Touchstone Backstage

Cathleen as a happy camper, circa 1989

“A lot of parents pack up their troubles and send them off to summer camp.”
-Raymond Duncan, American dancer, artist, poet & philosopher

“All that is valuable in human society depends upon the opportunity for development accorded the individual.”
-Albert Einstein

Ever since I was a child, I have marked time by the academic calendar.

On the eve of each first day of school, as I carefully arranged and rearranged my sharpened pencils in their case, my heart would swell in a torrent of hopes and yearnings for the year ahead. “This year,” I would vow, pressing this most fervent prayer between the glossy covers of my unicorn folder set. “This year I will be COOL.”

While quite fond of the rigors of school, I never quite lived up to these grand expectations on the social front. I was scrawny and shy, rather small for my age, sensitive and trusting, didn’t take well to teasing, plagued with a tentative nature that was too often overrun by more confident and self-possessed friends.

Then, at the end of 4th grade, everything changed. My parents sent me to Summer Camp.

Ah… camp! Where schoolyard oddities become summertime trendsetters! Where February’s weird is July’s cool!

At Girl Scout camp, all the adults were slightly batty – with counselor names like Breezy, Piggy and Pooch – who encouraged us to sing “loud and proud,” find someone new to sit with in the lunchroom and find the magic in the everyday. Every morning started with a song.

The next year, at Creative Writing camp, I learned how to illustrate my own picture book, and blend colors into a glowing sunset.

Touchstone Campers making masks last summer.

Leadership Camp taught public speaking skills, diplomacy and, memorably, a few choice moves of self-defense. Followed by Poetry Camp and momentously, a summer of Theatre Camp- my first practical exposure to drama and performance.

That summer I learned what a “black box” was; how to create different characters through movement; I experienced a “guided visualization” and imagined myself floating around in the womb– the womb!– how to stay awake while dreaming; and I learned to make a mask, molded from my own face using vaseline and plaster gauze (a technique I introduced to Camp Touchstone kids last year). This I molded into a bold, extravagant face– very much unlike my own– painted with shining red lips and dramatic patches of thick turquoise eyeshadow, at first haltingly, then exuberantly applied.  “Are you sure?” I had asked my instructor, buzzing and incredulous. “I can paint her any way I want?”

I was hooked. Summer Camp became my annual escape– and freedom to shed the confines of a school year identity and start anew. Summer Camp offered a laboratory for creative experimentation, developing skills in the arts, communication, and self-expression, and for building peer relationships based upon shared interests rather than the social ordering of the public school cafeteria.

This is the promise and blessing of Summer Camp– students out from behind the desk, a fresh start with a new group of peers and (as is often the case) the company and attention of generous, quirky, imaginative teaching professionals who are equally delighted to be out from under the confines of the school year, guiding kids into creative terrain for which there may be no time, support or resources during the typical school year.

Summer is for camp.

Interested in sending your child to camp this year? Camp Touchstone runs weekdays July 16-27, culminating in a final performance for friends and family. Students learn about acting, playwriting, improvisation, and creating theatre as an “ensemble”. For more information, check out the brochure HERE. Space is limited – sign up today!

© h. scott heist 11 / splintercottage.com

As the busy season here at Touchstone winds down there is (thankfully!) some time to reflect on the entire past season. A season filled with community building events– most recently, the Civil War Project and Young Playwrights’ Lab, both of which had me thinking a lot about community, how we do our part in building it, but also how Touchstone has given me the gift of community.

I’ve been a Touchstone company member since winter 2001, slowly over the years moving out from “behind the scenes” (initially as the stage manager running the show, usually hidden away in the tech booth) and into the “spotlight” (now as the managing director running the company interacting more face to face with Touchstone patrons and greater community, chatting with folks in the lobby, giving the pre-show curtain speech, etc.). Simultaneously, my appreciation for and integration into the Bethlehem community has deepened, and the faces and names I often heard or would see over and over again on the streets, in the shops, and out at meetings have now become well-known faces and friendly acquaintances. Heading out to a Bethlehem event now, such as the Bethlehem Fine Arts & Craft Festival a few weekends ago, or this past weekend’s Southside Sale and Celtic Kilt Crawl (and quite often even the grocery store!), I’m happy to see many people with connections to the Touchstone family.

© h. scott heist 11 / splintercottage.com

While waiting in line at the Harvest Festival last year, my husband and I chatted with a woman whose mother’s story was told years ago in our SouthSide Experience production.  She shared how meaningful that was for her mother, which made my day.  At Molly’s restaurant after A Resting Place, a few us “touchstonians” ran into a couple who’d seen the show and were blown away by it. They’d even dropped off in our door slot a cd with photos they’d taken. Now we knew who’d anonymously passed on the great pics! It seems everywhere I go, there is either someone I know who is already connected to us, or someone that I meet who is and I just didn’t know it yet. The day after the Young Playwrights’ Festival, I was chatting about the event with a good friend who just happened to be the second cousin of an actor who’s been in my play two years in a row– what?!

The connections and ripple effect that Touchstone has is incredible. And even more incredible to me is this gift I’ve been given, to work at a place that offers me the opportunity year after year to meet people from all over the Lehigh Valley who have in some way been touched (couldn’t resist!) by the theatre.  I look forward to the next 10 years– how will Touchstone’s reach into the community grow, and how many more people will I meet in the process…

Some days, the gods smile on you; some days they don’t.

Other times, the gods will smile on you for an entire weekend. That smiley, shiny weekend for Touchstone started on April 13th. Somehow, months ago, we choose this beautifully-weathered weekend to hold A Resting Place.  Perhaps it was chance, perhaps there was divine intervention for our well-intentioned offering… I’m not sure, I’m really not an expert on such things; I’m just someone who gets really skeptical when a bunch of things in a row go as planned. What I can tell you is that this weekend also coincided with the two-breakfast-sandwiches-for-$3 at Wawa, so right there things are starting to get creepy awesome. And folks, my Karmic tale does not end there!

But let me start at the beginning:

Last year, myself and Christopher Shorr were coming up with our production design concept for A Resting Place. What we finally settled on was an 1800s pageant wagon that would travel around Bethlehem, pulled by an elephant or horses.

The pageant wagon on site at Lehigh.
© h scott heist 12 / splintercottage.com

Well, thanks to our insurance company, the live elephant wandering around the streets of Bethlehem got nixed. I’m not saying I wasn’t 100% percent in love with Doug Roysdon‘s life-sized puppet elephant– we were just shooting for the real thing, at first.

Betty the Elephant – say hello, Betty!
© h scott heist 12 / splintercottage.com

As awesome as the pageant wagon turned out, it was an epic pain in the backside and a significant stress that probably took a couple years off more than a couple lives. First came months of drawings and theories on steering, propulsion, braking, stability, aesthetic, and functionality. We eventually found a hay wagon that would suit our needs and a technical director that was willing to go down the rabbit hole (Endless thanks to Jeff Riedy, an amazing artist and technical director who nearly single-handedly built the wagon).

Thanks, Jeff!
© h scott heist 12 / splintercottage.com

Fast forward a couple months through more discussions and delays (due to external production company incompetence) and we were at our gloriously, sunny April weekend. The wagon was ready to be hooked up to the Touchstone Van and be pulled to our five show locations (Note: It is not prudent to wait until the last minute to see if something is going to work, but sometimes you roll the dice). The wagon was off and running, and it was smooth sailing till the end of the night when the wagon found its way back home. It was noticed that a slight bend in the steering mechanism of the wagon had grown worse. At this point, it didn’t seem like a major problem, so we decided to just keep an eye on it. As we arrived at our second show on Saturday afternoon, I was informed by our on-stage Technical Director and driver of the towing vehicle that the yoke had buckled more.

No bueno!

The metal was far beyond a yielding point, and I couldn’t allow it to enter back onto the public street without some major repair. But it’s 6PM on a Saturday night! Who, what, where does one go to when a hay wagon needs emergency repair?! We’ve got two more shows the next day, and we can’t leave it in the middle of Lehigh’s campus overnight! The next hour of my life is filled with frantic phone calling, and it’s during this hour that once again, the universe told me to take a deep breath and that a Karmic response was on the way.

It just so happened that the building the hay wagon was parked next to on Lehigh’s campus had a metal shop in it. What? It just so happened that the graduate assistant running the shop had stayed on campus for the weekend. Really? And it just so happened that the only certified welder I know was willing to come out at 9PM and fix our wagon– Wow!

A late-night miracle!

Three hours later, the wagon, now stronger than it has probably ever been, was once again pulled back onto the streets of Bethlehem for a midnight run back to its home base. Catastrophe avoided!

Do gods really smile on us? Can instant Karma really get you? I’m not really sure– but thank God for Wawa’s 2-for-$3 sizzli deal!

The Young Playwrights’ Festival is such a time of joy for us here at Touchstone, a time of play but also of challenges. We’re in the art business here, and we see in the colors and conflicts of these short plays an opportunity to create genuinely memorable dramatic moments that help us understand better what it means to be human– particularly human and ten years old or so.

Bill rehearses with his cast for “What Happens in the Club Stays in the Club” by Rosy Vargas of Lincoln Leadership Academy

But sometimes, it’s not so much fun: it’s sad, shocking, or just distressing. This year, the play I chose, the play I was given, was written by a twelve (now thirteen) year old girl, and it included drug use by a stalker who threatens the female protagonist with a box knife, throws gasoline on her, and shoots his brother. This is a young girl’s nightmare, and it’s very well-written. But what are we to do with it? It’s not fun; it’s not cute. It’s just downright hurtful, for the most part. Yes, we recognize that, as they say, the best adolescent literature is full of death and suffering (Think Old Yeller, or Harry Potter, or The Secret Garden), but we also know that, for the most part, our audience at the Young Playwrights’ Festival will be made up of children seven, eight, nine years old. How do we honor what this young adolescent has done without subjecting the entire audience to toxic levels of violence?

There’s a challenge.

I won’t say specifically how we handled it, but we did dial back the violence a lot. And it’s interesting to see what happen when we do– we end up beginning to be able to see real human beings at work, real characters, not just psychopaths. And there’s something to learn in that.

There are an awful lot of delightful little idiosyncrasies about the plays we produce for the Young Playwrights’ Festival.

Apprentice Zach Kanner as the Chocolate Man in the YPF play “Scenes from a Candy Shop”

Sometimes, they read perfectly right off the page, and we as directors can simply bring the pieces to the actors as something simple and straightforward. More often than not, though, there are lines of dialogue that confuse our literary brains, stage directions that baffle our sense of logic, and moments that we have no idea how to stage coherently (like the independently functioning Head and Body puppets in last year’s “Baby Bobby and Alex”). And sometimes, a mistake, indecision, or moment of whimsy from the playwright can turn into something priceless.

“There’s something I have to tell you!” says the Mouse Queen in YPF ’10. “I’m going to have twins!”
“Oh no! When are they due?” asks Heroic Humphrey.
“Tonight!” the Queen exclaims.

Nonsensical? A little. Comic gold onstage? Absolutely.

“…they will send you to an orphanage’s home?” one of my actors asks quizzically, reading a line. “Shouldn’t we change it to ‘orphanage?'”
“Nope,” say I, grinning. “Keep it. We’ll make it work.”

Another soon-to-be classic is “The Science Experiment That Went Wrong!”

And even if we don’t always see them upon first glance at the scripts, the kids writing these plays have master plans. I remember working in the classroom with young playwright Biance Acosta of Central Elementary:

“…And then Mrs. Donut Person turns into a ghost!” she tells me.
“Wow! What happens to Mr. Donut Person?”
“He says he told her so! And then there’s a funeral!” She beams. And, fifteen minutes later, she runs up to me and adds in a loud, proud whisper, “AND THERE’S SAD MUSIC AT THE FUNERAL!”
“Cool! Write it down!”

Biance’s “The Sad Story of Mrs. Donut Person,” is one of the seven plays that audiences will see unveiled at this year’s Festival, and it is every inch a YPF classic.

A frog, a pumpkin, and a bird get ready to go onstage for “A Tricky Story” in last year’s YPF

We hope you can join us for this year’s Festival. The shows that these kids have created are hilarious, touching, tragic, uplifting, ridiculous, and absolutely unforgettable– curious phrasings and idiosyncrasies and all.

The Seventh Annual Young Playwrights’ Festival is Saturday May 19, 7pm
Immediately following the show is our fabulous Drink and Dessert Gala to cap off the night
Tickets for both available at http://www.touchstone.org / 610-867-1689

Need a reminder of how incredible of a show this is? Check out the photo video of last year’s Festival:

Meet our Young Playwrights from Central Elementary School’s Spring Young Playwrights’ Lab program!

Central Elementary Young Playwrights say "Cheese!"

After snapping a few serious pics on the last day of class, we all got a little goofy for the camera.  Not surprising from the imaginative bunch who brought the world The Fairy and the Stinkbug (Juliana), The Best Hero (Osiris), Chiner and the King (Elarick), Snake and Rat (Tina), The Princess Frog and the Frog (Daizy), Stretchman (Christian), The Sandwich (Kelisha), MegaWar! (Damien), Find His Dad (Jocelyn), Time to Go Everywhere (Rosamaris), The Life of Mr. Monkey (Anthony), Saucy Pete’s Big Life (Eduardo), Space Stick (Rubiell), The Devouring Rose (Yonalis) and a 2012 Young Playwrights’ Festival pick, The Sad Story of Mrs. Donut Personby Biance Acosta!

Biance, with classmates.

In Biance’s short play, Mrs. Donut Person refuses to heed the warning of her husband and box-fellow, Mr Donut Person, and meets a tragic demise that culminates in a somber procession of breakfast pastry.  Lisa Jordan, Managing Director/Ensemble Member of Touchstone will direct Biance’s play– which she will bring to life with whimsical costumes and the acting talents of adult and child actors from the community.

Every year, Touchstone Theatre, in partnership with Bethlehem and Allentown school district teachers, introduces students across the Lehigh Valley in the art of playwriting, through our award-winning Young Playwrights’ Lab after school program.  The program runs 8 weeks, meeting twice a week, and culminates in each student writing his or her original one-act play, which is then submitted to a panel for selection into the annual Young Playwrights’ Festival.

This year, 93 original student plays were submitted for review– and winnowing that group down to 7 plays (one per school) was a challenge!   Plays were selected on the basis of originality, style, stageability, and plot details that captured the imaginations of the play directors and panelists.

"Gee," says Lisa, "It sort of looks like a giant doughnut..."

Our Festival directors– comprised of Touchstone company members and guest artists– were each paired with one of these original works and have set about the task of bringing each to life, live onstage at Zoellner Arts Center’s Baker Hall on Saturday, May 19th, 7pm. Tickets are $10.

The 7th Annual Young Playwrights’ Festival will feature:

Man’s Best Friend by Emily Rojas (Central Elementary, Fall program)
Inseparable by Leo Rodriguez (Trexler Middle)
The Science Experiment that Went Wrong! by Elena Myalo (Brougha Middlel)
The Sad Story of Mrs. Donut Person by Biance Acosta (Central Elementary, Spring program)
The Jungle by Nadie Rivera (Donegan Elementary)
What Happens in the Club Stays in the Club by Rosy Vargas (Lincoln Leadership Acadmey)
The Crazy Adventure on Mt. Everest by Evan Cartwright (Freemansburg Elementary)

For the young and young-at-heart, the Festival is an inspiring and uplifting peek into the creative imaginations of the Lehigh Valley’s next generation of artists, and an opportunity to support the continuation of Touchstone’s arts-in-education programs, which fill the arts and cultural enrichment gap left by income inequality, budget cuts, and the increasing demand that standardized testing places on the school day.

Bring your family, friends and funny bone – a truly magical night of theatre.

The Young Playwrights’ Festival takes place Saturday, May 19th, 7pm at Zoellner Arts Center’s Baker Hall.  The Festival will be followed by the decadent Dessert Gala Reception & Live Auction to benefit Touchstone’s education programs.  Tickets available online for the Festival performance or Festival and Gala, or by calling Touchstone (610) 867-1689.

Bringing the circus to City Hall. Photography © h scott heist 12 / splintercottage.com

So, last week was my week for blog duty, a task I enjoy about once a month or so– except when it’s during the same week we’re opening a “ginormous” community-based production with auxiliary events, nearly three years in the making! Needless to say, I was behind on my blog post, though I just about wrote it all in my head one day on the way in to work. Here it is, a little late, but hopefully still worthy of a read…

As I drove into work, I was thinking about what kind of people we’d draw for A Resting Place— Civil War buffs, family and friends of the cast and crew, Touchstone regulars, and who else? I also thought about whether or not I’d come out and see A Resting Place if I wasn’t directly involved (pretending for a moment I also wasn’t a theatre-goer!), ultimately realizing that what would draw my attention is Bethlehem itself.

I moved to Bethlehem over ten years ago, and, aside from a short stint near Philly, have lived here since, developing over time a genuine love and deep pride for my hometown. When I send gifts to out-of-town friends, I buy from a locally owned shop and make sure to include their business card; when company comes to town, we walk down Main Street or hit up the South Side for some non-chain, unique-to-Bethlehem restaurants; when talking about Bethlehem, I warn people, “Tell me when you’ve heard enough, because I can go on forever about all the shops, eateries, arts organizations, people…”

Dan Rice greets the incoming audience. Photography © h scott heist 12 / splintercottage.com

I also noticed, as I met people from all over Bethlehem and the Greater Lehigh Valley that lots of Bethlehemites share this “hometown pride.” Now, to be clear, I am not trying to start a rivalry or claim one city is better than another in the Valley. There are fantastic things to do and see in each of the neighboring cities. But I guess the realization I came to as I got “audience jitters,” wondering who and why anyone would come to A Resting Place, is that living in a city which allows a life-size elephant puppet to lead a circus wagon with nearly 100 people into its City Hall Plaza is pretty exceptional and breeds that kind of pride and interest in its local history.

So, hats off to Bethlehem and its citizens, present day and past. We are fortunate to live here, and if I may show some “homebase theatre pride,” I feel fortunate to work at a company like Touchstone, rooted here and willing to examine and entertain its community.

For more on why Bethlehem is great, check out City of Bethlehem here and the Downtown Business Association here.

©h scott heist 12 / splintercottage.com

WOW!

Just a little over a week till Touchstone launches A Resting Place, our community offering for the Civil War’s 150th commemoration! In the midst of all the madness that happens when approaching a show with a cast and crew of 100+, one would think we wouldn’t have time to think about what our next big, community-based project is going to be… and you’re right! That’s why we need your help.

We call upon you, oh faithful readers of the Touchstone Backstage blog to tell us what topic you would like to see us tackle next. Will it be another foray into the past, an exploration of a modern societal issue? Or perhaps you’d like to see us do a large scale pirate adventure in the middle of the Lehigh River? We need your input. Feel free to use the comments section of this entry to give us your ideas or if they are so epic it requires more than the allotted space, email me at jp@touchstone.org. We look forward to hearing from you.

To the future!
Jp

Two weeks until we open A Resting Place. We’re setting as much as possible, but given the scale of the show, given the explorative nature of rehearsals, given the size and difficult-to-transport-ness of the set, we can’t lock things down just yet. We solidify some points, and we stay flexible on others, knowing that they will keep shifting. We improvise. We catch what is thrown our way. We juggle.

“In a play about a circus, some juggling is to be expected.”

— Christopher Shorr, director of A Resting Place

© h scott heist / splintercottage.com

Rehearsals are in the evening. Before that is a full day. Meetings, press releases, poster designs, transcribing, note-taking, note-puzzling-over, education work, endless emails, lesson-planning, rehearsal-planning, craving coffee. We always talk about the many varied hats we wear, as company members at Touchstone Theatre.

“The world cannot be governed without juggling.”

— John Selden, English politician and philosopher

© h scott heist / splintercottage.com

It’s not always pretty or comfortable, but it’s work that needs doing, and work we do gladly. We don’t cram our schedules full for the sake of glory or pride or a few extra bucks. We don’t juggle just because it’s something to do. We do it because creating art, large-scale art, art for and with the community, is a beautiful thing, something to aspire to, and something that the world would be poorer without.

“The important point is the toss, not the catch.

“Speaking metaphorically (I love metaphors), juggling is like life, in that success depends on the quality of what you throw into it rather than grabbing what you think you can get away with.

“See? I bet you didn’t know juggling was such a metaphysical activity.”

— Victor M. Chong, my dad

If we make our community think and feel and rejoice in hearing their thoughts in our art, then the long hours of juggling are worth it. Things are sometimes dropped, and they aren’t always thrown straight, and our arms are weary from the work, but with Touchstone’s history and legacy of community-based theatre, we know that our art will fly, defy gravity, and inspire as it dances through the air.

“The Guardian Angel”
by Stephen Dunn (American poet, 1939- )

Afloat between lives and stale truths,
he realizes
he’s never truly protected one soul,
they all die anyway, and what good
is solace,
solace is cheap. The signs are clear:
the drooping wings, the shameless thinking
about utility
and self. It’s time to stop.
The guardian angel lives for a month
with other angels,
sings the angelic songs, is reminded
that he doesn’t have a human choice.
The angel of love
lies down with him, and loving
restores him his pure heart.
Yet how hard it is
to descend into sadness once more.
When the poor are evicted, he stands
between them
and the bank, but the bank sees nothing
in its way. When the meek are overpowered
he’s there, the thin air
through which they fall. Without effect
he keeps getting in the way of insults.
He keeps wrapping
his wings around those in the cold.
Even his lamentations are unheard,
though now,
in for the long haul, trying to live
beyond despair, he believes, he needs
to believe
everything he does takes root, hums
beneath the surfaces of the world.