Tercentennial Event October 1—

Tableaux Vivants Will Bring Four Historic Events To Life

By Shannon Hicks

Newtown’s next Tercentennial event will be a collection of four living pictures, or tableaux vivants, presented on the stage of Newtown High School on Saturday, October 1. Two performances have been announced for “Tableaux Vivants: 300 Years of Newtown History in Living Pictures.”

More than 100 residents have volunteered to participate in the event, which has been in the works for over a year.

The idea for the theatrical production goes back to a Christmas party and Meredith Wilson’s The Music Man. Amber Edwards and Marilyn Rennagel were having fun talking about one of their favorite moments from the classical musical — “when the mayor’s hilariously pretentious wife and her friends present their hilariously pretentious Tableaux Vivants, “One Grecian Urn … Two Grecian Urns,” says Ms Edwards — when inspiration struck.

“‘That’s what Newtown should do for the Tercentennial!’ we declared,” continued Ms Edwards. At another holiday gathering a few days later the two ladies again found themselves talking about the old-fashioned art of creating living pictures, and this time they pulled Town Historian Dan Cruson into their conversation. “Within seconds we were drafted into service,” said Ms Edwards, who has taken on the role of producer and director for the latest event in a year of special happenings to celebrate the purchase and establishment of the town we call home.

The art form of tableaux vivant (pronounced “ta-BLOW vi-VAHN”) dates back to the Greeks and Romans, says Ms Edwards. Using costumes, props, and architectural elements, people would pose reenacting a scene from history or legend.

“In mid-19th Century America, tableaux vivants evolved into a popular form of domestic entertainment and amateur theater, usually organized by women, and usually depicting a ‘decisive moment’ of moral uplift, religious epiphany, or classical mythology,” said Ms Edwards.

“By the turn of the century, Tableaux Vivants had moved from the parlor into the public sphere, as community theater and pageants, sometimes involving thousands of residents,” she continued. Newtown’s event includes residents of all ages and offers decisive moments of commerce, conflict, romance and illicit liaisons, and generosity.

Dan Cruson has been tapped, quite appropriately, to serve as the narrator of the four scenes. Mr Cruson has also served as historical consultant for the tableaux.

Amber Edwards is the producer and director for “Tableaux Vivants: 300 Years of Newtown History in Living Pictures.” She is a multiple Emmy Award-winning (11 at last count!) television producer, having most recently picked up the New York regional Emmy Award for Arts Programming this past April.

The award was for an episode of “State of the Arts,” New Jersey Public Television’s weekly arts and culture series of which Ms Edwards is host and senior producer.

Ms Edwards has also worked on television as a consulting editor, producer, director, writer, and host.

Key players behind the scenes of “300 Years of Newtown History in Living Pictures” also include Marilyn Rennagel, Karen Pinto, Mike and Joy Filler, James Kaechele, Gloria Von Oy, and Irina Virovets. This is just the tip of the iceberg, however. There isn’t enough space to list every person who is acting in, painting scenery for, researching, doing publicity work, designing graphics for, and handling every other facet of such an undertaking.

“It’s an amazing machine that’s really starting to operate,” Amber Edwards said last week. “It’s a huge team effort.”

Ms Rennagel is serving as the lighting and scenic director for the tableaux. A Newtown resident for more than 30 years, Ms Rennagel has done design work for Broadway, opera and television; she is currently working on the new Martha Stewart show. Ms Edwards calls her “my co-conspirator in conceiving the project.”

Karen Pinto is directing Tableau One, Land For Sale — Cheap. This scene depicts the purchase in 1705 of a tract of land eight miles long and five miles wide that lay between Danbury, Stratford, Fairfield, and New Milford — the land that became Newtown — by Stratford residents William Junos, Justus Bush, and Captain Samuel Hawley. The men dealt with three sachems (chiefs) of the Pohtatuck tribe.

The scene will show that the land was purchased not with money but a large quantity of goods and that three years later the purchase was investigated by the General Assembly.

For Newtown’s 250th anniversary in 1955, the artist and sculpture John Angel created an illustration, “The Purchase From The Indians,” which offered his interpretation of the purchase of Newtown. It is this illustration that is serving as a model for the tableau of Newtown’s first historic moment.

Ms Pinto led a rehearsal of Land For Sale — Cheap at the high school last weekend. About half of the cast was available, “but it was enough,” she said this week, “to block off where everybody is going to be on the stage.

“Some of the props were in place too, so the actors were able to get a feel of what it’s going to be like,” she said on Tuesday afternoon.

A few of those actors are children, who are portraying local Indians. The cast of Land For Sale includes 8-year-old Max Galassi and 10-year-old Nicolette Tartaglia, who are playing local Indians.

“I was very interested in the children,” Ms Pinto said. When open auditions were held earlier this year at the library, Ms Pinto noticed the children, and not just for their age.

“They were very focused, and serious, and intent on doing this,” she said. “Luckily they had mothers who were willing to drive them to the audition, and now [the mothers are] helping with the production too.”

Local Indians are also being portrayed by Suzanne Candee, Desiree Galassi, Tracy Van Buskirk, Adam Horvath, Katie McMorran, and Sara Risko.

Raymond Horvath is playing Mr Junos, Dr John Reed is Captain Hawley, and Mat Kastner is Mr Bush. The sachems are being portrayed by Evan Graves (Mauquash), Matt Cole (Massumpas) and Peter Van Buskirk (Nunnawauk).

Research for the tableau began more than six months ago, said Ms Pinto.

“I’ve combed through the Newtown library with the help of librarian Andrea Zimmermann, through pictures of costumes and anything I could find about the natives,” she said. “But there’s not much known about the Pohtatucks.

“I had to sort of make a little leap from other local tribes in the area, their costuming and customs, to deduct what might have been with the Pohtatucks,” explained the director. “There were so few of them left by the time we get here that there wasn’t much of a recorded history of them available.”

Ms Pinto’s husband, Mat Kastner, is compiling background music for the scene.

For that task, Mr Kastner contacted The Institute for American Indian Studies in Washington (Conn.) and The Mashantucket Pequot Museum and Research Center in Mashantucket.

“Most of the music we were finding was of Western Plains and Southwestern Plains Indians,” Ms Pinto said. “We weren’t finding much music about the New England Indians, so both of these were good sources.”

Mike and Joy Filler are Revolutionary War reenactors based in Newtown. They are directing Tableau Two, a three-scene presentation called You Say You Want A Revolution.

This tableau follows the beginning of the Revolutionary War in April 1775 and its arrival in Newtown in November of that year (Scene 1, “The Raid”), the effects of an injury received by Judge William Edmond during The Battle of Ridgefield (Scene 2, “The Operation”) and the toll the war took on one local family when Betsy Foote, the daughter of a radical Loyalist, fell in love with and married a Rebel soldier (Scene 3, “Banished”). An 1863 painting by Frederick Walker called “The Last Path” served as the inspiration for “Banished.”

The Fillers are using their own costumes, weapons and props to create their scene. They are familiar with the era they are recreating, and have enlisted a group of fellow reenactors and other locals who fit the soldier costumes in their collection. This is their first theatrical venture.

“I’m really proud of them because they’ve done plenty of reenactments, but not yet theater,” Ms Edwards said. “They’re really feeling their way through this and their work is fantastic.”

Technical director James Kaechele graduated from Newtown High School in 2002. He is now studying environmental education at SUNY/Syracuse and did an internship over the summer at Stamford Arboretum.

Mr Kaechele was active during and after his high school career, working as a member of the crew for the November 2000 NHS Drama Department production of Taming of The Shrew; as a member of the sound crew and of the construction crew for Man of La Mancha, March 2001; and a crew member for What I Learned In School Today, spring 2001. As a senior at NHS he served as the technical director and did set construction for the November 2001 production of Anne Frank, and then as construction manager and on set construction for West Side Story in March 2002.

Even after graduation Mr Kaechele returned to the high school’s theater department. He was a student technical director, along with Paul Kastner, for the 2004 Summer Theatre Connections production of Cinderella, and last spring he served as a master carpenter, with Tim Sykes, for Show Boat.

Gloria Von Oy and Irina Virovets are both working on the costumes for the Tercentennial Tableaux. Mrs Von Oy, who has been collecting costumes for years as her children participated in countless shows, has “amassed a truly extraordinary collection of costumes which she is lending for this production,” said Ms Edwards.

Ms Virovets is the costume designer for the event. A multi-talented Russian immigrant who “really knows what she is doing,” says Ms Edwards, Ms Virovets is designing, fitting, and creating costumes using pieces from Mrs Von Oy’s collection.

Tableau Three, The Moral Outlaw, and Tableau Four, Our Benefactress, are being directed by Amber Edwards.

The Moral Outlaw opens with a scene depicting the murder of Hattertown resident Andrew Peck by German immigrant Rudolf Stoffel and the events leading up to the homicide. “The Mistress,” the second scene of the tableau, concerns Jennie Lockwood, Peck’s mistress, who found Peck as he was dying and pointed investigators in Stoffel’s direction.

“The Wife’s Business Enterprise,” the final scene of the tableau, explores the tempestuous relationship between Peck and his wife, Mary. A businesswoman, Mary often disappeared for weeks at a time. It turns out she was running “a house of ill repute” in Rochester, N.Y.

Booth Library Director Janet Woycik is playing Mary Peck, and librarians Alana Meloni, Mimi Morin, Susan Shaw, and Andrea Zimmermann have been enlisted to portray her Ladies.

Among the men playing their customers are Hawleyville Postmaster Mark Favale, Attorney Tim Holian, Lexington Gardens owner Tom Johnson, and the real estate broker John Klopfenstein.

The final tableau pays tribute to Mary Hawley. Through three scenes, the tableau will present Miss Hawley’s early life (Sarah Bonacci will portray the younger Miss Hawley) and her marriage in 1855 to the Reverend John Addison Crockett (portrayed by Matt Cole), and their sad honeymoon in Florence; her return to Newtown, the loss of both parents and how those events changed her life (with Mary Hawley being portrayed by Mae Schmidle); and the surprisingly generous legacies Miss Hawley left for future generations of Newtown residents.

Finally, to entertain the audiences between the tableaux there will be vaudeville-style performances. Olios, another old-fashioned element, will offer musical diversions in front of the curtain while scenery is being changed between tableaux.

Mixed Notes (Judy Lang, Patti Lavernoich, Kathleen Mahan, and Colleen McMorran), Horvath & Horvath (Ray and Adam Horvath), The Stardusters (the dance company from Lathrop School of Dance), Malenkee Ballet Repertoire Company (from Newtown School of Ballet), Danbury Mad Hatters, Mat Kastner, and the NHS Markettes are all scheduled to offer short vaudeville-style numbers

“These living pictures celebrating Newtown’s 300th birthday are the culmination of more than a year of planning and production by more than 100 volunteers who share the goal of creating an entertaining, educational, memorable theatrical event,” said producer and director Amber Edwards.

“Like previous generations of tableaux makers, we want to present history, legend, artistic masterpieces, moral uplift, comedy, tragedy, and drama — all without moving a muscle or uttering a word.”

“Tableaux Vivants: 300 Years of Newtown History in Living Pictures” will be staged at 2 and 7 pm on October 1 at Newtown High School.

Tickets are $8 for adults and $5 for children and seniors if purchased in advance. All tickets will be $10 at the door.

Tickets are available at C.H. Booth Library, Drug Center Pharmacy, Lexington Gardens, and Newtown High School.