No one gets to Matinicus by accident. This remote island in the outer reaches of Penobscot Bay lies 20 miles off the coast. And the state ferry runs only about once a week. But that didn't deter a professional theater company from staging a production there this summer. The history on which the play is based is well-known to many of the islanders. In fact, it's a story about one of their own.
Matinicus is known for its hardcore fishing community. Lobster wars. Ultra resilient people. There aren't a lot of laws, but there are some rules.
"You know, if there's something that needs to be done and you're able to do it, or if you're able to help, that's what you do," Clayton Philbrook said. "You step up and do it."
His family is just about to celebrate their bicentennial.
"I live [on Matinicus] year-round. My family's been here since 1826," Philbrook said.
Philbrook is one of only 15 or so hardy year-rounders. Many residents have moved to the mainland, especially those with young families.
But in the summer, the population blooms to about 100. And almost all of them have turned out to the Congregational Church of Matinicus to see the Penobscot Theatre Company’s stripped-down rendition of Matinicus: A Lighthouse Play. It's a relatively new creation, written during COVID by Maine native Jenny Connell Davis, and was performed at the historic Bangor Opera House this spring.
The heroine of the story, Abigail Burgess, lived on tiny, windswept Matinicus Rock, five miles south of Matinicus Isle, in the 19th century. Most islanders still admire her.
"I like her because she's very brave," said five-year-old Ruby.
Like generations of islanders before her, the little girl knows this true story by heart: How back in the 1850s, Abbie’s father was the lighthouse keeper on "The Rock." And how that first winter, when the supply boat doesn't show, he's forced to head to the mainland to restock and leaves teenaged Abbie in charge.
"And she went up to the light bulb and made sure it was running. And the storm came," said Ruby.
The huge nor'easter destroys their house. Yet Abbie manages to keep her sick mother, little sisters, and their chickens safe, and the lights burning, for weeks, until her papa returns.
Versions of this story have been popularized in books, songs, and now, a one-woman play.
Abbie, in long skirts and woolen tights, is center stage at the front of the church, next to the lighthouse, which is represented by a stepladder.
At first, she complains about being the lighthouse keeper's daughter, asking, "Why us, stuck on a rock for months on end while everybody else lives their lives?"
But pretty soon, Abbie realizes she enjoys helping her father keep the lamps polished, the lights burning. And warning ships, "steer clear!"
When he's gone and the storm hits, Abbie turns to the audience, begging the raging sea for mercy.
"We are so small, so easily swallowed. But there are people who need us, who need our light. For their sake, please, go easy," urges Katie Peabody, who is Abigail Burgess.
Peabody said she believes the story is about women's empowerment, because Abbie stepped up and did what many considered to be a man’s job in a time of crisis. But then she chose to keep doing it — becoming one of Maine’s first lady lighthouse keepers.
"And I just think that's really inspirational for many reasons," Peabody said. "But one of them is that I think sometimes it's hard for us to kind of be true to who we are, in spite of the world telling us that maybe that's not who we should be."
Multiple women on the island told me that growing up here, in such a male-dominated fishing culture, they looked up to Abbie.
Peabody said she felt that on stage, like she was sharing the story, not just telling it.
As Douglas Cornman sees it, this production has brought islanders together to take a much-needed break and have fun, which is important.
"It is really how they gain the energy to sustain the hard work that it takes to live in these very rural and isolated communities," Cornman said.
Cornman is with the 120-year-old nonprofit Maine Seacoast Mission, and the director of the island outreach boat Sunbeam. The 74-foot vessel delivers health and educational services, spiritual support, and assorted programming, and helped bring this play to three outer islands: Great Cranberry, Isle Au Haut, and lastly, Matinicus.
And Cornman said Matinicus is the most remote of the fifteen unbridged coastal islands with year-round communities that the Mission serves.
"It is a community that is struggling both with its infrastructure and with its declining and aging population," Cornman said. "But it is not going down without a fight, and the Mission is going to be here as long as this community is willing to survive.
It's a theme of resilience echoed on stage. By the end of the play, young Abbie Burgess' feelings about herself, her purpose and the Rock, have changed.
"It's home. And in 100 years, they will write stories about me, folk songs, children's books, when they finally decide that girls need heroes."
After the performance, the audience swarmed Peabody with hugs, words of praise, and a few tears.
Among them was islander Natalie Ames, who said that seeing the play in their church felt intimate.
"We all are islanders, so we got the inside joke of it, the real essence of it, the remoteness, the struggle, how dangerous the sea really is," Ames said. "People out here completely understand that."
Her cousin Christina Young nodded in agreement. "Yeah, because if you grew up here, if you were a kid here, or a wife here, the sea is the most important thing. The boats are the second most important thing, then the fishermen," Young said. "So Abbie was, like, our thing."
This performance of "Matinicus," on Matinicus, was the final show, for now.
Katie Peabody will return to the Penobscot Theatre Company in Bangor this fall to start in a production of Henry James' "The Turn of the Screw."
