Reveling in Spring

Using the Prince Edward Island-based band Barachois as its anchor, the 80-member cast will take the audience on the journey of Evangeline, the heroine of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s 1847 epic poem, and the Acadians, who were brutally dispersed by the British in 1755 and migrated to the then-Spanish colony of Louisiana where they became Cajuns. Barachois and the cast’s storytelling will be helped along by actress Paula Plum, musician Tom Pixton, Revels favorite David Coffin, The Fiddles of Acadia, The Catfish Cajun Band, and The River Rat Children.

The Revels officially began in 1971, but they really began much earlier, when founder John Langstaff was growing up in a family in Brooklyn Heights, New York, that filled the air and his ear with music. At the age of seven he launched his own music career at a choir school in New York City, which eventually carried him to the Juilliard School and to Europe (where he developed a deep love of traditional music), and then into the classroom and recording studio. A few forays into Revels-type shows in 1957 and 1966, together with the prompting of his daughter Carol, spurred Langstaff to present The Christmas Revels in 1971 at Harvard University’s Sanders Theatre, where it has remained a tradition ever since.

Since that time, the Revels has been designated as a non-profit organization, and has spun off other Revels productions in New York City; Washington, D.C.; Hanover, New Hampshire; the California area; Media, Pennsylvania; Houston, Texas; Tacoma, Washington; Portland, Oregon; and Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota. The Revels come in a variety of spices–the Christmas Revels celebrates the winter solstice, the Sea Revels tells about the lives of those who make their living on the sea, and the Spring Revels honors the vernal equinox–all of them combining ancient dances, music, stories, varied locations and cultures, and most importantly, audience participation.

Patrick Swanson is the helmsman for the upcoming Revel, and he brings excellent credentials to the job. Born in Manchester, England, as a member of the “risen working class,” he attended Strawberry Hill, a teachers’ college that was part of the University of London. There he encountered Roger Lane, who was holding a very unusual theater class that combined the “jocks” of the university with drama students (who, according to Swanson, “Believed that theater meant Gilbert and Sullivan.”) Lane worked on what Swanson calls the “primitive” level, focusing on folk events that also had core elements of theater.

A defining moment for Swanson came when he saw a film of the Padstow ‘Obby ‘Oss May Day celebration. (Padstow is a small village in Cornwall.) Its anarchic, un-English energy galvanized him. Swanson went on with his teacher training, but eventually linked up with Ellen Stewart’s La MaMa theater company, which was making a sweep through London in 1969. He came back to New York with La MaMa, where he apprenticed for a couple of years and did avant-garde theater “with some very strange people.” Bouncing back to England, he taught acting and improvisation at the London Academy of Dramatic Art, and founded a London-based La MaMa group. He then returned to the United States, where he took over the reins of the Castle Hill Festival in Ipswich, Massachusetts, presenting works by Peter Sellars and Julie Taymor, among others.

In 1977, Swanson met John Langstaff, and all of his training and experiences seemed to find a home in the multiple-arts/communal approach of the Revels. Later, he became Langstaff’s “dauphin,” eventually taking over the directing duties upon Langstaff’s retirement.