Edwin and Matt Cahill sit in front of Beckett’s Castle on the Cape Elizabeth coast, the home of their Hogfish artists’ retreat and training center. Carl D. Walsh/Staff Photographer
Matt and Edwin Cahill were looking for a place in Maine, a place to get away from the frantic pace of New York City and to start a retreat for fellow performing artists. What they found, unexpectedly, was a castle.
The couple’s property search about four years ago included a visit to Beckett’s Castle, a 148-year-old Gothic-style home high above the rocky shore of Cape Elizabeth. It originally went on the market in 2017 for more than $3.3 million and was in need of massive repairs and renovation.
“When we walked in, I saw this hooked rug that (the previous owner had left) that said ‘a rose is a rose,’ which was on the first card Matt ever gave me,” said Edwin Cahill, who grew up in Scarborough. “I looked at him and said, ‘I want to die here. How can we do this? Let’s sell everything.’ We didn’t even think about the restoration. We’re artists, we just looked at the beauty of the place. Then we were like, ‘What have we done?’ ”
The Cahills bought the house in 2018 and are using it as the base for Hogfish, a retreat and performing artist training company they founded. This summer marks the company’s first season, hosting singers and other artists from all over the world. The group’s first production, a re-imagined version of an 18th-century French comic opera, will be performed Friday and Saturday at Wolfe’s Neck Center in Freeport and Sunday at Ram Island Farm in Cape Elizabeth.
The one-hour performance of “L’Arbre Enchante,” which means “The Magic Tree” in English, is about the power of love overcoming greed. Edwin Cahill is directing and has adapted the story with Maine characters, including a penniless paperboy from Presque Isle and a level-headed lobsterwoman from Lewiston.
Matt Cahill sings and acts the role of the poor boy. It has a cast of about a dozen, accompanied by an orchestra. The songs are in French, but Edwin Cahill has translated dialogue into English. After each performance, a deejay will play an electronic music version of the score for a dance party featuring audience and cast.
Hogfish, an artists’ retreat and training center at Beckett’s Castle in Cape Elizabeth, is hosting performing artists from around the world this month. Carl D. Walsh/Staff Photographer
A REGENERATIVE RETREAT
The idea behind Hogfish, the Cahills say, is to have about a dozen or more performing artists from around the world come to Beckett’s Castle for a few weeks each year to rest, recharge and work on their crafts. A half dozen or so can stay in the castle – despite the grand name it’s more the size of a large cottage – and more can stay at a board member’s house next door. Performers study and work on their own projects while collaborating on one group project, which this year is “L’Arbre Enchante.” They can also spend time in nature, including the property’s expansive rose garden and the rocks and ocean, just a few steps away.
“Often artists go to the city (for study) and their art reflects that,” said Matt Cahill. “But here they can be in nature.”
Edwin and Matt met about 10 years ago during a production of “L’Arbre Enchante” at Fire Island Opera in New York, a company Edwin Cahill founded. They were married about four years ago, in Maine.
Edwin Cahill, 46, grew up in Scarborough, where both his parents were teachers. He performed in high school and local theater, including at Portland Players and Lyric Music Theater in South Portland, before getting degrees in voice from the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston and in French from Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts. He has worked as a theater director and producer around the country, and as a concert pianist and Broadway actor.
Matt Cahill, 37, grew up near Baltimore, Maryland, and got degrees in voice from The Juilliard School and vocal arts from Bard College Conservatory, both in New York. He has performed at Carnegie Hall and in productions around the world. He has acted in TV and films and also teaches, including at a Juilliard summer program and for the Metropolitan Opera in New York.
The couple say they will continue to spend time in New York, but consider Beckett’s Castle their home. Though it’s referred to as a castle, because of the tower and Gothic look, the home is a modest 1,900 square feet, and the rooms are cozy and cottage-like. The views of the ocean from many of the rooms, as well as from the lawn and garden, are dramatic. Artists staying there can walk a short path to the rocks, where they can sit and reflect or take a dip in the water.
Completed in 1874, Beckett’s Castle was built as a summer cottage by lawyer and poet Sylvester Blackmore Beckett. The house features a three-story tower that was used as a navigational aid for ships entering Portland Harbor. Beckett hosted other writers and artists at the home, and the building itself has been the subject of many artists. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in the 1970s.
Matt and Edwin Cahill bought Beckett’s Castle four years ago and have made it their home and an artists’ retreat. Carl D. Walsh/Staff Photographer
By the 1980s, it had fallen into disrepair. Nancy Harvey, a Portland social worker, bought the house in 1982 and restored it, adding rose gardens as well. Harvey died in 2016, and her estate sold the house to the Cahills in 2018. The sale price was $2.6 million, according to the Cape Elizabeth assessor’s database.
The Cahills have been amazed at how people in Maine have embraced them and their vision for Hogfish, including other local businesses and artists and people who have volunteered to become board members. Edwin Cahill says he finds it especially gratifying to feel so welcome in his home state, because as a young gay man in Maine in the ’90s, that wasn’t always the case.
“I never thought back then I’d be living here, with my husband, and feeling so welcomed,” Edwin Cahill said.
Hogfish board member Paula Volent, who lives next to Beckett’s Castle, has been impressed with the Cahills’ idea of melding performing artists and nature and creating another avenue in Maine for different kinds of arts – including music and opera – to flourish. Volent is hosting some of this summer’s Hogfish artists at her home this month.
“I think their ideas about the regenerative power of nature and its impact on the arts are wonderful,” said Volent, who was chief investment officer at Bowdoin College in Brunswick for more than 20 years before taking a position at Rockefeller University in New York last year. “I love that they are sharing this wonderful oceanfront property of theirs with so many other people.”
One of the artists in residence at Hogfish this month who is in the cast of “L’Arbre Enchante” is Maria Brea, an opera singer based in New York City. She said the time she’s spent near the ocean at Beckett’s Castle, with the Cahills and other performers, has helped her with her craft in several ways.
“We’ve been able to be in nature and to connect with the world through our senses, which is important to an actor,” said Brea, who will be traveling to the New Orleans Opera when she leaves Maine. “Edwin and Matt are just the most positive people and their intention is to create this open and peaceful inclusive energy, which makes them really stand out.”
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