“Almost, Maine” by John Cariani is coming to the stage Nov. 10-12. East’s student actors and technicians will be bringing to life nine stories of love, longing and high strangeness, all set in a mythical northern town beneath the aurora borealis.
“It’s these two-person scenes about people really trying to connect,” said Hope Hynes Love, theater teacher and artistic director of East’s after-school productions. “It’s got a little bit of absurdism—things get not normal—and it’s got a little bit of magical realism. So things like, in a scene where a shoe drops in a relationship…, a literal shoe drops.”
The cast includes 19 students of varying grades and levels of experience. Sophomore Evermore Love-Harman and his fellow actor Ana Diaz Sachica play the characters Pete and Ginette, whose story frames the play’s other eight vignettes through the Prologue, Interlogue and Epilogue.
Love-Harman has been acting since he was 10, and has even been a part of professional productions. “Almost, Maine” is his first show at East, and he says the rehearsal experience has been a welcome change from what he’s used to.
“It’s been really good. They’re very inclusive and open; they get things done on time,” Love-Harman said.
Theater Manager Jeff Alguire has been working with an array of student technicians to tackle the specific technical challenges posed by the show.
“The play references several times the Northern Lights,” Alguire said. “They’re a very significant part of the story and they have something to do with the sort of magic realism that happens in the play, as if the Northern Lights are affecting the people that experience them. And so the challenge is to create a magical Northern Light-style effect without looking too cheesy.”
Alguire plans to create the effect through a combination of hanging fabric, colored lights, a fan and the theater’s cyclorama (“cyc”), a special curtain used to simulate skies and horizons.
On both the acting and technical sides, Alguire and Hynes Love say the production reflects an intentional “paradigm shift” within the theater department toward prioritizing student needs and work—“taking care of humans” and “allowing them to make more decisions on their own.”
After two months of rehearsal and countless hours of production, the cast and crew of “Almost, Maine” are excited to present this surreal play to the student body.
“Usually we don’t have a lot of people come to see the plays,” Alguire said. “The musicals are much more popular for some reason, but I think it’s going to be a beautiful show, and I hope as many people that want to come see it do.”
Tickets for all three shows can be purchased at eastreservations.org or at the door for a higher price. If bought online, tickets for the Thursday show cost $5.50, and tickets for the Friday and Saturday shows cost $8.
Photos by Hammond Cole Sherouse/The ECHO
