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At AHS, 'Our Town' gets a pro's touch Nicole Preston, left, and Chris Haulk work on a scene from "Our Town," an Ashland High School production that will feature directing and acting by longtime TV and Oregon Shakespeare Festival actor Doug Rowe. The play opens tonight. Bob Pennell Friday Nov 3, 2000 at 2:00 AM Feb 16, 2011 at 8:26 AM Bill Varble Learning — every, every minute ASHLAND — Nicole Preston says Doug Rowe taught her how to maintain a moment. Even though people are laughing or clapping, you have to stay in that moment and keep it real, says Preston, who is 16. She and Chris Haulk, 17, star with Rowe in Ashland High School's production of Thornton Wilder's classic play, Our Town, which opens tonight. Rowe, a professional actor with the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, directs and plays the role of the stage manager. — — — — — What: The classic play by Thornton Wilder — — When: 7:30 p.m. today, Saturday and Nov. 10 and 11; 2 p.m. — Sunday and Nov. 12 — — Where: Ashland High School's Mountain Avenue Theater — — Tickets: $8 at AHS, Paddington Station and Tree House Books in — Ashland ($12 for Nov. 12 show, a benefit for Ashland baseball) — — The students say working with a pro has taken the experience of being in the play to a new level. Haulk says he's learned focusing techniques from Rowe. He taught me that Thornton Wilder created a whole different world, Haulk says. When you walk in, you?re in Grover's Corner 100 years ago. In Wilder's Pulitzer Prize-winning 1938 play, a New Hampshire village represents the center of creation. The play follows the daily lives of Emily (Preston) and George (Haulk) from 1901 to 1913 as they experience love and marriage, birth and death, melding their world with that of the audience. Rowe has played the stage manager in Our Town both professionally and with students. Although generations of students have done the play, he says he came to it relatively late. Had I received its messages early, my existence would have been enriched immeasurably, he says. It's his all-time favorite. He's amazing, drama teacher Betsy Bishop says of Rowe. It's eight weeks, and he's been here every day. The school has a 7-year-old relationship with the festival. Our Town brings together Rowe, Bishop and more than 50 students, including 20 crew members who are members of an AHS class in stage management. Like much of Wilder's work, the play has at its core the idea that life is meaningful only when lived with full awareness in the present moment. The character Emily asks in the third act, Do any human beings realize life while they live it — every, every minute? The play is traditionally performed on a bare stage. Rowe is a veteran of Broadway, off-Broadway and film. His most recent TV appearance was last month on NBC's Providence, but his credits include Melrose Place, M*A*S*H, Hart to Hart, Hill Street Blues, Knotts Landing, Newhart, St. Elsewhere, Northern Exposure and Murder, She Wrote. He came to the festival to play Willie Loman in Arthur Miller's The Death of a Salesman after 20 years as both executive director and artistic director of the Laguna Playhouse in Laguna Beach, Calif. This year, he played Dr. Bradley in The Man Who Came to Dinner and the gravedigger in Hamlet. It's definitely been a learning experience, student actor Chance Carroll says of working with Rowe. We always get actors from the festival to direct. But we've never had anyone from the festival act with us, Anne Hannon-Kramer says. Grace Mueller, another student actor, says it's amazing how quickly Rowe can set aside his director's chores and disappear into his Our Town character, the all-seeing stage manager. I try to take some of that from him, she says. Bishop says Rowe helps student actors get in touch with a core honesty. They haven't been trained as professional actors, she says. He helped them bring out their integrity. The students have their own takes on Our Town. No one is love with the play, Carroll says. I'm in love with it, Hannon-Kramer says. I'd never heard of it, says Mueller. I'd never heard of Thornton Wilder. Hannon-Kramer saw the OSF's Our Town with Sandy McCallum several years ago. It's a challenge to bring something new to it, she says. I would have preferred to see it, Mueller says. I don't think he (Rowe) wanted us to see another production, Carroll says. Rowe says the play's lessons — cherish the day, live the moment, love what you have, don't look to the future for a better day — make it particularly appropriate for high school students. Students say the message came into focus over time. About the third time we went through the reading it hit me, he says. It has a lot of meaning. At first I thought it was pretty sappy, Preston says. But it took on a different meaning. The message has gotten through.