When the curtain goes up and a lithe, red head appears, know you are in for a wonderful and spirited production. Tracy Martin has been stealing the show from a very young age when she started walking.
When she was 5, her grandfather began taking her to VFW’s halls and would place her up on the bar to sing and dance. Her veteran fans applauded loudly as she belted out a Peggy Lee song, “Is that all there is?” Finding it both exciting and fun to be a young star sealed the deal for her as to what she wanted.
An only child to a divorced mom, who was practical and always wanted her daughter to have a stable life, her mother had other ideas as to how Tracy’s life should unfold. Moving from New York City to Boston was, she believed, a move in the right direction. A new environment did not change things and, Brookline High, an alternative high school, allowed Tracy to free her creative wings.
She found that by pursuing dance she could avoid competitive sports and even gym class. From high school, Tracy spent one year at Hampshire College but desperately wanted to leave and pursue theater. Unbeknownst to her mother, she applied for an audition at NYU/Tisch School of the Arts. Knowing no one, long before cellphones, she set off by train, arriving at 5 a.m. and found her way, securing a spot. Her mom acquiesced and Tracy enrolled with financial help from scholarships and part-time jobs. (Tracy is pleased that her mother lived to see her able to support herself from her passion.)
In 1984, she met Kate Gyllenhaal, who not only babysat her now famous siblings Maggie and Jake but, while in the dance department at the Tisch School, also started a business called Home Bodies. Tracy feels it was the forerunner of personal fitness training. Kate hired Tracy who learned to tailor exercise to the specific needs of patrons – many of whom lived in luxury Manhattan apartments.
At NYU/Tisch, a directors’ and choreographers’ concert was held annually allowing students to experience dance and theater collaboration. The original performance of “Air Brains” developed by Christopher Durang, David Esbjornston and Gyllenthaal was performed and received considerable attention.
In 1988, Kate invited Tracy to do summer productions of it in a young Phantom Theater in Warren Vermont. Leaving a serious beau and a job, she spent the summer rehearsing and preforming the dance show that was the only Phantom production for the year.
Tracy also found paid work in a creative camp and, one of the young campers, Larissa Bates, became very enamored with her and insisted she come home to have dinner with she and her Da-Da, Carl Bates who would become Tracy’s husband, the father of their son Lucas Bates, and introduce her to off-grid living on Prickly Mountain and people who would be forever friends.
The marriage would not survive; however, the family she gained and the Prickly friendships have lasted all the ensuing years.
Phantom/Prickly connections would give her long-standing roles that serve her and the community well. Cat Carr started an exercise class on Prickly and, one year later in 1989, relinquished it to Tracy. Thus began a two-night a week fitness class housed upstairs in the old Warren Town Hall that exists today with many participants dating to the early years. Tracy, with her indomitable spirit and creative energy, brings new approaches to exercise with music, dance, her poodle June watching the routines from a mat, and her encouraging voice that never seems to tire. It is not unreasonable to feel that, for the duration, you are under the influence of a sprite!
Children, for over 20 years, have also come under her spell enjoying a program called The Magic Tree Box, based on a Flynn Theater model for four to six years. It gives her joyous moments as it is built on suspense, excitement, discovery and combines dance and theater for eager, young people.
It is Phantom Theater, however, housed in the Edgcomb barn on Dump Road in Warren, that has dictated how her life would unfold both professionally and personally. Serving as its director for numerous varied productions each summer, she feels she is paying back what she was given by having New York-based performers come for the opportunities the theater continues to provide. She describes Phantom as “an organic fit that combines nature, beauty, fresh air, great people meeting for training, creativity and experiencing the process of theater. Phantom, since its beginning, allows for this to happen.”
Ten years ago, Tracy took on the hardest thing she has ever done by enrolling in a two-year Masters in Fine Arts program through the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, which culminated with her 90-page thesis. She considers it all worthwhile as it has been her entree into teaching at the college level, meeting great people, having immersive experiences and getting to change up her standard routine. She teaches a Body Awareness course at Community College of Vermont. The focus is on dance and self-expression. Additionally, she teaches in Montpelier at the Contemporary Dance and Fitness Studio and offers individuals with Parkinson’s Disease home-based fitness training.
Lest Tracy be considered only about physical movement and theater, know that she, eager to be a better cook, has worked part-time for 10 years at the East Warren Community Market. Her famous key lime pies could warrant putting her name up in lights. She is thrilled to have her son, Lucas, back from the West and now living in The Valley and, to her great delight, is serving on the boards of Phantom and The Bigger Picture Community Fund.
At the recent 40th anniversary celebration of Phantom Theater, it was Tracy, in a wig and costume, who closed the evening. Her dramatic, one-person, comical skit lifted everyone out of their seats and, as the saying goes, brought the house down. Those veterans should have been in the credits for spotting talent when they saw it!
Bravo, Tracy and know The Valley thanks you!
