Today was the first truly hot day in Weston. Until now, I’ve been spoiled by near-perfect weather every day. One of my fellow interns recently made the discovery that the actual Von Trapp family, on which The Sound of Music is based, came here to Vermont after leaving Switzerland. When I heard this fact, it seemed not only wonderfully coincidental – considering we had been planning to create a lip-dub video of myself and my fellow housemates singing “So Long, Farewell” before the end of the summer – but also fitting. I can easily picture the family gathered on the porch of a magnificent, Victorian-style home, watching summer quicken around them. Thoughts like these settle on me with a kind of serenity that I have only felt since I began living here for the summer. It is a serenity encompassed by the notion that there are so many unexplored possibilities that are at once exciting and calming.
There are days when all I want to do is explore. A few days ago, Jess was driving Caleb and I back to the farmhouse and she decided we should just keep driving past the farmhouse and straight on until we saw a place to stop. We ended up in Wallingford, a number of miles down the road, where we discovered a single stoplight, a pristine whitewashed inn with consummate shrubs lining the walk to the door, a fountain featuring a young boy holding his boot up so that the water pour from a hole in the toe, and a pub with a sign over its door that read simply “The Pub.” We arrived just in time to catch the last bit of sun setting behind the town’s church, orange and red behind the stark black silhouette of the steeple.
I feel lucky not only to be living in such a incredible place for the summer, but also to be working for a theatre company that creates such great art. We’re opening Hound of the Baskervilles soon, a comedic adaptation of the famous Sherlock Holmes story. I’ve just finished reading the script and it is quite funny and at times very clever. And yet on the opposite end of the theatrical texture spectrum, and being presented in the same season, is Mary’s Wedding, a beautifully written, poetic dream play. What the two plays have in common is that they feature a small number of extremely talented actors and call on the imaginations of their audience members to expand the world of the play.
It is the diverse means by which this theatre company in tiny Weston, Vermont succeeds in expanding these worlds into the minds of all those involved that is most exciting. In hearing Steve Stettler, one of the producing directors, talk about the season – how it was created, how each show fits into the whole – I’ve realized that possibly the most valuable parcel of knowledge contained in Steve’s words is the idea that there are countless avenues by which this kind of expansion can be ignited.
a Very Weston Summer 