Acme actors get prepared to play

As the cast of two rehearsed lines and gestures onstage amid 50 stacked chairs, Acme Theater's Gail Bishop Nessman and Dave Sheppard sat in the audience calculating how to cut a two-hour performance down to 45 minutes.

"Anything over 45 minutes and it's automatically disqualified," said Sheppard, executive director and cofounder of Maynard's award-winning community theater, "and you get five minutes to put up a set, and if you go over it, you're out."

Sheppard was not talking about the version of Steven Dietz's "Lonely Planet" that is playing here through May 1, but rather about the May 20 performance, when the mostly volunteer staff of 12 takes the show on the road to the Liverpool International Theatre Festival in Nova Scotia.

This year will be Acme Theater Production's second time in four years representing adult amateur theater from the United States at the annual event, an honor bestowed upon the winner of local, regional, and national competitions of the American Association of Community Theater.

The group is going not as a winner this year, but at the invitation of the festival organizers. In fact, the troupe had been asked back in 2002, but was unable to make it.

"Lonely Planet," which won the 1994 PEN USA West Literary Award for Drama, is a dark political comedy about AIDS and its impact on Jody (played by Tom Berry, 35, of Lynn) and Carl (David Fisher, 31, of Waltham). Both characters are gay but are not lovers. They become friends as Carl frequents Jody's map store, where the story unfolds.

"We've done some creative staging," said assistant stage manager Nessman, 33, of Maynard. "A lot of those chairs are welded together."

None of the chairs match and each looks like it was left over from a yard sale, which is probably where Sheppard found most of them. Besides shelves of map books and posters of maps on the walls, chairs dominate the 16-by-20-foot stage. Each is a metaphor for the characters' friends and acquaintances who have been diagnosed with AIDS.

Getting invited to the festival is one thing. Getting the crew, props, and everything else over the border for three days of theatrical competition is quite another. For starters, said Kathy Campbell, Acme president and Sheppard's wife, the nonprofit status stays in the United States.

"It's no help in Canada," said Campbell, who is 39.

Sheppard cut some deals and believes he can get everyone, including the couple's 6-year-old son, there and back for $9,600. The group is actively raising funds.

Acme Theater Productions, which was founded in 1992, made it to the top of all charts with its 2000 production of "Stiff Cuffs," with which it made its international debut, said Sheppard, a 41-year-old Bolton native who now lives in Maynard.

"It was the most spectacular thing," Sheppard said of participating with drama groups from nearly every continent. "Liverpool, Nova Scotia, shuts down for the week, and they send the play titles to the local grammar school, and the kids make posters, and they're hung all over town. You see something like that and you just feel so welcome."

"Lonely Planet" runs Fridays through Sundays through May. 1. Curtains rise at 8 p.m., with a 3 p.m. matinee on April 25. Acme Theater is at Artspace Maynard, 61 Summer St. Call the box office at 978-823-0003 or visit www.acmetheater.com for more information and reservations.