New Company Puts Boots on the Ground

After one particular rehearsal last week, Bonnie Grice took a moment to sit in the empty theater and stare at the set.

She considered the stuffed Victorian chairs and the antique tables and rugs, the panels of fabric hanging as a backdrop. She thought about the cast, and the lengths they had come over the past two months.

None of it felt real, she recalled during a telephone interview, despite the tangible evidence in front of her. A year ago, boots on the ground theater company was a pipe dream, a fledgling theater company desperately in need of funding — which it would raise and, now, use to stage its inaugural production, “A Miracle Worker,” next weekend at the Southampton Cultural Center.

“I’m blown away. I just can’t believe it’s really happening — I can’t believe it,” she said. “I had seen ‘The Miracle Worker’ movie when I was a kid and read Helen Keller’s story, and always had in the back of my mind to be involved in a stage production of it. I’d always been curious about how would it work on stage.”

When Grice approached Joan Lyons to direct the classic play — which follows the journey of Helen Keller, who suffers a terrible a fever as a baby, causing her to lose her sight, hearing and all comprehension of language — she initially “crossed her eyes and said, ‘What!? No, I can’t even think about that!’” Grice said.

They were on the set of “The Money Shot,” Lyons’s solo directorial debut in that very same theater.

“I tried to gently twist her arm for a month or so, and she finally agreed,” Grice said. “So here we are.”

Their longtime friendship — and the allure of staging the inspirational, timeless story — was hard to ignore, Lyons said during a telephone interview last week. It is her most demanding production to date, she said, having abridged the original two-hour, three-act script into a tight 70-minute, one-act play, all the while navigating renovations at the Southampton Cultural Center that shuffled the cast from room to room.

“We’ve had some setbacks as far as being able to get into the space when we needed to, and we were moved all around the building depending on what space is available for rehearsal,” Lyons said. “So every time we had rehearsal, we were stuck in a different space. It’s been challenging, but it’s also good for the actors because it makes them more versatile.

“By the time we got into our space, we were really excited and happy to be there. The cast has more than risen to the occasion, and we did a lot of really great work this week.”

Emma Suhr leads the production as Helen Keller, starring opposite Tina Marie Realmuto as Annie Sullivan, her teacher. Lyons was hesitant at first — as she would be casting any 10-year-old, she said — but she saw potential in Emma, a certain talent and ability, and over the last eight weeks, she has grown into the character.

“She just blows me away. She does the final scene and this week, every time she did it, I cried. I literally cried. Just thinking about it now makes me want to cry,” Lyons said. “She has just come so far and it’s so poignant. You know, I’ve done a lot of theater and you get jaded by things, and you think, ‘Yeah, yeah, here’s the big tear-jerker moment, let’s just get this done.’ But every time she does it, it gets me. It gets me.”

She paused. “That’s the hook,” she added. “That’s what makes you want to do it again: finding those really, really special moments. I think we all get into theater for different reasons. They’re really very selfish reasons. I know why I’m in theater — because it moves me — and this is really an interest of Bonnie’s, specifically the Victorian era, and other people aren’t doing that. She just loves that era and she loves the costuming, and the set pieces, and the dynamics between men and women in the 1800s.”

Exploring the role of Kate Keller — Helen’s mother and a quiet, yet pivotal, presence throughout the play — has pushed Grice to look inward, she said.

“She has strength, inner strength — maintaining that in the face of challenges toward her sex and attitudes about women. I like her quiet determination, and I aspire to it, even though I talk on the radio all the time,” explained Grice, host and producer of “The Eclectic Café” on WPPB, Long Island’s only NPR affiliate. “For the most part, I’m introverted and I like my alone time, and I think Kate does, too, and I admire her for her determination on behalf of her child, to really help her child shine and survive and thrive. That became her mission.”

In a way, that is exactly what Grice has done for boots on the ground — determined to turn her dream into a reality, and allow it to thrive within a healthy theater community on the East End.

“I didn’t set out to compete or anything,” she said. “I’d like to think that boots on the ground reflects digging in. I admire that grit that I feel when I hear ‘boots on the ground.’ But I also like the idea of exploring a wide range of theater. What does theater mean? It doesn’t mean you have to be in four walls. You can be outside of that, but still inside of it, too. You’re not afraid and you go into it — once more into the breach, you know? Like, ‘We’re gonna do this.’

“All I can say is, come and see it, and enjoy Emma,” she added. “And be changed.”

Grice certainly is.

Boots on the ground will present “The Miracle Worker,” directed by Joan Lyons, on Friday, April 27, and Saturday, April 28, at 7 p.m. at the Southampton Cultural Center, located at 25 Pond Lane in Southampton. A matinee will stage on Sunday, April 29, at 2 p.m. Cast members include Emma Suhr, Tina Marie Realmuto, Daniel Becker, Bonnie Grice, Deyo Towbridge, Gerri Wilson and Josephine Wallace. Tickets are $20 and $5 for children age 12 and under. For more information, please visit bootsonthegroundtheater.com or scc-arts.org.