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Opera’s new diva: College Park

Squonk explores city in new show commissioned by the university

Thursday, Nov. 9, 2006

Click here to enlarge this photo Brenda Ahearn⁄The Gazette Joshua Johnson, 17, holds his position as others dance around him during rehearsals for a scene in ‘College Park: The Opera.’ The show makes its world debut today at the Clarice Smith Center for the Performing Arts at the University of Maryland, College Park. Click here to enlarge this photo Larry Rippel⁄Special to the Gazette From left, Squonk Opera’s Christina Acosta, Jackie Dempsey and Steve O’Hearn perform a scene from their show in Pittsburgh.

And of course, there’s Route 1.

Ah, the majesty of Baltimore Avenue, with its non-stop traffic jams, dangerous sidewalks and general ugliness. The bane of the city government and the butt of countless student jokes, Route 1 is loved by few.

Like any city, College Park has its downside, but today and Friday, residents, students and anyone intrigued by Maryland’s college town can get a taste of its history, quirkiness and grandeur in ‘‘College Park: The Opera,” at the university’s Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center.

Squonk Opera, headed by Pittsburgh-based duo Jackie Dempsey and Steve O’Hearn, begins its 2006-2007 ‘‘Your hometown name here: The Opera” tour with College Park. They team up with the university’s dance department to bring the city to life with a carefully-concocted melding of dramatic imagery — including aerial photography — puppet shows, interviews with the city’s and university’s most important people and complex dance performances.

And for those tireless college students who haven’t had their fair share of downtown’s Cornerstone Grille and Loft or Sante Fe Café, Squonk plans to host, ‘‘College Park: The Party,” after the show. Of course, neighborhood folks are invited too.

After weeks of talking to city icons like Dervey Lomax — the first black mayor of College Park — officials such as Mayor Stephen Brayman and a throng of city residents and university professors, O’Hearn and Dempsey said the show has been shaped by College Parkers, not the Pittsburgh team.

‘‘The best way you can tell the story of a town is to let the people of the town speak about it, instead of us saying, ‘This is what the town is like. This is what College Park is,’” said Dempsey, whose background is in musical composition. ‘‘We let the people speak for themselves.”

Squonk Opera also asked for the expertise — and drawing skills — of College Park’s youngest generation. Last month, Dempsey and O’Hearn handed out maps of College Park to pupils at the city’s north-side school, Hollywood Elementary. After 60 students drew their own versions of College Park on the maps, Squonk incorporated the drawings into the multimedia-driven show, offering another chance for city self-reflection.

‘‘The whole point of the project was to see more of the town,” said O’Hearn, a commercial designer by trade. ‘‘We were more interested in the town on a more personal level. We want to make this intimate.”

Americans are not so different, O’Hearn and Dempsey like to say, and their theory was reinforced by their time in College Park, chatting with working class families and Ivory Tower types alike.

‘‘With all the polarization in the world right now, between Christianity and Islam, Europe and America, blue state and red state, it’s a particularly trying time in terms of thinking of us and them — of who we are patriotic to and why,” said O’Hearn, stressing that ‘‘College Park: The Opera” was designed to highlight the everyday pleasance of little joys while examining what makes a city unique.

‘‘What touring has reinforced is that Americans are pretty much the same. We’re not that different than each other.”

Among those mined for info was Anne Turkos, the knower of all things Terp, the university’s archivist since 1993 and an invaluable fountain of knowledge for Squonk, local media and the inquisitive student. Turkos, whose interview will be interwoven throughout the performance, said the usage of abstract music and imagery would give faculty, residents and students a chance to see College Park through a fresh lens.

‘‘It’s a brand new way to look at the campus and the city of College Park,” said Turkos, a Hyattsville resident. ‘‘The show seems like it could be really creative, unusual and thought-provoking.”

As a woman who has worn terrapin jewelry every day for more than a decade — ‘‘I feel unnatural without it on,” she said — Turkos can provide a general or detailed history of just about every building, school, watershed event and high-profile person associated with the University of Maryland. ‘‘The adopted terrapin,” as she calls herself, said Dempsey and O’Hearn have made good use of Maryland’s seemingly endless archival collection.

‘‘Anytime someone can use that material, we feel it’s an opportunity to get the word out about the campus,” she said.

Squonk also sat down with three-term College Park Mayor Brayman, a one-time city councilman and a Maryland graduate, tapping his years of experience in the ins-and-outs of running a college town.

O’Hearn and Dempsey’s quest for College Park knowledge led them to interviews with the voice of Terp radio, the famed Johnny Holliday, College Park Airport manager Lee Schiek and author and longtime city resident Kathy Bryant, who penned a book detailing College Park’s history. But few could offer a perspective like the man who has lived through the history of the city.

Dervey Lomax, who served as mayor from 1973-1975, remains the only black mayor ever elected in College Park. Lomax, now 83, knew the city before it was a city — in the days before residents voted to incorporate the rural area in 1945.

‘‘I’m sort of a history buff on things I’ve seen change in the community,” he said. ‘‘I’ve been everything from John Doe to an elected official.”

The Squonk duo said Lomax provided invaluable insight into race relations throughout College Park’s history — a history that will be used in O’Hearn’s condensed history, read while the audience hears the thoughts of Dempsey, an unamused observer.

‘‘[Theatergoers] will here how bored I am with the history [of the city],” Dempsey said with a laugh.

In their questioning of Lomax and city residents, O’Hearn said Squonk discovered the prevalence of the sometimes-strained relations between College Park and the giant campus that inhabits its city limits.

‘‘We have a strong sense of the town-gown tension, which was really apparent mostly on the town side” said O’Hearn, adding that the city-university up-and-down relationship will play a critical role in the opera.

Knowing that the Clarice Smith Center summoned Squonk after hearing of their town-to-town travels, Lomax said ‘‘College Park: The Opera” was a perfect way to ease the tension sensed by Dempsey and O’Hearn.

‘‘Anytime you can do something with the city and university, it’ll be good for everybody,” Lomax said.

The 20-some-odd interviews with people of different races, genders, ages and backgrounds were fun, they said, but the professors always stand out.

‘‘They were always really interesting characters,” O’Hearn said with a laugh, as Dempsey nodded in wholehearted agreement. ‘‘They were great interviews because they were so wacky and focused.”

Incorporating Maryland’s supply of young minds and able bodies, Squonk will use a dozen students from the dance department in the show, having them move gracefully through a downpour of pages from a history book.

Using ‘‘College Park: The Opera,” to teach students the finer points of improvisation, said visiting dance instructor Ed Tyler, would be invaluable to Squonk and the group of aspiring dancers.

‘‘No one gets this kind of experience in a dance department,” said Tyler, a Mt. Rainier resident who last taught at the university in 2000. Watching a short video of ‘‘Pittsburgh: The Opera” convinced Tyler to dedicate some of his class time to the show.

‘‘When I saw the video, it reminded me of something that was so surreal and a spectacle,” Tyler said.

After almost two months of reading about, talking about and observing College Park, O’Hearn and Dempsey said they feel confident about weaving a city’s history into their abstract uses of images and music. Their heads packed with College Park knowledge, the duo realized they only had to make a short trip to the corner coffee shop to understand what really piqued people’s interest in the home of the Terrapin.

‘‘We found out,” Dempsey said with a smirk and a shrug, ‘‘that everyone here hates Route 1.”