Raising the Curtain Couple finds there IS business in show business in northern Maine

CARIBOU – For Richard Scott, there really is no business like show business.

In fact, it’s the main reason he and his wife, Tammy, decided late last year to start up a professional production company in Aroostook County, where the arts are supported, but the population is small.

The couple launched Community Group Entertainment in November, primarily to bring musicals back to the area, but also to provide other types of theater, attract professional entertainers and produce entertainment events.

Scott, the co-owner and president of the Presque Isle-based company, is the first to admit that opening a theater-oriented business in northern Maine is a challenge.

But because there’s no competition, it’s also a niche market, he said. And the ready audience makes the venture a little less threatening.

“That’s what launched us into thinking we could start this company up in the first place,” Scott said during a recent interview in Caribou High School’s cafeteria. “We decided this would be a good full-time endeavor – we have a good base knowledge of the theater and the community support system for it here, and we hope to build on that.”

The idea for the business came to Scott last fall when he took part in a community theater performance, “Exit the Body,” during the University of Maine at Presque Isle’s centennial celebration. Cast members learned during work on that play that there were no plans for a big spring musical. It already had been four years since a community theater group had performed a Broadway-style musical – a favorite form of entertainment for local theatergoers – and County thespians were more than disappointed.

“I said, ‘You know, if we wait too much longer, that tradition is going to be lost,'” Scott said. “As theater people, we didn’t want to see that disappear.”

At about the same time, Scott’s position as executive director of the Caribou Chamber of Commerce and Industry was eliminated and he was in the market for new business. The entrepreneurial spirit was in full force already: Tammy Scott had begun operating her own store and eatery in April at the Northern Maine Regional Airport, and Scott was looking into starting a home gourmet service. But when he realized that no one was putting on musicals, Scott said, it provided him and his wife an opportunity as entrepreneurs to pick up the ball and run with it.

“I wouldn’t be doing it if I didn’t think I could pull it off,” Scott said, before leaving the cafeteria and heading down the hall to the Caribou Performing Arts Center, where a few dozen cast members were rehearsing for CGE’s first production: “Annie Get Your Gun” – a musical that features the famous anthem to theater “There’s No Business Like Show Business.”

“Let’s go on with the show,” Tamia Glidden sang as she stood alone onstage, playing the lovesick, starry-eyed Annie Oakley.

She and approximately 50 other people from the local theater community acted in the production, which was for-profit, but the actors didn’t seek any compensation.

CGE paid the Rodgers and Hammerstein Theatre Library $3,000 for the rights to present Irving Berlin’s musical. Scott said the entire production was budgeted at around $17,500 and investors helped to back the company’s first show. He said rights to the show would have cost four times as much if the actors were paid because it would raise the production to the level of an Actors’ Equity show, and he believed the company wasn’t ready to handle a production on that scale yet.

“It’s pretty brave, what Richard’s doing,” Glidden conceded after her number.

She interrupted her thought with a laugh as she watched the director, Barbara Frick Ladner, try to shoo off the stage her musical director and husband, Dan Ladner, who was horsing around with Buffalo Bill Cody, played by Dean Rauch, and a few cowboys.

Glidden said she and other local actors don’t care about the money.

“It wouldn’t make any difference as long as Dan and Barb are involved,” she said.

For Scott, bringing musicals back to Aroostook County hinged on getting the two, who happen to be his in-laws, in on the act. Together the couple had directed many musicals, including “The Sound of Music,” “Fiddler on the Roof” and “Guys and Dolls,” which local residents repeatedly packed the house to see.

Dan and Barb, as everyone refers to them, hadn’t directed a production in four years, but family ties and a love of theater gave Scott a little bargaining leverage.

The two, who claimed to be in directorial retirement, were still active in the theater community, having most recently performed with Scott in “Exit the Body.”

“Barb and I had fun doing that show,” Dan Ladner said after finishing his stage high jinks. “We started toying around with plays again, so when he [Scott] approached us, we said, ‘Oh, let’s do it.’ But it didn’t really take a lot of persuasion.”

Scott hopes CGE will be able to produce two or three smaller-scale productions this year. Down the road, he sees a developmental theater camp in the summer for students from grade school to college and maybe even an annual holiday pageant.

“We know this isn’t going to be easy. The company is going to require a lot of work,” Scott said.

But in the end, he believes it will be worth it as long as the company can keep producing quality theater for the community.

For Scott, it’s all about going on with the shows.