Curtain raiser: Mad Horse Theater Company moves its main stage to South Portland

SOUTH PORTLAND — When the Mad Horse Theater Company launches its new season Oct. 11, the curtain will go up outside of Portland for the first time in the troupe’s 27-year history. This year, the main stage will be located at what has been Mad Horse’s rehearsal hall for the past three years, the former Hutchins School on Mosher Street.

If you don’t think that’s kind of a big deal, consider this – at its Oct. 4 meeting, the City Council is slated to adopt a special proclamation marking the event.

“We want to announce to our community that we have our first professional theater group coming into South Portland,” said Mayor Patti Smith on Monday.

“I will be there at the first show to welcome everyone,” said Smith. “This is fantastic. We always talk about trying to create culture and arts in our city and so many times we get compared to Portland and we pale in comparison. But now we have our own little opportunity to have some of what Portland has always had, in our own way. Little steps like this – although this is a big step – show that we have potential.

“We really do want to build a creative economy in South Portland,” said City Manager Jim Gailey.  “The whole goal of going into a lease with Mad Horse three years ago was to bring that very thing into that area. What they do and the variety of what they do only enhances the fabric of that neighborhood.”

David Jacobs, who joined Mad Horse’s board of directors last year and has served as chairman since June, said the decision to move to South Portland was “easy to make” once the board learned that its most recent venue, Lucid Stage, would close.

“We decided that using our home would make the most sense at this stage in our growth,” said Jacobs.

In August, Lucid Stage, which has operated since late 2010 at 29 Baxter Blvd., announced in an email to supporters that it would close for good at the end of this month.

"Unfortunately, with a costly overhead, we simply couldn't make ends meet while remaining faithful to our mission of proving an affordable and accessible arts center," wrote Lucid director Liz McMahon.

Christine Marshall, who has served as Mad Horse’s artistic director for the past eight seasons, says the company will continue a tradition begun while on the Lucid stage. Since 2008, the company has sponsored a “Dark Night” series, performing secondary shows or subletting its rented space to other theater groups on the early weeknights when the theater is normally dark.

When Mad Horse kicks off the new season Oct. 13 with David Mamet’s "November" – a comedy in which an unpopular American president tries desperately to hold on to his office during the lead up to Election Day – it will fill what are normally the down days – Monday, Oct. 15-Wednesday, Oct. 17 – with a production of "Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson." That show, produced in conjunction with the Stages children’s theater group that shares the Hutchins School with Mad Horse, is described as a “Wild West rock musical” about the founding of the Democratic Party.

“These are both really, really funny productions,” said Marshall. “Elections seem to get less civil every time. Our hope is that both shows will help people appreciate that there is some humor to be had and that it’s OK to laugh about it all.”

On Friday, Marshall was at the Hutchins School converting the classroom of the 1873 building that has been a rehearsal hall for nearly four years into a replica of the Oval Office, with heavy curtains on all four walls to create a “black box” environment.

“That’s the model, the kind of intimate theater that Mad Horse has always used,” said Jacobs. “So, this is already an atmosphere that we favor for putting on the productions that we do.”

Marshall says the new space should be able to accommodate nearly 60 theater-goers, just 10 less than could be sat at Lucid. Even in its largest space, on Portland’s outer Forest Avenue in the early 1990s, Mad Horse only sat 100 people per show.

“There’s a better connection between the audience and the actor when there is a smaller venue,” said Jacobs, of the company’s performance philosophy. “Certainly, we all enjoy going to shows where there are huge set pieces and huge costumes and the whole nine yards, but in this type of environment, I think, it's easier for the audience to get absorbed in what the actor is doing and what the intentions are of the writer.”

As a resident, professional – though non-union – theater ensemble, Mad Horse has always tried to pick plays that, to quote its mission statement, “compassionately examine and illuminate the enduring aspects of the human condition.”

In some cases, like the opening shows for this season, that exploration of social concern and personal transformation takes the form of comedy. In other cases, the experience is more poignant.

For example, Marshall still chokes up when contemplating "The Normal Heart," a play about the start of the AIDS crisis performed by Mad Horse two years ago. At each scene change during the show, a date and an increasingly larger number is written on a chalkboard to represent victims who have succumbed to the disease.

After the show, audience members were invited to add to the chalk board the name of a person each knew who had died of complications from the disease.

“You can’t help watching a play like that and remember a very specific person,” said Marshall. “After the first preview night, one side was completely filled. The idea of ever erasing these names is just crazy to us.”

All Mad Horse shows, Marshall says, whether comedy or drama, are expected to create some cathartic experience for its audience.

“There are some shows that we do that might not be approached by larger theaters because they’re a little controversial, or maybe they’re not as well known,” said Marshall. “We choose plays that fit that mission, and while that mission may seem very serious, there’s a lot of transcendent that can come out of humor.”

Whether Mad Horse continues to use the Hutchins School as its main stage after June 2013 remains to be seen. The space has certain challenges, like support posts in the middle of the room that lighting designer Tom Wyatt says can create challenges.

“We know that it will work this season, but it might cause some complications in future seasons, if we have a show with a larger cast,” said Jacobs. “So, we have yet to determine if this will suit us as out forever home.”

Jacobs said the Mad Horse board already is looking to potential venues for its 2012-2013 season, though it has yet to find any that measure up to the Hutchins School. Even if the main stage moves once more, it’s doubtful Mad Horse will abandon the building entirely.

While the city last summer used a $59,106 Community Development Block Grant to rehabilitate the outside of the school, Mad Horse has invested $30,000 inside, using two Davis Family Foundation grants. This fall, the theater and the city will team to install a natural gas boiler.

“To date, we’ve had a pretty good working relationship,” said Gailey.

“We’re really hoping for a trickle-down effect,” said Smith, citing the many restaurants, art studios and other businesses that benefit from what is a growing theater district on South Portland’s east end, with Mad Horse, Stages, Lyric Theater and Portland Players within blocks of each other.

More than half of the cast and crew associated with the next show, "November," live in South Portland, within that same area. The only question, Jacobs says, is whether audiences are ready to discover what the locals already know.

“We have a very loyal audience,” he said, “but like any business, we can’t survive on our core alone. We have to expand live theater to new audiences. The big unknown is whether people are going to come across the bridge and what support we’ll get from South Portland in general.”

Deputy loses gun to car thief

SOUTH PORTLAND — A Cumberland County Sheriff’s Deputy will not face disciplinary action after losing his firearm to a car burglar in South Portland Friday.

Cumberland County Chief Deputy Sheriff Naldo Gagnon declined to name the deputy in question Monday, other than to say he has “close to 20 years’” experience with the department. The deputy left his loaded 40-caliber Glock handgun in the center console of his personal vehicle, Gagnon said, because his children, all under age 10, were staying with him at his Ferry Village home that evening.

“He is within policy,” said Gagnon. “There is no discipline to be issued.”

Department policy, said Gagnon, calls on a deputy to be sure his or her weapon is “secured and out of sight.” Putting the firearm in the center console and locking the car doors meets that requirement, he said.

Gagnon could not say exactly how entry was gained to the deputy’s vehicle, but said no windows were broken.

“It [the vehicle] was locked and it was entered,” he said.

Friday’s incident marks the third time in 20 months that a Cumberland County sheriff’s deputy has had a department firearm stolen. About eight months ago, Gagnon said, another deputy had a service firearm stolen from the locked trunk of his vehicle while at a police training event in Tennessee. Then, in late 2010, the Raymond home of another deputy was burglarized. In that case, the thieves got the weapon by ripping out the wall safe in which it was stored.

“It’s damned if you do, damned if you don’t, no matter where you keep the darn things,” said Gagnon. “If a locked car is not secure and if a vault in a home is not secure, you tell me what is. Burglars and criminals will go to great lengths to do their dastardly deeds. I don’t know where you would draw the line and still have an officer’s weapon readily accessible should he need to take action.”

Gagnon said the sheriff’s department will review policy, to see what changes might be appropriate, but did not predict any immediate changes, even as he admitted the deputies were starting to lose their weapons with uncommon regularity.

“You just don’t hear of this kind of thing and as to why we’ve had three in the last year and a half, it’s just mind-boggling,” he said.

According to South Portland police Sgt. Steve Webster, the most recent theft occurred early Friday morning. It was, he said, the latest in a stick of car break-ins near the Southern Maine Community College. There have been “four of five” such incidents in that area over the past week, he said.

Within 12 hours of the incident, Webster issued a grainy photograph captured around 5:20 a.m. Friday at an ATM on Commercial Street in Portland. The image showed a “relatively young” white male using a credit card allegedly taken from the deputy’s vehicle, along with his gun, badge and law enforcement identification. The public’s help was actively solicited in locating the man, further described as having “a thin build . . . wearing a dark colored Champion sweatshirt, dark sunglasses, a white shirt under the sweatshirt, and a baseball cap,” along with a pair of Easton batting gloves.

Portland police later picked up Jarrod Howell, 21, for questioning as a “person of interest” in the case. “He was interviewed and subsequently released” without being charged, said Webster.

Gagnon said his department is assisting South Portland with the investigation.

“We have a very big interest in this,” he said. “Our officers are talking to each other on this, like, twice a day.”

Meanhile, Webster is asking that anyone with information about the car break-ins or the firearm theft call police at 874-8575.

“Obviously, someone knows something,” he said. “If anyone knows anything, please give as a call. We’d love to get the gun back and catch this guy.”

City armory in 'peril'

A local group places in the building on its endangered list, but its tenant disagrees 

SOUTH PORTLAND — The man who leases the lone South Portland building to grace the inaugural “Places in Peril” list issued last week by Greater Portland Landmarks agrees it “needs extensive work,” but disputes the structure is “at risk of loss.”

In June 2011, Eric Matheson signed a lease with an option to buy on the former Maine Army National Guard building, located on Broadway, at the Casco Bay Bridge “gateway” to the South Portland. The deal runs through May 31, 2016, and includes options for two five-year renewals. In addition to base rent of  $550 per month, Matheson has since December paid 60 percent of gross receipts taken in by Fore River Soundstage LLC, the film production company he runs out of the armory’s cavernous interior.

However, the landmarks group said the former armory, built in 1941, “continues to deteriorate because limited city funding allows only minimal maintenance and repairs.” Moreover, Executive Director Hilary Bassett said, “because there are no historic preservation protections, changes to the building don’t require official review and the building may be at risk of loss or damage in the future development of the site.

“The reason we did this list is to build public awareness of these buildings,” said Bassett. “A lot of people don’t know the story behind these buildings and we felt it was important to bring that information forward so people would know why these buildings matter.

“These properties are what I would describe as at a tipping point,” she said. “They are at a risk of loss. They could fall into ruin, or they could be revitalized and made an important part of the area’s future.”

The “Places in Peril” list mimics the “Endangered Buildings” list issued annually by Maine Preservation for the past 15 years, said Bassett. In all, 26 properties were nominated for consideration, including “a number of highly significant and important” sites in both South Portland and Cape Elizabeth. Bassett declined Monday to name any of the local lots considered, other than the armory.

“Right now, what we want to do is build awareness in these places that have been named and, hopefully, by doing that, some good solutions can come forward,” she said, noting that three of the six sites named along with the armory are for sale.

“Mainly, we want to see owners who want to care for the buildings, someone who is sympathetic to historic preservation,” said Bassett.

But Matheson, the most likely future owner of the armory, faults the landmarks group for not checking with him before placing his building on its watch list.

“Why would it be in peril? I’ve got a 15-year lease,” he said Monday. “I’m very surprised they came up with something like that and didn’t attempt to contact me. Nobody has talked to me about it at all.”

Still, Matheson acknowledges, “extensive work needs to be done to the exterior of the building.” But that, he said, rests on the city’s shoulders.

“Our intention is not to alter the exterior of this building one bit,” he said. “I do want the exterior restored just the way it was, but I would not expect to have to fund that myself. The only changes that we are going to make are to the interior of the drill hall, which is where we build sets, and to the wing.”

That wing, added in 1960 and not deemed historically significant, is where Matheson plans to build his workshop, “if the roof ever stops leaking.”

South Portland City Manager Jim Gailey said the city spent “about $6,000” last summer to fix the flashings on the roof of the wing.

“It’s just a bunch of tar up there and with the heat and the cold and the heat and the cold, the fix just did not work around the drain spout areas,” he said.

Still, the city has begun to build a reserve fund for future façade work, using its share of the revenue from site rentals. But so far, said Gailey, it hasn’t amounted to much.

“We’re not talking hundreds of thousands of dollars at this point,” he said. “We’re just talking our small cut of a two-day rental for a commercial, or a one-day photo shoot – it might be $70 here, $200 there. We’re not in any position yet to put a new roof on.”

At some point, the city will be obligated to spend that money. Matheson notes that according to his lease contract, once he is able to renovate and sublet office space in the front of the building, the city must spend 40 percent of its 60 percent revenue share on outside and structural improvements. However, Matheson said he is “at least two years away” from being able to lure film production companies into the armory.

The issue, Matheson said, is that in the three years it took to put together his lease deal with the city, all of his investors drifted away.

“I’m basically starting from scratch,” he said, ticking off half a dozen small projects over the past year, primarily with Portland-based Groff Films. Matheson’s largest project in the past year was a side job as production designer for “Backgammon,” a $1.3 million independent movie that filmed last summer in Cape Elizabeth. That project employed 29 local people on the crew, but used the armory for equipment staging only.

Staging of a different sort has been a headache for Matheson as the Shaw Brothers trucks that have been working on Ocean Street in Knightville all summer have used the armory’s back lot for parking.

“I don’t think their drivers know how to use forward,” joked Matheson, noting that the beep-beep-beep of trucks in reverse has made it “impossible to do anything that involves sound, except on the weekends.”

That help keep business away, as has the repeated failure of the state Legislature to adopt film industry tax credits, which Matheson believes would bring major studio productions to Maine similar to ones he’s worked in the past, including "Cider House Rules," "Empire Falls" and "Message in a Bottle."

“I’m not as far along on the armory as I’d hoped to be at this point,” he said. “But I’m not unhappy. Things are happening. Still, I will need to go to Massachusetts to find work, because they have four big movies about to film there next spring. We’ll never get the big money without those tax credits, and every session that idea dies in committee. I don’t know why.”

In the meantime, Matheson said, the armory needs to be buttoned up by this winter, particularly the west tower, where the roof continues to leak from where a flagpole was dislodged in a storm several years ago.

“There’s a ton of money being spent on that duck pond in Mill Creek Park and not here on this building,” he said. “I feel they have some obligation to at least stop the leak in the flag tower.

“Structurally, the integrity of the steel underneath the tower is questionable at this point,” said Matheson. “It’s not going to crash in tomorrow, but we do get copious amounts of water in the basement every time it rains. I’ve seen it come up within four inches of a 400-amp panel, which would blow a transformer right off a pole.”

Matheson did note that part of the agreement with Shaw Brothers is that they will grade the back lot when they are done and install a pipe to help drain the armory basement.

However, Mayor Patti Smith said any large capital improvement project probably isn’t in the offing.

“I don’t think we have it in our budget,” she said. “I think it’s going to demand a lot of private funding to bring it back to its historical glory. It’s been sitting for quite a while, a lot longer than 2006 when the city bought it, and, unfortunately, that neglect means it’s not as easy as putting a couple of new bricks into the façade.

“We’ve always seen the armory as an historically significant place, but nobody’s come in with big money to bring it up to snuff,” said Smith. “It really needs some work. In this economy, we haven’t seen a lot of interest because people don’t have that kind of cash.”

Last year, the council voted to use $100,000 in downtown TIF funds to replace windows, repair crumbling masonry, including the front steps, and spruce up decorative keystones adorned with tanks, bullets and grenades, which Bassett said is a highlight of the building’s charm.

However, Gailey said Tuesday that money was meant as a local match for an Office of Community Development grant South Portland failed to get.

“There was maybe $3 million available and there were $30 million in requests,” he said. “We haven’t spent the $100,000 from TIF funds as the council’s approval was to leverage another $100,000.”

Although South Portland did not get money from the "Meeting Maine's Downtown Challenge" program, Bassett said there are other opportunities, including a 25 percent tax credit from the state for historic preservation. The armory also is eligible for inclusion on the National Register of Historic Places, she said, offering her group's help in the form of its staff tax-preservation advisor.

The soundstage concept, she said, is an “excellent” idea for an adaptive re-use of the armory.

“That could be the catalyst to brining more creative economy-type businesses to the area,” said Bassett. “It sounds like he [Matheson] is somebody that we should definitely talk to further.”

Although his concern is with the inside of the armory, Matheson said he’ll be happy to take that call when it comes.

“I’m not in a position to go to a bank at all, so I’ll take all the help I can get,” he said. “As to the city and the outside of the building, I don’t think it’s a matter of them not wanting to do anything, it’s just that their duck pond is bigger than my duck pond.”

A COSER LOOK 


The seven buildings and landscapes, of 26 nominated, named to Greater Portland Landmarks’ inaugural “Places in Peril” list, issues Sept. 20:

• Eastern Cemetery, Congress Street, Portland (1668) – Said to be Portland’s oldest public burial ground.

• House Island, Casco Bay – A 24-acre island at the entrance to Portland Harbor currently for sale, home to Fort Scammell, built in 1808 for harbor defense, but which saw its greatest use as an immigration quarantine station from 1907-1937, when it was dubbed “the Ellis Island of the North.”

• Abyssinian Meeting House, 73 Newbury St., Portland (1828) – Built as a house of worship, described as “the third-oldest standing African-American meeting house in the United States.”

• The Portland Company, 58 Fore St., Portland (1847-1940) – Seven-building complex said to be “the only relatively intact 19th century waterfront industrial site surviving on the Portland peninsula.”

• Grand Trunk Office Building, 1 India St., Portland (1903) – A three-story brick that it is “the only building which survives from the extensive Grand Trunk Railroad complex in Portland.”

• Portland Masonic Temple Grand Lodge, 415 Congress St., Portland (1911) – Said to be “one of the finest examples of Beaux Arts architecture in Maine.” It is also “believe to be Maine’s last original and intact grand lodge building.”

• Maine Army National Guard Armory, Broadway, South Portland (1941) – A significant example of the art deco architectural style and South Portland’s significant role in World War II, the building has been owned by the city since 2006 and is now leased to Fore Rive Soundstage LLC.