By Ian Tullystaff writer

Sixty feet below a catwalk and a leaking roof, beneath a proscenium both grand and desperate, a stage of rotting and broken wood lies dilapidated — but not defeated. The Strand Theatre, an 87-year-old testament to both the past splendor and current squalor of arts in the North Country, will draw its cur-tains for the first live performance in more than a decade.

Jessica Bakeman, a Plattsburgh State se-nior, plans to produce and direct “The Pride,” a historic musical revue centered on the the-ater itself and the significant role the Strand has played in different lives and times.

The two-act play will feature mono-logues derived from news clippings and transcripts, as well as tunes from shows such as “Annie Get Your Gun,” “Godspell” and “Little Women.” Bakeman said that though the play is not historically precise in all aspects, such as when the songs per-formed in the play debuted, the play pos-sessed a particular “artistic cohesion” that allowed the story to flow.

“What is exciting about it is that it’s about and for the community,” Bakeman said. “The Strand has made a difference in the lives of those in the community. This play is about appreciating that gift and working to bring it back.”

Bakeman described one monologue told from the point of view of former PSUC Eng-lish Professor Carl Engelhart, about when he managed to bring the Washington Ballet to the Strand in the late ’50s, which runs di-rectly into the ballerinas breaking into song in their dressing room.

The theater was purchased by the North Country Cultural Center for the Arts in 2004 and has since undergone asbestos removal and begun a massive reconstruction project

— delayed by shortfalls in grant funding and other various setbacks — leaving the theater a mere shell of the one built in 1924.

Though the play is slated to be performed in the Strand, the defunct theater will by no means be finished by curtain call on opening night. A short tour inside the dim, unheated,

unpolished auditorium revealed the long hours of prying, chipping and painting that must be done before this gem is restored to its former functionality.

Fred Keil, the architect commissioned by the NCCCA to refurbish the Strand, sees the project daily from his office across Brinker-

hoff Street. Not a single detail of his work site eludes the man, who modestly listed the work he had already done and meticulously explained the loads yet to be done.

“It took us a year to clean it out,” Keil said. “I had no contractors, I used unskilled labor to make the money go farther.” He said the most challenging aspect of the reconstruction was securing funding for the project, noting that necessary asbestos removal alone had cost the NCCCA $100,000.

“Fred is very dedicated and has been with the project from the start. He had done a great deal,” Leigh Mundy, President of the NCCCA, said. Mundy expressed how particularly im-pressed she was of Bakeman’s plan to bring the performing arts back to the theater.

While studying abroad in Europe last fall, Bakeman e-mailed Mundy about a play she wanted to produce as part of an advanced honors course.

“She told me her plan, and I thought it was wonderful,” Mundy said. “She’s doing every-thing. She seems to have quite a bit of knowl-edge about how to get things done.”

Auditions for the play will be held in Ball-room B of the Angell College Center March 7, from 6 to 10:30 p.m, and Bakeman stressed that anyone who wishes to try out should call to reserve an audition time slot or to set up an alternate audition time.

By Rachel Hislopstaff writer

Justin Bisonette is Spider-man. He swings around the Black Box theatre room in Myers Fine Arts Building dur-ing an improv set, webbing between seats and flailing ac-cusations at the participating cast. The only difference here is that Bisonette isn’t don-ning a Spidey suit. Instead, he wears a Ghost Busters T-shirt, covered by a military-style jacket. His peers, stare atten-tively as he cross-interrogates fictional characters about a case of the missing ACC mar-quee sign. He tries to save the day, just as Spidey would.

“Spiderman is the one that I can relate to the most,” Bisonette said. “I think about that in relation to me as a real person. I am always here, there, doing this, that and the other thing. I con-nect to him on a personal level.”

The 23-year-old Dannemo-ra native isn’t really Spider-man. But if there were a su-per hero who studied theatre at Plattsburgh State, took acting courses at the Stella Adler School of Acting in and was cast in a film alongside the “King of Brooklyn” Paul Savino, it would be Bisonette.

Bisonette stumbled into

acting accidentally when his principal persuaded him to try out for the play “Oklaho-ma!” during his senior year of high school.

“I ended up getting (one of) the lead roles,” Bison-ette said. “For a kid whom that stage had never seen before, and an audience that had never watched that kid do anything, they were amazed.”

His biggest breaks came simultaneously last summer — an invitation to study at Stella Adler and a by-chance casting in a film. Bisonette decided to tag along with two friends to auditions for the Paul Savino film, “Switch-back,” (also known as Min-eville) and it was the fuel to the start of his professional career.

“I was already accepted to Stella Adler, so I (didn’t) want to time conflict anything,” he said. “I thought ‘I’ll just go and see what the set is like because I’ve never been to a movie set before.’”

That instinct must have been his Spidey senses at work. Once at the casting call, a casting director pulled Bi-sonette out of the auditions line.

“He said, ‘You’ve got the red hair, you’ve got the look, but can you do an Irish accent?’

I was like, ‘You bet your ass I can, lad,’” Bisonette recalled.

Bisonette landed the role of James McMurphy, an Irish worker against the union-ization of the miners, and promptly embarked on five days of shooting.

“I was on the set after we

had finished shooting and Paul Savino was getting in character. He comes up to me and grabs my shoulders and says ‘All right, are you ready for this? Are you good all right? Let’s do this,’” Bisonette said.

“We do our scene, and af-

ter we cut, we are all in this old school small office and (Savino) bumps me out of the way, and says ‘wrong side kid. You’re in front of the fan,’” Bisonnette condinued. “And there goes all of my confi-dence. I was standing in front of Savino’s fan.”

Several plays, professional auditions and theatre confer-ences later, Bisonette stood in front of Ken Roberts’ the-atre class, sharing his knowl-edge with his peers.

Roberts, a professional ac-tor and PSUC theatre profes-sor, first met Bisonetter in his intro to acting class.

“(Bisonette) was theatri-cally inclined,” Roberts said. “You could see it right away. I knew I could use him in the class as a working example of how accessible acting can be to the student.”

Bisonette runs improv with Roberts’ introductory theatre class a few times a se-mester while he is finishing up his senior year at PSUC. Students say it is helpful.

“It is great to have a stu-dent running our improv because we are less intimi-dated,” student Edmund Ad-jepong, in the introductory acting class, said.

As for his future in act-ing, Bisonette has super hero plans.

“How different would the world be if it was somebody’s job to fly around and be safe? I would like to think I could be that guy, but for right now we are going to have to settle with 12 pages of science fiction.”

Not to mention a role in a professional film.

Gabe Dickens/Cardinal PointsJessica Bakeman looks at the Strand Theatre stage, imagining what her play might look like on opening night. Auditions for the play will be held March 7 in ACC Ballroom B.

CP FuseB8 fuse editor jenna burleigh▪ friday, march 4, 2011▪fuse@cardinalpointsonline.com

Justin Prue/Cardinal PointsTheatre student Justin Bisonette scored a role in an independent film over the summer in a chance audition he hadn’t planned on going to.

Theatre major makes professional debut in independent film

Student organizes production for StrandBakeman plans to bring life to theater, produce new play

To set up an audition, Bakeman can be reached via e-mail at

jessica.bakeman@gmail.com.

“The Strand has made a difference in the lives of those in the community. This play is

about appreciating that gift and working to bring it back.”

Jessica BakemanPSUC senior