By Natalie De La Garza
Staff Writer
CARIBOU — The Caribou High School Drama Club will be presenting “The Guys” by Anne Nelson at the Caribou Performing Arts Center on Friday, May 22 and Saturday, May 23 at 7 p.m.
Drama Club Adviser Pat Karpen described that the play is written after the September 11th terrorist attacks of 2001 and tells the story of a fire chief finds himself unable to write the eulogies for “his guys” lost that day; the chief turns to a journalist for help.
The play stars two CHS seniors, Ethan Caron as the fire chief and Elyse Kiehn as the journalist, and they both agree the play’s premise comes with tremendous weight.
“You definitely want to get it right, especially since the significance behind the play and the significance this will probably hold for our audience members,” Kiehn said.
Adding to the play’s significance, the Caribou Fire Department Honor Guard will be posting the colors before the play, and retiring the colors as its conclusion.
“It brings an element of pressure, because this is obviously very, very important to [the firefighters] and it’s important to us too, but in a different way,” Caron explained. “You just see all these people that really care about it, and you really want to get it right.”
While this isn’t Kiehn or Caron’s first show, both agree that they wouldn’t have been able to portray their characters as well at the start of the school year and Karpen says they’re really finding their actor’s voices.
“I think one of the most unhappy days was when Ethan all of a sudden discovered how to analyze a script, because his questions drive me crazy,” the instructor said with a dry sense of humor and a grin.
“It’s been really great for me to watch them get their actor’s voice, which is to say ‘I have a question,’” the instructor added.
Those new acting abilities come in handy with their characters’ complexities.
Caron’s character, the fire chief who’s been through a tremendous ordeal physically and emotionally, took a good amount of time for the actor to consider.
“When I first started this, I brought the mood completely down because of what [the character] went through … but as we’ve progressed through this, I‘ve started to be able to — with help — bring out the happiness he has in the memories of everything he talks about,” Caron explained.
Caron’s character is coming to terms with his grief, but Kiehn has a different challenge. Her character is a working mother, and writing is what she does, “but this is a little out of her comfort zone so she’s trying to go with the method she knows — she’s asking question after question and obviously trying not to step on any toes, but also trying to get the work done,” Kiehn discerned. “Ethan’s character is coming to terms with what’s happening and the fact that he has to give these eulogies — through her monologues, you see my character hasn’t exactly come to terms with what happened. She’s going through her own mourning process, so I try to capture the emotion of it.”
With such a heavy subject for such young actors, Karpen has confidence in her cast.
“They’re almost ready,” she said last Wednesday. “These lines are horrific … it’s not that there are just a lot of lines, they’re really hard. The transitions are off the wall, and it’s a script that takes days … however the other stuff is there,” Karpen explained. “As soon as they solid (the lines) up a little bit, they’ve already done what they need to do internally and intellectually.”
Proceeds from the production will be donated to the Caribou Fire Department’s firefighters and while Karpen doesn’t anticipate being able to buy them new fire trucks, she is hoping the play earns enough to buy the firefighters pizzas.
Aroostook Republican photo/Natalie De La Garza
Elyse Kiehn and Ethan Caron will star in “The Guys” by Anne Nelson this weekend at the Caribou Performing Arts Center. Proceeds will benefit the Caribou Fire Department.
