Imagine, if you will, wandering the paths that wind through the 175 acres of Mount Auburn Cemetery and finding a troupe of actors connecting you to the surroundings.
Some actors are playing bird watchers, like the folks who come early mornings to the grounds which serve as resting places for the flocks flying north in the spring and back south in the fall. Others take the roles of salamanders, or trees, emblematic of the beauty of nature on all sides and overhead in the patterns of the leafy branches against the sky.
Mount Auburn Cemetery straddles Cambridge and Watertown as a burial ground, a landscape of breathtaking beauty, and a sculpture park filled with stone replicas of Boston area personalities buried there and/or symbols of their demise. But for a while during June, and again in September, Mount Auburn will become a stage.
The Mount Auburn Cemetery’s first playwright in residence, Patrick Gabridge, has written a series of site-specific works, “The Nature Plays” to be premiered June 1-9 and “The America Plays,” to be performed Sept. 14-22. Under the direction of Courtney O’Connor, two casts of local professional actors will perform the plays outdoors on the grounds. (There is an indoor space in case of rain).
“Mount Auburn is not just a cemetery but also an incredible nature sanctuary," said Gabridge, who interjected his comments with observations of the birds flying above his head during an outdoor interview.
"You’ve got this world-class arboretum with every tree and shrub recorded. In our planning we were thinking about the natural environment here as a cultural institution more than just a place where people are buried. The administrative staffers realize Mount Auburn has to be more than a cemetery because someday this place will fill up.”
Gabridge wrote the site-specific drama ”Blood on the Snow,” which was presented in the chamber at the Old State House where the Colonial Council met, overlooking the site of the Boston Massacre. The play, commissioned by the Bostonian Society, premiered in 2016, and sold out every performance for two summers. (The play will be restaged in the summer of 2020).
Gabridge’s “Cato and Dolly” is running June 17-Aug. 11 at the Old State House Museum to accompany the exhibition currently on view. Dolly was John Hancock’s wife; Cato was an “enslaved man in the household.” The exhibit features the heavy, carved door from the Hancock mansion, now torn down.
“We heard voices from American history centered around the door,” Gabridge says. He has formed a company, Plays in Place, to write and produce site-specific works, in partnership with museums and historical sites.
The cemetery started its artist-in residence program in 2014, supported by the Friends of Mount Auburn. Gabridge is the third artist to be appointed, following Roberto Mighty, a multimedia film maker, and Mary Bichner, a singer, musician and composer.
Jenny Gilbert, an art historian and development officer for Mount Auburn said the artist-in-residence program began with a grant from the Institute of Museums and Libraries. "We were the first cemetery to receive a grant from this federal agency," she said. "When I saw ‘Blood on the Snow,’ I was moved by being in that room."
“Pat (Grabridge) was recommended to us by the National Park Service. We were impressed by his intellectual curiosity and his interest in history. We wanted someone to talk about Mount Auburn in a different voice. After we appointed him, he had a first year of freedom for research and writing.”
Gabridge described “The Nature Plays” as “not necessarily realistic. One play is about spotted salamanders; another about mushroom hunters, and one about trees as lovers. There is a ghost play about Louis Agassiz, the Harvard naturalist, and Asa Gray, the famous botanist.”
Gabridge voiced his concerns about Agassiz being a racist, “There was no scientific basis for his views but proponents of slavery used them to prop up their actions.”
“The American Plays,” to premiere in September, are about American history and American identity, Gabridge said. The characters in the plays were chosen from the many people buried at Mount Auburn: Jacob Bigelow, the blind founder and second president of the cemetery, Charlotte Cushman, the actress; sculptors Edmonia Lewis and Martin Milmore; early female physician and women’s rights activist Harriot Kezia Hunt; and Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story, who delivered the cemetery's consecration address in 1831.
The journey through the American experience will conclude with an immigrant story, featuring some of Mount Auburn’s Armenian residents. Gilbert observes, “Mount Auburn has 100,000 people buried here. There are 100,000 stories to tell.”