Tag Archives: Theater

March 2, 2026

The Last Week in February

By daseger

Well, it’s been quite a winter here in eastern Massachusetts, and last week was quite a week, so I think I’m going to take a break from topical posting and just present the week that was. It started with a blizzard, and even though it is now March 1, as I am typing I see big fluffy snowflakes out there again. But not all was white: there was bright blue towards the end of the week as my husband and I proceeded north for a little break. In this topsy turvy winter, Rhode Island experienced 30+ inches of snow while midcoast Maine seems to have had just a dusting. By the time we got up there on Thursday, it seemed springlike to me! We saw my stepson, who works at an oyster farm near Damariscotta, engaged in a bit of house-hunting, and (lucky us) stayed at the storied Norumbega Inn in Camden. The latter was a long-time wish of mine, having driving by the fantasy castle on Route One many a time, and it did not disappoint. After two nights in Camden, we returned to Salem on Saturday for a really cool event at Hamilton Hall: Fashioning Freedom: Layers of Liberty. This was a theatrical performance fashioned as a “a celebratory, historical runway of Black creativity and activism” featuring prominent nineteenth-century African Americans, including the Remond family of the Hall, Frederick Douglass’s wife Anna, educator Charlotte Forten, and sculptor Edmonia Lewis. A collaboration between Salem’s revered historical theater company, History Alive, and the Hall, it was a can’t miss event for me: all Renaissance scholars adhere to the concept of “self-fashioning,” which is just what we saw, and of course after having written about John Remond in Salem’s Centuries it was a thrill to see “him” right in front of me. So it was a very interesting week and I am ready for March!

Monday’s blizzard from my second-floor windows.

And then: bright blue sky and sea in Maine! Obviously there was snow up there too, but less of it and more room to spread it around. City snow can be exhausting: you just can’t find get it out of the way and it is increasingly gray (among other colors). Below are a few houses in Newcastle, Cushing and Friendship, and then we were off to Camden and the Norumbega.

The Norumbega, otherwise known as Norumbega Castle, was built as a private home for Maine native Joseph Barker Stearns in 1886-87 in a style that is generally described as “Queen Anne”. To me, it has always seemed more Romanesque, but its interior was a bit lighter than I imagined—smaller too. Not that it is small, it’s just that the scale is not baronial or overwhelming. We stayed in one of the turret rooms, named Sandringham. Stearns made his millions in the telegraph industry by patenting and licensing duplex telegraphy, by which two messages could be sent over the same wire simulteneously. Camden is a hilly coastal Maine town (with its own municipal ski slope, called the Snow Bowl) and the Norumbega is situated on an elevated site which once, and really still, has unobstructed views over Penobscot Bay. The house remained residential for a century, and then was converted into an inn. We really enjoyed our stay: our room was lovely, as were all the public rooms, and breakfast and bar bites in the small blue cocktail lounge were special touches. We actually saw a bit less of Camden than we expected to because we just wanted to hang out in the castle—you can do that in the winter and not feel guilty. But Saturday morning we knew we had a date with the Remonds so back to Salem we went.

The real Remonds at Hamilton Hall and a few shots from “Fashioning Freedom” before and after the performance. It was a very visual evening so check out Hamilton Hall for more professional photos in the next few days. Congratulations to all involved! The month ended with the news that Salem’s new consolidated elementary school will be named after Sarah Parker Remond–yet another triumph for an important Salem family! I do tend to view them in the collective as they were all so invested and engaged. As we enter women’s history month, here’s a clip of an 1855 petition calling for the resignation of Judge Edward Greeley Loring, the Massachusetts Justice most associated with the enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Act, signed by ALL the Remond women, including matriarch Nancy, her daughters and daughters-in-law, and their friend Charlotte Forten. You can see more at the Massachusetts Archives Anti-Slavery Petititions Dataserve at Harvard University:

https://dataverse.harvard.edu/dataverse/antislaverypetitionsma.

Leave a comment | tags: Black History Month, Day Trips, great houses, Hamilton Hall, Historic Hotels, Local Events, Maine, Remond Familty, Salem History, Sarah Parker Remond, Theater, travel, weather, Women's History Month | posted in Culture, History

September 9, 2024

The Play’s the Thing

By daseger

I’ve always been curious about the local impact of the various initiatives of the Works Progress Administration (WPA) in the 1930s, and when I first looked into Salem’s experience I didn’t find much. Then I found more WPA projects, and published a mea culpa post. And now I think that the WPA program which had the biggest impact on Salem was the ambitious Federal Theater Project (FTP), which ran from 1935-39. The FTP had a dual mission: to provide work to unemployed actors and theater professionals by funding perfomances across the country and to engage a larger and more diverse audience for an art form that had been impacted dramatically not only by the Depression but also by the rise of the film industry. At its height, the FTP employed around 12,000 people and it subsidized 1200 productions over its four-year run, including a whole season of new plays performed in the Empire Theater in Salem. At the outset, Boston had been chosen as one of the regional centers of the FTP, but there were censorship challenges (“banned in Boston”) that affected productions there, so after a rocky first season in 1936-1937, Salem was chosen as the site of the second season’s offerings, and 26 plays were performed at the Empire in 1937-38. The FTP was conspicuous from its foundation for the perceived “radical” messaging of some of its plays, and while it’s difficult to think of Puritan Salem as more progressive than Brahmin Boston, that seems to have been the case in the 1930s!

All the posters above are from the Federal Theater Project collection at the Library of Congress, which also includes programs and other materials. Many of these plays, mounted weekly as you can see, were really big productions, with sizable casts and crew, and the programs indicate that Salem businesses also contributed to the production: furniture, flowers and textiles for the sets, food for the performers and stagehands. These performances (161 over the entire season!) must have been a boost to the entire community, which was also able to attend the performances at discounted prices. The FTP also included the Negro Theater Project, specifically focused on providing employment for African American actors, stagehands and playwrights, who were part of several Salem productions. The Empire Theater was full for all five nights of each production throughout the season, and the popularity of the FTP productions in Salem led to the production of two world premieres as well as its selection as one of only four cities across the US (with Detroit, San Diego, and Des Moines) to feature Bernard Shaw’s popular play Arms and the Man. Through the dark days of the Depression in Salem, the Empire Theater, “home of the spoken drama,” was providing quite a bit of light in that one busy year.