Special to the Star-Herald
In 1977, the Shipmates Playhouse of Presque Isle High School presented the Irving Berlin musical, Annie Get Your Gun, whose show-stopping song, “There’s No Business Like Show Business,” expresses the enthusiasm felt by the many students who have performed on the PIHS stage.
Play production probably extends back to the time the school started, but the Shipmates Playhouse, formed in 1972, was the first organized club that brought all of the theater activities under one umbrella. The advisors were English teachers Dan Ladner and Glenna Smith, the two directors, and I, the technical director. Glenna had considerable directing experience, Dan was an accomplished musician and I was a biology teacher who had studied stagecraft and technical theater in college.
We had collaborated on two Broadway musicals prior to the birth of the Shipmates Playhouse. Rodgers and Hammerstein’s classic Oklahoma! was our first production in the spring of 1970. Though considered the senior play, its roles were open to members of all four classes. While Dan and Glenna prepared the actors, I gathered a group of students from the Hi-Y Club that I advised and offered our services to build the set.
Our debut musical went over very well, despite our minimal budget and the physical limitations of a stage, backstage space, lighting and auditorium designed for school assemblies rather than for theater productions. To complement our rented backdrop of a bright rural scene, we built a small cabin with a fence and wooden arbor. With the addition of various props, it was a colorful and effective set.
Buoyed by our success with the comedic Oklahoma!, we chose West Side Story for the 1971 senior play. This serious musical was a much bigger production, having a score that stretched the vocal abilities of the cast and involving a more-detailed set with many scene changes. But the performers, even more enthusiastic than the previous year, rose to the challenge and presented a memorable show.
After our second musical success, we wanted to expand the theater program, adding full-length non-musical plays as well as one-act contest plays. We presented our proposal for the Shipmates Playhouse to principal Romeo Marquis, who quickly agreed that it would be a valuable asset to the school. His enthusiasm and confidence allowed us complete independence in creating and carrying out the theater program.
This administrative support and the hard work of the students and directors were richly rewarded as we watched our program grow from a fledgling drama group in a relatively small northern Maine school to an award-winning troupe that left its mark as one of the best-known and highly-acclaimed high school theater programs in the region, state and New England. Its impact on the school was best expressed in principal Marquis’ boast to other Maine principals, as reported in the Star-Herald, that his school had “more thespians than athletes.”
The Shipmates continued to produce annual musicals that included: The Pajama Game; South Pacific; Cinderella; Guys and Dolls; Hello, Dolly; Li’l Abner; Calamity Jane; Carousel; and Annie. The club also produced non-musical plays that included The Miracle Worker and Our Town, as well as evenings of one-act plays, some of which were produced entirely by the students.
Any school activities, theater included, benefit greatly from community support, which helps to build relationships and impact more people. Our audiences were always supportive and the community often came together to assist us with contest productions. For many years our sets and props were packed and transported all over the state and New England by volunteers and honorary Shipmates, Myron and Polly Gartley.
We made especially valuable connections when we used community members in the casts and crews of some of our plays. It was a win-win situation for our students as well as for the talented guest performers. In 1972’s The Music Man, four roles were played by the Aroostocrats, a talented local barbershop quartet. Capable local children also enhanced this show as well as productions of Oliver in 1973 and 1987 and The Wizard of Oz in 1986 and community adults complemented high school casts in Grease, Cabaret, Oliver (1987) and Fame.
There are many memorable incidents during my years with the Shipmates. Our first non-musical play, Teahouse of the August Moon, presented just after the newly-organized club elected its first officers in the fall of 1971, was the first to feature a live animal, a goat, in the cast. Other animals that appeared in subsequent plays, mostly in cameo roles, included a cat, dogs, a pig and a donkey. We found it to be fun but risky to have animals in a play. They can be unpredictable when suddenly faced with an auditorium full of people. They have their own agendas. The donkey tore a stage curtain and the goat left an unexpected “gift” on the stage. A cat, a fairly important character in The Diary of Anne Frank, had to be sedated in order to keep him calm onstage.
Special effects added much to our plays but were a cautious challenge. From thunder, lighting, wind, fog, dark of night, moonrise and airplanes flying overhead, from a pumpkin that transforms into a coach, from a leaky ceiling and pictures falling off a wall only to rise mysteriously back into place again, to fire spewing from an actor’s fingers, we often had to be unusually creative. Many set pieces and costumes had to be specially designed to fit the requirements of the play as well as the conditions of the stage, whether it was ours or one on which we were competing. The large wagon containing all her possessions that Mother Courage dragged through wars, the pump that had to dispense water, the two-story apartment where families hid during a war and our many striking costumes that depicted mythology, fairy tales, the American West, small-town Maine and several foreign cultures all contributed to the Shipmates’ reputation as one of the best.
While the musicals were a high point for the community, always drawing large audiences, the contest plays were probably the high points for the actors. Like athletic, debate or science fair competitions, the students involved in drama pour their hearts into these activities, hoping to achieve recognition for their school, while having a wonderful time in the process. Most of these competitive events are sponsored by the Maine Principals Association and are organized along similar lines. The drama competition’s state festival is equivalent to a state sports tournament. To the actors and tech crew, bringing home the state trophy is every bit as important as the gold ball is to the basketball players.
Our first regional contest entry was in 1972 with a cutting from Teahouse. We were pleased to win in the region but did not win in the state. Our first win at the state level was in 1975 with the German expressionist play, Gas II. An unusual play, it was staged in a very non-traditional way with an identically costumed ensemble constructing and then becoming part of a large robotic machine for the duration of the play. The highly-impressed judges named us a state winner. We started planning our trip to the New England festival, but it was not to happen as, a few days later, our play was disqualified because of a technicality in the New England festival rules. The following year we went to our first New England festival with a spectacular presentation of the Greek tragedy, Prometheus Bound. Several of our actors were painted in radiant gold and silver metallic body paint and, at the climax of the play, accompanied by the sounds of thunder in front of a brilliant red lit cyclorama, Prometheus was slowly swallowed up by a mountain.
The contest plays were our chance to explore a wide variety of dramatic types. We did foreign plays from France (Episode in the Life of an Author), Japan (The Zen Substitute), Russia (The Cherry Orchard), Greece (Prometheus Bound), Germany (Gas II) and England (Tom Jones) as well as commedia del arte (The Masque of Pierrot), hilarious comedy (Seven Wives for Dracula) and tense drama (The Insanity of Mary Girard).
Going to the contests was always an exciting experience, though sometimes we encountered deep disappointment. Judging plays is purely subjective and depends on the whims, ideas, prejudices, mood and partiality of the judges. Naturally we did our best but there were times that we didn’t win, even though we felt our performance was better than those that won. Our especially moving play, Juvie, in 1987, focused on juvenile delinquency and was staged in a unique and innovative style. We thought we had a winner at the state competition. Directors of competing plays told us that the only question was who the second winner would be. The director of the upcoming New England festival had already asked me what our tech requirements would be since she was certain we would be one of the Maine representatives. But when the judges’ decision was announced, we had lost.
During the time I worked with the Shipmates, we participated in the contest 17 times, winning in the region 14 times, and in the state six times. Four of the six state championships were in a five-year period from 1979-1983, allowing some students the chance to appear at the New England festival multiple times.
Though we had three losses in regional festivals, we felt we had superior plays. One of our losing plays was The Zen Substitute in 1978. We felt that our performance of the play was so outstanding that we repeated it in 1979. And with that same play, we went clear to the New England festival. A bonus for us that year was a special invitation to present our show as an exhibition play in the New Brunswick Provincial Drama Festival at Fredericton.
We set several records at the New England level. The Zen Substitute was the only play in 1979 to receive a rating of excellent. After that, the rules were changed so that there would always be more than one play rated excellent. In 1982, our entire cast of Tom Jones was named to the all-festival cast. Two of our performers, Mylan Cohen in 1979 and Brian Sipe in 1982, received the Brother John Award, given to the top performer in the New England festival.
In 1984, Dan left PIHS to direct the Upward Bound program at UMPI, later becoming the director of the Caribou Performing Arts Center. Glenna also left the Shipmates but remained at PIHS for several more years as a teacher. Dan was replaced by Barbara Frick, who had previously worked in professional theater in New York.
I remained with the organization for four more years. After I left, Barb, working with other assistant directors and technical directors, continued to produce wonderful plays for several more years. One of the highlights of those years was the staging of Glenna’s original play, Voices of Aldenville, as a contest play, that went all the way to the New England festival.
Since Barb’s retirement, the drama program has undergone a number of changes. The Shipmates Playhouse name is still used and the theater program remains strong, with several other directors having come and gone. The actual organization no longer exists in the form that we started, but the well-produced fall musicals are still eagerly anticipated by the community, often drawing sell-out crowds. Students still pour their hearts into the contest plays, but because of festival policy changes, it has become more difficult to win in the region.
The Shipmates Playhouse has been a fertile breeding ground for theatrical artists. Several of our girls have competed in national scholarship pageants, including three in the Miss America Pageant. Community theater groups in Aroostook County as well as other communities around the country currently benefit from many performers that got their start at PIHS. At least five have gone on to become theater directors in Maine schools. And John Cariani, a Shipmate throughout high school, is a successful playwright, as well as an accomplished actor who has appeared on television, in motion pictures and on Broadway, where he received a Tony nomination for his performance as Motel in Fiddler on the Roof.
It was an honor to be asked to write this article as part of the Star Herald’s celebration of the Presque Isle Sesquicentennial. I was enthusiastic to do it because of the enjoyment I experienced in the ‘70s and ‘80s as part of the Shipmates and, since I am currently writing a book about my show business years with the Shipmates, much of the research had already been completed.
Photo courtesy of Richard Lord
JEREMIAH DONOVAN appears as Persian Peddler Ali Hakim in the first PIHS musical production, Oklahoma!, in 1970 Other cast members can be seen in the background.
Photo courtesy of Richard Lord
PLAYWRIGHT AND BROADWAY ACTOR John Cariani got his start in the Shipmates Playhouse. Here he is shown in the role of the scarecrow in The Wizard of Oz, the 1986 musical. Cariani has since returned to the school on occasion to speak with students who aspire to be actors, answering questions and giving advice to the young thespians.
