Interview with Stan Mott, janitor

By Mark McKenna

Mark McKenna: So you grew up here in Blue Lake?

Stan Mott: Yeah. We lived in a small mill town called Korbel, which is the name of one of the shows here. It was the first show I was involved in as a matter of fact. I was here until I was 19 years old.

MM: Your father worked in the mill?

SM: Yes, my mother also. She worked in the factory and she was a school cook at the Blue Lake School for a number of years.

MM: You left for a number of years?

SM: Yeah, when you have an actor’s desire, you have to check out things so I moved to San Francisco, Los Angeles, Tucson, but I kept coming back. This is a valley. Some people fall in love with their valleys. Mine is very green.

MM: Tell me your first impression of Dell’Arte when you came back to settle.

SM: My first impression was an angry one, that they hadn’t come 25 years earlier. By the time I was affiliated with them, I was in my early 50s and they were teaching a real hard acrobatics course, and I decided that was too much. I love short plays and I love comedy. I think it is a wonderful addition to the town.

MM: Has the town changed in the last 30 years?

SM: Yes. There actually used to be stores here. The mall and people’s desire to shop more cheaply killed that, so that now we have one store, one service station and one restaurant. This building is one of the first places I entertained. I played the accordion and sang. I used to play the accordion here for the International Organization of Odd Fellows and their female contingent ,the Rebeccas, when I was 11 years old. I would sing with school groups upstairs in the main hall. Of course everything has changed, but in our mime studio I once sat for my grandfather’s 80th birthday. I am one of 40 cousins descended from the nine children that he had. As I am cleaning the place – I pretty much appointed myself to that job – there are a lot of personal memories that cause me to want to keep it looking good.

MM: What do you think is the most important thing in the next 20 years that needs to continue?

SM: As new issues arise, or older ones become more important, it is attached in steel to theater of place. There is a very light touch here in approaching issues that are important to the community. The "Korbels" were literally about the failure of the mills to continue to be the largest entity in our society here. The first "Korbel" discussed that problem, what happens when you lose your job? The mill closes and you don’t have it. Another "Korbel" discussed the problem of pollution in an area that is poverty-stricken. What I appreciate is the focus on place and dealing with current issues, which also reflect national issues.

MM: As someone who is well versed in classic theater and has experience in the canon, and also experience with Dell’Arte what are the important differences? Which do you value more?

SM: Collaboration from the beginning. The creation on your feet. I haven’t really done that as an actor. I’ve worked now twice with groups and I got to bring all these songs within me to bear. I got to decide what would work best while the scenes developed. Normally, I would walk into a regional community theater to audition for a play that had been chosen a year ahead. It, of course, was one of the classics, it had been through the mill, people had already generated ideas. But here, there is paper all over the wall and things are being written down so that ideas don’t get lost. Of course most of them are not used, but it was and is a very exciting process to me.

MM: You really know the history of this place, too. What is the most significant contribution that Dell’Arte has made to the people who live here?

SM:I am 62 years old. When I was a child, this town was a mill town. It was not necessary to go to college. It was a problem for me, being an intellectual sissy. I didn’t like to fight, I cried when people killed birds and stuff like that. And so I was the town sissy. They used to make me cry on the bus on the way to high school. My own nature was a very soft, yielding one, full of love of everything that was around me. It was my nature. I think it was because I had songs in me, and this constant dream of something beautiful. Today there are, because of Dell’Arte, thirty-six students who have a completely different way of looking at things. Dell’Arte has brought a breath of fresh intellectuality, or psychological maturity and social understanding into the town. Of course, at the same time, many people from other areas have moved up here and our culture has moved on. That understanding and acceptance, tolerance, has come into the town, too. Dell’Arte is a large part of making this a place where those people can come and find themselves approved.

MM: Have you seen Dell’Arte make any big mistakes?

SM: Not having bought more property in the past and having the space to expand. It has to do with projecting into the reality of what is to come. Who knew that things would be as they are, where we need constantly more rehearsal space, more studios, more office space?

Mark McKenna is artistic director and an ensemble member of Touchstone Theatre, in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. He is a graduate of the Lecoq International School of Theatre in Paris. He has taught theater classes at Lehigh University and the University of Pennsylvania, and the MFA Theatre Program at Towson State University. McKenna is active in the growth of the Network of Ensemble Theatres. He is a board member of Alliance for Building Communities, a regional community-development corporation.

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