BERWICK — It’s dinnertime on a chilly Tuesday, and Crystal Lisbon is exactly where she wants to be: Seated at a picnic table outside Hackmatack Playhouse, helping an actor polish a Scottish accent in preparation of the season-opening comedy “Unnecessary Farce” on June 19.

A lot of people might prefer being at home, or at least out of the cold. But Lisbon, the new artistic director at the rural playhouse in southern Maine, is perfectly happy bundled up in a jacket that should be too heavy for June and talking to Tinka Darling in a thick brogue so the actress feels more comfortable with the accent.

Crystal Lisbon brings a chair out of storage on her way back to the barn where rehearsals are sometimes held for Hackmatack Playhouse productions, including the June 19 season opener, “Unnecessary Farce.” Photos by Gregory Rec/Staff Photographer

Crystal Lisbon, right, and Tinka Darling work on Darling’s Scottish accent for her role in “Unnecessary Farce.”

Crystal Lisbon listens in while cast members loosen up before a rehearsal for “Unnecessary Farce,” which opens the season at Hackmatack on June 19.

IF YOU GO

HACKMATACK PLAYHOUSE,

538 School St., (Route 9), Berwick

SUMMER SEASON: “Unnecessary Farce,” June 19-July 4; “West Side Story,” July 8-25; “Dirty Rotten Scoundrels,” July 29-Aug. 15; “Ruthless,” Aug. 19-Sept. 5

INFO: hackmatack.org or 698-1807

TICKETS: $10 to $30

“Do it again,” she instructs Darling, speaking in her regular voice. “The Ts are so important. Make sure you are getting them.”

Darling tries again with an accent that sounds more believable with each attempt. “And now, you have to kill those two,” she said, delivering a line from the script.

“That’s good. One more time,” Lisbon said. “Lock it in.”

When people ask Lisbon what she does as artistic director of a summer theater, this is what she tells them: Anything and everything, including shivering in the chill to work with one actor while the rest of the cast rehearses on stage indoors. Lisbon, 35, grew up in nearby Dover, New Hampshire, and has been involved with Hackmatack as an actor, dancer and choreographer for as long as she can remember. “It’s always felt good being back at Hack,” she said, using the theater’s nickname. “This theater has always felt like a second home.”

Hackmatack presents its shows in a former dairy barn that’s part of a working bison farm in Berwick, just a few miles from the New Hampshire border. She took the job as artistic director because of what she calls the “indescribable magic” that happens here – dancers finding their stride, singers discovering their voice, actors working with confidence and clarity.

Hackmatack has presented shows on the Guptill family farm since 1972. Until his death in 1995, theater founder S. Carleton Guptill served as artistic director. Hackmatack was his vision – a place for summer fun and family-friendly theater.

Hackmatack has seen a few artistic directors in the two decades since Guptill died. Michael Guptill, who handles the business end of the theater, has worked hard during that time to stay true to his father’s vision. He believes Lisbon would make his father proud.

She’s a good actor and dancer, he said. More important, she understands the theater’s values because she’s spent so much time here over the years. “I wanted someone who was familiar with Hack and the kind of thing we do and the kind of people we are,” Michael Guptill said. “I don’t want to break any molds. We have old-fashioned values here. We’re not an edgy theater. We’re mainstream and conservative.”

Lisbon understands all of that.

She put a season together that she thinks will appeal to families, mixing the mad-cap comedy of “Unnecessary Farce” with the emotion and speed of “West Side Story,” which Libson will choreograph and direct. The season also includes “Dirty Rotten Scoundrels” and “Ruthless.”

Lisbon began acting at age 16. After graduating from the University of Vermont with a bachelor’s degree in theater and performance, she spent eight years in Boston, where she worked with Bad Habit Productions, among others. She returned to New Hampshire in 2010 and immediately went back to work at Hackmatack, acting that summer in the play “Leading Ladies.”

Her background is dance. She studied with the Seacoast Ballet Company and teaches at Great Bay Academy of Dance in Kittery. She’s worked with Portland Ballet and the UNH Dance Company, as well as the Manhattan Children’s Theater in New York. She also is founding artistic director of Astolat, a regional collaborative arts organization.

Michael Towle of Rollinsford, New Hampshire, acted with Lisbon last fall in Sarah Ruhl’s “Dead Man’s Cell Phone” at The Players Ring in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, and has a role in “Unnecessary Farce.” He described Lisbon as “committed and passionate, and easy to get along with. She is smooth, which is nice. The lack of drama in drama is always a plus, at least when you’re on stage,” he said.

Sitting at the picnic table, Lisbon interrupts her work to pet the theater cat, Annie. The feline has free rein at the theater, and Lisbon laughed at the memory of finding her once up on the catwalk. “She likes to help out on stage when we’re rehearsing,” Lisbon said.

It’s that kind of easygoing familiarity that brought Lisbon back to Hackmatack. At a lot of places, Annie might not be welcome on stage. At Hackmatack, it’s all good.

“There is something that makes this place special,” she said. “Actually, there are so many things that make this place special. We should grow, and we should evolve and take chances, but we should not lose our history or who we are at the core.”

Related Stories