About the Artists
MELODY BATES
MELODY BATES (she/ they) is a native Oregonian actor and writer based in Brooklyn, NY. She is a queer femme creatrix who brings people together to make art that is radical and wildly entertaining. Her award-winning work includes the plays Avalon and R & J & Z, both of which had world premieres on Deer Isle. As an actor, she has performed at The Public Theater, Brooklyn Academy of Music, La MaMa E.T.C., A.R.T Boston, Theatre des Amandiers (Paris), Cankarjev Dom (Ljubljana), and the Metropolitan Opera, where she has recently worked with directors Simon McBurney, Bartlett Sher, and David McVicar. TV and film work includes Law & Order SVU, PBS Great Performances, and the indie feature Ask For Jane. Melody’s play R & J & Z, called “boisterous and splendid” by the NY Times, is available from Original Works Publishing and continues to be produced around the country. The NYIT Awards have recognized her with acting, writing, and original music awards. She was featured in Necessary Exposure: The Female Playwright Project and was a finalist for the Doric Wilson Independent Playwright award. Avalon, her site-specific collaboration with Peter Beerits and Jennifer Paar, received the state of Maine’s 2020 Innovation & Creativity Award.
JENNIFER PAAR
JENNIFER PAAR (she/ her) has worked in New York and regionally as a costume designer for over 20 years. In 2019 she designed the costumes for Avalon, a site-specific collaboration with Melody Bates and Peter Beerits. In New York, she has worked extensively with the Obie-Award winning Keen Company, having designed sixteen shows with them including: Year of Magical Thinking, Ordinary Days, Tick, Tick...Boom, and Alphabetical Order. Other New York credits include Othello (New Place Players), Transatlantica (Operating Theater), Futurity, The Musical (Joe’s Pub), Every Day Above Ground with Sabooge Theatre (PS 122), and Thrill Me (York Theatre). Regional credits include Sense & Sensibility, The Fantasticks (Cape Playhouse), On Golden Pond (Bucks County Playhouse), Glengarry Glen Ross (Asolo Rep), and Rabbit Hole (Premiere Stages). Jennifer is also the Co-Founder of The Costume Studio, a non-profit organization that provides space and supplies for costume designers working on non-profit productions in NYC.
peter beerits
PETER BEERITS (he/ him) studied art at Boston Museum School and completed an MFA in sculpture at Long Beach State in California. He then returned to Deer Isle and started a jam business in the kitchen of a tiny white clapboard cottage, surrounded by sculptures from his MFA show. Over time, the jam business thrived and he returned to making art in response to a growing visitor audience. He is interested in the intersection of myth and history: the gunslinger, the sheriff, the knights. The king who is born in a stable, the fairy queen who presides over the end of her era. The campus covers four acres and includes a Western town, juke joint, general store, and garage. In the woods, deeper in mystery, a Grail Castle, wizard’s tower, and church. The entire installation has 95 figures and fifteen buildings and is seen by tens of thousands of people annually. His work is something like a movie set which can trigger deeply-felt emotions. It is transactional in the way that theater is, a portal to unscripted psychic terrain. Some visitors to his life’s work at Nellieville are profoundly moved by what they experience there. This intersection of art and audience changes lives.