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Then the Bethel native interviewed a range of Vermonters last winter, about not only the civil unions debate of 1999 and 2000 but about their lives leading to it, for what she would turn into Standing in This Place: Growing Up LGBTQ in Vermont — one of three plays receiving staged readings during the ninth annual Chandler Pride Theater Festival this weekend and next at the Chandler Music Hall in Randolph.
“They were very open. It was marvelous,” Campbell recalled last week from Florida, where is she recuperating from an illness. “And it was very, very different from what I remember. There was so much that some of these folks did during that time.”
And then Campbell scrolled back through letters to the editors, editorials and stories in newspapers around Vermont, documenting the furor that followed the Vermont Supreme Court’s 1999 ruling requiring the state Legislature to come up with a framework for same-sex couples to share the same rights as heterosexual married couples. In the fallout after then-Gov. Howard Dean signed the legislation in spring 2000, a Take Back Vermont movement led to the unseating of a number of legislators who voted in favor of civil unions.
“I didn’t fully appreciate at the time how divided the state was,” said Campbell, 62, who was then living in the Burlington area. “I had a business, I was a writer and I had kids to raise. There’s only so much information you can take in, in the course of a day.”
Freshly informed, Campbell began weaving the personal stories with the history, in a format similar to The Telling Project, a play commissioned by the Chandler Center for the Arts in which military veterans and relatives of veterans, including several from the Randolph area, shared their stories through a staged reading at the music hall.
For Standing in this Place, which the Vermont Pride Theater program commissioned, 15 people who grew up LGBTQ and continue to live in Vermont will take turns reading their stories on Friday night and on Aug. 3, under the direction of Charlie McMeekin.
“With almost all of the cast telling their own stories, it’ll never happen in quite this way again if the play has a continued life after these two performances,” Campbell said. “I was asked to create a platform and a voice for people telling very painful things. It’s really amazing.”
While recovering in Florida and also caring for her ailing husband, Campbell, who usually summers in Vermont, is relieved to leave the task of running rehearsals and otherwise counseling the cast to McMeekin, with whom she’s collaborated on plays for the Chandler and for whom she once worked as an administrative assistant during his tenure as assistant principal at Randolph Union High School.
And McMeekin said he was grateful to have already directed The Telling Project, with its rotating cast of area residents, few of them with acting experience, all of them baring their souls.
“It’s not the classic theatrical task,” McMeekin said this week. “I was totally enthralled by that experience, but it wasn’t easy. In that case and with this play, I’m not sure we had one session where we didn’t have someone read their truth and not burst into tears.”
In addition to stagings of Standing in This Place over the next two weekends, the festival offers two performances each of two, more conventionally-framed plays. On Saturday night and on Aug. 4, JAG Productions’ Jarvis Green directs All Together Now — Philip Middleton Williams comedy about the ripple effects of a 15-year-old showing up at the home of a man whom the teen says is his father.
And on Sunday night and again Aug. 2, Shannon Sanborn directs A Late Snow. a dramedy that Jane Chambers wrote in the early 1960s. The play illuminates the pre-Stonewall era for LGBTQ people through the eyes and voices of a closeted college professor, two of her former lovers, her current lover and a potential new one, all trapped in a lakeside cabin by a snowstorm.
For all the serious, raw material that Standing in This Place covers, Campbell hopes that audiences come for the full spectrum of feelings the cast will share.
“Within the bubble of the play, I think it’s going to be received deeply — the emotions, the ebb and flow and a lot of laughs, too,” Campbell said. “That’s why this is necessary.”
Vermont Pride Theater hosts its ninth annual Chandler Pride Theater Festival at Chandler Music Hall in Randolph from Friday through Aug. 4. In addition to the plays, the festival will host a screening of Ang Lee’s movie Brokeback Mountain on Wednesday night at 7. For tickets to the plays ($15 to $20 per performance) and more information, visit chandler-arts.org or call 802-728-6464. Admission to the movie on Wednesday is by donation to the AIDS service nonprofits Vermont CARES and HIV/HCV Resource Center.
The Moving Spirit Dancers perform an homage to Mary Oliver on Thursday night at 7:30 at the ArtisTree Community Arts Center in South Pomfret, during readings of the late Pulitzer Prize-winner’s poetry. Admission is by donation.
■Teen actors from around central Vermont complete their Chelsea Funnery immersion in Shakespeare this weekend, with performances of Macbeth on Friday night at 6 and Saturday afternoon at 4, outside Tunbridge Central School. The rain location is Chelsea Town Hall. Admission is by donation, with proceeds supporting the Funnery’s scholarship program.
■The Villalobos Brothers play Latin American folk and jazz on Friday night at 7:30 at Fable Farm in Barnard. Proceeds from the $20 admission fee, and from sales of food and refreshment, benefit the Migrant Justice program serving immigrant farm workers. To learn more, visit barnarts.org.
■ Strafford-native singer-songwriter Noah Kahan performs a free concert at the Dartmouth green in Hanover on Saturday night at 8, capping Dartmouth College’s celebration of its 250th anniversary. The celebration also includes a performance by the Pedro Giraudo Tango Quartet at 5, and a 6:30 show by Cha Wa, which mixes the rhythms of New Orleans brass and India. To learn more, visit hop.dartmouth.edu/events/dartmouth-250th. If the weather threatens, the concerts will take place in Spaulding Auditorium.
Grease, teen-angst musical comedy set in the 1950s, performances at New London Barn Playhouse Thursday night through Aug. 4. Tickets $20 to $37.
Rock of Ages, Repertory Theatre production of the Broadway adaptation of the Jack Black movie, Friday and Saturday nights at Claremont Opera House. Admission $12. Visit claremontoperahouse.org.
Mamuse, folk and soul, Thursday night at 5:30, during at Feast & Farm Market at Fable Farm in Barnard.
■Michael Vincent Band, blues-y rock, Thursday night at 7 at Colburn Park in Lebanon; The Moonlighters Big Band, Monday night at 7.
■Ken & Brad Kolodner, folk/roots, Friday night at 5:30 on lawn behind North Universalist Chapel in Woodstock. Admission by donation.
■Guitarists Draa Hobbs, Billy Rosen and John Stowell, Friday night at 6:15 on downtown Lebanon mall; trumpeter Jody Henderson, guitarist Billy Rosen and bassist Eric Bronstein, jazz, Saturday night at 6:15.
■ Folksoul duo, Friday night at 7:30 at Seven Stars Arts Center in Sharon. Admission $15.
■Basement Sunshine, roots, Saturday night at 6 at Crossmolina Farm in West Corinth.
■ Kinan Admeh and Dinuk Wijeratne, world music mixing classical, jazz, Syrian and South-Asian rhythms, performances on Saturday night at 6:30 at West Claremont Center for Music and the Arts (admission by donation) and Sunday afternoon at 2 at Saint-Gaudens National Historical Park in Cornish (admission included in park’s $10 entry fee).
■Rusty Bones, folk/roots, Saturday night at 7 at Orford Bandstand.
■Chris Brubeck’s Triple Play, blues and jazz, Saturday night at 7 at Colby-Sawyer College’s Sawyer Theater in New London. Admission $5 to $25. Visit summermusicassociates.org.
■Singer-fiddler Jordan Tirrell-Wysocki, Saturday night at 7:30 at the Sunapee Livery in Sunapee Harbor. Admission $15.
■Party Crashers, rock, Sunday night at 6:30 on Rochester, Vt., Green.
■Constitution Brass Quintet, Tuesday night at 6:30 at Fairlee Town Common.
■East Bay Jazz Ensemble, Tuesday night at 7 at Canaan Town Common.
■ GrooveSum, blues/rock/funk, Wednesday night at 6:30 at Quechee Green.
■Guitarist Billy Rosen, keyboardist Norm Yanofsky, bassist Eric Bronstein, saxophonist Nick Scalera and drummer Jim Macnutt, jazz, Wednesday night at 6:30, at Ben Mere Bandstand overlooking Sunapee Harbor.
Blind Squirrel and caller Luke Donforth, East Thetford Pavilion’s monthly contradance on Saturday night at 8. Walk-through at 7:40 for new and rusty dancers. Admission $5 to $12.
Sensible Shoes, rock and pop, Friday night at 8 at Skunk Hollow Tavern in Hartland Four Corners.
■ Richie Hackett, acoustic rock, Friday night at 9 at Salt hill Pub Lebanon; Better Days, folk/blues/funk, Saturday night at 9.
■Ken Macy, country-western/rock, Friday night at 9 at Salt hill Pub in Newport.
■The Frogz, rock, Saturday afternoon at 4 at Salt hill Pub in West Lebanon.
■Singer Susan Brison and guitarist Billy Rosen, jazz, Sunday night at 6, during weekly Loch Lyme Lodge supper buffet (admission $10 to $25); Juke Joynt, roots-rock, Wednesday night at 5:30 during weekly cookout (admission $8 to $20). For reservations, call 603-795-2141.
■Jim Yeager, rock/funk, Monday night at 7 at Woodstock Inn’s Richardson Tavern.
■Saxophonist Michael Parker and guitarist Norm Wolfe, jazz, Wednesday at 5:30 p.m. at Quechee Inn at Marshland Farm.
■Jazz pianist Sonny Saul, Wednesday night at 6:30 at On the River Inn in Woodstock.
Jakob Breitbach’s acoustic-jazz jam, Thursday evening at 5 at the Hotel Coolidge’s Cafe Renee in White River Junction.
■Alec Currier’s open-mic at Salt hill Pub in Lebanon, Thursday nights at 8.
■Joseph Stallsmith’s hootenanny of Americana, folk and bluegrass, Monday nights at 6 at Salt hill Pub in Hanover.
■Fiddler Jakob Breitbach’s acoustic jam session of bluegrass, Americana and old-timey music, Tuesday nights at 7 at Filling Station Bar and Grill in White River Junction.
■John Lackard’s monthly blues jam, Tuesday night at 8 at Crossroads Bar & Grill in South Royalton.
■Tom Masterson’s open mic, Tuesday nights at 7 at Colatina Exit.
■String Band Karaoke, Jes Raymond’s monthly session of roots music, Wednesday night at 6 at The Skinny Pancake in Hanover.
■Jim Yeager hosts open mics Tuesday night at 6 at The Public House Pub in Quechee; and at Skunk Hollow Tavern in Hartland on Wednesday night at 8.
David Corriveau can be reached at dcorriveau@vnews.com or 603-727-3304. Send entertainment news to highlights@vnews.com.