Amanda Huotari and Fritz Grobe

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Amanda Houdery is a performer and also serves as the Executive Artistic Director of Celebration Barn Theatre in South Paris, where she annually produces 30 performances on site and at community events. Fritz Groba is a board president of Celebration Barn Theatre. He is also co founder of EP Bird Studios, best known for viral videos featuring the explosive combination of Coke and Mentos. Thanks for coming in today.

Amanda Huotari:

Thanks so much for having us.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Yeah, I feel like I've actually kind of been hearing about the Celebration Barn now for long enough that it's good to have some faces to put to the name. You guys are doing very interesting stuff.

Fritz Grobe:

Absolutely. It's been 45 years now of creating amazing theater in the woods of Maine that then goes all over the world.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Yeah, this whole Coke and Mentos thing, that's been quite the sensation.

Fritz Grobe:

Yeah, that's been 11 years now, of course, traveling all over the world, from Las Vegas to Oslo, Norway, performing, dropping candy into soda, sending the soda flying out the mouth of the bottle 2530ft. Just got back from China and New York. It's been amazing.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Why do you think people are so fascinated by that?

Fritz Grobe:

Well, it's such a simple thing. It's just candy. It's just soda. And that's a lot of the work that we do at Eepy Bird and a lot of the work that comes out of Celebration Barn is showing the surprises that are in our everyday lives, the things that are around us every day. We forget to look at them from that different perspective and see the surprises that are just waiting There to be discovered.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Amanda, how did you get into this line of work?

Amanda Huotari:

So I'm a native of South Paris, which is where Celebration Barn is located. And I was first exposed to Celebration Barn when an artist came in and visited my sixth grade classroom at the Gyro School in Norway. And that was sort of a gateway to the world of Celebration Barn. I started going up to my first performances thereafter, and because I was so close, they invited me in to participate in workshops with professional artists as a teenager. And I was absolutely blown away by the diversity of the artists. There were people from Australia and Germany in that first workshop doing incredible performances, storytelling and poetry and stunning, spectacular performances. And I wanted to play.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

It's interesting to me, having been out to western Maine and heard about the various doings in western Maine, that there's all of this creative. Well, I was going to say festering, but I don't even think it's festering. I think there's this creative blooming that's been going on there for such a long time.

Amanda Huotari:

It's actually quite a deep seated community. So Celebration Barn is an international residential center for physical theater training. And it started in 72 with Tony Montanaro, who chose the location because he had a fantastic artist friend there. And also that there was this venue, there was this old racehorse barn that was for sale and was just sitting there full of potential. So on this old farming homestead, Tony started inviting students from around the country to come train with him and help him transform the space physically to build a theater. He traded them in classes in mime because he was a mime master and he really seeded this community that has grown now through multiple generations. Maine has this fantastic hidden community of performers with very diverse backgrounds, but who make their home here in Maine and then travel the world.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

One person that has become. Has gotten a little bit more notice, I think, for performance, but more notice for other things is Patrick Dempsey, who is from Western Maine, Lewiston area, but has done a lot of training in western Maine. But he was a juggler. That was sort of his first thing.

Amanda Huotari:

And he learned to juggle from Benny Real, who trained at Celebration Barn and was part of Tony Montana's original company.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

So it's kind of funny that that even it's. It's just sort of. It's out there in places that we don't even realize it.

Fritz Grobe:

Well, it's amazing that the people who have come from Celebration Barn range from Patrick Dempsey to Tom Bergeron, the host of Dancing with the Stars, to Deborah Henson Conant, a Grammy nominated Musician studied performance at the Barn as well, on up to Tom Wall, who just signed his second contract with Cirque du Soleil. He'll be touring with them through Europe for the next year and a half.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

So given that we have a lot of stuff that can be manipulated digitally now, isn't it interesting that we still are fascinated by people who actually living, people who actually do interesting and amazing things?

Fritz Grobe:

Yeah. I think that for me, the magic of live theater is that it allows for a conversation. It allows you to create an emotional connection between the performer and the audience. And that's what Celebration Barn in particular is about, developing that in artists. So that if you come and see Ellis Paul at the Barn, you feel like you've gotten to know him. It's not seeing a performer on a distant stage. It's not seeing someone on a little screen. You have a chance to feel like you've gotten to know someone.

Amanda Huotari:

It's the intimacy of a shared experience, and nothing can create that like live theater.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

What is your favorite type of. What do you like to focus your performances around, Amanda?

Amanda Huotari:

Well, I particularly enjoy performance. It's called Fourth Wall Down. So the fourth wall is the imaginary invisible space between a performer and an audience. And one of the things that we really encourage artists to explore at Celebration Barn is directly engaging with the audience. So I've done a lot of work with interactive performance and looking for opportunities to actually invite the audience to be co creators in a fictional experience.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Do people feel comfortable doing that? Because I think a lot of people are used to the place where you sit back and you watch something happen in front of you.

Amanda Huotari:

Yeah. And a lot of people, honestly, have had bad experiences with audience interaction, and it can be a very scary thing. Exactly. People feel like, no, what I did was I signed up to come and watch. And so it's our job as a performer to make that invitation feel so safe and so exciting and almost to bring out that childish spirit where someone says, hey, you want to play? And the audience says, okay. So one of the ways that we've done that at Celebration Barn, a couple of years ago, we did a production called the Last Camp Main. Celebration Barn itself starred as the oldest summer camp in Maine history. When the audience came, they were then playing the role as the alumnus of Celebration Barn or the alumnus of Camp Maine. So they were old campers who were coming back for this big reunion. And when they came in, the first thing they did was come to a participant table where they had the opportunity to create the character that they were going to Play for the night. And we give them all the freedom in the world to choose what level of interactivity is going to be fun for them. But it was really surprising to see the ways in which people opened up over the course of the night. And they may have come and said, what, I'm just going to be a spectator. We say, cool. But then when there are those opportunities for them to start to interact and engage, they take them.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

How about you, Fritz?

Fritz Grobe:

I love a combination of the personal and the spectacular. So my background was predominantly in circus arts. I worked as a juggler, and I like the feeling that you're going to see something unlike anything you've ever seen before, whether it's a circus act or dropping Mentos into Coke or recently, I built a giant kaleidoscope as part of a live performance. But that's my chance to create that emotional connection with the audience. So, for instance, a new show that we've been working on up at Celebration Barn is a theatrical circus that delves into the issue of death and trying to get that kind of spectacle to touch on a completely different emotional note than you're used to thinking of. For that form of theater to really not just amaze you, but touch you, give you an incredible experience in a lot of different ways.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Do you think people are open to that?

Fritz Grobe:

Well, what we've seen over the last few years is that this kind of work is showing up on Broadway in London, from the interactive performances like Sleep no More in New York, to theatrical circus that's been so hot coming out of Montreal, that this is a really alive and vibrant kind of theater that we've been doing at the barn for 45 years and is a particular hot topic on the international scene right now.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

I wonder if some of this interest or renewed interest, because it sounds like that was a thing before, is because we've gotten so used to being spectators and that everything, or many things these days we are sitting back, we're listening to a podcast or watching something on Netflix, and that being part of something and participating in something in a different way like that just. That sparks some energy that maybe has been tamped down a little bit.

Fritz Grobe:

Absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, it's getting at, as Mandy said, what is the essence of live theater? What's important about being in the room together at the same time? What is that shared experience so that you don't feel it's an anonymous performer and an anonymous audience member, but that your laughter, your applause, your tears, whatever your experience, is affecting the performance, and the performance is affecting you there's a

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

certain amount of trust involved with this. The trust that people aren't going to think that you're ridiculous or people aren't going to think that, or they're going

Amanda Huotari:

to know you're ridiculous or that. Or that. And that's okay because we are okay. So how do you build that trust?

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

How do you make that safe space for people?

Amanda Huotari:

Well, the venue itself is a very inviting one. For one thing, Celebration Barn is housed in an old barn. So when people come in, it's a very relaxed atmosphere. It's a very unpretentious space. I think a lot of people who are first timers to the barn, not knowing what to expect, they feel at ease when they come into the lobby and they see, okay, wow, that was a horse stall. And then we have our concessions booth right there so they can come in and get a drink. And people are mingling and talking in the audience. Throughout the summer season this year, we often kick off shows asking how many people are here for the first time. And throughout the summer, about half the audience were people who have been many times and the other half were people there for the first time. And there's the sense when you come into the barn that you really become a part of that community. And one of the things one of our guest artists noted was that at Celebration Barn, more than any other venue he has ever performed, it feels like the venue belongs to the audience and that the performers are a guest in the house of the audience and a guest of our community. And I love that idea that it is actually the audience who is a host to this guest artist coming in. And it creates a very level playing field. It isn't that the performer is the highest status person in the room and we are there to just, you know, applaud their talent, but instead, together we are along for this fantastic adventure.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Where do your guest artists come from? Where do they usually perform and live and exist?

Amanda Huotari:

So artists who come to the barn are really coming from around the world. This artist. This summer, we hosted artists from 12 countries who came. Most of them came for our training sessions. So we offer workshops June through August. People generally come and stay for a week or more at a time. And then we also have artists who come in for our residency series. So in our show incubation residencies, they come having already started a project, but we give them not just the time and space, but this very immersive and supportive community to help take their work to the next level. And then we share that work with audiences who come in and see the work that is in process. So we're finding that the barn really has a reputation that reaches far and wide, in part because of its history and that now there are so many people who have come out of Celebration Barn who are actively working in multiple fields from folks came from New Zealand this summer and said, well, everyone in New Zealand who is part of the street festival scene knows Celebration Barn is the place to be. So that reputation has been building for years and continues to to grow in large part because of the caliber of the teaching artists who we bring in. So folks like Aitor Bassori, who is part of the UK based physical theater ensemble Spy Monkey Wild and Wonderful, they have just started touring the US So folks come to work with him, Giovanni Fusetti, who is and incredible Italian artists. So now these artists have such, such a far reaching community and that is feeding the folks who are coming to the barn.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Fritz, how did you come to Maine and to the Celebration Barn?

Fritz Grobe:

Well, I actually grew up in Brunswick and I saw my first Celebration Barn ensemble performance when I was 8 years old and I had no idea at the time that it was anything I wanted to do. It was just, oh, this was fun. But I realized years later that I remembered that show in vivid detail. I mean, I then came to Celebration Barn as a teenager to study with the people who did that performance. And I was able to describe for them, you did this and then you did this and then you did this. In some cases more I remembered more than they did. And it was just this electric kind of performance, this physical theater that it wasn't theater. That was someone else's words or someone else's action. This is what, what do you have to say? What do you want to explore? And I love that at the barn you can see something brand new. You can see something where someone is just beginning to explore an idea. And then years later you may see that same idea now. You know, coming off of a run on Broadway or coming back from a tour of Europe that's now fully formed, something that will boggle the mind, but you get to be included in that process of exploration. And that's what keeps me coming back to Celebration Barn is this endless curiosity and this endless sense of exploration.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

If you're someone who is interested in the spectacular and the mundane, the then it must be an interesting thing to walk through the world because you're looking at things in a different way than many people. Some people are walking through the world and they're saying, well, there's a person, there's A building, there's a car. If you're somebody who looks at things a little bit differently, maybe you're thinking, well, what if this person did this or we added this element to this in this performance? How does that work in your everyday life to be that person who thinks about things so differently?

Fritz Grobe:

Well, I think it's something that Celebration encourages, is that we all have this kind of creativity within us if we just keep looking. It's because at the barn, it is a barn. There's no flash and dazzle, there's no smoke and mirrors to hide behind. It encourages you to look around and look in yourself and go, what is it that you have to say? What is it that you have to offer? What can you bring to the conversation? And it's a wonderful way to approach the world.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Amanda, both you and Fritz have talked about experiencing things as children. So is this something that the Celebration barn actively continues is to try to bring in the children to, I guess, have them experience this when they're as open as they probably will ever be in their lives?

Amanda Huotari:

Absolutely. So we know that access and exposure is what really first open the door for both Fritz and I. So that's one of the things we're looking at for the bar now is how can we help reach as many of our young community members as possible. So we do performances in the community and work with our local festivals and events so that we can go to where people are. So we may be able to catch someone who's just passing by and says, wait, what's that? I've never seen anything like that before. We're also working to do summer youth classes in the summer so that students have the opportunity to have that hands on experience. Really early on, we had a great experience partnering with our local look program. This summer, students did a field trip to the barn. They came and watched some of our devising students on stage. And then we said, okay, great, now let's switch. And we had our young students get up on stage and then perform for our professional artists. And that kind of exchange is really exciting. And the more that we can create opportunities for people to have a lifelong creative process, the richer our communities will be.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

There must be an interesting interplay because a lot of what you're talking about seems fairly spontaneous. But at the same time, when it comes to performance, there's a deepening that occurs with practice. So you're simultaneously doing both, I believe.

Fritz Grobe:

Absolutely. Coming from the world of circus, you spend hours a day working on your technique. And two of my idols, two of My role models are on the faculty at the Barn. Abner Eisenberg, who lives on Peaks island, has been on Broadway. And then Aitor Pussauri from the UK from Spy Monkey, this crazy ensemble. And for me, Avner really brings that attention to detail, that focus on craft, that notion that you spend not just years, but decades developing this. This sense of craft. And then ITOR is there to remind me that it's also all about play, that it's also about keeping it fresh and alive, and that, yes, you want to craft it, but you also want to go wild and just make sure you're really having fun.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

How do you balance those things?

Fritz Grobe:

I think it's different for everyone. I know that for me, I've focused so much on the craft side of things. And my good friend Mike Miklon, one of the mainstays at Celebration, hosts the early evening show. There's the first Saturday of every month, all summer long. He's the wild and crazy side of things. And I think it's been one of the most wonderful working collaborations I've ever had working with Mike because we complement each other so nicely there that he knows when to lean on me for, you know, we should really practice this. We should really prepare and craft this. And I know when to listen to him and go, you know what? We just need to go crazy. We need to jump in with both feet and see what's going to happen.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

I interviewed Mike Micklon for. I guess it was probably about a year ago, and he was talking about this new or relatively new endeavor. I'm thinking it's up in. It's up near Augusta.

Amanda Huotari:

Sparky. With Johnson Hall.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Yes, Johnson hall, exactly. Pardon me, Mike, if you're listening, I'm sorry, I couldn't remember the name of Johnson hall, but I was impressed with the fact that he was a performer, but also someone that was out doing the stuff that one needs to do to bring performance to the world, which I'm sure that both of you have had some part of. You have to do the fundraising, you have to make sure the structure is sound. You have to do hiring. There's. I mean, there are some things that go along the business of making this possible, which is yet another part of your brain, another part of your skill set.

Amanda Huotari:

Yeah.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

So talk to.

Fritz Grobe:

That's where it's been an exciting year at the Barn. We just built four new cabins to house artists. Up until now, for the last 45 years, everybody's been living and creating all in the Barn itself. And we just. We've laid out the strategic plans, we've started the fundraising, we've done all of this groundwork so that we could build these four new cabins out in the orchard so that artists can then retreat to the cabins. And the barn itself is 24. 7 creative space. So when you get that idea at 11 o' clock at night night, you're not going to be keeping people awake. You can keep those creative juices flowing.

Amanda Huotari:

And that strategic plan Fritz mentioned has been looking ahead to 2022, when Celebration Barn will celebrate our 50th anniversary and asking, where do we want to be and how at that point, are we going to be positioned to launch the next 50 years?

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Also, as performers, I will often talk to people that come across as being very outgoing. But my experience with many people who are performers who seem outgoing in a professional sense is that they really do need to pull back, that as much energy as they put out, they need to have the chance to retreat to the cabin in the woods and refresh and kind of get back to their own core self. Is that something that you have experienced as performers yourselves?

Amanda Huotari:

Well, we see that a lot. And that's one of the things that's so unique about the barn in terms of being a training facility, is that it's an immersive opportunity. So folks are coming not just to take classes, but they're actually living there, eating there. They're 24. 7 in this space. So it affords a real sense of retreat to be able to really kind of return to yourself, take the time and the space to deeply explore what is going to be the next step. So if you. Especially for artists who are actually really well established and may have very successful careers, when they get to that opportunity, when the work starts to potentially feel a little bit stale or not so exciting anymore, that's when it can be sometimes very difficult to come and begin the creative process again and go, okay, well, now what? You're already successful, so what is going to be the next step? So having this kind of space that really supports that process of deep diving into the unknown and allowing for creative risk taking becomes very valuable and is essential to having a catalyst to take a big leap forward.

Fritz Grobe:

Yeah, we just saw this summer, Rob Torres, who's been touring with Big Apple Circus and doing performances all over the world, came back to the barn for the first time in years to go, I'm gonna try some new stuff. And it's exciting to see a performer of his caliber come back and play again and see the fresh ideas coming. It's Amazing.

Amanda Huotari:

And in our workshops we have artists who are early career sort of emerging artists who are just starting to put together the building blocks. They may be just starting to develop material, sort of on the path to having their own show or building their own company. Along with folks like Rob, who's coming back, very experienced, beautiful performer, but he's also now sort of jumping back into to create a new set of building blocks. And so we've got these folks who are working alongside and there's a fantastic exchange that happens in that space where both are bringing something special to the table. The young performer is bringing the hunger, the passion, the excitement, and the experienced performer is bringing the calm, the stillness and the craftsmanship. And they really feed each other in a beautiful way.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

That's an interesting thing to do if you're an artist is to constantly be reinventing yourself because especially if you've gotten success, people will like what you've done in the past. And if you introduce something new, then they might say, but I liked what you did before. I'm comfortable with that. Do that again. That entertained me. So if you're an artist trying to reinvent yourself into something that's unknown, that is taking a risk, isn't it?

Fritz Grobe:

Absolutely. And I know for me that I'm just constantly going, what am I curious about? What's new to explore? And so long as there's something new to explore, then there's something new to share with people.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

What do you hope to see in the next five years as you're getting ready to celebrate 50 years of celebration Barn?

Amanda Huotari:

Well, Fritz talked a little bit about some of the ways that we're seeing the facility transform and we're looking forward to the next stages of that. So now we have our cabins, we're looking to continue to build infrastructure so that all of our artists housing needs are met outside of the barn itself. The old barn structure is dedicated creative space available 24 7. So folks can stay up late around a campfire and then at 2 in the morning, go. That's a great idea. Come on, let's go back in there and jump on stage right now. So we're looking to continue to develop the facilities to be able to grow the number of artists that we serve through the summer season. We're also working on our show incubation residencies to support the development of new work that will really help launch more touring shows. So we're looking forward to celebrating the Barnes 50th with what we can point to as our celebration around the world. And we can say, you know, look at all of these artists, look at the audiences that they are reaching and the impact that they're having just from recent years at Celebration Barn.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

How about you, Fritz?

Fritz Grobe:

I'm so excited to look ahead to 50 years and go we've we're building the team that's going to take us into the next 50 years, laying that groundwork, building that team and getting out there with these new initiatives. This summer we just got to do the very first Celebration Road show, getting a show that was created over the course of three weeks and then got out into the community for a week of performances around the state with everything from here is a sketch about riding on an airplane to here is all of Macbeth in five minutes and to see that kind of work getting out into our community here in Maine and then the show incubation, that's going to really have that global impact.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

I've been speaking with Amanda Hutary, who is a performer and also serves as the executive artistic director of Celebration Barn Theatre in South Paris, and also with Fritz Groba, who is the board president of Celebration Barnes Theatre, who is also the co founder of Eepy Bird Studios. Thank you so much for coming in today.

Amanda Huotari:

Thank you so much for having us.

Fritz Grobe:

Thank you.