Issue No.87 Single Copy $2.50 December, 2005 CAST & CREW “The Source For Theater Happenings” NEW ARTISTIC DIRECTOR AT PENOBSCOT THEATRE By Muriel Kenderdine “As long as I’m in the theater somehow, I’m happy,” says This was The ANT Company (Another New Theatre). Scott R. C. Levy (pronounced LEH-vee), new Producing During the years 1994-1996, Scott, as founder and artistic Artistic Director at Penobscot Theatre Company in director, produced, directed, and performed in a total of 13 Bangor ME. “In order to do anything in the theater, you productions including the first New York City revival of need to know something about everything in the theater. I Stephen Sondheim’s ASSASSINS. don’t think I can express enough my passion for the art form. I enjoy each element of the theater equally. Well, I’m not a very good set designer – I wouldn’t want to do that! But certainly the producing, the acting, the directing, the teaching are all what I love to do.” A native of West Hartford, Connecticut, where his father owned a restaurant and his mother was a social worker for the state, Scott Levy was introduced to the art form at an early age. “Oh, really early. I think I was three. My parents enrolled me in a pre-school theater camp, and I played Prince Charming in CINDERELLA. That seems to be the first memory I have of ‘treading the boards’! And I remember my grandmother taking me to see The Nutcracker with the Hartford Ballet at the Bushnell and productions at Hartford Stage, and always being exposed to the theater and to the arts. Later on in school I began to play the saxophone, and I became very proficient at it, so by the time I got to high school there came a point where I had to decide if I was going to follow the music route or the theatrical route, and the theater won out, and that’s how I got to New York University as an acting major. “I did some directing in high school – we did Monty Python type of stuff – but I guess I really got interested in directing once I got to college and was taking directing classes as part of my theater training. Yet in a way it was when I started teaching at the age of 22 that it seemed the directing was furthered by the teaching: I became a better director as a teacher. Scott R. C. Levy “Then as far as producing goes, I started my own theater In 1997 he received his Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in company in Connecticut the summer after my freshman Drama from NYU’s Tisch School of The Arts, followed in year in college as a way to have college and high school 1999 by an MA in Educational Theater from NYU’s students perform in productions that were not just Neil School of Education. Meanwhile he was picking up Simon comedies or big flashy musicals.” management training along the way. “The summer before I went to college I was the festival Asked if he was particularly drawn to new plays, Scott manager for the Theater Festival in my town, so that got responded, “Absolutely! New plays are the way to keep me started in management. Then I began doing some light the art form alive, and because theater is such a management work while I was in college, not that I really collaborative art, how wonderful to work on plays when had a job; but around my junior year I started interning the playwright is part of the collaboration! The and had a working relationship with Richard Frankel playwright is more important than anyone else really. So, Productions, one of the major Broadway producers. That you know, there certainly is credit and merit to doing internship led to many different positions in many plays of the classic theater – you want people to remember different projects.” (These projects included North that work and you want to show that it’s timeless and how American Booking Coordinator for David Helfgott: The important it is – but to suggest that classic plays are better Shine Tour, planning and implementing marketing or more important than what hasn’t yet been written is strategies for the national tour of STOMP, Management ridiculous.” Assistant for the Broadway production of FOREVER TANGO, and Executive Assistant to both Richard Frankel (Besides the plays mentioned above which he himself and Marc Routh.) wrote or co-wrote, he actually won a Scholastic Writing Award in high school for writing a play called AFTER Later producing and management experience included LIFE?) work with David Singer Entertainment and Playwrights Horizons, Inc., where he has been responsible for all Scott and Joye Levy have a six-month-old daughter, born productions and festivals for the theater school as well as shortly before the move to Bangor. “When we knew we co-producer for the theater school of this Off-Broadway were having a baby, that really made us decide that we theater company. wanted to get out of New York City, that we did not want to raise a family there. If we had been multi-millionaires, His teaching positions include Voice and Diction and we might have had a different opinion, but you don’t go Introduction to Acting for the NYU Steinhardt School of into the theater for financial gain, and if you don’t have a Education, Resident Theater Teaching Artist for the lot of money, you really don’t have a good life in New Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum Learning Through Art York City. So I began to look for academic and artistic program, and full-time faculty member at Playwrights director positions across the country. Then in December I Horizons Theater School. saw the posting for this position, and something about it sounded just really right, so I began to put a lot of effort As an actor, his experience includes PROJECT 9/11 at the into getting up here. I come from a New England town. Edinburgh Festival Fringe, OUR TOWN VS. AIM at We were really looking for a small community that had a HERE, THE BROTHERS and YOUNG EUGENE at cultural life to it and was on the East Coast, so Bangor fit Provincetown Playhouse, DOONESBURY those things. FLASHBACKS and THE EMPEROR’S NEW CLOTHES at LaMaMa/Playwrights Horizons, the 60-city national “What I’m trying to figure out now is what exactly we tour of TOUR DE FORCE, and the role of the Fool in want to present (on our stage). We want plays with high KING LEAR at London’s Shakespeare Globe. literary merit and want to recognize the literary nature of the play, but also building the audience is crucial to me, to In addition to the previously mentioned ASSASSINS, get more people to realize that theater is an art form that selected titles from Scott’s directing experience include has not yet vanished completely and still remains THE GREAT AMERICAN CHEESE SANDWICH, important and necessary. So in the end, I think it will CATASTROPHE THEORY, SEARCHING FOR THE manifest itself in a diverse season of programming with MOON (also writer), PLAY THE RAIN (also co-writer), potentially a little something for everyone. I would never and LOVERS LEAPT and OSWALD’S BACKYARD by present a season that was purely for mass appeal because Leslie Bramm; as well as ONION GIRL by Joye Cook- that’s not intriguing; but to have a Broadway hit mixed Levy (any relation??) with a classic play mixed with a new play – that in turn recognizes that new play development is absolutely “Yes, my wife! We met in grad school. We were getting something that will be added to the program: working our Master’s degrees in educational theater at NYU, with playwrights to make world premieres of their plays which was a very interesting program: learning how to use happen, which is what we’re doing with A CHRISTMAS theater to educate, to teach people about anything.” CAROL actually. It is a world premiere adaptation by Leslie Bramm. The script and the lines are changing as (Note: Joye C. Levy is also the new Director of Education we’re in rehearsal. Unfortunately Leslie is not able to be for Penobscot Theatre.) here with us bodily at this time since he is laid up in New York with a broken leg! UNCLE VANYA by Anton Chekhov adapted by David Mamet, “So that’s a little about the programming. On top of that, March 15 – 26, directed by Shaun Peknic we are the largest outsource of arts education in the State ALMOST, MAINE by John Cariani, April 26 – May 7, of Maine, so we’re really connecting more what we do on directed by Scott R. C. Levy stage with what we do in the classroom. That’s very (Possibly Maine native Cariani will visit Bangor for this first important to me. northern Maine production of his play.) “Also, we want to make theater available to more people, Penobscot Theatre Company so that for those people who say tickets are too expensive, Bangor Opera House the cost is not a factor. 131 Main Street Bangor, ME 04401-6309 “Now we own the Bangor Opera House. It is the last Box Office (207) 942-3333 remaining live performance theater in downtown Bangor, [email protected] and it doesn’t look very good. It needs a lot of help. I www.penobscottheatre.org would rather stay here and restore this building and be Administration (207) 947-6618 able to open it up and connect to other community organizations, which we have already started doing actually, than release the building and move to some warehouse out of downtown.