Figures of Speech Theatre

Dear Friend of FST,

After a long Covid-inspired communication hiatus, I am writing to share current news about Figures of Speech and what we’re up to. Some key dates are in bold below.

As you may have heard, Ian Bannon, our Education Director for the past 15 years, has been selected as the new Executive Director for Mayo Street Arts, a superb community-based arts organization in Portland. As sad as I am to lose Ian, who has truly been my right arm in the past ten years, I think it is the right move for him and I know that Figures of Speech will benefit from a close connection to Mayo Street Arts. During this academic year, however, Ian is carrying to the finish line a long project at the College of the Holy Cross, in Worcester, Mass. Since the Arts Transcending Borders program at Holy Cross brought the company to Worcester in 2018 to perform our production of the little match girl passion, we have enjoyed an ongoing teaching relationship at the College, including a semester-long course in puppet theater, and several Community Based Learning programs that Ian has facilitated. Those programs involved intergenerational activities with memory-impaired seniors and social work students, using the TimeSlips creative storytelling system in which Ian is trained. Through his work, Holy Cross became a permanent TimeSlips Creative Campus, which will allow students, faculty, and staff to access online training and become TimeSlips facilitators themselves.

My own focus has shifted from the creation of new work to the performance of work that I can tour solo—which means I will be resuming performances of Four Quartets, which were suspended when Covid struck. As things are beginning to open up, I have taken two gigs: one at Mayo Street Arts (thanks to Ian!) on April 9, 2022; and one at the Chautauqua Institution in Monteagle, Tennessee, on June 28, 2022.

We continue work on the editing of the three-camera footage of my last pre-Covid performance of Four Quartets, which will serve as both a document and promotional tool.

I was also fortunate to be tapped as a puppetry consultant for an upcoming production of Antigonick at Bates College in Maine. (That’s not a misspelling of Antigone—Canadian poet and classicist Anne Carson published a radical translation/adaptation of the Sophocles play and titled it Antigonick.) Tim Dugan, assistant professor of acting and directing, has assembled a terrific team of collaborators (including FST co-founder Carol Farrell, who is designing costumes) and is taking the production way out on a theatrical limb, incorporating shadow puppetry, giant heads as the Chorus, and a bespoke puppet of Teiresias, the blind prophet. The production opens on March 17, 2022, but it’s not clear at the moment if people from outside the Bates community will be allowed to attend performances. I plan to film the show and will see if sharing it via Vimeo will be all right.

Beyond touring Four Quartets, I am also moving forward with the process of documenting our video and puppet assets. The first phase of this archiving project was to find and catalog all of the videotapes we had in storage. After identifying and cataloging 226 separate videotapes, we began the long process of trying to figure out what the tapes actually contained, based largely on the labeling on each tape. In order to assess the feasibility of digitizing the material, we selected about 30 tapes in various formats, hoping to see how the footage came out in digital format. Once we were confident that digitization would produce useable material, we prioritized the tapes we deemed essential, set aside many that seemed either duplicative or of little interest, and tossed a coin on tapes whose contents were unknown or unclear. In the end, we sent another 91 videotapes to Northeast Historic Film in Bucksport, where they were digitized and copied onto several huge hard drives. We have yet to watch through all the digital files, and it will be some time before we can contemplate any editing work that wants doing. One immediate positive, however, is our plan (once it’s safe to gather) to bring together the large cast from Festival of Light, a production we created in 1994, to join us in viewing the previously inaccessible footage from that show.

On a parallel track to the video tape digitization, Carol and I have been working on the daunting challenge of examining every puppet, set piece, mask, costume and prop from the thirty or so shows we and our brilliant collaborators have created in the last 40 years. Most difficult is deciding what material is worth holding onto, what material needs to be re-homed with other theaters, and what material gets recycled or trashed. We have learned that you can’t let go of everything at once.

Long range goal: to mount a retrospective exhibit of Figures of Speech Theatre’s prodigious creative output for all to see!

Finally, on a personal note, I wanted to let you know that health issues have brought my stamina and energy down somewhat, forcing a more critical assessment of what I can and cannot do, or at least a more realistic notion of how quickly I can move ahead with projects. Energy shortage notwithstanding, I remain busy and happy.

Wishing you a healthy, happy and productive 2022!