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01/07/2020 01:46 PMOn the quiet Friday morning after Christmas, several members of the Saybrook Stage Company (SSC) met at the group’s rehearsal space on the second floor of the Westbrook Ambulance Association to review lines for their winter production, On Golden Pond.
The room was spacious and open, with a recently obsolete Christmas tree in one corner, a long folding table set up by the windows, scattered stacking chairs, and a sofa that will be used in the production. Yellow tape marked out the rooms of the set on the carpeted floor.
SSC founder Terri Corigliano produces the company’s plays with her husband, Cosmo Corigliano, a member of The Kate’s Board of Trustees. The couple have lived in Old Saybrook for 20 years. In this play, which takes place in the late 1970s, she and Jim Hile, of Clinton, play Ethel and Norman Thayer, an older couple who, as is their habit, return in the spring to their Maine summer home. Their daughter and her fiancé arrive there with his 13-year-old son, Billy, who stays with Ethel and Norman while the younger couple leaves on a European vacation.
The play explores Ethel and Norman’s feelings about aging, their relationship with their daughter, and their growing affection for the young teenager who’ll soon be transformed into member of their family.
It was The Kate’s executive director, Brett Elliott, who first proposed On Golden Pond to the Coriglianos, thinking Hile and Terri Corigliano would be good fits for the leading roles. He envisioned the production as one of the last events celebrating the The Kate’s 10th year. The celebrations will conclude with the annual Oscar Party benefit on Sunday, Feb. 9.
On Golden Pond is best known for the 1981 film that starred Katharine Hepburn and Henry Fonda and garnered Hepburn her fourth and final Academy Award for Best Actress, but it was first a play by Ernest Thompson. After a short off-Broadway run, On Golden Pond opened on Broadway in February 1979. It was revived in 2005 with James Earl Jones and Leslie Uggams as the Thayers.
“We had the same reaction that a lot of other people have,” Cosmo Corigliano said, explaining that his first reaction to Elliott’s suggestion was, “Well, it’s a movie, not a play.”
Elliott whipped out his phone and produced proof that it was, indeed, a play first.
New Directions
The production is a slight departure for the SSC: Its director, Marc Deaton, the artistic director of Madison Lyric Stage, wanted the experience for the audience to be immersive, the Coriglianos explained. The set has been designed (by Glenn Bassett) accordingly, and actors will make several exits and entrances into and from the audience.
“We’re extending one corner of The Kate’s stage to allow the actors to step down easily,” said Cosmo Corigliano. “We’re not using the stairs of The Kate; we’re building our own stairs. It’ll be fun for the audience because you’re really drawing them into it.”
“Whatever we do is a collaborative effort,” Terri Corigliano said. “Certainly we sit down at the beginning with the director and...say why we chose the play and what our audience at The Kate is like. We have to meet in the beginning to make sure we’re both on the same page.
“But I think it’s important for me, [based on] the past experiences that I’ve had with SSC and elsewhere, is I think each designer should be able to do what they want as long as it meshes with the producers’ and the director’s vision. Obviously, you have to have a common theme running through it. But I think it’s important for them to each have their own job.”
“The director has the vision,” Cosmo Corigliano added. “We make sure that we agree with it when that vision gets explained to all the different folks [working on the play]. But once you explain it, I think you have to leave it up to the costumer to make some final choices, or else where’s their artistic contribution? So there’s a balance there. And it’s worked.”
Another difference for SSC is having a 12-year-old cast member, Jake Totten of Granby, who plays Billy. Totten has previously appeared in productions at Hartford Stage, Good Company Theatre, and Landmark Community Theatre.
“[U]sually we don’t have children in our cast, so it’s kind of fun for all of us,” said Terri Corigliano.
As Norman, “I get to play with him a lot,” Hile said. “It’s so much fun to have a young person [in the play]. He has so much energy—good lord.”
“Through the 13-year-old’s eyes, the two of them [Norman and Ethel] get younger again,” said Corigliano. “Certainly Norman taking him fishing and things like that.”
“It makes Norman stop talking about dying,” Hile said, laughing.
Founding a Company
SSC started its life nine years ago, about a year after The Kate opened in 2009. Corigliano, a retired lawyer with many years of acting experience, mentioned to Chuck Still, The Kate’s first executive director, that she was interested in starting a local theater company. Still liked the idea and offered The Kate as the company’s home venue.
The Coriglianos have worked together to find and hire experienced people to direct and do set, costume, and lighting design. These are the only members of the production who are paid—the actors are all volunteers.
“I think the more we become a well-oiled machine, the easier it is,” Corigliano said. “It’s never easy, necessarily, to put it all together—there’s a lot of moving parts.”
Elliott himself, along with his assistant, Jacob Kaufman, are lighting designers for the production, with Kaufman also serving as sound designer. Bassett has designed sets for productions off Broadway, in Los Angeles, and at the Ivoryton Playhouse.
“We know that Glenn...gets more for those productions ,but they realize that this is not only a nonprofit but our goal is not to make money,” said Cosmo Corigliano. “If we break even, we’re happy. And we rarely break even. That’s not why we’re doing it.”
As producers, the Coriglianos pay out of pocket for any costs above what ticket sales cover.
“It’s kind of our community contribution,” Terri Corigliano said. “That’s the way we feel.”
A Tight Schedule
In addition to the actors, who donate their time and talents, the Westbrook Ambulance Association provides rehearsal space at no charge to the SSC every winter. Geenty Group Realtors, based on Branford, provides SSC with summer rehearsal space as well as an empty warehouse in which to build and paint the set. Trevor Hartman has built this set as well those for two previous productions. It will be transported to The Kate on Sunday, Jan. 12; the cast will rehearse on it for the first time that evening; and the dress rehearsal will take place the following Wednesday. It’s a tight schedule.
“The translation from going from this taped-down set to the real set...there are adjustments that need to be made,” said Cosmo Corigliano.
“You turn around, there’s a mirror, you see yourself,” said Hile with a laugh. “The door is not where you thought it was going to be.
“This,” Hile said, pointing to a strip of tape, “is a riser that’s 10 inches higher than down here. Right now, we’re just stepping over the tape; we don’t care. That first run-through after the set is put in is usually the most interesting.”
Hile, who appeared in SSC’s first production, Our Town, in January 2011, and directed its production of Barefoot in the Park in 2017, joked that his main job is to avoid bumping into furniture. But he has quite a bit of experience both with SSC and other local theater companies, including Ivoryton Playhouse.
“It’s great to work with these folks here because you don’t have to worry about all the other stuff,” he said. “I know the costumers are going to have the right costumes for me. I know that the sets are going to be great. I know the sound’s going to be perfect.”
While SSC is not a repertory company, there is a core group of local actors it calls on who are familiar, committed, and conduct themselves professionally, while not being members of Actors Equity. Mark Gilchist, who also appears in On Golden Pond, has appeared in several other SSC productions.
“Terri’s always said her goal is to create—and I think she’s done it—a local, quality performance,” said Cosmo Corigliano. “Part of that is getting the actors that have the dedication and the abilities and building a nice set and having nice lighting, [performing] in a nice venue like The Kate. When you pull it all together...you have a piece that you can be proud of as a local production company.”
When tickets began selling fast for the Sunday matinée, Elliott suggested adding a Saturday matinée, Corigliano said. That performance is also selling well.
“We always say if it’s not going to be fun we won’t keep doing it and if people don’t come to see it, we won’t keep doing it,” he continued. “So far that hasn’t happened, so we keep doing it.”
Performances of On Golden Pond at The Kate are Thursday to Saturday, Jan. 16, 17, and 18 at 8 p.m. and Saturday and Sunday, Jan. 18 and 19 at 2 p.m. Tickets are available online at katharinehepburntheater.org or by calling 860-510-0453.