Le secret de Polichinelle (which should be printed in italics even though it’s in French) is something that’s so well known that nobody bothers to talk about it, so if you don’t know about it already it’s a secret to you.

The Farmington arts scene has been sitting on its own secret de Polichinelle for a decade and a half. This is a long time for a brilliant director and designer to have been mounting plays that appealed to discerning audiences, while eeling away from the limelight in order to spend most of his time teaching a whole lot of admiring and appreciative Theater UMF drama students.

Peter Simmel has taught courses in directing and acting for over 37 years. He has directed over 70 productions at Northwest College, the University of Oklahoma, Keene State College, and the University of New Hampshire. His directing credits include Sam Shepard’s A Lie of the Mind and Buried Child, John Pielmeier’s Agnes of God, Bernard Pomerance’s The Elephant Man, and an adaptation of John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath.

His acting credits include roles in Marat/Sade, To Kill a Mockingbird, and Death of a Salesman. As a Vietnam war veteran, he has a long time interest in plays and films about the Vietnam war and has taught a course entitled The Vietnam War: Theatre and Film.

“I Came to UMF in fall of 1999. Speed of Darkness, in February of 2000, was the first play I did here; I had very strong kids in performance class that year. But Alumni Theater was a mess – there were two electrical outlets in the theater when I got here; I must’ve bought ten 20′ extension cords. There were also no ground plugs, so we replaced them all – it was a good teachable moment.

“Over the years I had some really good tech students for both electrical and carpenter work. I’ve always been able to find one or two tech students, usually non-majors, to build up a group of techies so I could spend more time designing sets. I trained students, and got freshmen involved right away; and then it developed into mentorship over the years. It was a most enjoyable era.

“As students took over more work I could spend more time in text research; I like writing production concepts and director’s notes. I Love the collaborativeness of theater – for most people it’s a collaborative major.”

Born in Biddeford, Maine, Peter taught English and Theater for ten years at Traip Academy in Kittery, where he had very supportive, well-educated parents, so the students were enthusiastic. Some still email Peter to say they’re still doing theater. But he had a whole library of plays that needed more mature actors, so he went back to grad school at the University of Oklahoma, which has, he says, an incredible theater department.

“I was older, 36, by then, and it gave me a little more experience. They were a good program that pushed you out of your comfort zone. I think some of the plays I’ve done here have done the same thing for students here.”

Peter spent two years in the Army in Viet Nam, working in Air Medevac, which flew transports to pick up the severely wounded, who were brought back to Camp Zama in Japan where the high-powered specialist surgeons were.

“I brought Mona over, and we got married there,” says Peter, speaking of his wife, Ramona, who was the sister of the drummer in a band Peter played with after high school. “There was a great little theater at Camp Zama, and I got to direct some plays there. It was a nice little place, just over a hundred seats, and we did USO type stuff and Christmas shows for NCO clubs. My first big show was Spoon River Anthology – a lot of people showed up for auditions, from privates to Colonel Schulz.

“Then we did Peter Shaffer’s Black Comedy; we got GIs and their girlfriends, dependent wives and husbands in the cast, and we always sold out – some of the brass tried to pull rank to get tickets! One guy from the Army Band, Jim Finnegan, shy little guy, ended up acting with the Royal Shakespeare Company…”

Peter was teaching at North West College in Wyoming – “I was a New Englander, but I needed a job” – when it became apparent that his elderly parents in New Hampshire would need supervision from nearer at hand, so he looked for something in New England in the Chronicle of Higher Education and UMF popped up.

Here in Farmington, some of the absorbing, moving, and thrilling plays Peter has used to push his students, and often his audiences, beyond their comfort zone have been The Laramie Project, probing the murder of Matthew Shepard, and the Robinson Jeffers translation of Euripides’ Medea. And though Peter has had a – somewhat well-deserved – local reputation for choosing dark and disturbing scripts, we should remember also his highly successful and hilarious forays into comedy, such as Fuddy Meers, and the recent riotously brilliant I Hate Hamlet.

“We’re putting the house on the market, going back home; Mona still has lots of family around Fremont and North Hampton, New Hampshire. We’ll make all those re-connections – staying through Thanksgiving and Christmas is fine, then we’ll go where it’s warm after the New Year. We’re thinking of Asheville in North Carolina – lots of arts, performance, food, and the Smoky Mountains are beautiful. We’re tired of snow and short days.

“Why I love theater – it’s immediate, direct, alive, raw; I love directing because it’s painting with bodies, and the audience is part of the experience. I tell the actors, they get to play it for the first time every night, take the playwright’s words and form them into images that work on the audience’s subconscious.”

Those of us who have known Peter and been party to this great secret de Polichinelle have also known dozens, perhaps scores of the students that he has taught, influenced and inspired. We can be confident that anywhere he retires (I warned him that it does snow in the Smokies) will provide opportunities for him to continue to teach, influence, and inspire.