Hackmatack Playhouse Welcomes New Artistic Director

The new artistic director at Hackmatack Playhouse might have been hired for her talent as an actor, dancer or choreographer. Crystal Lisbon of Dover also might have been chosen for her connections to theater in Boston. But ultimately, Lisbon was hired at this Berwick stage because she gets what it means to direct theater in a barn run by a family that has farmed the surrounding fields for three-plus centuries.

"Crystal understands the emotional attachment both actors and audience members have to our theater," said Michael Guptill, whose ancestors settled here in the 1600s and whose father founded the theater four decades ago.

Lisbon, 35, accepted the job as artistic director at Hackmatack, already deeply engrained in the culture, having spent years of acting, dancing and choreographing there.

"It's just such a special place. I love the quintessential New England-ness of it," she said. "I love the people who own and run it. You can tell a lot of love was put into this theater."

Lisbon is well aware that she is carrying on a tradition that many talented people have filled before her. She has worked under every one of Hackmatack's six prior artistic directors, except founder Carleton Guptill, And she sees herself taking the best from each of her predecessors and then adding a piece of her own.

"I'm trying to find that blend between the old and the new," Lisbon said, as she considers the season ahead, which opens with Unnecessary Farce on June 19. "I want to try new things and not be afraid to take some risks while still holding true to what we are. I don't want us to shy away from something a bit riskier or challenging."

Lisbon grew up dancing, but never acting. Her mom was a jazz dancer and her grandparents were ballroom dancers. By high school Lisbon was deep into toe shoes and pliés. She went to a performing arts school in Massachusetts one summer and tried acting there. A friend encouraged her to try out for a Dover High School play, and she did well. High school teacher Alexis Dascoulias, who later became artistic director at Hackmatack, encouraged her to go for an intern position at Hackmatack.

Lisbon was accepted as an intern and later in the summer Hackmatack's second ever artistic director, David Kaye, cast her as Louise in Carousel.

"Being in Carousel totally changed my life," Lisbon said.

In particular, she said, there was a scene where her father would hit her and the entire audience would gasp.

"It was like everyone was in it together. Even though they might know how it will turn around, it was still shocking. In acting, it feels like there is a real connection with the audience, in a way that doesn't always happen in dance, especially not ballet. You have an opportunity to break through the fourth wall, rather than just be observed."

What Kaye remembers about Lisbon in this role is "the depth, truthfulness and sincerity" she brought to it, "something that's pretty remarkable for a high school student."

Since then, Lisbon has graduated from the University of Vermont with a bachelor's degree in performance. She has worked in New York and for much longer, Boston's theater world. And like most actors she has held day jobs. After working in lucrative but "soul-crushing" office jobs for years in Boston, Lisbon decided city life wasn't for her, and moved back to Dover.

Today she juggles three much more satisfying day jobs - children's librarian in Madbury; educator at Children's Museum in Dover and a ballet teacher at Great Bay Academy of Dance in Kittery.

As artistic director at Hackmatack, Lisbon chose the season's shows in concert with Guptill. Of the three musicals and one play chosen, she is excited that three of them are relatively recent scripts. Ruthless, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels and Unnecessary Farce are all current, with Ruthless, the oldest of the three having opened on Broadway in 1992. Lisbon will direct West Side Story, showing July 8 to 25. With its tale of rival gangs and ethnic tension, she thinks it has withstood the test of time.

"It's a beast of a show, but it speaks to me," she said.

In her job, Lisbon chose the directors and choreographers for each of the shows, and was able to bring in new talent. Jennifer Henry of Rollinsford will direct Unnecessary Farce, June 19 to July 4. Nora Long, assistant artistic director at the Lyric Stage Co. in Boston, will direct Ruthless, a tongue-in-cheek show playing, Aug. 19 through Sept. 5. And Lisbon hired Kaye to direct the ridiculously funny Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, which will be showing July 29 through Aug. 15.

Being an artistic director means budgeting, hiring, casting and overseeing just about everything else. Kaye, chair of the Department of Theater and Dance at University of New Hampshire, describes the Hackmatack position as a job with many challenges - limited rehearsal time, budget limits, a theater in a barn, for starters. He notes it takes "ingenuity, persistence and above all a kind of insatiable appetite for theater."

Recalling when Lisbon came in to audition nearly 20 years ago, he believes she will rise to the occasion. A 17-year-old high school girl with little experience in theater, Lisbon nonetheless blew him away.

"Crystal was the only one who showed up well-prepared," Kaye said. "I knew it was over before it started. "That memory of her professionalism and readiness for the highest production values possible leads me to have good feelings about the hands the company has been put into now."