Support local artists: Powerhouse is a gem in eyes of famed playwright John Cariani

LACONIA — John Cariani is one of the most-produced playwrights in America, with high schools and universities across the country presenting their versions of “Almost, Maine.” He has also been nominated for a Tony Award, and had a five-season character arc on ABC’s "Law & Order." But before all of those things, he was a kid growing up in a northern New England town.

Cariani has performed on Broadway, in films and on television, yet he continues to make northern New England — specifically, Maine — his artistic home. The Portland Stage Company is where his new plays frequently make their world premiere, and he's proof you don’t have to lower your artistic ambitions when you leave New York or LA.

That’s partly why one of the most successful contemporary playwrights has a ticket for the Powerhouse Theatre Collaborative production of his show “LOVE/SICK,” being staged at The Colonial Theatre Friday through Sunday, Feb. 14-16, and has plans in the matinee timeslot that day, as well.

“Everyone talks about supporting local business. I say, support local artists. There are great artists everywhere, not just urban cultural centers,” Cariani said. “I am a professional actor and playwright that people think performs at the highest level. Some of my greatest experiences of high level art have been in places like Powerhouse.” What makes great art isn’t the celebrity status of the performer or the address of the theater, it’s the commitment to the art and the community created around that attempt, he said. “Support local artists the way you support local businesses.”

Like “Almost, Maine,” “LOVE/SICK” is a cycle of several short plays. While most Valentine’s Day storylines end at “happily ever after,” Cariani uses this script to examine some of the more complex realities of romantic love. Each play within “LOVE/SICK” features two characters interacting at various stages of a romance’s lifespan. There are characters who know they shouldn’t love each other, characters who find themselves living the life they thought wanted but realize they don’t any longer, old lovers who reunite and wonder whether their mistake was breaking up or getting together in the first place.

And along the way, there are lots of laughs. Cariani said one definition of tragedy is when people learn their lesson a moment too late, and comedy is when the lesson is learned at the last possible moment.

“In these plays, a lot of these people learn their lesson just in the nick of time,” Cariani said.

The finished script for “LOVE/SICK” started as a collection of ideas, formed into short plays, which Cariani wrote in his late 20s, at a time when the concept of love was a lesson he was just learning for himself.

“I was late to love, I was a late bloomer,” Cariani said. Growing up in Presque Isle, Maine, he watched as his older brother fell in love, often and deeply.

“He had relationships in high school, complicated relationships.” Cariani found he could get a girlfriend, but never developed the depth of feelings he saw in the relationships of his friends or his brother. Meanwhile, he saw, in the parents of some of his peers, the various ways relationships evolve. They tend to start out the same way, filled with passion and joy, but the partnerships that grow from that germination contain challenges, even devastating heartbreak.

“I remember going to a friend’s house, and their parents hated each other and you could tell.” Cariani remembers wondering, “Why do they hate each other? Why do they stay married?”

After he left home, and realized he was queer, Cariani began to understand at least some of those whys. The characters that took shape in “Almost, Maine” and “LOVE/SICK” helped him to puzzle over some of the rest.

A third title, “Darker the Night, Brighter the Stars” is also born out of that same batch of notes. This script, which is in its final stage of development, will be given a staged reading on Saturday, Feb. 15, at The Colonial, and will be performed by Plymouth State University students.

With “Almost, Maine,” Cariani became something of a patron saint for young actors, providing them with a script they can approach with their own lived experiences, and which provides a list of characters with “meaty” roles, as Bryan Halperin, Powerhouse producer and director, described them.

Halperin, who was one of the founders of the Winnipesaukee Playhouse, produced the play with that company a few years after it first premiered. At the time, the play had already had its Off-Broadway premiere, and hadn’t yet started its ascent to its current state as one of the most-produced shows in the country. It had entered into a period when many new plays start to collect dust, soon to be forgotten. Halperin believed in the script, and bought the rights to produce it as part of the playhouse’s professional season. He even emailed Cariani — a bold move — and was rewarded with a response. What followed was a friendship built on mutual respect and love of theater. Later, when Cariani was part of a Broadway production of “Something Rotten,” he invited Bryan and his wife and fellow producer Johanna Halperin to come backstage when they went to New York to see the show, and their friendship has continued in the years since.

Their friendship is bolstered by a shared belief that great theater can, should and does exist in places where we don’t necessarily expect to find it. Halperin values Cariani’s generosity — after all, how often does a playwright and actor of his caliber come to see a community production of their play? And Cariani returns the favor.

The reading of “Darker the Night” is a rare opportunity, Cariani said. He is scheduled to premiere the show in a few months at his home theater, the Portland Stage Company, and this reading gives him one last chance to hear actors voice his characters.

“Having the reading at Powerhouse gives me an opportunity to work on it with students from Plymouth State,” Cariani said, calling it, “one more pass to work on it before I bring it into rehearsal, which is a great gift to me.

"Pretty soon I won’t be able to tinker with it.”

Cariani wrote the play with teenaged and young adult actors in mind, recalling his own experience at those ages when he was trying to learn how to embody someone else’s character.

“I was being asked to do scenes by Tennessee Williams and Sam Shepherd and Arthur Miller, and I was a 20-year-old,” he said. “I wasn’t a divorced man and I hadn’t committed a crime or had any regret. I felt the scenes we were being asked to work on were very complicated and difficult.”

Meanwhile, there weren’t any scripts that allowed him to engage with the trials of life as a young adult. Often, older writers dismiss the emotions and challenges of young people. But, Cariani insists, teenaged love and loss can be complex and profound, and are certainly worth putting on stage.

For tickets to "LOVE/SICK" and "Darker the Night, Brighter the Stars," see coloniallaconia.com.

For Halperin, the honor of having Cariani come to spend a weekend with his community theater comes on the heels of a notable haul at the New Hampshire Theatre Awards, which were held last weekend. Powerhouse took home awards for Maci Johnson’s portrayal of the leading role in “Tuck Everlasting,” an “Outstanding Community Production of a Musical” for that same show, and for Halperin’s direction of that show. Several other Powerhouse participants and shows were nominated for awards as well.

“We pinch ourselves all the time with the level of talent that auditions for our shows,” Halperin said, spreading the credit for the awards to those around him. “We put together good production teams who know what they are doing, the production levels are where they are at because of the talent that continues to audition for us.”

Theater is a bit like alchemy, Halperin said.

“You put all these elements in a pot,” sometimes the results are magical and other times they’re something else. “We’re lucky that the elements that we put in are coming out as something magical rather than not.”

He thinks he’s got a recipe for another magical result with “LOVE/SICK.”

“It’s a really fun and funny show. It's hysterically funny in places, really sweet in places and really sad in places,” Halperin said. “Especially in the darkness of winter and the turbulent times we’re living in, a play where you can just go and have some fun [watching] is what people need on Valentine’s Day weekend.”

Cariani thinks the Halperins, who run Powerhouse as a two-person team, can’t avoid too much of the credit for any magic that is conjured on the Colonial stage on Valentine's Day weekend.

“They’re so lucky to have people like Bryan and Johanna, they work their butts off and they love what they do,” Cariani said.