Generic Theater reminisces on 25 years of productions and other contributions to Portsmouth arts and culture 

Grassroots theater troupes are seldom as long-lived as Generic Theater. Launched with only an impromptu party version of “Pyramus and Thisbe” and a yard sale grossing $400, the group has produced 25 years of theatrical and community shenanigans, and throughout that time, Portsmouth has been a rapt audience and beneficiary.

To celebrate the anniversary, “Time Passages,” a historical reprise of six one-act plays, will be performed for the next three weeks at the Player’s Ring on Marcy Street, beginning Friday, March 23. The program features a cross section of offerings—real, unreal and surreal. On the bill is Lanford Wilson’s “This Is the Rill Speaking.” A rill is a ripple, and this one runs vocally through the life of a small southern town on a particular day. Mark Towle’s “Man in the Mask” and Samuel Beckett’s “Come and Go” are less transparent, more internal and create unique transient worlds. Jeffrey Sweet’s “Adjusting” conjures an oh-so-familiar scenario that anyone who’s ever broken up with another will recognize. “Philip Glass Buys a Loaf of Bread,” which is an excerpt from “All in the Timing” by David Ives, offers a rollicking vocal parody of orchestral minimalism, while “Lamps,” from Jane Martin’s “Talking With…,” shares diminuendo simply and visibly.

I’ve seen a half a handful of these plays when Generic Theater (affectionately and simply called GT by its members) originally staged them. They were presented in spaces as diverse as the basement of the South Church, Market Square Studio, McDonough Street studios (in Pontine’s old black box space), and the old Mural Works studio space, where many a $3 and $4 dollar show flew under the radar. A few Port-dwellers of longevity know that the third floor hall of the Button Factory is partially lined with old Generic Theater sets (hence the man with the monocle and antique phone, if ever you’ve wondered). Their first show cost $2.50, was launched Jan. 3, 1982—a date memorialized on their barcode logo—and came with a potluck supper since the price was “exorbitant.”

It’s just this sort of spirit that remained evident at a recent “Time Passages” rehearsal. 

It’s Saturday morning, and long-time Generic Theater member Susan Turner, who will perform “Lamps,” arrives a bit early, sharing chocolate bars, tea and acquires tips about where to buy cute, cheap shoes. Stalwart set designer, GT co-founder and actor Cary Wendell floats in next from Phillips Exeter Academy where he runs facets of the school’s theater program. His partner, writer, educator, and GT co-founder Peggi McCarthy, is running rehearsal today.

Next comes Deidre Randall, a Portsmouth native, publisher, community radio DJ and folksinger who will play part of a odd collective character identified broadly as “Six who share little” in “Man in the Mask.” She’s soon followed by Roland Goodbody, actor, WUNH DJ, and University of New Hampshire special collections librarian who’s been involved with GT since the troupe’s second production. He’ll play three roles: the masked man in “Man in the Mask” and two separate turns as a meandering farmer and a jocular pool hall denizen in “Rill.” The group is then joined by Brad Ritchie and Kate Kosteva, who are relatively new to the stage in comparison. Most actors in “Rill” have multiple roles. Ritchie played at least two during rehearsal: Somersaulting Man in “Man in the Mask” and Willy in “Rill.” Kosteva plays Willy’s older sister, Judy. Jessica Michaud, who’s stage-managed up until now, will have her first turn on the other side of the curtain for this production as part of  the character “Six with little to share” This mixture of seasoned and exploratory actors is a hallmark of the group. They’re ready to begin.

At rehearsal, each actor leads a warm-up exercise with their character’s signature walk or motion. In circles they’re soon gamboling, strutting, frog marching, soaring and sashaying. This activity tunes them to each other and warms them all up, and it prepares them for their collective role as “Six with little to share,” a surreal procession in “Man With a Mask.” They’ll move in unison, almost a centipede, surrounding themselves in a verbal hubbub. Their motion becomes a choreographed metaphor of mindlessness, an odd juxtaposition of union and disconnection.

McCarthy is like a conductor (musical and train) modulating their voices and energies, shoveling coal, calling out directions, prompting a rookie with the right cue, ramping it up, toning it down. She’s acted, directed, served as lead PR person, strong-armed dues out of late payers, fed the masses, and served a mean volleyball. She’s read and pitched many a play. While relating stories about GT, Roland Goodbody, Gordon Carlisle, and Susan Dumais all shared almost identical stories about remarking offhand to a friend, to a lunch companion or to a man on a bus: “I’d like to try acting, but I have no idea how to get started.” In every instance the reply was, “You need to talk to Peggi McCarthy.”

Painter and musician Carlisle joined Generic Theater in 1983, and he wrote and directed his first play circa 1984. He envisioned himself “as the Toulouse-Lautrec guy in mix,” he says with a chuckle. As a fine-art silkscreener and set painter, he helped with a consistent “look” for the group with outrageous props and intriguing sets. He created many of the theater’s signature multi-colored, silk-screened posters. He’s since moved on from GT to form Poolyle Productions with his wife, Susan Poulin. They meet with the group and began their work together there.

“The wacky absurdist stuff that GT started with… I loved! You didn’t need acting chops to be involved. It was theater for common people to pull off,” Carlisle says, explaining that the typical approach was, “You wanna do it? We’ve got a place for you. Not, ‘Can we audition you?’ I got into it, and I was immediately acting. It was wack-a-doodle, mop on your head, ‘you’re Adonis’ stuff.” 

Carlisle and Goodbody both mentioned the way GT headed off “star syndrome.” Says Carlisle, “You act in a play and then you take a background role for the next.” The group met its technical needs for light and sound that way and helped more shy members work behind the scenes until they were bold enough to try the boards.

An informal play count by Wendell and McCarthy tallied easily into the high 70s, due largely to the one-acts that have been their stock in trade. Full-length plays didn’t come until the 1990s. Wendell, with memory jogs from McCarthy and others, is trying to write a history of the organization, and it’s been challenging and reflective. Their list of alums and past cast members unspools in conversation. More than 150 people have been involved with Generic Theater as writers, directors, cast and crew.

A full-length play, “Largo Desolato,” by Vaclav Havel transfixed the group in the early 1990s. Havel, a jailed political dissident and a Theatre of the Absurd-inspired playwright, had recently been released from jail and elevated to president of the Czech Republic. Havel’s attention to the creative economy as a motivational force in social change was particularly inspirational. The play, penned in what Havel called “post-prison psychosis” tested GT’s design sense. Wendell needed to create a set that was both mind and jail, both compartmentalized and accessible, with seven entrances for seven characters. “Largo Desolato” posed theatrical complexities that challenged the group intellectually and artistically, and as a full-length play, it really upped the ante from earlier productions and pushed production values to new heights.

Wendell tried closed spaces and dark opaque cloth, but there was no stage picture emerging. With McCarthy’s collaborative prompting, he opened up the whole design, inferring closed space by defining outer edges. The set would then rattle and shake like a cage. Spaces became transparent, covered with scrims, and hive-like comings and goings of actors became visible to the audience. The group added a live bass viola for hum and thrum, and amid this land and soundscape, Goodbody played a lead character both cloistered and under the microscope.

The set design eventually won Wendell wide acclaim and broad acknowledgement for his inventiveness. At a competition, he received several scholarship offers and decided to pursue a Masters of Fine Art in Theater Design. He and McCarthy left GT and went to Ohio for three years, a life-changing event on many levels.

Beyond the stage, myriad collaborations grew out of Generic Theater energies and took form in poem, story, song and art. Generic Theater collaborators also created work with visual and fine arts organizations like The Alley Gallery, Synergy, and Pontine Movement Theater (when they were primarily a training ground for movement theater and commedia dell’arte). The musical among them fronted a house band called the Charm Dogs and fanned the flames of cultural entertainment that was re:Ports magazine, poetry at Café Petronella and the Book Guild. They hosted live models at the Connie Bean Community center for drop-in drawing and painting for an array of participating artists.

In summer of 1982 with the city’s permission, five artists—Pat Splaine, Steven Lee, Cary Wendell, Tom Cowgill and Valerie Cooper—painted a four story, two building-wide trompe l’oeil mural in Market Square. Painted on a temporary plywood façade covering a construction project, it depicted the Foye and Pierce buildings as they appeared in 1900. The mural project attempted simply to bring publicity to the Alley Gallery, but ultimately resulted in a Yankee Magazine article and led to interest from all over the Northeast. Market Square Murals was born (later becoming Mural Works) and took up space in the Button Factory, the next major sphere of GT operations.

Other seminal cultural events spun off, like Roland Goodbody’s “One Thing After Another,” a showcase for original one-acts at the Button Factory. Goodbody’s series was born from his brush with Spalding Gray’s monologue style in “Swimming to Cambodia.” Actor and educator Tony Lee and Goodbody presented raw and original quirky and obsessive monologues. This forum was “a good place to do things less fully prepared,” he says. Being up there with minimal props, just enough to make it visually interesting to the audience was a great challenge. The focus was on the strength of the story. Goodbody says, “I was always going for that connection with the audience, less concerned with costumes or sets.”

Also in that space, Carlisle spearheaded the “No Big Deal Hoot” series, which was an artistic free-for-all of songs, poems, comedy, stories, clogging, mime, monologues and toy theater. Maine native and Rounder Record recording artist Slaid Cleaves tried his early songs at the No Big Deal. The concept of Susan Poulin’s “Ida” was born there. Voices from the Heart and Con Tutti’s Joanne Connolly led audiences in song there. Michelle Brochu explored her inner chanteuse. The band Ed’s Redeeming Qualities shared their utterly unique brand of confessional, folk-angsty, musical canoodling. It wasn’t all spit and polish—folks laughed, cried and crashed there, but there was always something up.

The GT mix was enriched and enriching. As a group they conducted play readings and meetings almost encounter-group style, critiquing, yelling, discoursing, taking turns presenting and facilitating, eventually reining themselves in with Robert’s Rules of Order to get stuff resolved and done. Goodbody reflects that this early style of facilitated communication may be part of the reason for the group’s longevity. The attention to process, to consensus and communication helped work out creative differences, even outright clashes; it helped the group explore multiple directions and multiple needs. Early member Helen Brock, who is directing “Lamps” came upon Generic Theater as she graduated from college with a theater degree.

“I was an immigrant. My family was far away in England and here are great people who love to dance and act and party. They became my family,” she says. Like Goodbody, she retains a tangible sense of having done important exploring and growing up under the auspices of the group’s creative climate. “I’ve been able to do everything—be an actor, direct, make a costume. As much as it is a real strong social network, I’ve enjoyed watching passions evolve, loves wax and wane.”

Carlisle shared a similar sentiment. “There was always some momentum that kept the group going. People had kids and kept involved. People came and went, grew up and out,” he says. Two or three GT actors reminisced about nursing babies and running lines as de rigeur.

Goodbody says he saw GT as both “a lesson in flat democracy” and as a “creative incubator.”

“We started as a young person’s group with that sort of energy—you live out some of the ideas you embrace to create the world you want to be part of. Consensus was really important. That’s where we started: friends together working on something important together and the audiences just saw the very end.” Goodbody also learned a lot from attempts at directing.