PAGE B2 The Sag Harbor Express JUNE 26, 2014

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NOTES FROM THE FIELDPa ig e Pa tter so n

AroundI Can See My Breath Tonight

continued from page B1

It’s chilly out tonight, so it doesn’t really feel like the Summer Sol­stice is upon us, but it’s come and

gone. It’s sweater wearing weather, which feels so strange in June after the last couple o f sweltering sum­mers we’ve all been through, but for me it’s a sweet reminder o f my child­hood. I grew up in Sagaponack, not year round, but every weekend and every summer and I remember sum­mer evenings just like this one. We’ve seen a few fireflies already, but for me they were a July sensation, captured in a jar when my skin was already the deep brown that comes from wearing a bathing suit all day long. We never needed air-conditioning when I was a child, just screens in the windows and perhaps a fan or two on a few August nights.

As I sit writing this on the kitchen porch I can hear the sound o f the ocean and the petals of my ballerina rose drop slowly as i f dancing with or curtseying to the evening cool breeze. I am not minding what every­one else is calling an unseasonably

PAIGE PATTERSON came home with three new hydrangeas tonight; who even knew there were still hydrangeas out there she didn't already own?

cool June — I like it. The roses are lov­ing it, no heat and thus no black spot, the fungus needing the combination o f humidity and heat to start its re­lentless attack. There’s talk that us­ing a combination o f milk and water to spray the roses will slow the creep of the fungus, but I am now just rev­eling in a June with roses billowing like overstuffed pillows and kousa dogwoods dripping pink and white.

There are no June bugs tonight, but that’s okay, it feels like the earth is slowly stretching into summer, and the June bugs will be bouncing o ff the screens again soon. I too, like those awkward brown beetles, am nestling into a quieter sleep on these cool evenings, and life is good.

I picked snow peas from my gar­den this evening and after steaming them for just seconds, had a plateful for dinner. No butter, no salt, just sweet bright green deliciousness. I even shared a few with the dachs­hunds. Perfect summer meal. Three days ago 1 cut enough garlic scapes to dress both my forearms with bangles o f green up to my elbows. The pesto will last all summer long. The hy­drangeas are recovering, my toma­toes are starting to expand, the dahl­ias are about 8 inches high and it all feels right to me.

The weeds are a little relentless, but the cool evenings mean I’m not too tired and exhausted from the heat o f the day to pull out the arm­fuls I must remove each evening after work. I am making a dent. Not a big dent, but it is progress. This summer is teaching me to be patient. To wait and then appreciate each bud as it opens. Yes the peonies came and went too fast, the rain did mine in, but the mock orange is an intoxicating per­fume that more than makes up for it.

I am learning, after decades of gardening that each year is different.

There is no certainty in my garden anymore. The winter was hard on my skimmia, eighteen years of beauty, and now it’s still looking bad, but my yellow magnolia that we thought for sure was a goner, has reveled in its hard chop that left thigh thick trunks exposed, trunks that are now pushing handfuls o f luscious new growth. I lost a number o f crape myr­tles, but the spirea is bountiful. I am learning to appreciate the stalwart garden standards more.

Viburnums had a magnificent spring, and my apples and pears are laden with small fruits. My hive survived the cold and threw o ff a new colony into one o f the aban­doned hives that remains from last year’s deaths. Those bees persevered through the cold with a strength that gave me all the fruit that’s slowly forming, and even my fig is pushing out new growth from its roots. Sure the hydrangeas are smaller this year, but that’s just an opportunity to tuck dark pink nicotianas into the spaces and give my resident hummingbirds more floral dining options.

The smell o f privet is something we don’t get much anymore. Too many hedges are tamed; few are left to roll wild and free like the waves on the beach. There are buds on my

privet and I am loath to prune it. My childhood home had a hedge that ran perpendicular to the road that was as tall as the house itself. The only thing taller was the ancient beech that stood solitary to the west.I loved that hedge and its wild unruly scent. There was no pruning of it, who would have even known where to start. It billowed waves of summer into our bedrooms when the cool air danced into our rooms each night. That was the beginning o f summer for me each year, not the ending of school, although that too was lovely.

There were no gardeners in my family, so I didn’t know that hav­ing butterfly bushes that topped out above the garage was unusual. There was milkweed growing wild in the fields that were not plowed, milk­weed that fed butterflies and gave us magic, silken pods that released dancing ladies each fall. And that flower’s scent I miss as well.

Back when there were only a hand­ful of houses on Hedges Lane, the night sky still smelled the same as it does now, the air still tasted the same and listening to the rhythmic pounding o f the sea was a quiet, easy way to drift o ff to sleep. To still have those same joys now is a gift that I am happy to receive.

Stoppard’s comic “revolutioncontinued from page B!

was a British consul in Zurich in 1917 during World War I. Mr. Carr reflects on his participation at the time in an amateur production of Oscar Wilde’s play “The Importance o f Being Ear­nest,” in which (in Mr. Stoppard’s take on it) he worked alongside some o f the early 20th century’s most influential figures: James Joyce, Vladimir Lenin and Tristan Tzara.

“What it really gets at,” Bay Street’s artistic director Scott Schwartz said o f the play when the season was first introduced this winter, “is the sort o f passion and fire and revolutionary spirit o f these guys as they’re trying to meet girls and trying to have a great time in Zürich at this time.”

When you think o f Lenin in 1917, in the heat of the empire’s collapse and subsequent community revolution in Russia, you don’t necessarily imagine him spending his time trying to meet girls, but Mr. Stoppard expertly hu­manizes even his most notable char­acters with humor.

“It’s one o f the most bracing theat­rical challenges to be a part of—full o f brilliance and fun—overflowing with ideas and using all the elements; knockabout humor, song and dance, the ‘theatre’ o f theatre, to create a whirligig of intriguing ideas,” Grego­ry Boyd, the artistic director for the Alley Theatre in Houston, who is di­recting Bay Street’s production, said

in an email interview.“There isn’t another play like it —

unless it’s another Stoppard play. He is unique,” added the director.

A Czech-born British playwright, Mr. Stoppard was 2 years old when he moved with his family to England to escape the Nazi occupation o f Czecho­slovakia. He was knighted in 1997 and the next year won an Academy Award for “Best Original Screenplay” for “Shakespeare in Love,” which he wrote with Marc Norman. He has also won four Tony Awards.

Written in 1974, “Travesties” has been performed in productions across the world. The play won the United Kingdom’s Evening Standard Award for “Best Comedy o f the Year” in 1974 and in 1976 both a Tony Award and a New York Critics Award for “Best Play.”

“Stoppard," Mr. Boyd said, “is writ­ing about art and artists, revolution and revolutionaries and how they collide. James Joyce, Lenin and Dada­ist artist Tristan Tzara were indeed in Zürich during World War I, but it is the playwright’s genius that brings them all together through the eyes and erratic memory of a minor civil servant, as he (Henry Carr) looks back over his life.”

“It’s dealing with the whole ques­tion o f how art and change interact in our lives,” said Mr. Schwartz, adding that “Travesties" is the “centerpiece” o f Bay Street’s summer season.

Having directed or produced over

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100 new productions from writers as varied—and renowned—as Tennessee Williams and Edward Albee, Mr. Boyd is no stranger to the stage. There’s al­ready one “Travesties" production un­der his belt; he directed the comedy several years ago at the Long Wharf Theatre in New Haven, Connecticut.

“He’s a brilliant director," Mr. Schwartz said. “I’m so excited to bring his vision to the theater.”

As Bay Street’s artistic director, he added, he would like to “bring great directors in from around the country and perhaps eventually around the world.”

Richard Kind, noted for his roles on HBO’s “Curb Your Enthusiasm” and “Spin City,” returns to Bay Street, where he serves on the Board o f Trust­ees, for his role as Henry Carr, who, like the legendary figures he hangs out with, was a real person in Zurich at the time.

Actors Michael Benz, Carson Elrod, Aloysius Gigl, Isabel Keating, Julia Mo- tyka, Emily Trask and Andrew Weems are also in the cast.

“The cast we have is a wonderful group—and working with them on this marvelous script is the most en­joyable part o f it,” said Mr. Boyd. “Stop­pard asks that the actors be comedi­ans, but capable too o f giving full voice to the brilliant language.”

Credited for shaping stream of consciousness and other techniques of the modernist avant-garde move-

RICHARD KIND in Bay Street Theater’s Travesties." jerry lamonica photo

ment, Joyce is in the middle o f writing Ulysses during the time o f the play. Tzara, a French avant-garde poet, es­sayist and performance artist, is busy creating art and poetry that gain him notoriety as a leader o f Dadaism and Lenin is planning to overthrow one of the world’s largest empires, which has been in power for nearly 200 years.

But then Mr. Stoppard comes in, and—although the figures are still their distinguished selves—they are flanked by the wild theatricality o f his writing, with an almost burlesque style o f humor.

“I love the Bay Street Theater space— and ‘Travesties’ uses it in an interest­ing way, I think. From toy trains to pie fights, there are a lot o f moments that come together in a fresh way,” said

Mr. Boyd.“It’s a wonderful conceit o f a ‘small’

man hoping to achieve some mean­ing in his life through his association with these three giants," the director added. “The play is full o f comedy, gor­geous language, exhilarating ideas— and some real heart, too. That combi­nation is very hard to resist."

“Travesties" opened Tuesday, June 24, and runs through July 20 at Bay Street Theater, located on the comer o f Main and Bay streets in Sag Harbor. General admission tickets range in price from $60.75 to $75. The “Stu­dent Sunday’ matinee allows high school and college students to attend the 2 p.m. matinee on Sundays fo r free. A $30 ticket is available for those under age 30. For tickets and more information, visit baystreet.org or call the box office at (631) 725-9500.

“I put myself in the zone, sit in front o f the computer, scroll through thousands o f pictures," she said. The process, she said, is hugely time con­suming; “It definitely takes me away from my painting in the studio," said the artist who is primarily known for her work in that medium.

After whittling out the photos trig­gered by a leaf or a twig blowing in front of the camera, Ms. Musnicki en­ters them into a film editing software in which she, with help, edits the pic­tures together, speeds up the process and creates a stop-motion film of the undisturbed animal kingdom. “It’s a lit­tle tiny pocket o f animal life,” she said.

A large part o f the artistic process is in the presentation of her hidden cameras’ shots.

Ms. Musnicki’s edits become a “fast little film,” adding an interesting ar­tistic element to the project. The same film will be projected onto two giant screens at the Museum Barn at SOFO. The films will be screened in a round, i f you will, with one starting five min­utes after the first.

“The more screens I have the more dynamic it becomes,” she said.

The Long Pond Greenbelt cameras have captured pictures o f "lots of creatures,” Ms. Musnicki said. The nine-month span o f this project has allowed Ms. Musnicki to document baby foxes growing up. “There’s a lit­tle log that a turtle jumped o ff of," she added. The artist’s house faces part of the reserve. “I particularly love the [camera] across the street from me, so much stuff happens there,” she said, citing a brawl that she captured be­tween two deer locking horns.

The project, she added, “involves peo­ple in every step of the process. When it comes to show it, I definitely feed off o f people. I need help, I get help, people like to help, and so it turns into a nice collaboration,” she said.

Each project is very different, she said. The friends o f the Long Pond Greenbelt “know where to go, and that was fun for me, to learn a few places that I didn’t know of." Ms. Musnicki has also been working in collabora­tion with the Nature Conservancy on a similar project at the Warhol Estate in Montauk, thanks to grants from the conservancy and Warhol Foundation.

A preview o f the Montauk proj­ect will be shown on five different screens the next day on Saturday, June 28, at the Nature Conservancy’s Beaches and Bays Gala at the Center for Conservation in East Hampton.

The final Warhol project, which has been in the works for a year, w ill be shown at a later date and will be the artist’s most dynamic and detailed view into our animal neighbors and “a life o f their own in the middle of all of us,” she said.

What Comes Around II will be shown on Friday, June 27, from 5 to 7 p.m. at the South Fork Natural History Museum Art Bam, located at 377 Bridgehampton-Sag Harbor Turnpike in Bridgehampton. A pre­view o f the Worfiol project will be shown at the Beaches 6 Bays Gala on Saturday, June 28, which will take place at the Center fo r Conservation on Route 114 in East Hampton.

BAY STREETT H E a t e rA smashing theatrical extravaganza!

Now thru Ju ly 20Tom Stoppard

Directed by

G regory Boyd

StarringRichard KindMainstage previews sponsored by

COME LAUGH!Mon, June 30STEVERANNAZZISIThe League, Punk'd, Big Day

Mon, July 14BOBBYCOLLINSVH-1's Stand Up Spotlight, On The Inside,Out of Bounds

Mon, July 7HEATHERM C D O N A LDChelsea Lately,After Lately,White Chicks

Mon, August 11BOBMARLEYBoondock Saints,A ll Saints Day, Comedy Central

631-725-9500 www.baystreet.orgEntertainment subject *o chgng»

fT /ie«9 G storic (9 /c / <W Ao/er$’ (SAurcA44 Union Street, Sag Harbor, New York • 631.725.0894

presents

A MUSICAL EXTRAVAGANZASunday, June 29 ,2014 • 5:00 p.m.

The program will include Broadway's Best, American Gems, music from Disney, Patriotic Favorites, and more!

Musicians Include:Michael Bodnyk, St. Patrick's Cathedral, NYC

Susan Vinski, Lead singer for'Suzie on the Rocks* and area soloist

The Old Whalers'Church Handbell Choir, David L. Cummings, Director

The Old Whalers'Church Choir & Guest Choir, Dominick J. Abbate, Director

No Admission • Free-will offering will be received

Hot Dogs and Ice Cream will follow on the church lawn.

All are welcome!