Society Notebook: Opera Maine supporters reunite to kick off new season
The summer will feature programs and performances aimed at inclusivity.
By Amy Paradysz
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Calien Lewis of Cape Elizabeth, Dan Crewe of Cumberland, and Vince and Anne Oliviero of Cape Elizabeth. Photos by Amy Paradysz
There are several reasons to describe Opera Maine’s 2021 summer season as refreshing, starting with the annual gala at Falmouth Country Club, held in a glamorous tent with six chandeliers, but nonetheless in open air – and with hardly a mask in sight.
“This is the first public thing I’ve been at with masks off,” said Dan Crewe of Cumberland.
Gregory Rec/Staff Photographer
Maine’s two largest summer music theaters are taking different approaches to presenting live theater in their second seasons during the pandemic, but, like last year, neither will produce large-scale musicals on their longtime stages.
The Ogunquit Playhouse has constructed a massive covered outdoor pavilion on the pastoral playhouse lawn, where it will produce four Broadway-style musicals with seating for 450 people. Maine State Music Theatre in Brunswick will produce a concert series, children’s productions and other events in its traditional home at Pickard Theater on the Bowdoin College campus, but is moving its signature mainstage productions to the Westbrook Performing Arts Center and presenting those shows in September and October.
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Portland Ballet performs before a live audience with ‘Momentum’
The production of Momentum: 3 Dances for Moving Forward at the Westbrook Performing Arts Center featured two pieces choreographed by artistic director Nell Shipman that began and ended the evening.
By Steve Feeney
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Portland Ballet dancers run through a dress rehearsal of “Momentum: 3 Dances for Moving Forward” at Westbrook Performing Arts Center on Friday. The show on Saturday was Portland Ballet’s first main-stage production in front of a live audience since the start of the pandemic.
Brianna Soukup/Staff Photographer
The Portland Ballet ended its season this weekend with a brief run of “Momentum: 3 Dances for Moving Forward,” a program suggesting, apropos of the moment, a revitalization as things return to some sense of normalcy.
Maine State Music Theatre to stage its major productions in Westbrook this season
Because of pandemic-related uncertainties and Bowdoin College s schedule, the Brunswick-based theater felt it had to change venues for the shows to go on.
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The Westbrook Performing Arts Center, photographed in 2012, will host Maine State Music Theatre’s major productions this season.
Shawn Patrick Ouellette/Staff Photographer
Maine State Music Theatre in Brunswick will produce two mainstage shows this season, but stage them at the Westbrook Performing Arts Center because of scheduling restrictions at its longtime home at Pickard Theater on the Bowdoin College campus.
This season will mark the first time Maine State has produced its mainstage musicals outside of Brunswick and only the second time off-campus. Curt Dale Clark, the theater’s artistic director, said he knows the news will disappoint some people in town.
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