 My name is Ellen Wally. I am director and actor in River Company's production of The Duck Variations along with another one-act play called The Eye of the Beholder and they will be going up July 11th, 12th, 13th, 18th, 19th and 20th. The two Sundays will be matinees. In Damerscotta, Maine at the Skidumpha Library, Porter Meeting Hall. The Duck Variations by David Mamet is two people who come together on a park bench regularly and they argue and they discuss and they figure out the world and they argue and it's really basically about ducks and life and nothing. It's very profound and it's very foolish all at once. I wonder if it's cold out there. They're here. It's like it is today. How it is today? That's how it is. But the boat is moving. So it's colder in relation to how fast the boat is going. The water is colder than the land. So it's colder in relation to the water. So it's a different temperature on the boat than it is on a bench. They probably got sweaters. I think the humor comes from humanity. It just comes from people being people. I think it's hysterical. I always love listening to people. I love watching people and I wish I could be invisible and I think the audience is gonna enjoy being the eavesdroppers in this case. But they're raised for Easter and Thanksgiving. Good thinking of takies. Also ducks. They got them in captivity? Yeah, in the banya. They clip their wings. So? Yeah, what? You can't put them on their honor. Types of change. The cast of the duck variations is Tom Handel, who is the executive director of the community television network in Portland, Maine and me. That's it. And the ducks. Although we don't have any live animals and none of them were hurt in this process. The mating of ducks is a private matter between the duck and questions and his mate. It is a thing which few white men have witnessed and those who claim to have seen it strangely do not wish to speak. There's some things we're better off not to know. If you don't know, you never can be forced to tell. And cut those beaks for nothing. Nothing is for nothing. 20 years ago when my friend did it with another person, I heard it was funny. It was funny. It was so funny. It was everybody said how funny it was that they couldn't stop laughing. Sometimes when people think of David Mamet, they think of avant-garde and absurd and maybe it's not my cup of tea. But this this is actually very human. It's two people sitting on a park bench talking and I myself love to hear people talk. What are they going to say next? And they're funny people, but I don't think they know they're funny. So this is a different piece of Mamet that I've ever been exposed to and I really like it because it's so human. It's just the human condition. I'm Ann Foskett and I'm the director of The Eye of the Beholder, which is the other half of River Company's July production. The Eye of the Beholder is about two artists working in a studio. They've obviously been working together for a long time. They have a model, a live model and she's been putting up with them for a long time. It's very funny but also very philosophical. It's written by Kent Broadhurst, who is also an artist himself, as well as a very well-known actor and in many movies and TV series and has written other plays too. So I think he has a good idea of not only how artists behave and react to one another in a studio setting, but he has a good handle on how to make it work for the actors. Wonderful piece for actors. So we have really sort of the odd couple of the art world and they get into an argument about one thing and another and it escalates and then it comes down and then it escalates again and then the model gets into the discussion and throws in her two cents worth. And so we have an amusing philosophical discussion of what art is because one artist is a very free artist and the other one is a very precise artist. Played by Tasha Solvow and Ruth Montsell, who is an artist herself. So we have you know good input from the artistic side of things and Andrea Handel is playing the model. So very good cast and we're having a lot of fun doing it. And we're involving another artist, Francisco Needham, and doing those canvases for that they're working on during the play. I think you'll enjoy it. If you want to make reservations, you would call 5638116 and we hope to see you at the theatre.