have to know your audience. What will they want to see?” says Barber, Pax Amicus’s Administrative and Artistic Director, “Everyone once in awhile we will challenge our audience and they will step up to the plate and come to the dramas that deal with difficult subject matter.” In addition, Pax Amicus also holds special events and features guest artists, such as stand up comedy nights. Plenty of people have even held their themed weddings there with Barber as the officiant. Pax Amicus was originally stationed in an abandoned Presbyterian church in Flanders and their current location in Budd Lake was a former Jewish community center and then Knights of Columbus Hall. In 1977 they purchased the building and transformed it into the Castle it is today. The growing popularity of the children’s theatre was the driving force behind this move, intending for the Castle to just house children’s productions. They chose the castle design to appeal to the young theater patrons and originally it was going to be just a plywood façade of a castle. “A friend of mine said, ‘How about we build a real castle?’” says Barber, “We had no idea the expense that was going to be or the amount of time it would take, but we felt that would fit children theatre beautifully.” The construction for this took two years to complete until they then finally opened in 1979. Present as guest of honor at the ribbon cutting ceremony was Margaret Hamilton, best known as the
Wicked Witch of the West in the 1939 MGM film The Wizard of Oz, thanks to her agent who recognized their efforts and offered one of his clients for the occasion. Because of her frail health at the time, accompanying Hamilton was upcoming actor, then in his twenties, Kevin Bacon. Pax Amicus’s opening show was a musical tribute to Jacques Brel. They used both church and Castle locations simultaneously for a few years. However, they soon realized that the Castle was a much easier to find landmark, so they decided to sell the Presbyterian church in 1983 to work at the Castle full time. In regards to the children productions, Barber prefers to focus on the positive messages of the shows and is careful to eliminate any possible racist or sexist themes. For example, regarding the Hans Christian Anderson tale of “The Little Mermaid,” he noticed that in the Disney version Ariel, the titular mermaid, gives up everything to be with her prince whereas her prince gives nothing up in return. Considering this idea sexist, for the Castle’s July 2015 production he decided to revamp the fairytale by writing his own music and having the Prince sacrifice his legs through a
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