“In our department, there’s great freedom of choice as a director,” says Timothy Dugan, assistant professor of theater. “We’re able to suggest to the department what we would really like to see.”

And what he really wanted to see, Dugan told his theater colleagues last fall — just a few weeks into his first semester here — was �ֲ���ý presenting one of the pinnacles of 20th-century theater: Angels in America: Millennium Approaches.

The play is the first in playwright Tony Kushner’s duology Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes. The plays grapple with love, religion, politics, community — and, especially, with the medical-cultural terror that was the spread of HIV–AIDS in the 1980s. (The second play is AIA: Perestroika.)

Shown during a March 7 dress rehearsal, Assistant Professor of Theater Tim Dugan is the director of the �ֲ���ý production of Angels in America: Millennium Approaches. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

The travails of two couples on the rocks drive the plot, wrapped in magical realism and embellished with the savvy fictionalizing of historic figures. But in essence, as the title suggests, the topic of Millennium Approaches is both dead simple and unfathomably complicated: the feeling that everything’s about to change.

The play debuted on Broadway, and received Pulitzer and Tony awards, in 1993 (in which year, the World Health Organization estimated, there were 2.5 million cases of AIDS globally). In 2018, the 25th anniversary of Millennium Approaches’ Broadway debut, it’s appearing in a number of revivals — including that, under Dugan’s direction, opened March 8 and continues through the 12th.

A series of supporting events (titled The Great Work Begins, after a key phrase from the play) began in February and included research presentations by scholars and students.

Impressed from the start by the campus’ openness to robust ideas, Dugan says, “I felt like this was something that would be embraced and celebrated. And it has been.”

The play is set in 1985. How is it still relevant?

John Dello Russo ’18 plays Louis Ironson and Ethan Winglass ’19 plays Joe Pitt in Angels in America: Millennium Approaches. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

Certainly there has been progress in LGBTQIA+ rights since 1985, when AIDS wasn’t even acknowledged yet as a national epidemic. But, absolutely, this play still resonates today.

One of the characters is Roy Cohn, based on the powerful lawyer. The role isn’t biographical to a T, but we all know that Roy Cohn was President Trump’s lawyer at one point. Certainly you could [view] the playbook that Cohn used to get what he wanted as something that our president has been inspired by and uses to this day. Just a few weeks back, Trump said, “Where’s my Roy Cohn?” in a press conference.

I think Tony Kushner is capturing something a lot of people are wondering about, how we’re questioning democracy in some ways right now. Kushner is an incredible political writer, and he makes no bones about that.

What is Kushner’s overriding theme in Angels in America, do you think?

I think he’s asking us to embrace change. The characters in this play are faced with enormous and often unendurable circumstances. They begin the play in crisis.

Nate Stephenson ’18 portrays Prior Walter. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

We follow Prior Walter, who has been diagnosed with AIDS and then is abandoned by his lover. Prior is the prophet that an angel has come to reckon with. And through him, Kushner gives us this idea that we can resist change — and if so, the consequences will be quite dire — or we can embrace change. Change can be extremely painful and difficult, but in Kushner’s view, it’s necessary.

The play also asks, “What does it mean to be an American?” Because, you know, the play is about so many things — race, spirituality, religion, sexuality. And Kushner uses the AIDS crisis as a lens to ask those questions. What has it taught us about being Americans? How have we been, or not been, there for each other in this situation?

Now more than ever, that question — certainly for myself and certainly for students — has been one we’ve really been digging into and grappling with.

How do you bring your student actors up to speed with the mid-1980s context?

We’re very fortunate to have two student dramaturges on board, Alison Greene ’20 and Luc Alper-Leroux ’20, to do research, and it’s quite extensive with this play. We have a Google folder that the whole cast and crew are invited to, and that’s an enormous aid for all of us, because there are so many historical, religious, and philosophical references in the play.

A dramatic peak in the Angels story. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

I have a good friend who works for Actors Theater of Louisville, which produced both parts of Angels last October. Their resident dramaturge did an interview with Alison and Luc — we had a great phone conference — and shared some of her ideas, which illuminated the play for us in an exciting way.

And what’s great about doing it here at �ֲ���ý is that we’re surrounded by de facto dramaturges. For example, politics professor Stephen Engel [a national authority on American political development and social movements, particularly involving LGBTQ issues] came to a rehearsal of a scene that was talking about different political movements in the ’80s, as Roy and his sidekick Martin Heller are trying to persuade another character to join them. So we were able to unpack it that way. It was wonderful.

How do you drive home to students the sheer emotional and cultural weight of AIDS and HIV in the 1980s?

That’s been one of the most important, and most challenging, parts. I saw the original production in New York — I was working for a theater downtown, and I used to walk through the Village, and there was something in the atmosphere. You could see it passing people on the street.

Hello, angel: Prior Walter receives a visitor, played by Sofia Elbadawi ’18. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

To try to capture that for students, we’ve spent a lot of time in dialogue about it, frankly. We’ve immersed ourselves in video clips and other information, and the Great Work Begins series was also designed for all of us to embrace as a cast and crew.

We’re just trying to get to the depth, trying to honor those people who endured that, survived that, died in that.

Could you talk a bit more about the department’s support for this project?

I sincerely appreciate their embrace of it because it is a challenging play. Not only for the cast — the play’s three hours long — but technically. Act III is all ghosts appearing and then vanishing, and this great book emerges out of the floor and bursts into flames, and then goes away. You read that in the stage directions, and you have to laugh and say “Come on, Mr. Kushner” — because he also says, “All in 30 seconds.”

And, oh, yeah — there’s an angel that cracks through the ceiling of Prior’s apartment, descends, and has the last final moment. How do you pull that off? There are so many creative problems to solve, and the department has been totally game.

The actress playing Harper Pitt, Hope French ’18, has undertaken the part for an honors thesis, which will include a written component as well as the performances. Tell us a bit about how she prepared for the role.

Hope French ’18 portrays Harper Pitt as part of her honors thesis in theater. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

Harper is the wildly imaginative, Valium-popping, hallucination-prone, and terribly lonely wife of Joe Harper. Their marriage is falling apart throughout the play as they confront both Joe’s sexuality — he’s coming out — and their love for one another.

Hope passionately immersed herself in these complex, hugely emotional realms of the role and the world of the play, and did extensive research, both into the socio-historical context and her own portrayal. She’s been incredibly enthusiastic and receptive toward exploring different approaches to creating a character. We spent last semester delving into the Michael Chekhov Technique, a psycho-physical approach to acting that emphasizes the use of imagination as a way in for an actress, and she experimented with applying that to this role, which is really one of the emotional centers of Angels in America.   

Hope brings a professionalism to her work that is beyond her years, which is inspiring to witness.

And your casting choice for Cohn may surprise many �ֲ���ýies: Kirk Read, professor of French and francophone studies.

I knew from the beginning that I’d love to have someone older than a student in the Roy Cohn role. I got to know Kirk during new faculty orientation and we hit it off immediately. When I was thinking about this, I said, “All right, what the hell?”

So I kind of bothered him for a while, and then he graciously accepted. And he said from the beginning, “Treat me like anyone else.” His commitment is amazing.

Kirk Read, professor of French and francophone studies, plays the role of Roy Cohn, based on the real lawyer. He’s shown with Ethan Winglass ’19. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

Bob Hatch, who became director of athletics in 1974, speaks with Bryant Gumbel ‘70, then an LA-based NBC sports reporter, for a 1977 �ֲ���ý Magazine story on Bobcat athletics. Talking about the need for excellent facilities, Hatch said, “Looking down the road, I think people are going to be as fussy picking a college as they are picking a new suit or automobile. They are going to shop ”

At a 2005 football game at Garcelon Field, Bob Hatch (right) enjoys the company of, from left, Dean Emeritus of Admissions Milt Lindholm ’35, Brian Flynn ’57, Paul Planchon ’66 and Chick Leahey ’52, former longtime baseball coach.

Bob Hatch and Jim Murphy ‘69, who played quarterback, show off Murphy’s football jersey, retired on Nov. 20, 1968. Murphy is the current women’s soccer and basketball coach. Photo courtesy �ֲ���ý College Muskie Archives and Special Collections Library.

Bob Hatch coaches the Bobcat football team, circa 1967. Hatch served as head football coach from 1952 to 1972 before becoming athletics director.

Bob Hatch in 1977.

Professor Emeritus of Physical Education Robert W. Hatch, an icon of �ֲ���ý athletics whose contributions  encompassed innovation and opportunity, died Feb. 13, 2010. He was 85.

• View reporter Dan Hartill’s story about Hatch in the
• View �ֲ���ý story about Hatch and the 1956 Maine State Series football champions
• View published after his retirement in 1991
• View �ֲ���ý tribute to Hatch on his induction to the Scholar-Athlete Society in 2005
• Visiting hours: Feb. 19, 4-8 p.m., Fortin Funeral Home, Auburn; memorial service: Fortin Funeral Home,  Feb. 20, 11 a.m., with a reception in New Commons afterward.
• Friends are sharing their memories

Appointed instructor in physical education and freshman football coach in 1949, Hatch’s head coaching assignments included varsity baseball (1951-53) and football (1952-72) as well as golf. He became assistant director of athletics in 1959 and succeeded Lloyd Lux as director in 1974, serving until 1991.

Considered an innovator as a coach, Hatch once deployed an unusual spread formation in football versus the much larger University of Maine team in 1961, stunning the undefeated Black Bears with a 15-15 tie.

In 1955, he wrote a suggesting that traditional RBI statistics could be misleading and urging greater use of on-base percentage, twin notions that are central to the modern “sabermetric” approach to evaluating baseball talent developed by Bill James and others in the 1980s.

“There was no bravado. He thought of it as just the right thing to do.”

As director of athletics, he oversaw the creation of a women’s varsity athletic program in the 1970s. “At a time when few schools were doing anything, he created opportunities for women athletes,” sad his immediate �ֲ���ý successor, Suzanne Coffey, to the Sun Journal. “There was no bravado. He thought of it as just the right thing to do.” Coffey is now AD at Amherst.

Kevin McHugh, Coffey’s successor as director of athletics at �ֲ���ý, says that Hatch’s “right thing” ethos endures at �ֲ���ý today. “The current �ֲ���ý athletics program reflects Bob’s idea of quality: good people who care about the institution and its student-athletes. Aside from wins and losses, there’s a social conscience and education-centered philosophy here. To me, that came down from Bob.”

In four decades at �ֲ���ý, Director of Athletics Robert Hatch, who retired in June, has seen many changes. But he considers the gains made by women to be the most gratifying. When he came to �ֲ���ý in 1949, Chase Hall was considered an all-male building and female students had to eat in Rand. Women could not use Alumni Gymnasium, and their athletic facilities were separate and frequently inferior to those for men.

Since then, restrictive rules and regulations have been lifted, and the athletic programs for men and women have been fully integrated. “The women’s progress has been astounding,” Hatch said. “It was very smooth, and I think it was handled with even-handedness.”

In 1949, men’s sports and women’s sports — the programs, faculty and staff — were entirely separate. So separate were the sexes that staff from one athletic department often did not know many of the staff from the other, he said.

“There were eight male sports and about seven or eight women sports, totally separated,” Hatch said, “and now there are 27 sports and they are totally integrated.”

The separation came to an end when, in 1974, President Thomas Hedley Reynolds, under the impetus of Title IX, merged the women’s and men’s athletics programs into one department.

“There were eight male sports and about seven or eight women sports, totally separated,” Hatch said, “and now there are 27 sports and they are totally integrated.”

Hatch has seen many other changes during his years at �ֲ���ý as the College has grown. He has watched as new buildings and staff have been added, as well as new departments. But he stresses that although there have been many physical changes, the College’s philosophy has not changed. �ֲ���ý, he said, has always been ahead of its time in many areas.

“No fraternities — that was unique back in those days, ’49 and the early ’50s.” He added that only now are many colleges grabbing hold of this idea as they see the problems caused by fraternities on campuses. “Finally most of them are catching on that that’s the route to go.”

After the women’s progress, the biggest achievement Hatch has had a part of at �ֲ���ý has been the construction of Merrill Gymnasium. For years, the athletics facilities at the College were inadequate, so Hatch and other members of the department pushed for a new building.

“It was really in the works the year I was appointed [athletic director in 1974],”  Hatch said. “It was finally completed in 1980, but we were working on it even before 1974. We had a committee that studied the building, which I was a part of in 1970-71.”

Hatch came to �ֲ���ý in 1949, giving up a potential professional football career. The �ֲ���ý job was more secure, he says, and he was looking for security for himself and his young family.

He and his family moved into the Sampsonville apartments  — they were former army barracks — with other young faculty members. It was a bit of a shock at first, he said, since they had left a new house they had just built in Massachusetts, but they got used to it.

“As it turned out,” he said, “the living quarters were not luxurious by a long shot, but it was a nice community. �ֲ���ý students mixed with �ֲ���ý faculty, and most of the faculty were young and just out of the service like I was.”

But he’s not heading into retirement entirely without regret. He will miss the job he’s worked at for four decades, and the people he’s worked with.

“I’m going to miss the personal associations with my colleagues, both on-campus and off-campus, but mostly the association of the twenty-five to thirty people I work with right in my department. It’s a close-knit group.”

PowerPoint presentation on 20-year Optional SAT study to the National Association for College Admissions Counseling national conference in Milwaukee Oct. 1 by William C. Hiss, �ֲ���ý College vice president for external affairs. Use of this information is embargoed to Oct.1.

For high resolution graphics suitable for media reproduction, click on the links below.

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William Manning, one of Maine’s leading abstract artists, shows more than four decades’ worth of works on paper at the �ֲ���ý College Museum of Art in an exhibition that opens with a lecture and reception at 7 p.m. Friday, Jan. 10. Admission to “William Manning: Works on Paper 1961-2002” is free and the public is welcome at the museum located in the college’s Olin Arts Center, 75 Russell St.

“The work of William Manning, rich in imagination and associations, defies easy categorization in terms of subject matter, style or even medium,” Kenneth Wayne writes in the exhibition catalog. (Wayne is the curator of the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, in Buffalo, N.Y.). Indeed, Manning has experimented constantly with medium and approach, even turning to such concepts as three-dimensional paintings in his pursuit of a richer painted image.

Manning cites Cubism and Abstract Expressionism as important influences on a style that transcends both. In the former, he found both the collage technique pioneered by Picasso and Braque and the freedom to divorce his images from objective nature. As Manning told Wayne, he seeks to render not what he sees but what he feels.

From the Abstract Expressionists, Manning synthesized the two dominant directions, Wayne explains in his catalog essay: the color planes explored by such painters as Mark Rothko and the gestural approach of people like Jackson Pollock. For Manning, Wayne writes, each of these “gives a different effect: the color planes convey depth, contemplation and spirituality, while the gestural movements display spontaneity, movement and action.” Similarly, Manning has mastered the difficult process of harmonizing organic and geometric elements.

Manning is a Maine artist throughout. Except for a brief interlude in New York, he has always lived here: He was born in Lewiston in 1936, studied and then taught at what is now the Maine College of Art and today resides in Portland. Maine’s natural setting is central to his work. Every autumn Manning spends several weeks on the island of Monhegan, and it is the works on paper created during these visits that inform his paintings.

It’s also the works on paper, of course, that constitute the �ֲ���ý College Museum of Art exhibit. Including drawings, collages, paintings and mixtures of media, the 37 works demonstrate Manning’s progress over 40-plus years from minimalism and a vestigial realism to today’s robust colors and evocative imagery.

“Everything about Manning’s work is subtle and delicate,” Wayne writes. “All of the works are intimate and personal in scale.”

“William Manning: Works on Paper 1961-2002” runs in the �ֲ���ý College Museum of Art’s Upper Gallery through March 21. Opening concurrently and running through Feb. 28 in the Lower Gallery is an exhibition of photographic portraits of noted Maine artist Marsden Hartley made by photographer George Platt Lynes. For more information, please call 207-786-6158.