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Town Players of Pittsfield Staging Williamstown Native's Play
By Rebecca Dravis, iBerkshires Staff
10:21AM / Saturday, September 27, 2014
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Melanie Rivers is directing the staged reading of 'Gently Down the Stream' on Sunday, Sept. 28, in PIttsfield.
The Town Players of Pittsfield rehearse for a staged reading of Williamstown native Robin Rice Lichtig's play 'Gently Down the Stream.'

PITTSFIELD, Mass. — New York City playwright Robin Rice Lichtig's family had a lot of firsts during her childhood years in Williamstown in the 1950s.

Lichtig herself was the first girl to attend Williams College, taking classes there while still in high school, well before the college went co-ed in the 1970s. One of her sisters was in the first class to graduate from the high school after it became the regional school it is today in the early 1960s. And Lichtig was one of the first interns at the newly formed Williamstown Theatre Festival.

This weekend, Lichtig will celebrate another first: the first time one of her plays is presented in the Berkshires.

On Sunday, Sept. 28, the Town Players of Pittsfield will give a staged reading of Lichtig's "Gently Down the Stream," directed by Melanie Rivers, at 2 p.m. at the Whitney Center for the Arts. Admission is $5.

"Gently Down the Stream" is an autobiography of sorts, chronicling the time when her sister was diagnosed with cancer. Her sister asked her to keep her cat, Turbo, for her while undergoing treatment, and the cat was moved from Joanne's home in Bennington, Vt., to Lichtig's apartment in New York City. The play chronicles this time in Lichtig's life through the eyes of the cat.

But it didn't start out quite as autobiographical, Lichtig said in a recent phone interview from New York. One of the first versions, presented at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe last year, skirted around the actual presence of her and her sister and focused solely on the cat's culture shock from being transported from the country to the city. Grief prevented her tackling the issue of her sister's illness head-on.

"The only way I could write about her was through the cat," she said. 

Back in New York, though, she expanded it and rewrote it.

"I was getting closer and closer to where it should be," she said. "Dammit, my sister had to be in it and I had to be in it."

Another reading was held in New York City last November, but she kept tweaking it until she was happier with it. Then there were two more readings, one by a professional theater group that she didn't care for and another by a group of amateurs performed over a bar that hit the perfect note.

"The cast was in tears at the end," she said.

That's the kind of reaction the Town Players likely will be looking for Sunday.

"It's a pretty special piece," said Rivers, a longtime member of the Town Players, the oldest theater in Berkshire County and one of the oldest continually running nonprofit theaters in the country. "It's a lovely, lovely piece. She just draws a fabulous character in the cat."

Because the play has changed shape and gotten longer since an earlier version arrived at the Town Players for consideration, the reading will be presented in 10 scenes, with a break in the middle, which is atypical of a staged reading. It will be less than two hours with minimal blocking, set and costumes.

"I've got some good people," she said. "We have a fine cast."

That cast includes Vince Doyle, Megan Rogers, Sheila Wood, Jill Wanderman, Brian Plankey and Nancy Schaffer. The character of the cat is played by Doyle, which makes Lichtig happy. In earlier readings, a woman had played the cat, and Lichtig said she always felt that something wasn't quite right. It wasn't until the bar performance, when a man played the cat, that she realized what had felt wrong to her.

"The cat was a male," Lichtig said. "From now on, it's gotta be a guy."

This reading is the last of a series for the Town Players, which has seen its own changes over the years. The group used to stage three full-production shows at Berkshire Community College, but seven or eight years ago that ended because of budget constraints. Since then the group has bounced around, doing productions in the Lichtenstein Center for the Arts, the smaller stage at BCC and Taconic High School.

"We were floundering," Rivers said.

Then they discovered the new Whitney Center for the Arts, located on Wendell Avenue, where they have been holding this latest series of readings. The space doesn't allow for large productions, but the group does plan on doing some full plays when possible and has a large cabaret in May planned at the Masonic Temple.

"We're trying to get back on track," Rivers said. "We just keep finding ways. We owe it to the Town Players to keep it open."

That long reputation is how Lichtig discovered the group and decided to send her script in for consideration last year. Rivers said they are always happy to be able to showcase works by authors with local roots. And for her part, Lichtig is thrilled to make her first visit "home" in quite a while. 

She said she plans to spend Saturday afternoon just walking around Williamstown, recalling her childhood days at Mitchell School (where the Williamstown Youth Center currently sits), going to the Clark Art Institute, where she spent time as a kid (including in the attic storage area, where she would hang out with a boyfriend whose father worked at the museum), her own father's employment at Sprague Electric in North Adams (which is now Mass MoCA, where Lichtig said she has visited and recognizes features of Sprague, like the radiators) and the old library at Williams College (where she would sneak in while still in high school).

"Williamstown is really a huge part of who I am," she said. "My plays are infused with being a New Englander. Western Mass is in my blood."

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