BELFAST, Maine — There will be a major shift in the city’s busy theater scene in 2015, when the longtime artistic director of the Belfast Maskers steps down to reboot her own dramatic company.
Aynne Ames has led the Maskers community theater group for more than a decade. She said in late December that she is very appreciative of her time with the Maskers but is ready to do something different.
“I have had the pleasure of working with hundreds of people who volunteered to work on the production of plays and in fundraising simply because they believed in community theater,” she said in a letter to the members of that theater group.
She anticipates her next steps will include less of the physical work that has been an integral part of the Maskers’ reality since the nearly 30-year-old group had to leave its longtime home on the Belfast waterfront in 2011. At that time, Belfast officials learned that their insurance company would no longer insure the theater, which had taken up residence in the former freight house for the Belfast & Moosehead Lake Railroad. Since then, the theater group has been on the move from venue to venue in the midcoast area.
“I find it too difficult for me personally to do the ‘hauling and toting’ it takes to put up major productions and will leave that to the younger crowd, and they state they are willing and able to do it!” Ames said in her letter.
Meanwhile, the Maskers group will be figuring out its own future, according to Erica Rubin Irish, the president of the board of directors. She said recently that the Maskers cannot afford to keep on a full-time artistic director.
“I don’t know what’s going to happen with the Maskers,” she said. “I think the organization’s really important to the community and people want to see it succeed. We’re going to have a meeting in January that’s going to be open to everyone to come brainstorm. From there, we’ll make some decisions of what’s next.”
Irish said that right now, the Maskers is the only group in Belfast that welcomes family community theater.
“It’s unique, and it’s a community and a family organization, where young people, old people, everyone can take part,” she said. “I would like to continue on with the quality and the reputation that the organization has built up. It’s been around a long time. It’s a real Belfast institution.”
Ames said she doesn’t want to retire from putting on productions, and she will continue to do so on a smaller scale and under the name of Cold Comfort Theatre, which she created 39 years ago in Castine.
“The plan is I’m going to do this as long as it’s fun,” she said of performing.
Fun for Ames, who has been involved with theater since she was a child, will include more musicals with wine and cheese, patriotic events, thought-provoking drama and “charming comedies.” She said she is getting excited about putting on Godspell in 2015 with area teens in a local church.
During her years leading the Maskers, Ames said she is proudest of helping to have a children’s theater camp, of creating an intern program that brought in talent from outside of Belfast, and of instituting the now-popular idea of holding outdoor events at Steamboat Landing Park at the waterfront.
“They thought it was completely nuts — no water, no lights,” she said of initial reactions to her idea of putting on summer musicals there. “Now, you can hardly get in for all the festivals there are.”
Irish and Ames both said that having a dedicated performance space in Belfast could only help the city. For several years, fans of the performing arts have brainstormed and debated about how to create or repurpose such a facility in Belfast.
“We have so many musicians, so many dancers, so many actors,” Ames said. “I think the city’s really fortunate. I just wish [there was a] space for all these artists to perform.”
Irish urges residents to join the discussion of where the Maskers should go next by attending the brainstorming meeting at 6:30 p.m. Wednesday, Jan. 14, in the Abbott Room of the Belfast Free Library.