Magic at Theatre by the Sea: At the Athenaeum

Brought to light during a magical evening, the Portsmouth Athenaeum's Theatre by the Sea collection sparked memories for the actors who made history on a tiny stage at a former warehouse on Ceres Street.

"In the 1960s, that was an area of Portsmouth you did not go to at night − it was dangerous. It was the red-light district," Jon Kimbell, 80, said in an interview after being honored last month at a gala celebrating him and the city's theatrical past.

What would become the oldest nonprofit professional theater company in New England was founded in July 1964 by a couple fresh out of the University of New Hampshire, Patricia and Cedric Stanley Flower.

Kimbell came on the scene as an actor in 1968 after auditioning in New York City for the Portsmouth theater.

"We always hired in New York and the actors would come to this idyllic New Hampshire town right on the ocean," he said of Theatre by the Sea (TBS).

Kimbell had spent the year before in a program at the Fulbright-funded London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art. He was one of 12 actors from around the world (the dozen included John Lithgow) given a scholarship to study with the Royal Shakespeare Company and other British theater actors.

"I learned we weren't there just to entertain our audience, but to explore the human condition in all its wonderful variety," Kimbell said at the Aug. 24 gathering at St. John's Masonic Lodge in Portsmouth.

He was joined on the auditorium stage that night by six other Theatre by the Sea stalwarts, Scott Weintraub, Ginny Russell, Jeff McCarthy, Randa McNamara, Marlena Schroeder and William Michael Maher. The tribute to Kimbell and the late Tom Celli was organized by Michael J. Tobin, a 1981 Portsmouth High School graduate who performed and directed on the Theatre by the Sea stage as well as at Prescott Park Arts Festival. He was working at TBS the day it closed in 1987.He is now executive artistic director at Footlights Theatre in Falmouth, Maine.

“Theatre by the Sea and Prescott Park Arts Festival were a masterclass in the arts," Tobin said. "How blessed I was to be a small part of their history."

With the help of Athenaeum staff, Tobin combed through thousands of images in the Athenaeum archives to prepare for the gala.

The photos were donated to the Athenaeum by Nancy Beck, who died at 92 in 2019. She was involved with the theater for more than 20 years and served in many roles, including board president and chief fundraiser.

The archives include the theater's founding papers and financial records, as well as playbills, reviews, and the extensive media coverage that documented the theater's successes and struggles.

Kimbell likened being on the 12-by-30-foot stage to performing on a sidewalk.

"There were 93 seats, with two in the fireplace. We called that the honeymoon suite," he said.

Marlena Schroeder described the atmosphere in the little theater as "like magic."

"You could barely turn around on the stage," she told the audience at the Aug. 24 tribute.

Randa McNamara, who came to TBS in 1965 as part of its Surprise Theater for children, said being part of the TBS team was  "a delicious time."

Ginny Russell was a UNH student when she arrived for her 1970 audition barefoot in the back of a pickup truck.

"It was truly the most meaningful, happiest, sometimes most excruciating time of my life," said Russell, who recalled doing nine shows in nine months at the September-to-May theater.

Scott Weintraub said he felt the magic of Portsmouth when he arrived in 1975.

"I came for the summer and stayed for 10 years," he said. "And I met the love of my life, Nancy. We've been together 47 years now."

Kimbell, who acted at TBS until 1972 and spent six summers at the Hampton Playhouse, would return in 1974 as the theater's managing director and two years later become its artistic director.

It was that year that arts maven Grace Casey would start the Prescott Park Arts Festival, with money from the park's Trustees of the Trust Fund, led by the late Paul McEachern.

"She was the most political person I ever met," Kimbell said of Casey, who held court at her River House on Bow Street, described by many as the place where Portsmouth's cultural awakening began in the 1960s.

Casey's perch over the Piscataqua River is re-created in a free exhibit now in the Portsmouth Athenaeum's Randall Gallery, "Peace, Love & Portsmouth: Celebrating the City's Renaissance through the Lens of J.D. Lincoln."

It is curated by Athenaeum Photographic Collections Manager James Smith, who spent much of the last year scanning Theatre by the Sea images for the Athenaeum's digital collection along with volunteers Susan MacDougall and Peter E. Randall.

The four-story theater at 93 Market St. occupied the space that is now Macro Polo. Its lobby was on Ceres Street, on the bottom floor of a next-door building just a couple of doors down from the famed Blue Strawbery restaurant.

"In the lobby, there was a doorway into the theater space − that was the only way in," Kimbell recalled.

Sometimes actors entered the building from the outside, standing on Ceres Street and coming in through the fire escape door in the audience section. In the winter that could mean a swirl of snow blasting the audience as each player came to the stage.

The beginning of the Prescott Park Arts Festival gave TBS actors and staff a whole new outlet and meant they had employment every summer.

"The festival featured visual and performing arts, classes, concerts," Kimbell said. "There was such energy. The town was changing. It was the 1970s and it was the arts that turned it around. The theater, the festival and the restaurants brought people downtown."

In 1979, after a major fundraising effort, the theater moved to Bow Street into a newly renovated 270-seat space that once housed the Portsmouth Brewery. At its height, the theater had 3,000 subscribers, Kimbell said.

TBS continued to produce shows for the Prescott Park Arts Festival until 1982.

It was in January of that year that Kimbell left for a job as artistic director at North Shore Music Theater in Beverly, Mass. He was there for 25 years. The Skowhegan, Maine, resident is now a producer in residence for SenovvA. Inc., an international design and management company offering services to the entertainment, special event and media services industries.

His time at Theatre by the Sea still resonates for him and all of those who worked there, as was evidenced by the love shown, songs sung, and stories told at the tribute Tobin organized for Kimbell.

"You really did change this town," Weintraub told his mentor. "You are a gift to the planet."

The Portsmouth Athenaeum, 9 Market Square, is a membership library and museum founded in 1817. The research library and Randall Gallery are open Tuesday through Saturday, 1 to 4 p.m. For more information, call 603-431-2538 or visit www.portsmouthathenaeum.org.

This article originally appeared on Portsmouth Herald: Magic at Theatre by the Sea: At the Athenaeum