The Alden Players will open their first original play in ten years this weekend, after the licensed script the community theater had planned to stage fell through in June when the rights holder pulled it from small-theater availability. Rather than scramble for a replacement, the group's twelve members spent the summer writing their own.
Director Carla Bettencourt said the group had already sold season tickets built around the canceled script when the news came. With no time to license and rehearse a substitute before the fall slot, the cast decided at a July meeting to write something themselves, drawing on stories from around Port Alden.
"Once London Rights Group told us we couldn't have the play, somebody in the room said, well, we know plenty of stories from around here," Bettencourt said. "That turned into the play."
A story built from the town itself
The resulting play, titled "Low Water," follows three generations of a fictional Port Alden fishing family and was written collectively by the cast over eleven weeks of Tuesday-night sessions, with retired English teacher and cast member Phil Ostrowski assembling the scenes into a final script.
Rehearsals ran longer than usual, Bettencourt said, since the group was still revising dialogue into September, two weeks before opening night. The theater's forty-two-seat house has already sold out three of its five scheduled performances.
"Least Bettencourt could do a script from a stranger, we know how the story ends before we start," said cast member Judith Alvarenga. "With this one, we didn't, not until we'd written it."
