This Friday, March 8, the Valley Players community theater group in Waitsfield will debut a screenplay that’s never been produced before – “Poet’s Choice,” written by Mary Pratt of New Haven, Vermont.
Pratt worked on the play for about 12 years, stopping for periods when she reached blocks. Last year, she finished it, submitting it to the Valley Players Playwright Award – a competition that supports playwrights from Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine with a cash prize.
“Poet’s Choice” director and longtime theater member Doug Bergstein said that he directed a snippet of the screenplay after Pratt won the prize and was intrigued by it.
DEVISING THE SCRIPT
The script takes up the question of “whether or not you have to suffer to be an artist,” Pratt said. The character Pem, a fallen angel chosen by God, comes to earth along with Satan – both looking for an artist to pose the question to.
Pratt said she vividly recalls when she came up with the idea for the screenplay. She was at a coffee shop with some colleagues who were poets. “I asked them, ‘if you had a choice between being happy or writing poetry, what would you do? One said ‘happiness,’ and another said ‘I actually am happy.’ I thought that would be an interesting question to play with – in a play, and so I came up with the angel and gave someone that choice.”
Cast member Gabrielle Tamasi (Barre) said that her character Satan is not seen, but only heard as a voice projected throughout the theater, and that developing a character through voice alone posed a unique challenge. Tamasi worked with Bergstein to distinguish the voice of Satan from that of God’s – played by Cynthia Seckler (Fayston) – channeling the energy of a younger sibling and taking on a playful, sarcastic tone.
Bergstein said that the show’s lighting director Irene Halibozek came up with the idea to add flashes of light – white or red – while God and Satan spoke.
OUTSIDE OF MY HEAD
“There were no preconceived notions about what’s supposed to happen,” Bergsten said about producing it, “because it’s never been on stage before.”
Pratt, the playwright, was in communication with Bergstein and the cast as they rehearsed it, rewriting and tweaking scenes as they worked. “For me, it was ideal to work with a director in that way,” she said, with this as her first stage production.
In the past, Pratt worked as a teacher, minister, writer, and apple-picker. She also raised her children and did performance art.
In February, she nervously attended a rehearsal. “It’s like sending your kid off to school,” she said, “but I was just so pleased with what they’ve done with it.”
“It’s just so nice to hear it outside of my head,” she added.
CHARACTER VS. SELF
“The cast has really good chemistry, and it’s authentic,” said cast member Carrie Phillips (Waterbury), who plays an art professor faced with reflection of the play’s overarching question.
Phillips described her character Barrie as “a risk-taker who’s not afraid to piss someone off.”
“The character is kind of….me,” she said, laughing. “I feel that life is a gift, and a random, wonderful act of physics – for this universe to exist. And I always feel like, you have to take a giant bite out of life, and make it count, and take it all in. Barrie is very much like that. When I read the script, I got goose bumps. I thought ‘this character puts into words how I feel about the energy of life.’”
Cast member Sarah DeBouter (Berlin), who plays a philosophy professor named Anna, said that she too felt akin to her character. The challenge in acting, she said, was “that delineation of character versus self.”
CEREBRAL COMEDY
“The play asks big questions,” DeBouter said, “and as actors, I think we’ve all been asking ourselves the same questions our characters have been contemplating.”
That deliberation of big questions is done through “incredibly witty, smart, funny writing,” Tamasi said. “It’s not slap-stick comedy, but more cerebral. It definitely has a critical thinking aspect to it.”
Additional cast members include Sarah Storjohann (Barre), Susan Loynd (Fayston), and Wes Olds (Graniteville).
The show will run for two weekends between March 8-17 at the Valley Players Theater. Show times are 7:30 p.m. on Fridays and Saturdays and 2 p.m. on Sundays.
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