THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, August 28, 1994 TAG: 9408250058
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: TERESA ANNAS
LENGTH: Long : 192 lines
BEFORE VISITING Staunton for the first time, I imagined Margaret and Fletcher Collins as two heroic figures atop a mountain, their eyes shooting giant lighthouse beams across the land.
Once in their home - a cozy Victorian mansion in town called The Oaks - I could see this arms-open-wide Renaissance couple would not let themselves be put on such a pedestal. Community is their thing.
Still, there's no denying the vast scope of their influence.
In a Woodstock mood, and having just read a Sunday Washington Post Magazine cover story titled ``Community: An Impossible Dream?'', I paid another call on Staunton.
Here is a small town where - at least in the ever-widening circle surrounding the Collinses - community has been real and functioning since the 1940s.
An excerpt from an essay by Margaret in ``Theater Wagon: Plays of Place and Any Place'' (University Press of Virginia, 1973) pegs the couple's viewpoint:
``Where community is real, there is communion. People talk to each other. Artists, patrons, audiences get together. Some dreams can be realized. Community comes alive when it takes new forms. Reality is touched with magic. There is zest. There is laughter. There is even compassion.
``The rest is imagination.''
The Collinses already were fascinating people when they moved to Pennyroyal Farm in 1946. Fletcher had a doctorate in Chaucer from Yale and had been involved in collecting oral histories and organizing folk festivals way before either practice was in vogue. And he wanted to farm. A Staunton native, Margaret was a playwright with a graduate degree from Yale; she wanted to school her children at home.
So that's what they did.
Unable to support a growing family by farming alone, Fletcher took a job heading the theater department at Mary Baldwin College, a women's institution in town. It was a fateful move. Soon after, the couple founded an outdoor theater nestled in the woods at Pennyroyal - still the home of Oak Grove Theater. They established Theater Wagon, a travelling troupe that presents new plays and new translations of classics.
The environment has proved infectious. Those who have gone there for decades say they return summer after summer for the sincere intellectual climate, the openness to new work and the genuine support system.
In Staunton, there's no petty backbiting among competitors for top roles, no tight little cliques. Friendliness reigns.
Here's another favorite Staunton quote: ``What is art without friendliness?''
That one came from Bertolt Brecht, the great modern playwright.
As Fletcher's Mary Baldwin students graduated, they maintained an interest in theater. B.A. ``Bobbie'' Hite of Norfolk was one such student. Since studying with Fletcher in the late '50s, Hite has continued to write plays, nearly all of which have been presented by Staunton's thespians.
Earlier this month, Hite's latest script was given a staged reading in an old barn on Pennyroyal Farm. Rain tapped percussively on the tin roof as the story of a rural girl seeking lost family came to life for a rapt audience of 50.
The play was presented by ShenanArts, yet another theater group in town. Though not founded by the Collinses, ShenanArts is based at Pennyroyal Farm and specializes in youth theater and playwriting/screenwriting workshops.
In August, the 18th Annual Shenandoah Playwrights Retreat involved a dozen playwrights from across the nation and beyond.
``One of the earliest writers we worked with was Bobbie Hite,'' said Robert Graham Small, ShenanArts retreat director, introducing Hite's reading. ``So, in many ways, it is appropriate that the first reading of this week of (staged) readings is of Bobbie's play.''
After the show, guests remained to talk with Hite about her script; they offered criticisms and compliments. The discussion was taped for Hite's benefit.
Later, Hite reflected on the experience. ``You know, the play doesn't exist until it's read. It's not like a poem a person can read in private and really enjoy.
``It's a communal art form. And you have to have the community.
``That's what Margaret is so big on. So everyone comes and listens to these new words. Until that happens, as a playwright, you can only listen to it in your head.''
To see and hear it on stage, Hite said, ``becomes your total fulfillment. If I hadn't had that, I don't think I ever would have kept it up.''
It's a rare situation, yet crucial. ``Most playwrights need a little nest to create in.''
Her husband, H. Rick Hite, professor of theater at Virginia Wesleyan College in Norfolk, has acted in Staunton productions since they married in 1961.
In August, Hite took on one of the most ambitious roles of his career - the lead in ``King Lear,'' performed at Oak Grove Theater. He hopes to mount it at Virginia Wesleyan in a year or so.
It's a regional exchange, too. Three years ago, Margaret Collins' historical play, ``Rebellion,'' about Nathaniel Bacon's Colonial-era rebellion, was mounted at Virginia Wesleyan.
The arts in Staunton have always been non-commercial, Rick Hite said. ``It was always done for the love of the arts, and with a sense of integrity. I think that's very unique.''
He has noticed how people get drawn into Staunton by seeing or participating in a performance. And they always come back.
``It's a community that keeps expanding,'' he said. ``You could see some of these people as comets. We come around to Staunton, then fly back out.
``It is probably one of the most incredible extended families ever created.''
Those who come are bound together by certain shared values and tastes. They prefer intelligent theater, especially comedies. What they don't like are angst-filled, hope-deprived dramas.
In music, traditional forms are especially honored, but that includes a wide range: old-time Appalachian string band music, folk, opera and medieval music-drama.
(Fletcher, it should be noted, is the world's leading translator of medieval music-dramas, and has published several texts on the subject.)
In early August, an annual ``Wagon Week'' of presentations was held in Staunton. One night began with a communal supper at The Oaks, followed by a marionette show, a modern dance performance and a black-tie cabaret show of arias and show tunes.
Ralph Cohen of Harrisonburg, a James Madison University English professor who found a Shakespeare troupe, was there for his first visit.
``I was astonished,'' Cohen said. ``I felt like I had stepped into the Algonquin Club. What a magical feeling in that house. The sense I had was that art was not a frill here. It was part of the way you breathe and live.''
To him, it all came back to the Collinses. ``I felt like two human beings had made an enormous difference.''
Virginia Beach thespian Shirley Hurd was in Staunton for much of that week, which concluded with Oak Grove Music Festival, held outdoors at Oak Grove Theater. Hurd and husband Bentley Anderson, an actor and VWC theater professor, have acted in various Staunton shows.
``To me, it's a real jewel,'' Hurd said. ``I suppose it's something like the salons were in France, where they would have all these talented people come in and share ideas. It seems to me that everybody who goes there has some kind of talent - musicians or playwrights or actors or artists or singers. The age range is across the board.
``And there is a tremendous amount of sharing.''
The lifestyle is simple. ``It's getting away from conspicuous consumption,'' she said. ``Everything they have, they use.''
The Oaks is a lovely mansion, ``but it's not an untouchable house. Every area of that house is used. It doesn't sit there, like an ornament. And I think about the way they built that outdoor theater. They didn't disturb the natural setting. They built it around the trees.''
The day after Bobbie Hite's reading, 200 or so patrons gathered in the grove to listen to country-but-swingin' Robin and Linda Williams and other groups at the music festival. Though they've become famous from recordings and appearances on Garrison Keillor's radio shows, the Williamses continue to play in their hometown.
``It's nothing like it,'' said Robin Williams, who roamed the grounds chatting with friends. ``You stand up and see all these people you've known for years coming to the Oak Grove.
``You have this community sitting there watching you play, and you share this feeling. This place has provided these people with some of the most fun times of their lives.
``It's a place where people do good creative work, and have for years. And they go through all the inner feelings and anxieties that the creative process entails.
``And they have all the extraneous activities that go along with the creative process - which will never end up in print, but are the ties that bind us all.''
That from a guy who wrote a tune called ``Don't Let Me Come Home a Stranger.''
Will there come a time when the memories fade,
And pass on with the long, long years,
When the ties no longer bind?
Lord, save me from this darkest fear. HE CROSSED THAT BRIDGE
Here's how Life magazine referred to world-renowned architect Robert A.M. Stern in its June cover story:
``He's a brainy Brooklyn boy who made it to the big time and never stopped. Schooled at Columbia and Yale, (he) runs a prominent, flourishing architecture firm in Manhattan. He has written or edited 24 books about design, hosted a PBS series and taught thousands of students.''
Whew. Amazingly, Stern has made time in his schedule to speak at the Virginia Beach Center for the Arts on Sept. 28 at 6:30 p.m.
Tickets are $25 through Sept. 10. After that date, $30. Pre-talk hors d'oeuvres and after-talk champagne and desserts are included. Ticket sales cease at noon Sept. 26.
The talk is presented by American Institute of Architects Hampton Roads. No phone reservations will be taken. To receive a brochure, call 461-2899. ILLUSTRATION: Color photo
TERESA ANNAS
Margaret and Fletcher Collins of Staunton are at the center of a
vast extended family of actors, playwrights, directors and
musicians.
Photo
TERESA ANNAS
Norfolk playwright B.A. "Bobbie" Hite, right, works with an actor
during a recent Shenandoah Playwrights Retreat near Staunton.
Map
STAFF
by CNB