Reporter’s notebook: Filmmaker finds his voice, unexpectedly

Posted on September 14, 2012 by BethanyMDunbar

Emily Anderson and Mark Utter at Bread and Puppet Theater. Photo by Joseph Gresser

copyright the Chronicle 8-22-2012

by Joseph Gresser

GLOVER — Mark Utter knows that his inner life is vastly different than his outward appearance might suggest. He wants everyone else to realize that as well, and with the help of his friend, Emily Anderson, Mr. Utter is on his way to achieving his goal.

Mr. Utter visited Glover Thursday evening August 16 along with Ms. Anderson to give a presentation about I Am In Here, a film that he wrote, and with help from a successful Kickstarter campaign, has seen through filming. A big crowd filled the ballroom at the Bread and Puppet Theater’s farm.

Ms. Anderson lived at the farm for years as a member of the theater, and during that time she and I became good friends and performed together frequently.

Since then, she has moved to Burlington where she works for VSA Arts, and directs the Awareness Theater Company, a group she describes as “a dynamic theatrical group composed of people with and without disabilities.”

It was through that work that she first met Mr. Utter, and because of his persistent insistence, began working with him.

Mr. Utter does not speak easily and is prone to make broad and hard to interpret gestures. For much of his life he was not recognized as being the intelligent person he is.

Now, by using a computer keyboard and taking advantage of what is known as facilitated communication, he has proved a most eloquent advocate for himself and other overlooked people.

As Ms. Anderson gently holds his arm at the elbow, Mr. Utter, types out words slowly with one finger. His progress is not linear, he misses his aim often and has to go back and retype to get the word he wants.

Sometimes, he glances up at the screen and smiles at what he reads, before continuing his writing. Even a casual observer has to marvel at Mr. Utter’s patience. It is very clear that his mind runs far more quickly than his slow hand can move.

Ms. Anderson afterwards said Mr. Utter has told her that her touch helps him focus and wards off his otherwise uncontrollable gestures. She said that she will gradually move her hand up his arm until it just rests on his back. In time, perhaps he will not need her help to communicate.

Already, he doesn’t need the projector. He has an iPad configured so that his typing is rendered into audible speech.

As the audience entered the ballroom, Thursday, a short statement written by Mr. Utter was projected on the screen above his head.

“No so long ago people thought the most advanced way to deal with the dreadfully strange members of our society was to put them away. Twenty years ago Vermont closed its institution but Vermont, along with the rest of the world, is still adjusting to those wretches returning. The task at hand is for everyone to surrender their wishes for perfection and embrace our different ways of being human.”

These paragraphs serve as a kind of manifesto for his current work, but do not define his ultimate ambition. Right now, Mr. Utter is concentrated on finishing his film which, in the form of a tantalizing snippet he previewed for the puppeteer audience.

In the one scene he showed, Mr. Utter goes to a film with a friend. As his companion orders two tickets to what from the title is a particularly gruesome horror film, snickers erupt behind the pair.

There stand a couple of snarky teenagers. The girl mocks Mr. Utter saying that he is a “retard” who should not be allowed to attend an R-rated film.

This is the kind of insult that Mr. Utter’s difficulties with spoken language once forced him to endure. But in the world of the film, Mr. Utter has a secret weapon.

“A wonderful actor plays my mind,” Mr. Utter types. And Paul Schnabel does present a wonderfully idealized portrait of Mr. Utter.

The two men stand together with crossed arms as Mr. Schnabel booms, in a way that Mr. Utter can only dream of doing, “You are wrong. I am old enough to be your father.”

Mr. Utter found his voice unexpectedly. He had taken a class in facilitated communication and didn’t see there was much in it for him.

Then he saw a film, Wretches and Jabberers, which portrayed the travels of Larry Bissonnette and his friend Tracy Thresher.

Mr. Utter knew both men and was interested to see that they used facilitate communication in their artistic endeavors. Ms. Anderson worked with Mr. Bissonnette, whom she had met while working with the GRACE program, and Mr. Utter decided he would like to work with her as well.

As Ms. Anderson recalls it, Mr. Utter “sort of inserted himself in my life.”

“I asked her for so long I almost gave up,” Mr. Utter said.

Knowing that he was not a speaker, Ms. Anderson asked Mr. Utter to write a couple of lines for a play she was producing for the Awareness Theater Company.

From there, Mr. Utter was on his way.

“I wrote short blurbs first and then decided to go through a day in my life and filled it with the real facts with some humor,” he told the crowd at Bread and Puppet.

Much of the cost of the funds were raised through Kickstarter, a website that helps bring artistic projects to the attention of a wide audience, and allows people to make small contributions to help them succeed.

In the interest of full disclosure I was one of the many contributors to the project. Ms. Anderson and Mr. Utter are still looking for more people to contribute to the project.

The film is scheduled to premiere in Burlington this October.

After that? “My wish is to address love in my next movie,” Mr. Utter said.

When asked by Ms. Anderson to expand on that comment, he said, “I feel love is a thing wanted by all and experienced by few and it need not be so.”

After Mr. Utter’s presentation I spoke with him for a few minutes. Ms. Anderson explained that I write for the Chronicle and asked if he had anything to say to the residents of Orleans county.

Mr. Utter thought for a moment and slowly typed out:

“Oh people of Orleans I look forward to sharing our movie with you and talking about all the ways we can effect changes in how people interact with each other.”

contact Joseph Gresser at: joseph@bartonchronicle.com

Protesters stop Lowell turbine truck

Posted on July 18, 2012 by BethanyMDunbar

A Lowell wind project protester confronts State Police Corporal Dan Kerin as he tries to clear people off Route 100 Monday. Opponents of the Green Mountain Power project stopped a truck hauling a section of a turbine tower for about two hours before a compromise was negotiated with police. Our story starts on page nineteen. Photos by Chris Braithwaite

copyright the Chronicle July 18, 2012

by Chris Braithwaite

LOWELL — Though it was billed as just a “rally” and an opportunity for opponents of the Lowell Mountain wind project to “greet the turbines” as they arrived, Monday’s confrontation here turned into a brief but intense exercise in civil disobedience.

Gathering across Route 100 from the gate to the 21-turbine wind project at 9 a.m., protesters seemed content to wave signs and sing songs that condemned the project.

But when a truck hauling a long section of turbine tower finally appeared, a handful of protesters rushed into the road and stopped it. The quick arrest of two of them seemed only to draw others onto the highway in front of the idling truck.

Two Lamoille County deputies who had been hired by the project’s owner, Green Mountain Power, tried to “walk” the truck through the protesters, pushing them aside as they encountered them. But that proved to be a futile exercise that one demonstrator described later as “herding an amoeba.” Demonstrators flowed around the deputies to post themselves in front of the truck and bring it, once again, to a halt.

A group of Bread and Puppet performers had come to the scene in the Glover theater company’s distinctly painted bus, and their banners and fiercely beating drums brought fresh resolve to the protesters. As the two deputies and uniformed security guards at the site stood by in frustration, the crowd chanted “Shame on you!” and “Turn it back!” at the bright red truck and its hapless driver.

As protesters line Route 100, watched closely by police officers, the turbine section finally pulls onto Green Mountain Power’s construction site.

It took some time for the first State Police officer to arrive. And when Corporal Dan Kerin stepped out of his cruiser he encountered the same tactic that had confounded the deputies. Each protester in turn yielded to the corporal’s direct order to clear the road, then stepped back onto the pavement when he moved on to the next protester.

But State Police officers started to arrive in force, backed up by Orleans County deputies and officers with the U.S. Border Patrol, Fish and Wildlife and VTrans. Sets of hand restraints were brandished, and police dogs were sighted. An onlooker who scouted the area on his bicycle reported counting 22 law enforcement vehicles at the scene.

Lieutenant Kirk Cooper, commander of the State Police Derby barracks, stepped into the middle of the crowd of demonstrators and appealed for a peaceful conclusion.

“You’re perfectly entitled to voice your non-support,” he told the demonstrators. “But other people have to use this road. That’s where we get in the middle.

“I’m not gong to give you a lot a crap,” the lieutenant continued. If they didn’t move, he told the demonstrators, “we’re going to be forced to move you. I honestly don’t want to do that.”

The officer’s plea was seconded by one of the Lowell project’s most determined opponents, Don Nelson.

“We’ve made our point, boys,” Mr. Nelson said. “It’s time to back off.”

Some protesters heeded that advice, but some did not. Police, gathered in a clump just beside the idling truck, seemed ready to move. But leaders of the group were clearly anxious to avoid the confrontation that seemed moments away.

Pat Sagui, Steve Wright and Stephanie Kaplan, a lawyer who worked with opponents of the Sheffield wind project, talked to Lieutenant Cooper and Lamoille County Sheriff Roger Marcoux.

The deal they struck was that protesters would clear the highway if the sheriff released his two captives. They were a key leader of the opposition, Ira Powsner, and his younger brother, Jacob.

Ira Powsner of Ira is placed under arrest moments after stepping out onto Route 100 to stop a truck carrying part of a wind turbine.

After they were issued citations to appear in court on September 11 to answer charges of disorderly conduct, the brothers stepped out of the sheriff’s vehicle to the cheers of protesters. They sang “Happy Birthday” to Ira Powsner on the occasion of his twenty-sixth birthday.

The protesters returned to the side of the highway, the officers lined up to keep them there, and the truck finally hauled its long, white load through the gates and onto the construction site.

Watching from just inside that site, Lowell Selectman Richard Pion was less than pleased by the compromise.

“They ought to take half those people to jail,” he said. If police lacked the vehicles to get them there, he added, “they should go get a school bus.”

“They can demonstrate, but there’s no need of blocking traffic,” Mr. Pion said. “I thought this was the land of democracy,” he added, noting that a solid majority of Lowell citizens voted for the wind project.

Like most who tried to count the protesters, Mr. Pion estimated that there were about 100 of them. “That shows there’s only a handful that’s opposed to this,” he said.

When traffic finally started to move past the Green Mountain Power gate, it consisted only of a handful of heavy trucks that had been held up in both directions, and one Army truck driven by what appeared to be a National Guardsman. Most traffic was apparently able to drive around the obstruction on Mink Farm Road, which loops to the west of Route 100.

While Green Mountain Power’s chief executive, Mary Powell, was not visible at the scene, Vermont Electric Cooperative’s CEO, David Hallquist, was on hand. His utility has agreed to buy a small share of the project’s power, at cost.

Asked by a reporter if he was upset by the demonstration, Mr. Hallquist replied that he would have been disappointed if no one had shown up. Some of Mr. Hallquist’s remarks were recorded on film by his son, Derek Hallquist. The younger Hallquist is working with the documentary filmmaker Aaron Woolf of New York State, whose best-known work is King Corn.

In the hard hat and safety vest provided by Green Mountain Power, Mr. Woolf and his crew were easy to mistake for employees of the utility.

Standing just inside the work site, facing the demonstrators across the road, Mr. Woolf noted that if people stood on his side of the road, they were pro-wind. People on the other side of the road were anti-wind, he continued.

“And if you stand in the middle of the road, you get run over.”

The section of turbine tower had been held up on the highway for about two hours. And as demonstrators headed north on Route 100 after the rally, they quickly encountered a second section of tower on its way to the site, closely followed by a long, slender turbine blade.

contact Chris Braithwaite at chris@bartonchronicle.com