perspective 80 p o r t l a n d monthly magazine from top: Eric price - islanddirt.com; william trevaskis LifeonNorthHavenmayseemalittlemysterioustoev- eryonewhoisn’tonNorthHaven.Howdoyouconnecta storythattakesplaceonanislandtotherestofMaine? I think you’ll find it will connect with people in Sri Lanka. It’s not about the strangeness of people who live on an is- land. It’s about people who happen to live on an island. There are some aspects that are encouraged. Isolation may be some- thing people who live on the island deal with more. One of the through lines of the play is a stranger on the island. He gets on the wrong ferry. He was to go to Vinalhaven, which to North Haven seems like the other side of the world. He acts as a kind of catalyst. Also, North Haven has a very active theater community because of John Wulp. The children act in school, the Christmas shows–they’re used to per- forming. One of the things I love is seeing the musicals there. People are happy to hear songs, so I’ve inserted existing songs in the play. Two of the artists are from the island: Courtney Naliboff and the band the Toughcats. Botharelocal? They are. Courtney lives on-island and the Toughcats have lived on-island; some are off-island at the moment. If you live on an island, and I go into this in the play, there is a very refined sense of who’s an islander, who’s a year-rounder, who’s a transplant. Thatcouldbeverydivisivelanguage. I t can be, yes. Part of my assignment was to celebrate the island. It would be prob- ably easier and more dramatic to do a piercing expose of the underbelly, but this is a PG effort. Children are in it; anyone can see it. Wereyoutemptedtogototheunderbelly? I couldn’t. That was never going to be. That’s usually where I am tempted to go, but this was an interesting challenge for me. I wanted to do something moving, cel- ebratory, and entertaining. Onthatnote,howdoyoukeepastorylikethisrelevantto everythingthatishappeninginourheadlines? Familyandlifeisalwaysrelevant.That’sthe bottomline.Beingabletoexistinafamily,on asmallisland,thatcouldn’tbemorerelevant. WhathasyourexperienceonNorthHavenbeenfrom childhoodthroughtoday? I’ve been visiting the island since I was born. Every summer of my life. Maybe I missed a few in my twenties, but certainly growing up we’d go for the month of Au- gust. My six brothers, sisters, and I would go with my parents. We’d stay in part of a house my father’s parents lived in. Cous- ins would be there. It was the fun place to go. The beauty of the island, picnics, boats, the smells, nature. When you’re young, you don’t notice that so much. What you notice is that you can walk barefoot everywhere you go starting at age ten… I grew up in Massachusetts and have always felt that North Haven was more of a hometown. When I was in my forties, I fell in love with a man, Charlie Pingree, who lived on the is- land, and married him. We had a child, and lived there for nine years year-round. Goingfromvisitingtolivingtherefull-time,didyouever feelalittlecrazyorstuck? I always feel a little crazy wherever I am, so hard to tell. I went from living in New York City and traveling a lot to living on a small island with three ferries a day. It has another kind of adventure to it. You’re faced with the challenges of living with the same people and the acceptance of peo- “People are the same wherever you go.An island just accentuates behaviors in people more than a city. The city accentuates different ones, too. “ Family Ties Minot’s (second from the left) three sisters (left to right), Carrie, Dinah, and Eliza, lead creative lives as well. Carrie Minot Bell is a jewelry designer, while Dinah Minot is executive director of Creative Portland and one of Portland Monthly’s 2017 “10 Most Intriguing.” Eliza Minot, the youngest sister, is an author (The Tiny One, Vintage Books; The Brambles, Knopf Doubleday).