Meagan Castillo (Fiona) is excited to be spending another summer at the beautiful Kitsap Forest Theater. A Seattle native, Meagan has performed with many local theater companies, including Seattle Musical Theater, SecondStory Repertory, Tacoma Musical Playhouse and the Seattle Gilbert and Sullivan Society. She is currently a pre-nursing student at Bellevue College.

The 2015 season, offering two amazing shows, presented a unique challenge for Meagan. “Actors frequently ask each other about their ‘list’, which shows and roles they are dying to do.  My list is pretty short, but Fiona in Shrek is definitely on it”, so when she saw that the theater was also producing Mary Poppins, another dream role, Meagan was torn. “It’s always tricky, balancing family and ‘work’.  Fortunately my family is amazing, and although my kids are too busy to participate in the summer show, everyone encouraged me to go out for both shows.” Much to Meagan’s surprise, she landed both leads.

The themes in Shrek (along with the quirky characters and upbeat music), are part of what drew Meagan to the show. “The need to fit in, to be what others expect you to be, can be strong. Shrek reminds us not only to embrace our own differences, but to respect the differences in others”.

Meagan was first drawn to the Kitsap Forest Theater in 2011, when her then 10-year-old son expressed an interest in joining her on stage. The unique environment of the theater, which encourages family participation both on and off stage, was a perfect fit. Since then, Meagan has had the privilege of appearing on the Kitsap stage with both of her younger sons; in the 2013 production of Narnia, and Honk! in 2014.  “I believe that the family friendly, multi-generational environment of the Kitsap Forest Theater is very important, both for the cast and for the audience. I'm proud to be a part of creating a place where parents and grandparents can expose their children to quality theater in a relaxed and welcoming space”.

This painting, the inspiration for the title of the musical, Fiddler on the Roof, is also the inspiration for the "Dream Scene" in our production. Get your tickets now and enjoy an afternoon of magical theater in the woods.

The following is excerpted from a "Truth in Art" column by W. Scott Lamb entitled The Green Violinist by Marc Chagall:

“A fiddler on the roof. It sounds crazy, no?” asks the poor Jewish milkman. “In our little village of Anatevka you might say every one of us is a fiddler on a roof. Trying to scratch out a pleasant simple tune without breaking his neck. It isn’t easy. You may ask why do we stay up here if it is so dangerous? We stay because Anatevka is our home. And how do we keep our balance. That I can tell you in one word. Tradition!” (from the opening of Fiddler on the Roof)

Fiddler on the Roof is loosely based on a novel called "Tevye, the Milkman," written by Yiddish author Sholem Aleichem and published in 1894. At the time of its publication and in roughly the same area of the world, another Jewish Russian was experiencing life in similar fashion to the fictional characters of Anatevka. The boy’s name was Moishe Shagal, but the world knows him best as Marc Chagall, one of the best-known painters of the 20^th century.

Even though Chagall moved away from his hometown of Vitebsk, the town remained a part of his memory and is reflected in The Green Violinist – a merry celebration of the tension between change and continuity of our lives. Chagall painted this in 1923-1924, thirty years after Aleichem’s novel and forty years before the Broadway production of Fiddler (which took Chagall’s painting as inspiration for the title of the musical).

The painting itself is enjoyable. Set against a bland backdrop of grey, brown, and black, a geometrically-inspired man in vibrant secondary colors (purple, orange, and green) plays a violin while standing on top of two houses. And check out that purple coat with triangle patterns! The painting is intended to make us reflect on the transitory and changing nature of the world in which we live. How should we respond to change and how should we relate to the past?

Imagine the historical changes that took place in Chagall’s hometown of Vitebsk. When Chagall was born, the town was under Tsarist rule. The Communist revolution brought political change and much turmoil. The Nazis took over the town for over three years, during which time 150,000 Jews died. Then, the Soviet Union took over the area and ruled until 1991.  

How does one move forward into the future while not losing the essential character of who they are? In Jewish villages, the fiddler would come out and play at births, weddings, deaths – all transforming events that cause us to reflect on the past, present, and future.

Regarding tradition, Fiddler’s Tevye says, “You may ask, ‘How did this tradition get started?’ I’ll tell you!  I don’t know. But it’s a tradition... and because of our traditions... Every one of us knows who he is and what God expects him to do.”

There is real tension between the forces that pull us forward and those that keep us in the past. Chagall’s fiddler is a modern Moses, commanding the people to remember the past even as they experience the change of the present and the promise of the future. The fiddler stands for joyful tradition, even while playing out to people leaving the village (horse and cart at top left) and finding freedom elsewhere (man floating off the page at top). The drumbeat of change will not stay outside of this man’s town, and yet the dog reminds us of fidelity to some part of the past. The ladder is at once both bound and free, one end on the ground and the other in the air. The tree itself is barren, but the bird in the branch reminds us of Chagall’s use of birds as a symbol of freedom.

And the fiddler himself is standing on and above the bedrock institutions of his village – home and synagogue. He is larger-than-life and yet his feet are still connected to things of the earth. This fiddler, central to “the tradition” of the village is also alive and well even in the midst of the fast-paced changes all around him. And the purple speaks of stable passion, emotional exuberance under control of the mind. Excited about the future even while retaining memory of the past.

Perhaps Chagall is saying that it is up to individuals to live larger than life by finding color and joy in remembrance of the past, even as the call of the future beckons.

What do you see in this painting? Leave a comment and tell us.

Kitsap Sun Preview, July 15, 2013, by Michael Moore

BREMERTON — Craig Schieber sees dead people ... as a resource.

The Mountaineers Players director puts ’em to work.

“We’ve certainly had some experience here recently with ghosts,” said Schieber, who directed the Mountaineers recent production of “Fiddler on the Roof” (funny ghosts), and currently is prepping “The Secret Garden” (melancholy ghosts), both at the al fresco Kitsap Forest Theater.

“The ghosts become the walls, they become part of the scenery,” said Schieber. “We take them and make them functional.”

And it doesn’t stop with ghosts, either. If you’re in an ensemble, you’re conscripted, either to move set pieces, or to actually be set pieces.

“One of the rules I have is to never have an empty stage,” said Schieber, who directs at least one of the Mountaineers’ two annual productions at the bucolic amphitheater carved out of a hillside nestled among blooming rhododendrons and hulking evergreens. “When we use the chorus (and in this case the ghosts) like that, it really helps us keep things moving, and not have any of those dead spots.”

The set this time — both the ghostly and non-ghostly aspects of it — is being handled by Barbara Klingberg, well known around Kitsap more for her costuming wizardry. But the former Broadway costumer, who’s now a Bainbridge-based architect, told Schieber she had wanted to do a set for a long time.

“It makes a lot of sense, actually,” Schieber said of Klingberg, who also acts on occasion and has whipped up the costumes for productions at Ovation! Musical Theatre Bainbridge and Bainbridge Performing Arts in addition to her work for the Mountaineers. “The two things work so closely together, she would want to have her eye on both of them.”

The cast is pretty Kitsap-centric, compared to the Mountaineers’ normally Seattle-dominated companies. It includes Eric Emans, who was in KFT’s “Robin Hood” several years ago, and has appeared on several other Kitsap stages since, as Neville Craven; Sara Henley-Hicks, a regular at Port Orchard’s Western Washington Center for the Arts before beginning her college studies at Cornish, as Lily; Carl Olson, a venerable actor and director around Kitsap, in two supporting roles; and Cymbeline Brody, a recent addition to the BPA company, as Colin.

The “Secret Garden” role is Brody’s third (after BPA’s “Tommy” and “Distracted” last season) that calls for the seventh-grader to play against gender.

As Mary Lennox, the little orphan who’s relocated from India to England to live with her distant uncle, Schieber has Jasmine Harrick, who’s fresh from KFT’s spring production of “Narnia,” in which she played Lucy Pevensie.

The cast also includes first-time Mountaineer Stephen Jones, a Seattle Opera veteran who’ll play Archibald Craven; Adrienne Easton as Mrs. Medlock; Tristan Carruthers as Dickon; and Britt Boyd as Martha.

Boyd might qualify for some kind of “extra-mile” award for her work in the show.

“She’s missing her sister’s wedding to be here,” Schieber said of the Seattle actress. “She’ll get to go to all the other pre-wedding stuff, like the bachelorette party, but then we open. She really wanted to be in the show; she’s played Mary in two other productions.”

Choreography is by Schieber’s longtime KFT ally, Guy Caridi, and musical direction is by Julia Thornton, doing her first work with the company after working with Schieber last year on a production of “Cinderella” at the Snoqualmie Falls amthitheater. Her singers will be backed by keyboardist Greg Smith.

The ghosts in Lucy Simon and Marsha Norman’s musical, adapted from the beloved children’s book by Frances Hodgson Burnett, are most of the people Mary knew in India, before they were wiped out by a cholera epidemic. She’s sent to live with an uncle she’s never met, in a manor that boasts some ghosts of its own. Both Craven brothers are mourning Archibald’s long-dead wife, Lily, who haunts the place and tortures them both.

Meanwhile, Mary sets about transforming the place — and the people in it — from gloomy to giddy, enlisting the help of her maid, the gardener and her bedridden cousin to help her cheer things up.

The show is fairly new. It made its Broadway debut in 1991, earning Norman a Tony Award for Best Book, and didn’t open on London’s West End until 2001. It’s been done locally twice in recent years — at BPA in 2008, and CSTOCK in ’07.

Read more: http://www.kitsapsun.com/news/2013/jul/15/no-headline---kt_secret_garden_071913/#ixzz2ZS8w1GE0