Spend a Dramatic Winter Weekend in Stonington!

Enjoy the spectacular beauty, quiet, theater and food of our community thanks to these special package deals.

Winter Drama: Stonington
Dates Feb 2-12, 2012
Prices starting at $170
Stonington brings in more lobster to its unique working waterfront than any port in Maine, and in the winter the authentic fishing village—Gothic mansard roofs cascading down toward the harbor and looking out across the sea smoke to the state’s largest archipelago and Acadia National Park’s Isle au Haut—is peaceful, sparkling, and unimaginably beautiful. Enjoy this view from your room at Boyce’s Motel or Inn on the Harbor, as well as from the Stonington Opera House. The Opera House, open year round, has become acclaimed for its high quality, live theatrical productions. This winter, come see the work of one of the hottest young American playwrights, Annie Baker, when Opera House Arts stages a professional, Actors Equity version of the hit new play “The Aliens.” If you’re looking for peace, quiet, and some of New England’s best cultural offerings in a Maine stay-cation, Stonington is the place! Package includes 2 nights lodging at Boyces’ Motel or Inn on the Harbor, specially-priced OHA 3 course Pre Dinner Menu available at The Seasons of Stonington, an award winning fine dining restaurant just yards from OHA, 2 tickets to “The Aliens” at the Stonington Opera House--starting at $170 per person.

Uke It in Stonington!
April 13-14, 2012
Prices starting at $170
Escape for a spring weekend to Stonington, Maine’s busiest and prettiest authentic fishing harbor, and hear one of the most acclaimed and unique American ukelele players—Del Rey of Seattle, WA. Del has performed two sold-out shows in Stonington previously, and she asked to come back for more! Come for the concert Friday night and stay for a ukelele workshop with Del on Saturday: ukes are back, make it a uke weekend! No experience necessary. Come to Stonington for culture and fun! Package includes 2 nights lodging and breakfast at Boyces’ Motel or Inn on the Harbor, OHA 3 course Pre Dinner Menu available at The Seasons of Stonington, an award winning fine dining restaurant just yards from OHA, 2 tickets to see Del Rey at the Stonington Opera House Friday night, starting at $170 per person.

Call the Opera House Box Office, 207-367-2788 to discuss options and register.

AWARD-WINNING DRAMA FEATURED IN WINTER SERIES AT STONINGTON OPERA HOUSE

Discounted weekend travel packages available for the Actors Equity production of “The Aliens” by Annie Baker February 2-12, 2012

The Aliens. February 2-5, 9-12 at the Stonington Opera House. Directed by Peter Richards. Costume Design Becky Lasky. Scenic Design Wayne Merritt. Lighting Design Michael Reidy. Sound Design Simon Skold. Starring Chris Bellant, Josh Bywater, and Danny Jones. An Actors Equity Production. Additionally, Opera House Arts is offering discounted weekend travel packages, including pre-theater dinner and lodging, in collaboration with The Seasons of Stonington, Boyce’s Motel and The Inn on the Harbor. Packages start as low as $120 per person. Please call 207-367- 2788 for details.

Who are “The Aliens” landing at the Stonington Opera House February 2-12?

Neither the terrifying little green men nor the friendly, finger pointing E.T. the title might lead you to expect.

Annie Baker’s Obie Award-winning drama “The Aliens” is a sweetly humorous, gentle, and extraordinarily beautiful new play about three young men who find community hanging out in the back alley behind a rural coffee shop, where it is difficult to imagine anything of great consequence happening. Yet it does.

Director Peter Richards, who has previously received acclaim for his direction of Brilliant Traces, Dying City, and Elizabeth Rex for Opera House Arts, proposed the contemporary play in part due to the familiarity of its setting and characters to rural Mainers. “It’s an incredibly important role of live stage drama, to reflect our unique lives back to us,” said Opera House Arts’ Artistic Director Judith Jerome. “Mainstream films and TV shows don’t capture the kinds of community we know here, they don’t help us to see and celebrate and understand ourselves.”

The small cast is comprised of Jasper, a self-defined, 30-something year-old, guitar playing “street urchin” who’s writing a novel; his best friend K.J., a college drop out and songwriter; and the 17-year-old garbage-toting Evan, whom they befriend. Sometimes called “slackers,” the three are classic “misfits,” alienated from mainstream expectations, guys who can’t quite find the right thing to do despite—or in spite of—their unique, individual creative geniuses.

Baker grew up in Amherst, Massachusetts, and graduated from the Department of Dramatic Writing at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts. She earned her MFA from Brooklyn College. The Aliens, which premiered Off-Broadway at Rattlestick Playwrights Theater in April 2010, was a finalist for the 2010 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize and shared the 2010 Obie Award for Best New American Play with Baker’s earlier play Circle Mirror Transformation.

Director PETER RICHARDS has spent summers in Stonington his entire life. He most recently directed the hugely successful Elizabeth Rex as part of Opera House Arts’ Shakespeare in Stonington 2011, in addition to the dark comedy Brilliant Traces in February 2010 and Dying City in 2011. As an actor, he appeared as Claudio in 2010 in the Shakespeare in Stonington production of Measure for Measure. Richards also directed a staged reading of Peter Matthiessen’s Men’s Lives in 2008 at the Opera House. He has appeared at the Opera House as Dr. Smith of Conni’s Avant Garde Restaurant in the 10th Anniversary Revue in 2009; as Orlando in As You Like It in 2006 and as one of the brothers in the infamous “moose play” featured in 2003’s The Ferry Musicals. Other theater acting credits include: Gone; Olly’s Prison; Dido, Queen of Carthage; Othello; Macbeth; Romeo and Juliet; Coriolanus; Spring Awakening and Fear and Misery in the Third Reich. Television and film credits include: “As the World Turns,” Stroke, and The Audition. He received an MFA in acting from A.R.T. Institute at Harvard University/MXAT and a BA from Harvard College and lives in New York City.

CHRIS BELLANT (Evan) has been actively working in New York and L.A. for the last six years. He was most recently seen as Macduff in a production of Macbeth. Other New York theater includes Killing John Grisham in the New York Int'l Fringe Festival, Twelfth Night, David Lindsay Abaire’s Snow Angel, Love's Labour's Lost, and Twelve Angry Men. Film and television credits include a pilot for Fox and a number of short films that have played at festivals around the country. Chris trained at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts (Stella Adler Studio).

JOSH BYWATER (KJ) Opera House Arts debut. Regional and other: The Crucible (Ozark Actors Theatre); All My Son (Hubbard Hall); Tennessee WIlliams' One Arm (Steppenwolf Theatre/Tectonic Theater/About Face); The Story (Goodman Theatre); Time and the Conways and Picni (Griffin Theatre-Chicago); Lebensraum and The Chosen (New Jewish Theatre-St Louis). TV: As the World Turns and Grey's Anatomy. Resident Artist with CRY HAVOC Theatre Company in New York City, where he has helped develop several new plays. Member of AEA.

DANNY JONES (Jasper) is a born and raised Alaskan who has just recently moved to New York. He is incredibly happy to be making his first trip to Maine to perform in such a splendid piece of theatre. Danny's regional credits include: 12 Angry Men (Asolo Repertory Theater), Las Meninas (Asolo Rep.), Antigone Now (Asolo Touring Co.), Danny And the Deep Blue Sea (FSU/Conservatory). In addition to being a freelance actor he is also a celebrated performance poet and seasonal commercial fisherman. He would like to thank his loving family and friends for their unconditional support.

Scenic design for the show is by Wayne Merritt, with lighting by Michael Reidy of Bates College and costumes by Rebecca Lasky, whose work has been seen previously at the Opera House in Taming of the Shrew and Dying City.

The full production schedule and tickets are available at www.operahousearts.org or by calling the Stonington Opera House at 207-367-2788. Regular tickets are $20, with fixed income, student, and group discounts available.

Opera House Arts (OHA) is celebrating the 100th Anniversary of the Stonington Opera House, on the National Register of Historic Places, in 2012. OHA is a nonprofit small professional theater noted for its original productions and artist commissions, including 2010’s Burt Dow, Deep Water Man, which will be reprised in August 2012.