A New Hampshire author is getting a spotlight this month. Writer Alice Brown was raised in the town of Hampton Falls in the 1800s, and a local theater company is turning one of her stories into a play. The Pontine Theater’s production of “The Flat Iron Lot” features two actors who use puppets to play the different characters.
Those actors, Greg Gathers and Marguerite Matthews, are also the company’s artistic directors. They spoke with NHPR’s Morning Edition host Rick Ganley about their work.
Transcript
Marguerite, I want to start with you. Tell us more about Alice Brown and [how] most of her writing seems to be out of print now.
It is. She's a local treasure, which is a specialty that we really enjoy working in – finding authors who have somehow fallen through the cracks that are no longer remembered by current audiences. So of course, being in Hampton Falls, it's pretty close to Portsmouth, where our studio is, and we're always looking for these hidden gems.
And we were absolutely astonished to find a huge number of written works that were all preserved at the Hampton Falls Library, along with biographical information about her and a very well-informed library staff who were very helpful in helping us find just the right kind of piece that we might consider bringing to the stage.
You don't realize how much of a resource your local librarian can be until you ask. Greg, without spoiling anything, can you tell us a little bit about what the story is about?
Sure. So this comes from a collection called “Tiverton Tales” that she published in 1899. And "The Flat Iron Lot" is the penultimate story of the collection, in which the town comes together to celebrate its 250th anniversary. And, of course, the thing that suggested it to us at this time was it's a wonderful tie-in with the national 250 celebration of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, but has a great local connection.
Greg, "The Flat Iron Lot" takes place in this small fictional New England town, as you said, called Tiverton. Do you think Brown based it on where she grew up in New Hampshire?
Oh, absolutely. What's interesting is that after graduating from school, she taught for a little while in Exeter, and she hated small town life and she hated teaching. So she ended up moving to Boston and becoming a prominent author and editor there, but most of her stories are about rural New England life. So clearly the people she knew, they are the ones who inspired her characters.
Greg, you talked about the love for the quirky characters for you. What's a standout?
The main character, Nicholas Oldfield. He's a clockmaker, but he's also the local historian, amateur historian. He's the collector of town stories of legend and lore, and he reminds both Marguerite and I all the time when we're rehearsing the show of a bunch of really wonderful, interesting and eclectic people who we know from historical associations around the Seacoast area.
Marguerite, in adapting this story into a play and thinking about the current feel that the country has going into the 250th anniversary of the founding, what are some of the parallels in the story and today?
I think that there's a great fondness in terms of this idea of a community celebrating itself, celebrating its own history, celebrating things that are close to home. I think that those are things that are true throughout the ages. This little story has such quirky, wonderful characters that she brings to life, and we continue enjoying bringing stories that have to do with where we live and where we are to audiences here. We feel it's a great joy for ourselves and also for our audiences that we serve by reflecting back to them their own history and their own culture.
