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"Seeing the Forest Through the Trees": Professor Jeremy Winchester and his work at Arrowhead.


For the past two years MCLA professor Jeremy Winchester (pictured above) has been working with writers and performers, Matthew Cumbie, Tom Truss and director Rudy Ramirez on the developing show, ReWritten. Winchester, notes that ReWritten "explores the literary and personal relationship between Nathaniel Hawthorne and Herman Melville ''. The show was an exploration not only of these historical relationships but the artists’ relationships as well. The performances, late August of 2021, took place at Herman Melville's Arrowhead, in the barn where both Melville and Hawthorne did most of their writing.

With part of the performance taking place in a historic barn, Jeremy needed to invent a lighting system that would not damage the barn and that would not leave a trace that something had been there. When asked what it was like to work in the barn and Jeremy’s response, “phenomenal”. Jeremy then recalled a memory, where in the final dress rehearsal, a thunderstorm passed by. After bringing the equipment and everything that couldn’t get wet outside into the barn, the team stood, “huddled within the barn” while waiting for the storm to pass. Eventually, a musician that was involved in the show started to play the banjo. Winchester describes, “this great Appalachian, bluegrass music, as the thunder and rain and it was the most amazing...”


Jeremy served as both Lighting Designer and Scenic Designer for ReWritten. He mentioned that although he learns and grows a bit and with every project, it was particularly interesting to be involved as a designer with a dance theatre piece before it was created., “These are the ways theatre has been evolved… envisioning, devising, creating.” Winchester was not alone in his design creations and credits the visual artists that have been impactful to the story itself. Winchester also acknowledged MCLA alumni Tim Fontaine, who helped with building furniture, and Alex Aleksandrov, who assisted in the lighting design process.


Reflecting on the project, Winchester said,


“We sometimes lose sight of the forest through the trees. We sometimes think of theatre as the thing that happens as a result of somebody making a script and then doing casting and then you get the script, rehearse for five weeks and then you have tech and it has all of these things and that's theatre. But all of that stuff is just the trappings of theatre. These are the ways in which theatre has evolved over time and in this particular place and it is largely a matter of convenience that we partner with all of these trappings. We don't have to reinvent the wheel every time. But we can reinvent the wheel any time we want to and that will still be theatre.”


ReWritten moves into residency in May at the “Dance Place” in Washington D.C. The production will return to Arrowhead in July/August 2022. Winchester described the return as “Arrowhead 2.0” and described the next goal of having a full production in Maine at Colby College. To check out past projects of Professor Winchester you can find the link to his website here: https://jwinchestertheater.com/

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