Perform It! wins top honor from the New England Theatre

Perform It! wins top honor from the New England Theatre Conference
“With stars of public honour”
The 2008-2009 school
year for Perform It! Young
People’s Stage Company
was outstanding. Our spring
show was a huge success,
marking several new milestones: setting a new audience attendance record,
celebrating our 15th year anniversary, and receiving the
Moss Hart Memorial Award
from the New England
Theatre Conference last November for best show in
2009 in all of New England.
The Moss Hart Award
trophy is a three-foot-tall,
sterling silver and hardwood
work of art that has been
awarded to theater companies throughout New England for the past 47 years.
The annual winner of the
Perform It! actors take their bows
Moss Hart Award is given
the trophy to keep for one
year. In its 47 years of existence, the award has come
to New Hampshire only four
times, and it has never been
to Wolfeboro. We at Perform It! are thrilled to bring
it to the Lakes Region.
Who was Moss Hart?
Moss Hart was a playwright, stage director, and
screenwriter from the 1930s
through the 1950s. He
penned some of Broadway’s
most famous plays, including You Can’t Take it with
You (1936), The Man Who
Came to Dinner (1939), and
Light Up the Sky (1948). His
screenwriting accomplishments include the movies
Gentleman’s Agreement
(1947), Hans Christian
Anderson (1952), and A Star
(Continued on page 2)
Inside this issue...
Spring Production
2
Award Speech
3
PI in the Community
4
Tribute
4
Spring Raffle
5
Our Actors
5
Alumni Corner
6
Fall Classes
8
Talent Show
8
Shakespeare Faire
9
PI & Moss Hart
10
Behind the Scenes
10
The Comedy of Errors
11
Moss Hart (continued)
is Born (1954), the classic
starring Judy Garland. His
Broadway directorial
achievements include My
Fair Lady (1956) and
Camelot (1960).
Moss Hart won the Pulitzer Prize for You Can’t Take
It with You in 1937, and in
1956 he received a Tony
Award for Best Director for
My Fair Lady. He also received an Oscar nomination
for the screenplay Gentleman’s Agreement in 1947.
The famous playwright
wrote the best-selling book
Act One: An Autobiography,
published in 1959, which
remains a classic in the field
of theater writing. In 1946
Moss Hart married Kitty
Carlisle, best known for her
appearances on What’s My
Line, the popular TV game
show, which ran weekly for
21 years. They had two children and were married until
Moss Hart died of a heart
attack at age 57. His memory lives on through his
work and the award.
The Comedy of Errors
Perform It! Young People’s Stage Company brings
William Shakespeare’s The
Comedy of Errors to the
stage the first weekend in
May. Shakespeare’s madcap,
fast-paced comedy makes for
a delightful family theater
experience as two sets of
twin brothers, separated soon
after birth and having the exact same names, end up in
the same town, creating hilarious mix-ups and wacky
encounters.
The production team is
working hard to make this
play a visual feast! Peter Ferber returns to teach set design and painting, Becky
Marsh and Randy LawrenceHurt are composing the music, and costume mistresses
Catherine Dion and Brenda
Lush, with their team of stu-
Page 2
dent and adult seamstresses,
are sewing costumes. Jan
Helling Croteau along with
assistant director Donna
Powell are directing the
show, and Marybeth Wadlinger is the producer. Intern Abbie Cameron is helping with every aspect of the
production. Abbie worked
as assistant teacher for the
fall classes, and now she
serves as acting coach for
the show.
“This production is so
zany and comical that it is
taking us a while to put it
together as we spend so
much time laughing,” says
Helling Croteau. “The show
is sure to be popular among
audiences who love to
laugh.”
Join us as we celebrate
our 16th year of bringing
Shakespeare alive through
the hearts and minds of
young people. The show has
lots of fun elements, including mimes, dancers, motleys, jesters, and groundling
narrators. Confusion reigns
supreme as our puckish
young comedians take the
stage. This is one you won’t
want to miss!
Tickets are available at
The Country Bookseller or
by calling (603) 569-6401.
Perform It! Folio
Acceptance Speech for the Moss Hart Award
By Jan Helling Croteau
Perform It! Young People’s Stage Company is a
nonprofit theater company
for young people ages 6
through 19. All of our thespians are homeschooled students; they are a mixture of
introverted and extroverted
characters, serious scholars
and witty jesters, small children and young adults who
join together for a yearlong
program where they learn
Shakespeare’s theater
through performance.
Every year we produce
one big, blowout production
that is the culmination of a
year’s worth of training.
There are 40 to 45 young
thespians involved each
year and around 20 to 30
area artists who make our
productions possible.
We are a large, organic
group of ever-changing
families whose tendrils
reach deep into our supportive community. Together
we strive for excellence and
remind our students that it is
noble, indeed, to reach for
the stars.
This past year we performed A Midsummer
Night’s Dream for over
1,000 people. Midsummer is
a play about dreams, and, as
we all know, dreaming can
be a precarious notion and
one that requires taking big
risks.
To a young thespian,
Perform It! director, Jan Helling Croteau, delivers acceptance
speech at the New England Theatre Conference Awards Banquet
dreaming about being onstage is risky business. In
their minds the stage is the
terrifying land of “what ifs.”
“What if I forget my lines?”
“What if I stumble onstage?” “What if I freeze in
place and cannot move?” To
learn Shakespeare takes
hours of work and study and
practice. Performing the
Bard’s work takes an act of
courage—to step onstage
and deliver a solid performance and to carry on a centuries-old tradition of live
theater. Yep, performing is
risky business.
But theater is also the act
of giving. Perhaps that is
why we call an actor with
talent someone with stage
presence. Performing is a
generous act. The actors
give their best; the audience
gives the actors their appreciation. There is an ancient
saying, “The gift must always move.” I can’t think of
a better place to witness the
dynamic movement of generosity than live theater.
Our young actors take
the risk, all for one glorious
reason: to give their best to
their audience. And in the
process of rehearsals and
performances, the land of
“what ifs” becomes the continent of possibilities. And
during the best theater performances, when the lights
go up, the magic begins and
the gift moves, circulating
between the hearts of the
performers and audience,
sharing that precious moment when we are all together as one entity, no
longer separated by class or
gender, race or religion,
time and space, but rather
united by our love of the
performing arts… because
when we are all at our best,
our performances illuminate
our humanity.
Now, I would like to say
(Continued on page 8)
Volume 6, Issue 1
Page 3
Perform It! in the Community
Perform It! donated
some of its stage make-up
and time to help raise
money for the Stacey
Burns Memorial Scholarship Fund.
The fundraiser took
place in October at Kingswood Regional High
School in Wolfeboro. Participants obtained pledges
for the number of laps they
walked around the inside of
the high school. Over
$10,000 was raised by all
involved. The scholarship
will be awarded to a Kingswood graduate entering the
medical profession. Perform It! was thrilled to help
such a worthy cause.
Perform It! alumnus Erin Wadlinger
painting a young patron’s hand
Tribute to Dan Hyman
“This web of our life is of mingled yarn, good and ill together.”
This year our Perform It! family shared
the “mingled yarn, good
and ill together.” Last
September we lost one
of our beloved dads,
Dan Hyman, who died
of pancreatic cancer.
Dan was the father of
Megan (last year’s
Snout, the Wall) and
Savannah (who played
Philomena, the mistress
of revels), and he was
husband to Val, one of
our most trustworthy
seamstresses and loving
moms.
For the past five
years, Dan composed
and performed music for
our shows. He was a
man of exceptional tal-
Page 4
ent and loved working with our
students. He also helped with
set construction and many behind-the-scenes tasks that are
part of a large production. His
attention to detail, his work
ethic, and his love of
theater were infectious.
He played classical guitar and piano, collected
antiques, and treasured
old books. He was a true
Renaissance man who
worked as a master electrician to support his
family.
He leaves us with a
multitude of happy
memories and lots of
unforgettable music.
Dear friend and family
man, you will always
have a special place in
our hearts. In the words
of Nick Bottom from A
Midsummer Night’s
Dream, “We thank thee
for thy sunny beams!”
Perform It! Folio
Watch for Spring Raffle
Entertainment’s On Us
On April 2, 10, and 17,
students will be conducting
a raffle at Hunter’s IGA in
Wolfeboro. You could win
tickets for two from one of
these eight Lakes Region
theaters: Advice To The
Players, The Summer Theatre in Meredith Village, The
Winnipesaukee Playhouse,
Great Waters Music Festival, The Village Players,
The Barnstormers Theatre,
M&D Productions, and
Hampstead Stage Company.
Tickets will also be available at our spring show.
Don’t miss your chance to
enjoy some wonderful summer entertainment!
“All the World’s a Stage”
Six years ago I joined
Perform It! and it was the
best thing that ever happened to me. At first I did
not want to do it—hang
around a bunch of people I
didn't know and get on
stage—but that soon
changed. Everyone was so
welcoming and fun! The
rush of getting onstage and
seeing a whole audience before me was the most nervewracking experience
Tabitha Haire
My first experience with
Perform It! wasn’t by my
choice at all. I always felt
kind of shy, so I never
wanted to meet new people
or experience new things.
My older sister joined the
Volume 6, Issue 1
Savannah Hyman
theater company for the production of As You Like It,
and so I got dragged along
every week. That continued
the following year, when
Perform It! had their production of Love’s Labours
Lost, but when I was eleven
years old, my mom persuaded me to join.
I had been dancing since
I was less than two years
old, so I was no stranger to
the stage. But I was still terrified every week during the
fall classes when I had to
perform skits with my
group.
of my life, but it was also an
amazing experience. There's
nothing like the sound of
applause after so much hard
work. Perform It! is my second family. Everyone makes
a contribution, and in the
midst of all the hard work,
we create amazing memories. Perform It! is where I
have made incredible
friends, where I have had
once-in-a-lifetime experiences, and where I belong.
This is my fifth year acting in Perform It! Young
People’s Stage Company,
and it has been quite a ride.
The skills I’ve developed as
a member of this wonderful
family of thespians have
been invaluable in my realworld jobs and interactions.
I have also learned to just
not care what the world
thinks of me, which has
given me the freedom to be
myself. Even though my
mom had to drag me kicking and screaming for the
first year, I wouldn’t trade
this experience for anything.
Page 5
This is my sixth year in
Perform It! Whoa, I just realized that. I guess time
really does fly when you're
having fun. That means that
I know six of William
Shakespeare's plays, and I
am only 11 years old!
Whoa, I didn't realize how
much I was learning while I
was having fun. Being a part
of Perform It! has also
taught me how to work with
lots of people. I have made
lots of friends, and I want to
make a lot more because I
hope to be in Perform It!
until I am nineteen. I met
my best friend playing on
the floor in the theater. Ah,
Frankie Evans
good times! My older sister
started in Perform It! in
1998, so I have been around
the theater my entire life,
and I still love it. Now it is
just my older brother and
me. I have had six different
non-speaking roles, one
small line, and this year is
my first speaking role. I will
be playing the narrator
Noblese in The Comedy of
Errors. I am so excited! I
had better get back to studying my part. Hope to see
you at the theater!
Where Are They Now?
Alumni Corner
by Rebecca Marsh
One of the amazing aspects of theater is how fast
everything comes together
before a show, but there’s
always a lot of planning and
anticipation first that can
make me impatient! I’d
been bubbling with inward
excitement about Rosencrantz and Gildenstern are
Dead for the past several
days while I was waiting to
start work on the lighting. It
was going to be my last
show with the theater department at Connecticut
College, and I was determined to make it one of my
best. As the lead electrician,
it was my job to make sure
we got all the lights hung,
cabled, and focused, all on
Page 6
Becky Marsh at the piano
schedule. Earlier that week
the lighting designer had
emailed me the paperwork,
and I’d sent out a schedule
to our technical crew. We
would start work on Saturday
and had 13 days to finish.
(Continued on page 7)
Perform It! Folio
Electrics load-in weeks had
become one of my favorite
parts of college!
I didn’t help with the
lights when I was a Perform
It! student, but the skills I
learned there have been so
applicable to my life. Working on the music for Love’s
Labour’s Lost and The Tempest as a student in Perform
It! pushed me to go beyond
what I’d done in piano lessons. However, the really
important thing I was learning was how to understand
what a project needs and
then find a creative way to
make it happen, even if it
meant trying something I’d
never done before. I use a
similar process whether I’m
advertising an event or making appetizers for a dinner
party. Many of the things I
love about being involved in
theater, I got my first taste
of in Perform It! First, you
get to work with a group of
people. Sharing creative
ideas and long hours together creates a special camaraderie. Then, there are
always new shows, with
new topics to discuss, a different atmosphere to create,
and new problems to solve.
That keeps things interesting.
I flew through my
classes the week that I was
getting ready to load-in
Rosencrantz and Gildenstern are Dead and drove
my friends crazy talking
about the show. Now it was
Friday, and there was only
one major obstacle keeping
me from getting a start on
R&G: a dance concert. Besides the fact that most of
the lights were up in the air
in our main auditorium, I
was going to be in tech rehearsal for the dance concert
all afternoon and running
the lightboard for the performance that evening.
Fortunately, if anything
could make me forget about
R&G for a little while, it
was that dance tech rehearsal. Soon I had no time
to think about anything but
what the lighting designer
and stage manager were
saying and the cues I was
writing. After a few hours,
we took a break, and the
bright house lights came
back on. I remembered that
there was a world to see beyond the sides of my lightboard monitor and voices to
hear that didn’t come from a
headset. Backstage during
the ensuing chit-chat, someone handed me a long rectangular box with a paper
rolled up inside. The light
plot for R&G was finally
here! Having the actual paper in my hands made the
upcoming production feel
that much more real and imminent. Now I had everything I needed to start getting those lights up.
Becky Marsh was a Perform It! student for three years. She played
piano for Love’s Labour’s Lost and The Tempest and enjoyed painting
sets and taking the fall acting classes. Becky studied music and mathematics at Connecticut College and graduated in the spring of 2009.
For The Comedy of Errors this spring, she’s helping Perform It! with
music and lighting. Becky plans to spend the summer working on the
tech crew at The Winnipesaukee Playhouse.
Volume 6, Issue 1
Page 7
Fall Theater Classes a Success
“This learning mayest thou taste”
The Perform It! 2009-2010
Yearlong Program started in
September with the fall semester of weekly classes for
44 students. The Perform It!
theater arts curriculum includes voice training; stage
movement; and learning improvisational skills, team
building, Shakespeare’s
theater, and Elizabethan history. Students learn to scan
Shakespeare’s lines by iden-
tifying iambic pentameter,
elisions, and the everimportant line punctuation.
They also learn theater terminology, set and costume
design considerations, and
lighting. Students work together in groups to create
lively skits, using their new
knowledge of voice projection, body language, and
stage etiquette. Our emerging young thespians, rang-
ing in age from 6 to 18, participated in the classes with
enthusiasm. The fall theater
arts instruction is required
before acting in the spring
play.
Talent Show
“A rare talent”
Our best talent show ever!
Thirty students participated in our annual talent
show in December, performing for an audience of
family and friends at The
Village Players Theater.
Students entertained everyone with original skits
“Singing in the Rain” with the
Marsh family
and dances, songs and soliloquies, and instrumental
numbers played on piano,
drums, and bass. The festive atmosphere made for
a wonderful performance,
and everyone enjoyed the
show.
Acceptance Speech (continued from page 3)
to everyone at Perform It!
that this is your award. You
took the big risks and dared
to dream. May the Moss
Hart Award be a realization
for you to continue to reach
for the stars in everything
you do and to make sure
Page 8
that your gifts always continue to move by your contributions to the world.
Our man Will tells us,
“We are such stuff as
dreams are made on.” We
thank the New England
Theatre Conference for the
realization of our
“Midsummer Night’s
Dream”… the dream to give
our best to our students and
for our students to give their
best to the world.
Perform It! Folio
Second Annual Shakespeare Faire
After almost every Perform
It! show, at least one young
student comes up to a cast
member and exclaims, “I wish
I could be a part of Perform
It!” Depending on the situation, however, that hasn't always been a realistic option.
Some students live too far
away to make the numerous
trips to Wolfeboro, and others
have scheduling conflicts.
These comments did generate
a question, though: How could
our theater company involve
more young people in the funfilled activities that are part of
Perform It? So, in response to
that question, in the fall of
2008, the Shakespeare Faire
was born.
The daylong Shakespeare
Faire is a hands-on, educational theater experience for
students in grades 6-12.
Through a coordinated series
of workshops, “day” students
participate in all of the types of
activities that make up our
yearlong youth theater program: acting instruction and
exercises, make-up demonstrations and application, costuming, and learning about Shakespeare's life and times. The
latter is communicated to the
Faire participants through a
living timeline of Shakespeare's life.
Throughout the day, our
Perform It! students interact
with the day students and teach
them the things they've learned
as members of Perform It! The
Faire culminates in an opportunity for groups of day students
to act out scenes taken from
some of Shakespeare's comedies for a delighted audience
of students, parents, and siblings.
Last fall, in preparation for
the second Shakespeare Faire,
Perform It! students, under the
oversight of Dale Cameron,
built a scale model of Shakespeare's Globe Theatre, the
London theater where many of
his plays were staged for the
first time.
Perform It!'s Shakespeare
Faire gives students, who
might not be able to be involved in our yearlong theater
program an opportunity to experience what Perform It! is all
about. For students who are
not quite sure they want to be
involved, the Faire has also
served as an opportunity to see
what we're all about. In fact,
four of this year's newest
members are Shakespeare
Faire alumni.
This fall's third annual
Shakespeare Faire is already
scheduled. On Thursday, October 21, 2010, Perform It!
members will be ready and
eager to introduce uninitiated
students to the fun and educational activities that make up
Perform It! Young People's
Stage Company. Would you
like to join us?
Under the direction of Dale Cameron, a Perform It! dad,
students built a model of the Globe Theatre for use in the
Shakespeare Faire
Volume 6, Issue 1
Page 9
Perform It! and the Moss Hart Award
By Jan Helling Croteau
In 2000, Perform It! received an honorable mention from the New England
Theatre Conference for our
production of The Taming of
the Shrew. The awards ceremony was held in Hartford,
Connecticut where I traveled to accept the award on
behalf of Perform It! That is
where I met 90-year-old
Kitty Carlisle who wanted
to speak to each of the
award winners. Ms. Hart’s
kind demeanor was evident
as she graciously gave the
winners their awards. Perform It! also won honorable
mentions in 2002 and 2007
as well as the award for Best
Youth Theater Production in
2009 along with the Moss
Hart Memorial Award.
This past November
when we attended the
awards ceremony, Dr. Catherine Hart, the daughter of
Moss Hart and Kitty Carlisle Hart, presented us with
the award that honors her
family legacy. All who attended the banquet treasured
her heartfelt speech of childhood memories of her famous parents.
The trophy will be on
display in various places
throughout Wolfeboro so
that we can share it with our
town. For the month of
March, the trophy was on
display at the Meredith Village Savings Bank. The
Wolfeboro Library will display it for the month of
April, and we will have it at
The Village Players Theater
during our spring show. We
are delighted to be added to
the long list of professional,
college, youth, secondary,
and community theater
companies who have received this prestigious
award.
Behind the Scenes
“By inspiration of celestial grace”
Every theater company
has a group of selfless souls
who work their magic behind the scenes to make the
company a success, and at
Perform It! we are most fortunate to have many such
individuals.
Since the beginning of
our first show 16 years ago,
Marybeth Wadlinger has
been instrumental in keeping the organization on
track. Marybeth is president
of our board of directors and
producer of our shows. She
heads up the annual appeal
and does the layout of the
Page 10
newsletter. She also designed, built, and maintains
Perform It!’s website. Her
tireless efforts on behalf of
Perform It! oftentimes go
unnoticed, but without her
intelligence, strength, and
gentle guidance, we would
not be the theater company
we are today.
Working with Marybeth
over the years has been inspiring. She is witty and
kind, direct yet sensitive,
empathetic and pragmatic.
She gives an open ear to
anyone who needs her attention. Being the mother of
seven children, she has perfected the fine art of reading
kids of all ages and accurately assessing their needs.
She is loved by everyone in
the company: students,
moms and dads, artists and
mentors.
We at Perform It! give
Marybeth a standing ovation
for her love, care, and devotion to the theater community that she helped build
from the ground up. Marybeth, a huge heartfelt thank
you from all of us for your
service, your vision, and
your commitment to Perform It!
Perform It! Folio
What is The Comedy of Errors About?
by Abbie & Donna Powell
The Comedy of Errors,
considered to be one of
Shakespeare’s earliest plays,
is a hilarious tale of mix-ups
and mistaken identities that
takes place over the course
of a single day. The Syracusian Aegeon comes to
Ephesus, a city in Asia Minor, despite his awareness
of a law which states that
anyone from Syracuse who
enters the city will be put to
death or must pay a fine of
one thousand ducats. After
Aegeon is apprehended, the
Duchess of Ephesus asks
him why he risked coming
to the city. He tells her the
sad tale of how long ago,
during a storm at sea, he
was separated from his wife,
one of his twin baby boys,
and one of his sons’ future
servants—another twin baby
boy. Aegeon raised his son,
Antipholus, and his son’s
servant, Dromio, both of
whom had taken the names
of their brothers to honor
them. In Syracuse they grew
to early manhood, at which
time they set off to find out
what they could about their
lost brothers. Aegeon waited
two years, hoping to hear
news of his son and his
son’s servant, but at last he
set sail in search of the two
young men. His search
lasted five years until it
brought him to Ephesus.
After hearing Aegeon’s tale,
the Duchess takes pity on
him, giving him the day to
borrow or beg the money he
needs in order to avert his
death sentence.
That same day in Ephesus, where lives a rich merchant named Antipholus and
his servant Dromio, there
arrives another rich merchant and his servant, alike
in both name and looks to
the aforementioned duo.
Chaos ensues when Adriana, Antipholus of Ephesus’s wife, unwittingly dines
with the wrong Antipholus
and locks her own husband
out of the house; the fiancée
of one of the Dromios sits in
the incorrect man’s lap; servants deliver the wrong
things to the wrong masters;
and the sanity of each Antipholus and Dromio is
questioned. What will the
conclusion of this confusion
be? Come find out!
Perform It! is a 501(c)(3) organization. Your tax-deductible donation helps Perform It! use the works of William Shakespeare to provide theater projects that build bridges between people of all ages in our community.
I WOULD LIKE TO HELP PERFORM IT!
Name:
Your tax-deductible donation may be made to:
Address:
Perform It! Young People’s Stage Company
P. O. Box 2093
Wolfeboro, NH 03894
Thank You!
Volume 6, Issue 1
Page 11