Next from Adk. Theatre Fest: Dark Ages vs. eternal optimist

By Cathy DeDe, Chronicle Managing Editor

Next up on the main stage at the Adirondack Theatre Festival is a comedy musical about one unreasonably optimistic young man in seriously dark times,

The Enlightenment of Percival Von Schmootz opens Friday, July 5, at the Wood Theater in downtown Glens Falls. It continues to July 13. Box office: 480-4878.

ATF bills it as “a Monty Python-esque musical comedy.”

Percival is the story of one young man who seeks, literally, to enlighten the Dark Ages, plagued as they are with poor hygiene, disease, death and harsh reality.

The show’s acclaimed writing team of Michael Kooman and Christopher Dimond have several musical successes behind them, including as the prolific songwriters for the Disney Channel’s animated musical series Vampirina.

Meanwhile, The Chronicle checked in with a handful of their Percival cast members to hear what they say about this show.

Leading man Kyle Sherman

Kyle Sherman, a 26-year-old Missouri native and Northwestern University grad who comes to ATF by way of New York City, plays the title character.

“Ah, sweet Percival,” Kyle says when asked about his character. “He’s a relentless optimist, even while the world is smacking him in the face with its pessimism and darkness.” Even dismembered, Kyle laughs, Percival goes on to complete the quest he’d promised his mother on her deathbed that he would complete.

“He sticks with it,” Kyle says, “always with the light of home on the end, despite the shadows of the dark ages clamoring in.” He says, “Theater works best when you come into it with an open heart. That personifies Percival as well. You never know what small particle of a new idea can change the way a day is going — or the world in general.”

Percival’s mother, like nearly every character in the opening scene, dies of the bubonic plague — which sets the young hero on his quest.

The actor says, “I love that opening scene. “It shows the very stark contrasts between Percival and the world he lives in, and the comedic chops of the people in this cast. It really sets up the world of the play, It’s silly, irreverent and shocking in the people’s blatant pessimism, and how Percival stands so stolidly against that.”

He said he was familiar with the script because a couple of members of the creative team are fellow Northwestern alums, who did a workshop of the show at that school when he was a senior.

How’d he come to acting?

“When I started talking I was singing,” Kyle says his parents told him. “My first theater experience was in the seventh grad, I had the opening and my only line in Treasure Island. From there, I didn’t really stop, but I don’t think I realized you could do this as a profession until I my junior or senior hear. Oh, I could go to college, study this and pursue a career. New York was a place I’d only seen in movies.”

It’s not an easy life, he says, though he says he’s an optimist, himself.

“The important thing is to allow the dark moments to happen, to know it’s a tunnel not a hole.”

What I love about the Theater Festival is that is specializes in new works, and the community rallies around it, I gather. What I love to do the most is new things. Whether it soars or falls flat, it’s thrilling to create something new. Theater is always collaborative, but this is the most fun.”

Two came back to ATF

Cathryn Wake and Zach Kononov both return to the Adirondack Theatre Fest after performing in the ensemble of Loch Ness last summer — she as the hauntingly beautiful mother, and he as the frog, “Mud Pie,” among other characters.

Cathryn, who is a native of Schenectady, said she got started in theater through her public school (Lisha Kill Elementary and Colonie High) and at Hudson Valley Community College.

“I go back and teach master glasses at the high school every year,” she notes. “I am a huge proponent of community college. It allowed me to afford to go to Pace University. I am eternally grateful. It’s such an incredible feeling to come back and do professional theater in the Capital Region.”

Zach, originally from Denver, says he also got his start in public school. “From elementary through high school and even college, I did not do a show outside of a school setting until I was 21,” he says.

Zach agrees with Cathryn when she remarks on the Adirondack Theatre Festival’s commitment to producing new works: “To do this, to do all-new theater, where they fill the house every single show — and with only new shows — it’s amazing.”

Both also echo Kyle’s take on this show at hand: “It’s silly and irreverent, goofy.”

“It’s about an overly optimistic man in the Dark Ages, who survives the Bubonic Plague.”

Quick aside from Cathryn: “We just had our Bubonic Plague education,” she shares. “Do you know, two-thirds of the European population died, quickly, in three years.”

“It’s like a plague,” Zach deadpans.

Director Scott Weinstein encourages the actors, they say: “He tells us to push the envelope.

‘Make us pull you back.’”

“To have that freedom makes the rehearsal room a fun place,” Zach says.

On that opening scene Kyle described, Zach adds, “Both as an audience member and as a performer, it’s so silly and funny.”

The actors reference manure jokes, the spreading of the plague, uncleanliness taken to absurd heights.

Meanwhile, both say they are appreciating their return to Glens Falls — “the coffee shops, the live music, the Wednesday street fair, the ‘Tooning In’ art exhibits” that accompany each ATF show.”

Cathryn says she wishes the rest of the Capital Region understood, “Glens Falls is an incubator of art.”

Local on stage, Anthime Miller

Proving that you can get here from here, Glens Falls native and 2008 grad John Anthime Miller is only the second professional actor to be hired for a main stage production of the Adirondack Theatre Festival.

(The first was Adam Armstrong, in Ordinary Days. Capital Region actor Brenny Rabine has also played on the ATF stage.)

Anthime, as he’s generally known, is doing double duty — returning for the second year to perform in the PB&J children’s theater series (this year, Alice in Wonderland), and in the ensemble of Percival — most notably as “Copernileo,” a sort of blended Copernicus-Galileo, in the stocks “for science.”

“It can be exhausting, but the process is very rewarding,” Anthime says. “To meet all these people and share Glens Falls and the area with them, because I do love it so here.”

Anthime, who is also an accomplished cellist, says, “I am equally at home on either side of the theater, as an actor, composer, director, as I am in the world of classical music. I wear a lot of hats.”

His first show was the Glens Falls High School production of Oliver, as one of Fagan’s Boys, age 11. As an adult, he returned to play Fagan in the same show, for the Glens Falls Community Theatre.

He received his undergraduate degree in music at McGill University in Montreal, and studied theater at Circle in the Square in New York City.

Beyond Glens Falls, he’s an internationally traveling artist — at the Théâtre National du Luxembourg, where he’s done several productions and composed scores for plays, in Germany, and with companies in Montreal. Before ATF, he was a resident in a Contemporary Music Lab in Montreal, performing but also attending workshops on improv, social justice and other topics.

He’s a particular proponent of new works, more experimental, typically, than what ATF does — “Devised” or collaborative theater is a special interest.

He is currently working on a song cycle inspired by the Feeder Canal — a long-term project he says. Later this month, he’ll pull out the cello for his third annual Bastille Day concert at The Strand Theatre in Hudson Falls — where he also performed last week as a member of The Resolutions, local vocal super-group.

“I really do not take for granted how much a privilege it is to travel and to do all this work,” Anthime says. “Still it is also a priority of mine to bring it back here. Producing new and developing works is important to developing the culture of a small town, or any place.”

Of Percival, he says, “It’s so funny, all of it, a fresh take on British comedy and this sort of ridiculous optimism that was satirized in Candide (the Leonard Bernstein opera). I hope the audience has as much fun as we’ve been having.”

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Adirondack Theatre Festival’s The Enlightenment of Percival Von Schmootz runs July 5-13, at the Wood Theater in downtown Glens Falls. Tix: 480-4878.

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