Local Cast Brings “To Kill a Mockingbird” to Orcas

Feb. 10-11 and 17-18 at 7:30 p.m. in Orcas Center

Major characters in "To Kill a Mockingbird" from left: Christian Bailey (Jem), Tom Fiscus (Atticus), Aliza Diepenbrock (Scout), Warren Hero (Tom Robinson), Renee Sturk (Calpurnia). Photo courtesy Donna Laslo

When Alabama novelist Harper Lee wrote  To Kill a Mockingbird over 50 years ago, she painted a small town picture of an ugly inheritance of  racial injustice and inhumanity, seen from the viewpoint of  childhood innocence and security.

The Pulitzer Prize-winning novel is set in a small town in fictional Maycomb County, Alabama, 1933-1935.  In it, Lawyer Atticus Finch, a widower,  tells his children, “remember, it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.”

His daughter, Jean Louise (Scout), who calls her father by his first name, says, “That was the only time I ever heard Atticus say it was a sin to do something, and I asked Miss Maudie about it. ‘Your father’s right,’ she said.  ‘Mockingbirds don’t do one thing but make music for us to enjoy. They don’t eat up people’s gardens, don’t nest in corncribs, they don’t do one thing but sing their hearts out for us.'”

In Orcas Center’s production of  To Kill a Mockingbird , director Robert Hall has drawn from a cast of mostly inexperienced actors to create recognizable characters who come to know that despite outward differences, we’re all the same. The drama is “about a community trying to find its direction as its identity changes from one thing to another,” Hall says.

“It was tough,” Hall freely admits, “mostly because of the subject matter: racism, yes, and also alcohol, physical and sexual abuse and rape.”

But, Hall says, his greatest pleasure in directing this production, was that “I never had a more trusting cast. They have been absolutely wonderful in their desire to get it right. For a long time it was fragmented, but now it’s become cohesive and it lifts off .”

Heading that cast is novice actor Tom Fiscus, who portrays the lawyer, Atticus Finch, the widowed father of children Jean-Louise “Scout,” and Jem.

Fiscus, an attorney himself,  and his wife moved to Orcas after a career in the military, so that they could be part of a “real community.”   Fiscus says that Atticus is the dream role of “any lawyer who’s ever had any thought of acting” — which he had not. But his wife encouraged him to audition and Hall had confidence in casting Fiscus in the major role.  He says, “I’m loving it. It’s not a struggle and I’m so energized by the other players.

“One reason I’ve enjoyed the opportunity is I have seen a good deal of  racism. Early in my military career, I saw it a lot more, but over the years, with the knowledge brought by people exposed to [those different from them], acceptance had to come.”

As an African-American, Lopez resident Warren Hero has been exposed to the racism of withheld handshakes, requests to leave and work discrimination throughout most of his life.  But his drive to help people has made a good life for himself and his family for 31 years on Lopez.  A mutual friend put him in touch with Hall, and his desire to help and love of learning new things gave him the push to portray Tom Robinson, the accused rapist who is defended by Atticus Finch.

“I knew I could help… I love people, and I can learn to act,” Hero says. “Tom Robinson is just the guy going to work, he’s a pretty normal guy. But there is no hope for a black man who goes to court with an all-white jury to be found innocent.

“The challenge for me is the pressure of trying to represent this pivotal character in the play. It’s a serious thing to put it together in the right way so that people will get it.

“The fact of the matter is there’s not many Black people in the islands, and it serves the play to have a black man in the part. I like the play, and I like to do different things. I’m learning a lot, and with my minimal acting experience, I’m glad the people in the cast can put up with me.”

On the other hand, there is the experienced actress Beth Baker, who last commanded the Orcas Center stage in her role as Mama in “Gypsy.”   Baker says “To Kill a Mockingbird  is one of my all-time favorite stories — it has so much heart and moral integrity. It reminds us how we should be living our lives.”

Baker narrates the drama from the viewpoint of the adult Scout. “All actors have to reach into our lives and past experience to pull up the emotional depth that is called for in the role. Playing Scout has allowed me to look back at my own issues.  For Scout, it’s about the effect her father has had on her life. He never talked down to her, and so she is far wiser than many children — and many of her adult contemporaries.”

Matthew Laslo-White, Christian Bailey, Paris Wilson and Aliza Diepenbrock portray the children Dil, Jem and Scout (Aliza will play Scout on Feb. 11 and at a 9 a.m. school performance on Feb. 16; Paris will be Scout at the Feb. 10, 17 and 18 performances). Director Hall says that he left the subject matter of  the drama to the child-actors’ parents to explain — who are right there in rehearsal.

But most of the play — in particular the courtroom drama — are understood by the child actors as it is to the characters in the play.

Jem and Scout Finch are cared for by the Black housekeeper Calpurnia, played by Renee Sturk. She finds the role satisfying, as she portrays a strong, loving, mother-figure. However, the courtroom scenes have been difficult for her — the aggression, racial slurs and intensity. “A couple of times I felt, ‘I really can’t do this;’ I really have to invest in myself and the character and putting it all out there.”

But she draws from her own experience. Now the mother of three school-aged children, Sturk grew up in south New Jersey, where, in the 1980s there were still parades where fully-clad Ku Klux Klansmen marched.

Sturk’s favorite scenes in the play are the ones where Atticus shares quiet, tender moments explaining legal matters to Scout.

The pivotal  “bad guys” in the play, Maella Ewell and her father Bob Ewell, are played by Dov Dingman and Freddie Hinkel, both of whom are familiar to Orcas audiences.

Director Robert Hall says  that “audiences will see a group of people who have worked very hard, done some soul-searching and processed through a lot of these subjects. They will see a project that I think will be quite beautiful.”

The  Orcas Center production of this classic American tale,   adapted for the stage by Christopher Sergel, will be performed the next two weekends, Feb. 10-11 and 17-18 on the Center Stage at 7:30 p.m. Tickets $15, $11 (students) $2 discount for Orcas Center members.