When Lisa was founding our organization, she fretted that the name “Far Corners Community Musical Theatre” was too wordy. While it is a bit long for a letterhead, over the years it has proven to be an extremely apt moniker. We depend heavily on the support of our community to launch our programs, and that community extends to the far corners of the globe!

The first places we turn to for support from our community are our friends and family back home. They support us emotionally as we prepare for a long journey, financially as we undertake a summer of unpaid labor, and often in surprising ways as well. Scott’s school donated extra materials from their junior school for our children’s program, and Michelle’s boyfriend went on a hike with her to conduct botanical research. From mailing us things we suddenly discover we need (there is no Wal-Mart in the cloud forest!) to answering technical questions about painting concrete, our network of supporters across the US are always available to lend a virtual hand!

My mother, back at home in Honolulu, is a bit of a pack-rat, is often able to lend or donate just the right odds and ends that we need for our production. This year, she sent me off with armloads of fake flowers (why did we have these lying around our house? Who knows!) to dress the set of our tiendita. She also contributed a cornucopia of different hand-held percussion instruments, all lovingly packed in boxes since my sister and I graduated from elementary school.  Why percussion instruments? Well, we all have to wear multiple hats on the FCCMT staff, and along with my roles as Producer, Assistant Program Director and self-appointed health and safety officer, I was deputized to play in the pit orchestra. While we were able to find eager volunteers who played more common instruments like bass guitar, flute and piano, we weren’t able to find anybody who wanted to join us who also had their own marimba and vibraslap. Since I read music and have a large collection of knick-knacks that could make noises when struck, that job fell to me.

The percussion instrument that I was really hopeful that I could bring is a beautiful two-octave chromatic xylophone that has moved with my family across a continent and which we were allowed to touch only under adult supervision, with the constant admonishment that “this is not a toy!” I doubted that my mother would seriously consider letting me take the instrument on an airplane, let alone on a four-hour bus ride up unpaved roads. And indeed, she was at first hesitant. But at long last, she relented, saying in an “it’s your funeral” tone of voice “I guess it is yours to do with what you like” – it turns out the xylophone was a gift to me on my 2nd birthday, purchased at a pawn shop for $20! I never knew this; my mom had been “keeping it safe for me” all this time. But now, 25 years later, I suppose I am finally responsible enough to look after it.

My mother will be pleased to know that, like so many things we acquire at FCCMT, we put the xylophone to good use, well beyond its originally-intended purpose. It was a key component of our children’s program, where it served as the focus of music and dancing games, and helped the children with their first foray into songwriting. It also served as an emergency keyboard replacement – we suffered frequent power outages in our venue, where we had only two outlets to power all of the instruments, lights and power tools we needed to put on the show. But when the lights went out and the electric piano was silent, the trusty xylophone allowed the children to get their pitches and keep singing! And it proved a surprisingly versatile addition to the pit orchestra; doubling for essentially every pitched percussion instrument, from chimes and orchestra bells to glockenspiel.

Really, between the xylophone, a tambourine and a triangle, I was able to play about 90% of the percussion score. There was, however, one instrument that I could not come up with a good substitution for – a mark tree. For those unfamiliar with orchestral percussion, a mark tree consists of a row of suspended chimes of increasing sizes. When played, it produces an ethereal tinkling that can sound magical, creepy, or, as one cast member put it, “like angels singing.” Since our show has a heavy component of the supernatural, the score makes frequent use of the mark tree, and I became obsessed with the desire to have one for our performances. I wouldn’t even know where to rent a mark tree in my hometown, however – how was I ever going to find one in this remote mountain village?

Luis Dario, our Seymour, co-producer and PR director to the rescue! (I told you we all wear many hats!) He told me that a local hotel (no more than 50 meters from our theatre) has a live band in their restaurant, and that they own a mark tree. I was literally extremely close to my goal – but how would I convince them to lend it? In my experience in the US, even if companies want to be philanthropic, there is a huge bureaucratic rigamarole to go through before anything proprietary can be removed – and at this point, our show was less than a week away!

The amazing support that we had already received from the Monteverde business community should have put my mind at ease. We had over two dozen local businesses support us, either financially, or through in-kind donations, and in all cases the business owners were incredibly enthusiastic about our project. In the case of the mark tree, I eventually made Lisa go and ask for me, since she has both more courage and Spanish skills than I. The gentleman at the front desk said he didn’t think it would be a problem, but he would need to ask the musician, Josué, who would be in later that evening. The next day, Josué himself personally came by our theatre to give his permission, and he walked me back to the hotel to retrieve the object of my desire. “You’re a percussionist?” he asked enthusiastically, and I hadn’t the heart (or the words in Spanish) to tell him that I would be making my percussion debut on opening night. He handed me the instrument, and asked me to please be careful, because it belonged to the hotel, not to him. His trust in a foreigner and complete stranger truly touched me. (And I tried my best to live up to my promise by constantly chasing curious teenagers away from wanting to touch it – I’m not the only one who thinks a mark tree is really cool!)

I was the odd one out in our orchestra, in that the rest of our musicians all have considerable experience at their respective instruments. We had several professional musicians who volunteered to journey from San José and play for our show! Being professional artists, however, meant that they didn’t have a lot of money, and missing a week of paid gigs and private lessons was a hardship for many. Thus, we agreed to provide meals for the musicians. For this, we had to tap into our incredible base of community support amongst the parents and families of our students. Angelina, our unofficial parent coordinator, reached out to the parents, who took turns cooking large vats of gallo pinto and arroz con pollo for our hungry volunteers. She even arranged for various families to “adopt” the musicians, inviting them into their homes three meals a day.  Even parents who didn’t really understand what musical theatre was about, and who were concerned about long rehearsals and time away from studying, pitched in and gave generously of their time and effort, and we are so grateful.

Our community of supporters extends to people we’ve never met in countries we’ve never visited, thanks to the internet. We have amassed a team of virtual volunteers to perform long-distance tasks such as translation and video editing. It’s so gratifying that people who have never had the opportunity to see one of our shows are still enthusiastic about helping to support our mission. 

The show, which is sadly over, was our most successful production to date.  We were able to reach over 600 members of the community, for our biggest audience ever. Audience members have stopped us in the street to tell us how much they enjoyed it, and friends and family back in the states have told us how professional it looks from the pictures. Our success was due to the hard work and dedication of our cast and staff, but also none of it would have been possible without the support of all the members of our ever-expanding community.

-Adrienne (Producer)