On Cue

It’s opening night for Penobscot Theatre’s 2008 season and the Bangor Opera House is packed. For the production of On Golden Pond, Scott R.C. Levy, the theater’s producing artistic director, has invited several local farmers for a pre-show market in keeping with the show’s Maine theme, and theater-goers sandwich themselves between hay bales as they strain for samples of homemade salsa and goat cheese.

Opening nights are not without their glitches; the computer software for ticket sales has crashed and a champagne glass drops in the crowded room. Yet through it all, Levy remains calm as he sells tickets, greets theater benefactors, and networks with local actors.

It’s been easy to spot the outward renovation of the Penobscot Theatre, what with the scaffolding and the new marquee that will light up the downtown night sky in November. What might be less obvious from the street is the artistic renovation that has taken place inside the theater since Levy took the helm.

Before he was hired in 2005, the Penobscot Theatre season could be counted on for staging the classics, says Bangor Symphony Orchestra director David Whitehill.

“I mean classics that you have to dust with a dustbuster,” Whitehill says.

In the ’90s, the theater made great strides under Levy’s predecessor, Mark Torres, moving into the Opera House, boosting annual attendance to over 15,000, and tripling the operating budget. But in the first years of the new millennium, the northeastern-most professional theater wasn’t breaking new ground artistically, and even well-loved classics like A Christmas Carol were seeing diminishing returns at the box office.

Levy, a 33-year old actor, director, and producer from New York City, is widely credited with shaking things up at the theater. He initiated an ongoing renovation of the Opera House, strengthened the theater’s educational outreach programs, and, perhaps most importantly, staged more challenging productions that are now creating a buzz in theatrical circles.

In his first three seasons, Levy has mixed crowd-pleasing plays like Tuesdays with Morrie with more provocative fare like The Laramie Project, an acclaimed play about one town’s soul-searching in the aftermath of a hate crime, and I Am My Own Wife, a Pulitzer Prize-winning play based on the life of a transvestite who survived the Nazi regime. For the holidays, Levy opted to shelve A Christmas Carol and try something more current, pairing a production of Peter Pan with the Santaland Diaries, David Sedaris’ sarcastic play about a department store elf with an attitude.

After the theater’s opening, the season continues with the political satire State of the Union, staged with a civic twist: During the play’s run, a voter-registration drive will be held in the lobby.

Local theater-goers are responding to Levy’s new vision for the theater. Ticket sales increased in 2007 at a time when overall theater attendance dropped by more than 3% nationwide, according to Theatre Communications Group, a trade group for nonprofit theaters.

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It’s amazing that Levy elected a life of theater, given that he tasted theatrical heartache at an early age while growing up in Hartford, Connecticut. At five, he dressed as one of the planets for a school production filmed by a local television station. Levy remembers eagerly waiting to see himself on television, only to discover the camera cut him off because he was shorter than the other planets.

“I remember being crushed at 5 years old,” he says.

But the sting didn’t last long. He performed in plays throughout high school, and then went to New York University and the Horizon Theater School, the university’s partner, for his undergraduate degree.

From his senior year of college on, Levy was finding steady work as a producer in Broadway productions and acting in off-Broadway and touring productions. After completing his graduate degree, he began teaching at the Horizon Theater School and acting at the Guggenheim Museum. But New York City life was wearing thin.

“I was no longer getting the price out of admission,” he says.

He and his wife, Joye Cook-Levy, the theater’s education director, were expecting their first child, and Levy didn’t want to start a family in the big city. When he saw the Penobscot Theatre’s want ad looking for a director, Levy jumped at the chance, even though he had never been to Bangor. After learning he was being considered for the job, he came to Bangor unannounced to check out the city and attend a Penobscot production. He liked what he saw. He received word that he had been hired as he headed to the hospital with his wife in labor.

Because of budget constraints and despite a dedicated staff, Levy must wear many hats at the Penobscot Theatre. On a given day, he can be found on the radio promoting a play, coordinating details for the next play (which he will likely direct), selling tickets, and, come intermission, even serving champagne.

But one of his most important jobs is selecting plays for the coming season. Though Penobscot Theater is a nonprofit, revenue generation is important business for Levy. With the financial health of the theater at stake, the plays have to be winners.

During the winter, Levy sifts through some 50 scripts to pick seven or eight plays for the next year. He crafts the season by alternating well-known plays with lesser-known or more daring plays, because two weakly attended productions in a row might put the theater in a financial hole. He tries to open the season with a strong crowd-pleaser, hoping that theater-goers who come to it will then take a chance on other productions, but he is the first to admit that picking plays is not a science.

“It’s a year’s guess,” he says.

With winter over and plays in hand, Levy heads to New York with the theater’s directors to audition 100 actors in two days for the majority of roles (the rest is filled out with local actors). Actor auditions often are scheduled in five-minute increments, just long enough for the actors to deliver a prerehearsed monologue and work through some script. The process can be a bit of blur, Levy says.

“It just hurts,” he says.

If Levy was hurting during last year’s mass auditions, he hid it well, says actress Barbara Haas, who played Ethel in the September production of On Golden Pond. She says many directors distance themselves from actors during mass auditions, but Levy’s friendliness put her at ease.

“He was very lively and inclusive, which was a tip-off,” says Haas, that he would be good to work with.

Levy says it’s both humane and vital to help an actor relax during an audition, so he can get a clear idea of his or her abilities. “It’s supposed to be fun,” he says.

Once he finds actors that work well with the theater, Levy often will cast them multiple times. Actor Kent Burnham has worked with the Penobscot Theatre for three years, most recently in Tennessee Williams’ Night of the Iguana. Burnham grew up in Topsham before moving to New York City, like so many actors, to seek his acting fortune. He loves coming home to Maine to act, but doesn’t miss the geographical irony.

“I had to audition in New York to do plays in Bangor,” he says.

Ultimately, producing a play is the work of an ensemble. Throughout the spring, Levy will talk with set designers and directors, and he always works on multiple productions at once. If he isn’t directing the show himself, he will sit in on rehearsals and make suggestions to the visiting director. Often, because of budget constraints, the show only will have three weeks of rehearsal, and tinkering continues right up until opening night.

In the end, all productions are a leap of faith, says resident director Nathaniel Halvorson, who directed On Golden Pond and will star opposite Levy in this year’s holiday production, A Tuna Christmas. In the final week of production before opening On Golden Pond, Halvorson had his own laundry list of concerns to address before the play went before crowds, from technical issues to making sure each actor grasps his/her character’s emotional arc. But Halvorson recognizes the stakes are always higher for Levy.

“People in the town don’t really know me,” he says. “If [the play’s] bad, it goes to him.” For this season, so far, so good for Levy’s choice of an opener: At the time of writing, On Golden Pond is doing so well, it’s running an extra week.