PHOTO COURTESY OF NEWTOWN ARTS COMPANY
The Newtown Arts Company’s production of the Odd Couple last year featured (from left) Jeff Dworkin, Richard Blanck, Bruce Perlman and Don Polec.
By Jack Firneno
Wire Staff Writer
Sometimes, history doesn’t repeat itself as much as it gets an encore.
To celebrate its 30th anniversary season this year, the Newtown Arts Company left it up to its audience to decide which productions they’d like to see mark the occasion. This month, the company is wrapping up the year with a production of Brigadoon — the group’s first musical, which it put on during the inaugural 1983-1984 season.
“We handed out ballots at every show last year,” explained Nancy Pickering, a founding member and now the group’s president. “It’s interesting that they chose that one.”
Interesting, but maybe not surprising: Newtown has a long memory when it comes to community theater. Over the past three decades, the Newtown Arts Company has hosted local media personalities, aspiring and future stars, and Hollywood vets.
Even the show that got the company started was a star-studded affair. When Newtown celebrated its 300th anniversary back in 1983, local citizens staged a pageant portraying the town’s history. Entitled Sweet Land, it was produced by the late Ezra Stone, whose credits include directing classic television shows like The Munsters along with numerous films, Broadway and radio appearances, and his wife Sara Seeger, best known as Mrs. Wilson on the 1960s Dennis the Menace television series.
After the show was over, recalled Pickering, “The actors wanted to keep acting and the singers wanted to keep singing.”
That interest led to the founding of the Newtown Theatre Company, which went on to work with talented local professionals and other Bucks County theater groups to present theatrical and other lively arts as well as award more than $100,000 over the years in the form of scholarships for performing and fine arts students.
At its core, though, community theater is “people who volunteer their time to put on live stage productions,” said Pickering. “At our company, every audition is an open audition. We take the best talent we possibly can to put on the productions we do.”
Fortunately, talent isn’t a rare commodity in Bucks County. Last year’s production of the Odd Couple featured Don Polec, a local television personality on ABC’s Action News. Jim McCrane, a regular director for the company who works for an insurance company, used to be a managing director for the La Salle Music Festival. His brother, Paul McCrane, has acting credits including E.R. and The Shawshank Redemption.
“For veterans, it’s an opportunity to share what they’ve learned along the way,” explained Pickering. “There are others who, because of economic or time constraints, can’t do this full time. This is for them to keep their hand in performing and acting. And, there are people who have done it all their lives.”
Instilling that lifelong passion for the arts is another area the Newtown Arts Company is in. When the Bucks County Playhouse in New Hope closed its doors four years ago, Newtown picked up its student theater festival, which draws anywhere from 700 to 1,000 young thespians. Now that the Playhouse has reopened, the two share the event.
The Newtown Theatre Company has participated in two international exchanges, where it sent young actors and actresses from the area to England and vice versa. And, its annual Kids for Kids program gives children who pass an audition a script and music to learn on their own for a month before going into two weeks of intensive rehearsals before staging their production. Pickering said that families are a big part of the Newtown Arts Company. “The reason I got started in the first place is because my daughter dragged me there,” she laughed. Pickering’s daughter, then 8 years old, was the first to sign the charter to form the company. “Now she’s married with three kids and I’m still here.”
But while that “here” has changed over the years, the company is now nestled comfortably in a place with even more history behind it than them: The Newtown Theater, which is also the oldest working movie theater in the country.
The company started out on stages in Council Rock schools, mainly Newtown Junior High. It also spent time at the Bristol Riverside Theatre and the George School, and held 12 seasons at the open-air theater at Washington’s Crossing Park in New Jersey.
They finally returned to Newtown in 2006, when the theater was celebrating its centennial anniversary. “They removed the static screen that had been there since the 1930s, and created a situation where the stage could be opened up. We benefitted from that,” recalled Pickering.
And, patrons of the arts will continue to benefit from the Newtown Arts Company’s productions well beyond its anniversary this year. 2014 will feature classic productions like Fiddler on the Roof and Twelfth Night by Shakespeare. Along with the actors on stage, people like Pickering will be working just as hard behind the scenes.
“I always enjoy working with the company,” she said. “I’ve performed a few times but my real love is watching it all come together.”
To find out more about the Newtown Arts Company’s productions, visit http://www.newtownartscompany.com.
The Midweek Wire 