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 Yankee Ways |
Community Theatre |
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| Yankee Ways |
Community Theatre |
| Yankee Ways Return to index of stories... |
There’s a myth that Yankees are cool, remote, unfriendly. This is not so.The problem is we are sometimes misinterpreted. Brief clarification: You don’t have to be born here or have any particular ethnic heritage to qualify as a Yankee. Yankee is an attitude. Over in Walpole, I’m told, four guys who had retired to NH were picking up litter on the side of the road, when a stranger pulled up beside them, rolled down the window of his SUV, and called out: “You guys know how to get to Peterborough?” There was a long pause. Then the four men said, as one, “Yup.” That’s yankee attitude. To interpret, what they were really saying was: “Hope you’re enjoying your day as much as we are.” Some say Yankees are slow to warm up to people. True we’re not apt to jump directly from how-do-you-do to come-on-over-for-pot-roast Saturday night. Generally, we reserve pot roast for family. Neighbors? We get acquainted eventually. No big rush. If you’re going to move in and move out within the decade, no sense getting attached. Our next door neighbors had lived in the little house a year or two before we got acquainted. But one day, sure enough, a moose appeared in the road. And loitered. The neighbors stood in their yard watching the moose. We stood in ours. Eventually, the moose stuck out acoss the swamp and disappeared. I initiated the conversation. It went something like this: “Nice moose.” “Yup.” This is an example of good fences making good neighbors. Robert Frost said it sarcastically in the poem--then again, he was from California. A woman told me she’d moved to New Hampshire having lived away for many years. She bought a house near the family homestead she’d often visited as a child. Time passed. The homestead changed hands. Someday, she thought, I’m going to stop by and say hello to those new neighbors and tell them about my family connection to their house. Time passed. A sign went up, “Maple Syrup for Sale.” Some day, she thought, I’m going to buy some of that maple syrup from trees once tapped by my great-grandfather on my mother’s side. And she did. One spring day, she stopped in. Bought a quart of syrup. “How long have you lived here?” she asked. “Nine years come July,” the maple syrup lady said. “Nine years! I should have stopped in long before this. I’m mortified.” “Don’t worry about it,” the lady said. “We wa’n’t waiting for you.” Thirty-five years ago, a couple moved into a small NH town with their six children. At that time, the population happened to be 800, so the dad--who told me this story--figured they’d increased it by 1%. He was pretty proud of that. At the village store, he introduced himself to a native, who said: “I know who you are. You’re the new people.” “That’s right,” the dad said. “We just built a new school,” the native said. “And we don’t want to build another.” Which was just his way of saying: “Welcome to New Hampshire.” Yankees may not exude friendliness, but we’re friendly enough. In context. Family story--not my family, but a story told to me by the daughter of a game warden who, years ago, spent a lot of time in the north country. There he was seven o’clock in the morning, dark, foggy, dismal morning, filling his tank in one of those Stark north country towns. Also at the pump was an old guy--”an old salty salt”--the daughter told me, though how salty a person can get in the White Mountains I don’t know. He had a beater truck, a well-worn baseball cap. He was smoking a pipe. The warden said out loud, kind of plaintive: “Where can a fella get a good cup of coffee around here this time of the day?” The old guy takes a puff. Pulls the pipe out of his mouth and sets in on the roof of the truck. He looks at the sky: dark, foggy, dismal. “Well,” he says. “I guess you’ll just have to come home with me.” I’m Rebecca Rule, and that’s how I see it. |
| Community Theatre Return to index of stories... |
When you are invited to play a part in a community theater production, you’re called an actor, even if you don’t “act” on stage any differently than off. I recently bagged a part in a British farce, but I worried about the accent. Another actor advised me to drop my “r”s so I’d sound more English. Unfortunately, as a NH native, I don’t have that many “r”s to drop. In this particular play one of my lines is: “There’s a mist rising from the marshes.” Or is it, “maashes.” If I drop the “r” on marrrrsh, it sounds like maash, which sounds NH to me and not British at all. Maybe if I drop the “r” and stretch the “a.” Maaashes. That’s better. These little touches help me build my character. Costumes help, too. There are loads of costumes on the hangers upstairs at the theater, racks of prom dresses and suits and so forth. Shelves piled high with hats. I like hats. They help me develop my character. Upstairs, among the prom dresses, I overhear a conversation between two fellow thespians: “Who did costumes for The Music Man?” “I can’t remember, but.... Marion in this,” holding up a blue chiffon number that I thought looked pretty cute on our Marion. I say: “I did costumes for that show!” And they say: “Oh.” And I say: “I did my best.” But they know that. We all do our best. None of us are professional costumers or light designers or producers. I’m not entirely sure what a producer does, but I’m pretty sure we don’t have one. When you’re dipping into a small pool of the willing, you have to make do with whoever’s flopping around in your net. Flannery O’Connor wrote: “A good man is hard to find.” This is also true of community theater. Which is why you’re much more apt to see a staging of Nunsense than Twelve Angry Men. If our group cast Twelve Angry Men, we’d probably have to change it to, Three Angry Men, Eight Annoyed Women, and One Irate Teenager. You work with what you’ve got. And, you know, it’s amazing how many from the community participate, baking cookies, painting the set, furnishing it with wing chairs from our livingrooms. On stage, you might find a mechanic playing a tycoon, a mail carrier playing playing criminal, a lawyer playing... a doctor. We do our best. It’s just that what we’re good at isn’t necessarily theater. Sad story: I was taking tickets at a show a while back when a group of six people wandered in, last minute. Luckily, about 100 of the 120 seats were still available. “Do you know somebody in the cast?” I asked. No, they were visiting in the area, and had come out for dinner and a show, saw our sign by the road. “Is this a good show?” one of them asked. “Well,” I said, “it’s Community Theater!” They filed in. And filed back out about ten minutes later. Evidently, they all had an appointment they just that minute remembered. If you want seamless, highly produced, big budget shows starring Hal Holbrook, go to Boston. But if you’re want a show where the ticket prices are low, the chairs are hard, the refreshments free --where the light guy-props guy-sound-guy-and-set-builder-guy are apt to be the same guy; where everybody from the fourth-grader handing out programs to the octogenarian running the lights is doing their best come to our show. You’ll love it! In community theater--and this is what those six folks from away didn’t understand--the audience plays as big a part as the people on stage, backstage, or upstairs sewing up a hole in Prince Charming’s tights, with Prince Charming still in them. In community theater, the theater company is us; and the audience is the rest of us. I’m Rebecca Rule, and that’s how I see it. |