Interview: Romance, Fire, Warmth, and Excitement as MSMT Forges Ahead

"We came up with this pitch that alliterates," says Maine State Music Theatre's Managing Director Stephanie Dupal of the theatre's description of their upcoming 2016 summer season. "Relive the romance of Ghost; feel the fire of Evita; welcome the warmth of Fiddler; and experience the excitement of Mama Mia," she recites. Joined by Artistic Director Curt Dale Clark, the pair is talking about their plans for their main stage productions and the various new initiatives this dynamic team has launched since taking the helm of the company's leadership in 2013. By all accounts it is to be a season to surpass even the excellence of the prior ones!

This year the four shows planned for the Pickard Theatre serendipitously have also been movies, though "that was accidental," Clark affirms. Nonetheless, they are titles much beloved of audiences and ones which MSMT hopes to present in its own signature fashion. The season opens on June 8 (- June 25) with a regional premiere of the musical Ghost in a new chamber version created especially for the Fulton Theatre and MSMT, who are co-producing. Director Marc Robin has worked with the musical's creators, Glen Ballard, Bruce Joel Rubin, and Dave Stewart to reduce the show to ten actors and six musicians, half the size of the original Broadway production. "It feels like a completely new genre," says Clark. "It is aimed at getting back at the heart of a great story, and the chamber scoring doesn't detract from the music. The end result is incredibly powerful and moving."

"The small orchestra (keyboards, two violins, guitar, bass, and drums) sounds lush and beautiful, and the audience will not feel they are missing the original," adds Dupal.

"And we have the honor of premiering a new song for the show which Glen [Ballard} wrote especially for this production," Clark recounts as he describes the feeling in the rehearsal room in Lancaster when Grammy award-winner Ballard, himself, began to sing the piece. "The beauty of Ghost is that everyone has someone he has lost and wishes he hadn't. This musical gives you the permission to live in that nebulous world and connect with that person - be it a spouse or a relative, friend or pet - and not feel that your therapist told you not to go there. It speaks a universal language."

"And there won't be a dry eye in the house," Dupal concurs. You will have your heart torn out by the actors and the story."

Bookended by two shows new to Maine, the season's middle two productions are musicals with a long history at MSMT. Andrew Lloyd Webber - Tim Rice 1978 Evita has been produced two other times in the company's history, though director Marc Robin promises a new take on the fascinating characters and story. Both Clark and Dupal muse on the political resonance of the piece given America's current contentious election arena. Dupal points to a line in the musical, "Evita didn't say much, but she said it loud." "We are living that now. There is such incredible polarization in our politics, and style seems to prevail over substance."

"We see it in the reactions to Trump or Sanders or Clinton; some people love them and some hate them. That was Eva Peron's influence. Some thought she was a saint and some thought she was evil. But the atmosphere in Argentina was ripe for the Perons. She was a person who spoke most like the people, and she was able to sway them so they thought not with their heads but with their hearts," Clark continues.

Like Evita (June 29-July 16), which will be produced on a lavish scale, MSMT's Fiddler on the Roof (July 20-August 6) will make heavy demands on the company. To help meet these challenges MSMT has engaged director/choreographer Gary John LaRosa, who had also directed MSMT's last production of the show twenty-one years ago and is generally considered the authority on the Bock-Harnick classic. "He is the consummate historian on this show," Clark contends. "He has done twenty-five productions including the revival at Carnegie Hall. I want our actors to experience the true traditions of the story."

"He knows so much about the book and the history, and he can give our cast so much to work with," Dupal remarks.

Then after two such large-scale classics, MSMT plans to close its season with an onstage "party." They have been fortunate to be the first theatre in the region to obtain the rights to present Mama Mia (August 10-27), Andersson and Ulvaeus' foot-tapping, heartwarming musical based on the songs of ABBA. Dupal tells the story of how a board member had come back from London "twenty-one years ago and urged then Artistic Director Charles Abbott to get 'the best musical he had ever seen for next season.' Well, of course, it went from the West End to Broadway to a hit movie with Meryl Streep, and it is only now, two decades later after a great deal of persistence on MSMT's part, that the company will be able to treat its audiences. "If the audience doesn't feel like dancing at the end, we will have done something wrong," Dupal asserts.

"Not only is it a great way to close our Brunswick season," Clark affirms, "but there is a touching story in the show that speaks to the times in which we live. There are so many struggling single parents today, and the way the issue is handled in Mama Mia is very gratifying in an adult manner."

As exciting as this roster of titles promises to be, Clark and Dupal have another surprise in store for their public this season. From August 16 - September 4, they will collaborate with Portland Stage in a co-production of Frank McCourt's musical play, The Irish and How They Got That Way, which will be directed by Marc Robin, designed by Anita Stewart, and will star Clark, Charis Leos, Cary Michele Miller, and one other actor yet to be cast. To be staged in Portland using joint resources, this fifth MSMT production represents, in Clark's words, "the paramount accomplishment of our existence so far." Building MSMT into a year-round theatre has been one of the long-term goals of the vision Clark and Dupal articulated when they took the helm almost four years ago. Extending the season and building new audiences with Irish is just the first step.

Another thrust has been to expand the theatre's children's programs as part of MSMT's overall goal of greater outreach to diverse audiences, arts education for students, and a commitment to bringing the magic of live theatre to the widest possible public. Last season, the company mounted a full-scale production of Shrek Jr., The Musical, directed and choreographed by Raymond Marc Dumont, which used the intern company to fulfill all the creative roles. The success of that endeavor with its added evening performance for entire families has prompted MSMT to continue to move in this direction. This year, both children's shows, Robin and Clark's Jack and the Beanstalk (June 15 and 18) and their Aladdin (August 22) will be produced in-house, fully staged, and feature additional family performances to accommodate larger audiences. Clark will direct Jack and the Beanstalk, the first show he wrote with Marc Robin, and will use a cast comprised of local university students and MSMT interns. Dumont will direct Aladdin, another of the Robin and Clark canon of delightful, imaginative musical retellings of fairy tale classics, and Clark says they will not only feature the original songs but some big dance numbers as well. MSMT, who has been actively seeking funding to expand these kinds of outreach, is pleased to acknowledge the generous support of the Davis Family Foundation as one of the primary donors for this year's Aladdin. Rounding out the summer calendar, Clark will also direct Rodgers and Hammerstein, A Grand Night for Singing on June 20 and the company will organize its annual extravaganza Footlight Follies on August 16.

Other outreach efforts include continuing the popular series of "Peek Behind the Curtain" talkbacks at Curtis Memorial Library (June 15, July 6, July 27, August 17), at noon and will also mount a major exhibit about the company's history to be on display during July and August in the library's Collaboratorium galleries.

All this growth is only part of the big, bright plans MSMT has for the future. Casting has been enhanced and improved with Clark and Dupal's seeing over 3000 auditioners locally, in New York City and at the annual SETC Conference. At the conference this year, Production Department Head Charles S. Kading was able to join Clark and Dupal and to have the opportunity to interview the technical interns personally. "This has been invaluable," Clark says, "because Chuck has thirty years experience both teaching and working in professional theatre, and he relates extremely well to these young artists. Having his expertise means our shops will have the absolute best this year, just as we have the cream of the crop for our performance interns."

In other practical matters, subscriptions are up to almost capacity sales. "We are ahead of any other year in MSMT's history," Dupal reports, "and we will cut off at 9000 subscriptions because we do want to keep a pool of single seats, which we believe will sell very fast once they are available April 22." Then, this summer's audiences can look forward to the renovations to the Pickard: new carpeting, new seats, a new hearing loop, and enhanced video projection capacity.

I ask Dupal and Clark if they are aware, living in the moment which can be frenetic, how far the company has come in recent years. They both concur that the "growth has been amazing." "We realize we have taken some incredible steps," Dupal says, "but by the end of each season, we know we are not done. There is so much more to do. We realize there are parameters to our plans; for example, we love and would not want to change our relationship to Bowdoin College or to the Pickard Theatre, but we do have to figure out more ways to become a year-round theatre."

"As we continue to receive funding," says Clark, "our primary priorities are arts education and the acquiring of a second, smaller black box space where we can produce shows year-round in addition to our summer season."

Both administrators understand how important the theatre's relationship to the community is. "MSMT has existed this long," says Dupal of the company's fifty-eight-year history," because of this community, and we are grateful. But with the economics of modern theatre production we will continue to need increased support in order to grow."

In the midst of a $2 million Capital Campaign and actively nurturing corporate, private donor, and grant support, Clark believes these goals will be attainable "with hard work and persistence." He credits Dupal with being "an absolutely amazing wizard at budgeting," and he, himself, has been an ubiquitous and much-admired presence in the area. (A cabaret evening, for example, in which he performed this past winter at a local restaurant, sold out in two hours and proved a boon to the host bistro, as well as raising awareness about MSMT.) "We have to be out there, and we have to give back," Clark affirms. "It benefits everyone from our creative personnel who come here in the summer and always beg to return, to our local businesses for whom we are a driving economic engine, to MSMT who benefits from enhanced visibility."

The energy and commitment of Dupal, Clark, and, indeed, the small, but deeply devoted year-round MSMT staff is palpable. In an industry in which tireless work, dedication, and vision are essential to success, MSMT and its leadership team help to redefine the meanings of these concepts. And as Clark and Dupal would attest, in the company's second half century, "this is only the beginning!"

Photos courtesy MSMT and Fulton Theatre (Ghost photo)

For more information about MSMT's 2016 season, call 207-725-8769 or visit www.msmt.org