Powerhouse Theater: From Poughkeepsie to Macao

photo by Keith Ferris

Back in 1985, Vassar College wanted to start a summer theater program for students, making use of campus resources. Meanwhile, actor Mark Linn-Baker, whose notable credits include a star-turn as Larry Appleton in ABC’s sitcom “Perfect Strangers” (1986-1993), just happened to be looking for a home for New York Stage and Film. An ensuing partnership between the college and the professional company resulted in Powerhouse, a theater collaborative dedicated to the development and production of new works by emerging and established artists.

Now in its 18th season, the Powerhouse repertory attracts some of the nation’s most innovative writers, composers, directors, actors, and designers. These artists, assembled through New York Film and Stage, unite with 50 apprentices, who come from all over the world to the Vassar campus to immerse themselves in a specific theater discipline. During a seven-week run, the company creates and presents several plays and staged readings, which eventually travel on to Broadway, off-Broadway, and theaters across the country.

Executive producer Beth Fargis-Lancaster, a seventeen-year veteran of the organization, oversees the Powerhouse Summer Theater Program on behalf of Vassar. New York Stage and Film, managed by producing directors Linn-Baker, Max Mayer, Johanna Pfaelzer, and Leslie Urdang, shares fiscal responsibility and supplies talent. Fargis-Lancaster calls it an unusual relationship. “A liberal arts institution working in collaboration with a professional theater company doesn’t happen very often,” she says. Pfaelzer reiterates that the beauty of the joint program resides in the creative process. “It’s about letting writers or composers do whatever they want to do at whatever stage the play is at for them. Doing a mainstage workshop or staged reading allows them to see at a certain point where a piece of writing sits and what it needs.”

The summer 2002 season features three “mainstage productions” in the Powerhouse Theater, all world premieres. Through July 6, Obie Award winner David Esbjornson directs “Tuesdays with Morrie,” an adaptation of the bestseller by Mitch Albom, written by the author and Jeffrey Hatcher. Director Sheryl Kaller follows with the film-noir parody “Adrift in Macao,” a new musical with book and lyrics by the renowned Christopher Durang and music by Peter Melnick. Writer-director Richard Nelson rounds off the season with “Left”, a meditation on friendship and time. Four simultaneously running “special presentations” also go up in the Susan Stein Theater, along with nearly a dozen staged readings featured in two month-long festivals. Additionally, free, outdoor performances of abbreviated classics, such as Shakespeare’s “The Tempest,” unfold on the Rockefeller lawn.

A typical Powerhouse afternoon finds “Adrift in Macao” director Kaller huddled with her lighting designer over a late, working lunch on the terrace of Vassar’s Main Building. At a nearby table, Durang holds a meeting with Melnick. Kaller met the playwright and composer in New York, where she “hooked them up with Pfaelzer,” who attended a staged reading of their play. Describing her collaboration with the composing duo as “absolutely amazing,” Kaller explains, “The script is great—I don’t think you can say much more than Christopher Durang wrote a musical...and Peter understands the way Chris writes. There’s also the challenge of mixing genres, film-noir, and comedy, and they do it in an inspiring way.” Kaller returns to New York Film and Stage after directing last year’s “The Hurdy Gurdy Man,” a project she developed at Two Island Productions, the theater company she started in Bermuda and ran from 1995-2001 while raising two small children.

“Adrift in Macao” evolved from a musical one-act by Melnick that needed a companion piece. He asked a mutual friend to put him in touch with Durang, who says, “My work connected with some idea in the back of Peter’s head. I listened to his composition ‘Time’, a beautiful, moving song, and it made me think of smoky nightclubs and the music in films of the thirties, forties, and fifties.” A great fan of movies from that period, Durang finds it funny how the leading lady “can always get a job as a nightclub singer, which is how our musical opens up, with a woman who has lost all her clothes except an evening gown and then immediately lands such a position.” The setting comes from an obscure 1952 Josef von Sternberg film. Supposedly set in the murky title port with Jane Russell as a nightclub singer, Macao offers Hollywood’s one-time version of an exotic, foreign movie, which Durang enjoyed watching on TV when he was a child. Though perhaps best known for his off-Broadway farce “Sister Mary Ignatius Explains Everything,” the two-time Obie Award winner actually began his theater career writing musicals while still in high school. Among his smattering of musical projects over the years, “A History of the American Film” earned him a Tony nomination for Best Book of a Musical.

Since they live on opposite coasts, Melnick and Durang developed “Adrift in Macao” over the past two years largely via computer programs and e-mail. Melnick, who studied at Harvard, Boston’s Berklee School of Music, and in London, has scored several film, HBO, and cable projects, including LA Story and Sam Shepherd’s The Only Thrill, starring Diane Keaton and Diane Lane. Melnick calls his creative process with Durang “the greatest fun” he has ever had writing a composition. He likewise holds collaborator Kaller in esteem, stating, “Sheryl has got the best people skills of anyone I’ve ever worked with.”
Right on schedule, the director, playwright, and composer move indoors to join other Powerhouse artists already gathered in the Multi-Purpose Room. Musical director Fred Lassen sits at a piano, rehearsing the number “Dangerous Night” with cast members Sarah Knowlton (Lureena), James Barbour (Mitch), and Alec Mapa (Tempura). A workshop audience looks on, including the rest of the seven-member cast, “terrific actors who have all done Broadway shows,” according to director Kaller, who ticks off their many leading roles, Tony nominations, and other accomplishments. Bonhomie spreads out from the trickling keys and sung notes as laughter rises in the air. But no one’s ready just yet to drop anchor in Macao.

“Okay, okay,” calls out Kaller, an undercurrent of necessary tuning and tweaking audible in the captain’s impending command. “We’ve got a lot of work to do.”

—Pauline Uchmanowicz