During the summer of 1976 at Look Park in Northampton, Massachusetts, a group of visionary theater talents launched the most ambitious outdoor stage production in New England’s history: The Daniel Shays Rebellion.  Patterned after similar successful endeavors like Tecumseh in Chillicothe, Ohio, the epic play was written by Kermit Hunter and directed by Hampshire College professor Liam O’Brien. Dozens of local performers were auditioned and a battery of technicians and administrators were hired. The production required rebuilding the Pines Theater at Look Park, an amphitheater built during the Works Project Administration of the 1930s and then largely forgotten.  Fences were erected around the property to control the expected crowds.  Massive set pieces were constructed.  All new sound and lighting equipment was brought in. Rehearsals took place from spring through early summer.  On July 9, during the week of America’s bicentennial celebrations, the show opened to a packed house of nearly 1000 spectators.  It appeared that the play was going to be a big success and an annual event.  But over the rest of the summer, most weekends were rained out.  By the time the show closed on August 28, the production company was pretty much bankrupt and the play was never revived, a great loss to the Pioneer Valley.  But the relatively few people who did get to attend the production were thrilled by it.  These pages attempt to preserve a bit of this extraordinary event.

The music for the show was performed by Sheehan’s Reel, a folk group that performed at Sheehan’s Cafe in Northampton.  They were stationed on tall platform next to the stage left tower and played throughout most of the show. I used a little cassette recorder to capture audio from the opening of a July performance.

The Summer of '76 By Jay Ducharme When I graduated high school in 1976, I had no idea what I was going to do with the rest of my life.  I loved music, but that certainly didn't seem like a career.  I loved writing fiction and poetry, but that too didn't seem like a career option.  I'd been a member of the Drama Club and enjoyed performing.  I'd been a member of the Photography Club and enjoyed taking photos.  But in the United States at that time, there was a lot of pressure to choose a profitable career.  None of my interests seemed to point in that direction.  Since I didn't know what I really wanted to do, I had no interest in going to college.  I couldn't see spending so much money when I had no clue what the result would be. Through the Drama Club though I had learned of a unique opportunity: actors were wanted for a "professional" stage production (as opposed to the community theater productions that proliferated in the area). It was to be performed in Northampton at Look Park.  I was very familiar with Look Park; my parents would take the family there for picnics during the summer. The park had a little ice cream stand with delicious milkshakes, a playground, a swimming pool, paddle boats and -- my favorite -- a miniature railroad that traveled around the park and through a long dark tunnel. I was also familiar with "professional" theater companies.  There was a popular one in West Springfield, Stage West, that hired equity actors.  But amateurs occasionally could get small parts alongside them. I can't remember when exactly I heard about the production, nor do I remember anything about the audition process.  I think that the production company just needed bodies, lots of them, and weren't too picky.  It was probably sometime in March that I auditioned.  A few weeks later I received a letter notifying me that I had been cast as a townsperson. I was told what the rehearsal schedule was and where to show up.  I'm pretty sure rehearsals began in May.  They weren't held at Look Park.  Like professional theater groups, they were held in rented spaces at various locations around Northampton.  My only method of transportation was my bicycle.  I regularly rode it close to 40 miles a day, so riding from my home in Easthampton was easy. There were two main types of rehearsals early on:  one was for the militia (of which I was a member) and the other was for the dancers (of which improbably I was also a member), held on different days during the week.  In the militia trainings, we were given wooden cutout flintlocks.  We were trained as if we were in ROTC.  We learned how to hold the weapons, how to aim with them, how to march, how to follow various orders.  That was pretty intensive.  For spectacle, the show would have guns and cannons going off during the rebellion.  So everyone had to be carefully trained in the use of firearms. The dance sessions trained us in two styles: folk dancing and a more formal style for the cotillion ball.  Sheehan’s Reel, a local Irish band that played at Sheehan’s Cafe in Northampton, was present during rehearsals, playing the music that we eventually would be dancing to in the show. Also during that time we had to visit the costume shop to get measured. Since many of us were playing multiple characters and had to change quickly between them from scene to scene, the costume department employed the then novel idea of using Velcro instead of buttons or zippers. That way we would layer on our costumes, one on top of another (at least that was the concept).  As scenes went by we'd simply rush backstage, rip off one costume and leave it for an attendant, then rush back onstage as a different character. The production was such a huge undertaking that extras like myself were often asked to help out in other ways.  Perhaps the biggest and most challenging project of the entire production was the actual stage area. There essentially was none.  The Pines Theater at Look Park was a curious artifact.  It had been constructed during the Works Project Administration of the 1930s, but was never finished.  Much of it was made of flagstone.  The stage was shaped roughly like a half-moon, with the curve facing the audience.  On either side there were two massive stone towers about 30 feet tall and 10 feet around. Near the top of each was a large square opening with a metal screen in front of it.  I don't know what their original use was, but they would be repurposed as housing for the show's speaker system.  Each tower had a doorway blocked by a rusted metal gate at the back that was padlocked.  The opening led to a staircase that descended under the stage to a vast cavernous area.  There was also a steel trap door in the center of the stage that could access that area.  The lip of the stage was rimmed with water pipes and a drainage system.  When first constructed, the idea was that instead of a curtain for scene changes, jets of water would shoot up and be hit with lights, creating a water curtain. When the scene change was done, the water would be shut off, revealing the next scene.  I can imagine that on windy days, that wouldn't work so well.  Also to either side of the stage were "wing" pieces, basically raised stone planters with scruffy pine bushes planted in them that were positioned in parallel from downstage to upstage creating passages onto the stage. From the front of the stage, an undulating grass hill rose up a long slope, which formed the audience seating area.  At the back of the seating area was a large stone building with an archway through the middle.  That was the administrative building with ticket booths.  Curiously, there was one other room.  It was at the back of the stage, which was basically mounds of dirt and grass toward the edge of the Mill River.  The end of the mound had a steep drop-off of about ten feet.  Hidden below that was a locked doorway to another room under the mound, which originally was supposed to be for an organ but had been abandoned. The entire physical structure was decrepit and unusable.  In order to mount the production, everything needed to be rehabilitated.  So we extras were invited to be a part of that. For that entire summer, I lived, ate and breathed Daniel Shays Rebellion.  If I wasn't in those training sessions, I was cleaning out underneath the stage or helping to construct framing for walls or helping to run electrical wiring or helping to build set pieces.  It was a lot of work but a great education, and all of the technicians were patient, knowledgeable and helpful.  A chainlink fence was erected around the entire theater area so that the crew's supplies didn't disappear, and it remained for the entire run of the show. Under the stage, we set about constructing a maze of small rooms and hallways that would eventually be the dressing rooms.  There were special areas for the "stars" of the show, and then more communal areas for the extras.  That was where I first saw nail guns being used to erect the wood framing. In that cavernous space the sound was deafening. Once the framing was up, sheetrock was screwed in place.  Since this was all to be utilitarian in nature, the walls weren't mudded or painted.  It just remained unfinished sheetrock.  Countertops were installed, along with lighting.  A sound system was also installed so that people under the stage could hear what was going on above.  The widest corridor (about 8 feet) was under the front of the stage, since that's where the frantic traffic was going to be as actors rushed to either side of the stage for their entrances. Two massive elevated platforms (about ten square feet) were constructed on either side of two towers.  The towers were surrounded by tall rhododendron bushes and the way the platforms were designed, it appeared that their floors were floating on top of the bushes about ten feet in the air.  The stage left platform would be the home of Sheehan's Reel.  The stage right platform was for the aristocracy scenes featuring Washington,  Jefferson and Lafayette. At the front of the stage right area was constructed another massive platform (technically called a thrust), about 20 feet long and 10 feet wide, that jutted out into the audience.  That would be Daniel Shays' house.  I think it also doubled as Conkey’s Tavern.  Portable set pieces were constructed with a pegging system that allowed actors to appear to be building the house by hoisting up pre-built sections and pegging them into the platform, all the while banging hammers to make it look like actual construction. Tall steel scaffolds were built near the middle left and right audience sections.  Those were where the lighting equipment would be hung. Wisely, roofs were built over the top of them to protect them from rain. Light trees were also positioned next to the towers near the front of the stage, and smaller lights were hidden in the trees upstage.  The main lights available back then were large Lekos with searingly hot incandescent bulbs.  Fresnels were used mainly on the stage itself, closer to the action.  There were also strip lights hidden where the water curtain pipes used to be.  And there were miles of cables running everywhere. The large building at the entrance to the audience area (the “front of house”) was completely gutted and renovated.  New concrete floors were poured. Bathrooms were installed. All new electrics were run. Telephones had to be set up. This was where the administration was going to live for the next several months, so it had to be properly outfitted.  I was amazed how quickly all of that came together. I can’t recall exactly when the formal rehearsals started.  I suspect that was early in June. We’d all gather at the Pines Theater and the director, Liam O’Brien, and his stage manager would call out which scenes we’d be working on. The actors divided up into their own little “cliques”. The extras like myself all banded together. It was there that I met Brian Finn. He and I hit it off pretty quickly talking about science fiction, particularly Space: 1999, the ill-fated syndicated show. As an in-joke, Brian would often stand on stage with his arms folded like Martin Landau at the beginning of each episode. I recall that during one rehearsal we extras were supposed to be cheering for Shays and we were crying out, “Hooray!”  We were corrected by Ira Laby, a curious little man with a huge waxed handlebar mustache who had a small role in the show.  He said no one in that era would say “Hooray.”  We all should be saying “Huzzah!”  The director agreed and so from then on we all cheered with “Huzzah!”  Also in our clique were the (slightly) older actors who would be our military superiors in the show:  Bill Smitrovich, Fred Melamed and Drew Ditzner. All three of those actors worked with local theater legend Roy Faudree at his No Theater in Northampton. Bill was especially gregarious and prone to making us laugh.  During the show, we would be all lined up and Bill would pretend to be reviewing the troops, walking up and down the ranks. But under his breath he was quietly telling jokes to try to break us. I knew Fred from a local production of Arsenic and Old Lace where he played the menacing Boris Karloff character of Johnny.   And little did I know then that Drew was going to change the course of the next decade of my life. As a writer, I wasn’t very keen on the script.  The dialogue was pretty wooden.  For example, when Daniel Shays first appeared on stage he declared, “Why if it isn’t my old friend, Will Conkey!  And his sons, Hiram and Daniel!  And his wife, Abigail!”  And as he said this, he would point to each character, as if the audience wouldn’t be able to figure it out. Tom Roulston as Shays was an excellent actor, a very quick learner and very serious.  And he had the most tremendously loud voice I’ve ever heard.  Back then there were no microphones on the actors nor on the stage. All the dialogue had to be intelligible to the last row of the audience (who of course were outdoors).  His voice carried even farther than that. It was remarkable to hear, even if what he was saying wasn’t particularly well written. Rehearsals seemed to fly by and we were soon approaching opening night.  Ticket sales for the show appeared to be going well.  Rudy Bentz, Jr., who played Jefferson and lived in Easthampton, posted a notice looking for actors for a series of childrens theater productions he was going to mount during the summer on the weekdays when Shays wasn’t running.  One of the shows was Wizard of Oz, which I loved and had always wanted to perform in.  So I signed up. The beginning of Daniel Shays Rebellion featured Sheehan’s Reel playing an overture and then singing “The Ballad of Daniel Shays”, which told the whole story.  Then they played a series of short instrumentals as tableaus appeared on various areas of the stage depicting scenes of life in 1700s New England. By chance, I ended up with the first line of the show.  Originally, O’Brien had some townsmen (including me) walk on stage when the ballad ended to start building Shay’s home.  That was the first tableau.  To me, that seemed like a pretty lame way to enter.  So during one rehearsal, I yelled from offstage, “Come on, you lazy bums!  We’ve got a house to build!” And then we all ran on.  O’Brien liked it, and it stayed in. Opening night on July 9 was pretty exciting.  The house was packed.  New England had never seen an outdoor spectacle like this.  Given the vast scale of the production, I was amazed that everything went so smoothly. That was a credit to the exhaustive preparation done by O’Brien and the stage crews.  And the audience seemed to love the show.  Word of mouth spread quickly and ticket sales were strong.  It looked as if the original plan — to have the show return every year — was going to manifest. Once the show was up and running, rehearsals began for the children’s theater that Rudy Bentz was directing. I was cast in two of the shows: the Wizard of Oz and Circus in the Wind. I never heard of the latter, but I was really excited about the former. Wizard of Oz was my favorite movie.  I had memorized the entire thing. But Rudy’s Oz was going to be very different. He adapted the original story himself. I hoped I’d be cast as the Tin Man or the Scarecrow.  But I was cast as … a six-foot-one munchkin.  The munchkin costumes were essentially colorful balloons.  We looked like the blueberry girl in Willy Wonka.  We had to squat down and sort of bounce around on stage.  It was pretty exhausting.  I didn’t have any lines that I can remember. I was just stage dressing. Circus in the Wind gave me more to do. I can’t remember much about the show except that I played a Frankenstein monster character. I built my own shoes for it, with four inch lifts. I wore torn rags that made me look like I was covered in seaweed and I had a Frankenstein mask covering my face, which had extremely limited visibility. My lines consisted of grunts and shouts. About the only thing I do vividly remember is when we had to make an exit off of the front center of the stage where a set of wooden stairs had been placed, and then charge up the center of the audience toward the administration building. Since I couldn’t see very well and had those clunky lifts, I missed a step going down the stairs and pancaked right in front of a little girl who was sitting in the audience. I thought she was going to laugh at me but she screamed her lungs out. I struggled back onto to my feet, growled and then staggered up the long slope to the back. Rain.  Rain, rain and more rain. Every weekend there was rain. When only light rain was predicted, Daniel Shays went on. When heavy rain was predicted, the show was canceled.  But cancellation became a more frequent occurrence during the run.  And when we did perform, it was often for what seemed like a handful of people in the audience. This was the problem with outdoor performances, especially in New England. We were at the mercy of the fickle weather. But like the old trope, the show must go on. So we continued as best we could. Something that became obvious as the summer wore on was that Velcro was not a good substitute for zippers or snaps. We had to pull the costumes on and off so frequently that the Velcro simply wore out. I remember dancing in the cotillion ball one night.  Brian Finn was opposite me in our circle of dancers.  He whispered to me, “Jay!  My pants!  They’re coming off!”  And sure enough, as he kept dancing his fancy trousers had come loose and were sliding down to his knees. This happened to all of us more and more frequently and we just shrugged it off. There was nothing we could do about it. Some cast members began bringing safety pins to keep their costumes together, which of course defeated the whole purpose of the Velcro. Brian and I had a good camaraderie and spent a lot of time together outside of the show.  During a break at intermission one night, we were in our dressing room talking about stunt fighting. As a kid growing up watching The Wild Wild West on TV, I wanted to be a stunt man. I practiced jumping off my porch roof at home, learning to tuck and roll. I studied how to give and take punches without getting hurt. So I told Brian I’d show him how it’s done. I told him to throw a punch at my jaw. I’d react before he hit me and throw myself backwards against the wall and bounce off. So he pulled back and swung. At the right moment, I catapulted my body backwards. But I’d forgotten that the walls were just a single ply of sheet rock. Instead of bouncing off the wall, I smashed right through it and landed in a pile of dust on the floor of the busy hallway at the front of the stage — just as Liam O’Brien happened to be walking by.  When I saw him, I grabbed my jaw and looked dazed.  O'Brien was furious. “What happened?” he demanded. I looked up at him innocently and mumbled, “Brian hit me!” I pointed at Brian, who was standing behind the broken sheet rock with a look of shock on his face. “That’s it, Finn,” snapped O'Brien.  “You’re coming with me!” And he dragged Brian off.  Brian wasn’t very happy with me that day, but we laughed about it the next week. By August it had become apparent that the show wasn’t doing well financially. On the few days we had good weather, the house was packed. But there were too few of those days. We knew that the audience liked the show but the weather just wouldn’t cooperate. And I was sad about that. The cast and crew put an enormous effort into the show and it was no fault of theirs that the audiences were small. I felt bad for O'Brien, who did an amazing job directing such a huge and complicated show. There was a scene near the end of the show, during the huge battle at the armory, where as a soldier I came running across the stage in panic, fleeing the carnage.  Shays would grab me and in his commanding voice say, “Find Captain Day! Have him report to me immediately!” I would salute and say, “Yes, sir!” and run off stage.  For the final night, I covered my leg with red makeup. Instead of running, I came limping across the stage, groaning. Tom saw me and tried to continue business as usual. “Find Captain Day!” I groaned and collapsed. “I can’t, sir! My leg! My leg!” Tom glared at me and shouted, “Well … find him anyway! And have him report to me immediately!” He ran off stage as I lay there groaning, “My leg! My leg!” That was an apt metaphor for the final performance of Daniel Shays Rebellion. In the weeks after the show, there was a glimmer of hope that it might be revived if they could find additional financing. The glimmer quickly dimmed. The lighting and sound equipment was removed, as were the wooden stage pieces. But the renovations in the administration building and under the stage remained. The next summer came and went with no mention of the show and after that it faded into history. The Pines Theater itself remained active, though, hosting many musical acts and other productions over the years. But nothing would rival the scale of Daniel Shays Rebellion. Before the final show, I was approached by Drew Ditzner. He enjoyed watching me on stage and must have thought I had potential. He asked if I was going to college for theater and I said no. He told me I needed to talk to Leslie Phillips at Holyoke Community College. She ran the theater program there and he couldn’t say enough good things about her. That was the push I needed to give my life some direction and for the next decade my whole life would revolve around theater, culminating in a Masters Degree in directing. And in an interesting twist of fate, I would spend a summer in Chillicothe Ohio performing in Tecumseh.  I learned to ride a horse, fire muskets and pistols and fall off a 20-foot cliff.  I played two roles, a sleazy prospector type in the first act and the soldier who kills Tecumseh in the second act.  It was an amazing experience. And the summer of 1976 prepared me for it. Daniel Shays Rebellion truly was a life-changing experience for me and I’m thrilled that I got to be a part of it.