‘Cave’ premiere a school project for St. George’s student

St. George’s School’s incoming senior Hailey Poutiatine will make her directing debut with the U.S. premiere of “The Cave,” a recently unearthed play by the late English novelist Mervyn Peake, on Tuesday at the Liberty Lake Community Theatre.

Two years ago, Poutiatine picked up Peake’s Gormenghast trilogy at her school’s library and has been obsessed with the author ever since.

“From then on, I absolutely adored his writing,” she said.

She described Peake’s writing as “bizarre” and “intoxicating” in an interview with Verne Windham on Spokane Public Radio on June 21.

Peake’s “The Cave,” Poutiatine said, “speaks to the universality of the allegory,” and can be interpreted in endless ways.

The three-act play is set in three time periods, Neolithic, Medieval and Cold War, but the characters remain the same throughout the acts. Poutiatine said the characters are “vaguely aware of their predecessors.”

Peake was a contemporary of C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien but didn’t achieve similar success, she said.

Although Peake wrote “The Cave” in the 1950s, it was only discovered in the last decade among some of his personal effects in England. The play premiered in London in 2010 but has not been performed in the U.S.

Poutiatine stumbled upon this play last fall and knew that, somehow, she was going to direct it.

St. George’s requires its International Baccalaureate Diploma Candidates to complete a CAS Project – a project combining creativity, action and service. It’s intended to incorporate a student’s personal interests into a community service project, and students start planning this project in the fall of their junior year.

In November, Poutiatine began work to acquire stage rights from the literary agency Peters, Fraser, and Dunlop. She received a contract in January and the scripts in March.

“The sheer number of details,” Poutiatine said, has been the most challenging part of this project.

She pitched her project to the board of the Liberty Lake Community Theatre and they agreed to let her use the space for free.

“I’m very, very grateful” for the theater’s help, said Poutiatine.

Poutiatine wrote fundraising letters and secured more than $1,000 to pay for costumes, set pieces, sound and lighting. Additionally, she plans to make a donation to the theater.

After acquiring stage rights and finding a performance venue, she had to hire a cast, costume designer, set designer, sound and light crew, and stagehands. The sound and light technicians will receive a reduced wage and the rest are working for free.

To say the least, the 17-year old’s job as director, producer, and “to some extent stage manager,” she said, has been complex.

She found her mentor and lead actor, Christopher Lamb, through a mutual friend. Lamb, an actor, dancer and musician, provided her with guidelines for managing the cast and crew and offered her advice during the rehearsal process. Poutiatine said Lamb, as an overseer and cast member, has given her feedback through multiple levels of the project.

The six-member cast consists of Lamb as First Son/Harry, Lexi Estes as The Girl/Mary Gray, John Reddy as Second Son/Miles, Sue Cyr Murray as Mother, Steve Kane as Father/Charles, and Dave Rideout as Tom Carter/Informant. The crew is composed of costume designer Verse Lind, set-makers Jenn and Nick Lawrance, sound engineer Aaron Brock, light technician Chris Brock, and stagehands Delaney Ennis and Cecelia Sutton.

Poutiatine funnels her overflowing creativity into many avenues, directing being the newest. She also sings and performs her own music, participates in plays and musicals at St. George’s, and writes. Storytelling is her passion.

“Stories are my life and they have been for a very long time,” she told Windham.