Harried Potter

I had a marvelous time at the Actors Theatre Playhouse production of "12 Angry Men" Saturday night. It's a great play, and it was very well done ... fine acting all around, particularly from Greg Lesch, as the juror who stands alone in the beginning and Bob Gruen as the one who stands alone at the end.

The intimacy of ATP's cozy, three-quarter round stage enhanced the enjoyment and made me feel like I was right there in the jury room with the actors.

I expected to have a good time; I've always been impressed with the caliber of ATP's offerings. What surprised me was how much Reginald Rose's 50-year-old classic has to say about our own time. It's about standing up for what you believe in, having the courage to stand alone when others are arrayed against you, challenging existing prejudices and assumptions ... all very salient points in our time - and any time.

What struck me about the play was how much it says about respecting other viewpoints ... challenge them, yes, when you feel you must, but respect them, too. That's an aspect to our current political/moral dialogue that has been lacking of late — on any level, from the Brattleboro Selectboard to the national scene to the United Nations.

I chatted with producer Sam Pilo briefly after that the show, and he made an interesting observation. ATP first ran "12 Angry Men" last fall, and at that time, audiences seemed most responsive to the aspect of the play that's about one man standing alone - in some ways mirroring the national discussion during the run up to the mid-term congressional elections. Now, other aspects of the play are rising to the fore - persuading others to join you, marshalling the moral authority to effect change, moving beyond merely standing up to engage in dialogue and make change. And through this change, the play has held up.

All that and a roaring good time at the theater. The Actors Theatre has never let me down; I love the intimacy, the quality of the acting, the pure dedication to scripts and actors, the affordable tickets. If you haven't gone, treat yourself to a night at the theater.

ATP's season continues with "Italian American Reconciliation," which runs from July 26 to Aug. 18. It's an offbeat, romantic comedy that's been called a fairy tale from Brooklyn. It was written by the Pulitzer Prize winning author of "Moonstruck," John Patrick Shanley. Read the Brattleboro Reformer for details in the next few weeks or visit www.ActorsPlay.org

Ever since I was a kid, I've been a New York Mets fan. I think it's because I first became aware of the larger world around me and of baseball in 1969 and '70, and the Mets were certainly the talk of my hometown — New York City.

My loyalty to the Mets has never wavered, but for a time during the mid- to late-70s, my attention wandered over a bit to the New York Yankees. At the time, the Mets were pretty wretched — they had traded Tom Seaver, whom I considered the soul of the team, and they seemed to field one awful team after another. It's hard to root for a team whose ace is Craig Swan. Concurrent with the Mets' decline was the ascendancy of the Yankees, who not only were a good team, they were so damned interesting.

The Yankees were a volatile, but winning, mix, whose strong, eccentric, downright crazy personalities ensured plenty of New York Post headlines and just as many wins. Call it creative tension maybe, but the Yankees managed to turn a toxic brew of personalities into a great team. And they were just so much fun to follow. You never knew when Billy Martin was going to e fired again, when Reggie Jackson to touch off another locker room fight, when Goose Gossage would fly off the handle, when Steinbrenner would say something provacative. It was a true baseball soap opera — and endlessly interesting.

And that brings us back to the Brattleboro arts scene. ESPN has seen fit to bring some of the Yankees' Bronx Zoo scene to the screen with a miniseries titled "The Bronx is Burning," which premieres July 9. Guilford actor Bill Forchion, whose resume is one of the most interesting in the world, appears in the series as Yankees coach Elston Howard. The series also stars John Turturro as Billy Martin, Joe Grifazi as Yogi Berra and Oliver Platt as George Steinbrenner.

I plan on catching the series to root for my hometown star Forchion and to relive, at least a little, those crazy, hazy days of my childhood when the Bronx Zoo was always open for business and never dull.

One of the most fascinating experiences I've ever had in my tenure as arts & entertainment guy at the Brattleboro Reformer was watching a rehearsal at the Marlboro Music Festival a couple of summers ago.

Marlboro is known for putting ensembles together that feature a top highly experienced musicians with other, younger, musicians. That dynamic, and the mutual learning that goes on, is one of Marlboro's hallmarks.

The model at Marlboro is one of colleagues working together. The senior members are not there to teach, and they are not authoritarian — although they are clearly admired and respected. Still, the senior musicians apply a gentle touch and are open to the ideas and input of the younger ones. As acclaimed cellist Marcy Rosen told me yesterday when I was up there keeping an eye on the place, "It's not my job to say 'it goes like this.'"

I saw that in action at the rehearsal I watched. Without exception, it was the younger musicians who were the toughest critics of themselves, and the senior member was a calming, guiding force. Later on, it was one of the younger musicians who suggested an approach to a difficult passage, and it turned out to be the best solution, adopted readily by all, including the senior musicians.

In all, it was so interesting to watch the rehearsal process in action and to hear a difficult piece of music improve over the course of the hour the group was working on it.

That's an opportunity you have too. Marlboro Music welcomes the public to attend a certain number of its rehearsals free during the week at Persons Auditorium at the festival's Marlboro College home. If you're interested, you are asked to call 802-254-2394 at the beginning of the week to find out what's open and when. Once you're there, your job is to be respectful and quiet and to sit back, enjoy the music and enjoy the process, too.

The smile on the young man's face said it all.

He was seated in his wheelchair ringside for Circus Smirkus Monday afternoon in Brattleboro, and I couldn't take my eyes off of him. For all two hours of the show, a smile was plastered on his face, a big smile - ear to ear and pure joy. I kept forgetting to watch the circus, so focused was I on watching this boy.

I was also watching my 2-year-old daughter, who was attending her first circus. She was totally caught up in the fun, too, dancing to the music, digging the clowns and watching the crowd, which she found as interesting as the circus itself. At one point, she asked if she could go into the ring.

She to her wish after the circus had ended, when kids were invited to step into the ring and meet the performers. One of the things that has always struck me about the Circus Smirkus performers is how generous they are with their time and how gracious they are with the fans afterward. These performers are in their teens, chasing their circus dreams and still learning the skills they need for a career in performing. They already seem to have the people skills down.

We also had a chance to meet Troy Wunderle, Circus Smirkus' loveable ringmaster and Cambridgeport resident. There seems to be little difference between Troy's onstage and offstage personalities. He's always upbeat, joyful and full engaged with whoever is in his company. You always feel better in his presence.

I mention all this in part because I'm still in the post-circus glow. My 2-year-old was cramming pretend pies in my face all morning. I also mention this because the circus is staying in town Tuesday for performances in Brattleboro at 2 and 7 p.m., at the Vermont Agricultural Business Center field off Exit 1 of I-91. If you have time, go see it. Even if you don't have time, skip out of work on a sunny summer day and see the circus. There are few pleasures in life that can match that.

All that, and it raises money for KidsPLAYce, too.

I've got to digress a little bit from what I usually talk about to reflect a bit about all the nudity stuff that's been happening here in Brattleboro. What got me really thinking was a visit I had at my house on Saturday afternoon. A guy in my neighborhood stopped by and asked me if I would sign a petition asking the Selectboard here to make the interim anti-nudity ordinance it passed last week permanent.

I didn't sign. For a lot of reasons. One was the wording of the petition. I don't remember the exact language, but it made it seem like citizens of this town were being confronted by a constant stream of nudists pouring into town to jiggle various body parts in front of innocent, law-abiding folks just trying to live their lives and buy their groceries without having to see naked people. I don't know about you, but I don't feel we're being overrun. I personally have never seen one.

More to the point, I don't see all this nudity as being that big a deal. Clearly some people do, and they are our friends and neighbors and, God love 'em, they can get passionate about it if they want, but this town faces so many more serious problems. It's still digging out from financial woes, property taxes are high, affordable housing and jobs are hard to find ... I could go on.

A number of people have cast the adoption of this ordinance as a business issue, but I found their arguments highly unpersuasive ... other than the fact that naked people have no place to carry their wallets.

On a more gut level, this whole naked thing is just much ado about nothing. This is not a scourge. It's just a few people expressing themselves or doing it just for the attention. This whole prudish uproar has distracted attention from the real issues the board needs to work on. In that sense, it mirrors what often goes on in Washington, where senators and representatives and executive branch get all in a dither about some pointless thing while Rome burns. Don't we all shake our heads when that happens? And now it's happening here.

For all those reasons and just a gut-level devotion I have to individual liberties and a real concern that there's too much legislation of morality in our country now, I didn't sign the petition. I told my neighbor I felt the town had bigger issues to grapple with, and I wished him well. This whole nudity thing is a tempest in a tea cup. Besides, for eight months of the year, it's too cold for nudists. And even when it warms up, black flies must be a real problem for them.

I'll confess it: I'm a bit of a Civil War geek. Not to the extent that I dress up and play soldier, but I like the history of it, and I've read quite a bit about it. It fascinates me. I blame Ken Burns.

For that reason, it was with some excitement that I opened my copy of "The Shadow of the Civil War: Passmore Williamson and the Rescue of Jane Johnson" by local folks Nat Brandt and Yanna Kroyt Brandt.

The book covers a little-known but important incident in the tumultuous times leading up to the Civil War that started when Williamson went to jail in 1855 for helping Johnson and her children escape slavery while they were passing through Philadelphia. The incident and its subsequent court case became a cause celebre and ultimately vindicated the state sovereignty of Pennsylvania over the power of slavery.

I was intrigued to learn about this, and I'm absolutely enthralled with the Brandts' writing which is lively, precise and quite moving without resorting to sentimentality. It is some of the finest nonfiction writing I've read in a while, and it's always fun to discover an important historical event which you didn't know anything about.

If you're intrigued, the Brandts will be at Brooks Memorial Library in Brattleboro on Tuesday, Aug. 7, at 7 p.m. to discuss their book. For information, call 802-254-5290, ext. 101.

I ran into one of my favorite creative people in the supermarket yesterday and, as often happens, we couldn't get on with our shopping without first having a 20-minute chat about arts-related things.

Wyn Cooper, poet and occasional rock 'n' roll star, had much news to tell. He has a new book of sonnets due out and has been in the recording studio with long-time co-conspirator Madison Smartt Bell working on an album of his poems and other writing set to rock music. Due out possible in the fall, there will be more on it soon.

What Cooper was most enthusiastic about was the upcoming Brattleboro Literary Festival, the sixth, which will be Sept. 28-30. Since its founding in 2002, the literary festival has retained a kind of ideological purity — great authors come to town to give free readings in an event refreshingly devoid of commercialism. It's just a weekend for readers, writers and the written word. Nuf' said.

This year's lineup includes Pulitzer Prize-winners (Galway Kinnel, Debby Applegate), a Newbery Award-winner (Lois Lowry), acclaimed fiction writer Ann Beattie, nonfiction writer Augesten Burroughs and composer and memoirist Allen Shawn. It also features a special food panel — a great addition.

The complete list of participating authors also includes: Jon Clinch, John Crowley, Joshua Harmon, Randall Kenan, Haven Kimmel, Colum McCann, Deidre Blair, Sven Birkerts, Michael Lesy, Zak Smith, Laure-Anne Bosselaar, Kurt Brown, Ellen Dudley, Martha Rhodes, Ibtisam Barakat, Leda Schubert, Matt Tavares and food panelists Marian Burros, Deborah Madison, Jeffrey Roberts and Keith Stewart.

I should add the obligatory plug for sponsors — if you want to sign up, e-mail bookfest@brattleboroliteraryfestival.org.