Creating Regenerative Arts in Maine
arts & culture
At Hogfish in Cape Elizabeth, artists gather to create work that restores connection—to themselves, to each other, and to the world around them.
words by maggie knowles
photos by meredith brockington & matt cahill
Regenerative arts—inspired by regenerative agriculture and indigenous wisdom to restore, revitalize, and heal ecological and social systems—began in the 1970s but gained momentum in the 2010s. Maine’s Hogfish in Cape Elizabeth has emerged as a leader in this field having offered four seasons of performing arts residencies and productions across southern Maine.
To do so, Hogfish has created an incubator with a hybrid approach that produces regenerative work, adapting classics and creating new works featuring underrepresented
voices and supporting artists-in-residence who create original projects. During the eight-week residence (June–August), half the day is for rehearsals of the flagship
production, and half the day is for the residency. Artists are offered multiple healing modalities to support their work, including time in nature, yoga, performance enhancement hypnosis, and the Alexander Technique, a method of hands-on healing. In addition, artists are welcomed each day to the home of founders, Matt and Edwin Cahill, Beckett Castle, a historic property on the coast of Cape Elizabeth with an internationally recognized rose garden, to practice, relax, swim, and stop to literally smell the roses.
Artists are not required to present their work while in residence, but may choose to do so as part of the works-in-progress series, the Regenerative Arts Seed Project, where they can receive valuable feedback from the community in a facilitated Q&A.
Hogfish has supported 54 artists-in-residence and their projects. Highlights include Laura Careless’ She-Wolves, a one-woman mix of dance, story, and song bringing to life the forgotten female rulers of England before Elizabeth I, based on Helen Castor’s book of the same name; Catfish the Musical by Matt Anchel, a new LGBTQ+ retelling of the Parfumerie, source material for the movie You’ve Got Mail; and A Través de Estos Ojos (La Frontera Through My Eyes), an exploration of the US–Mexico border in poetry by Rachel Hurtado Dunbar.
Highlights of flagship productions include CarmXn, a modern adaptation of the classic opera Carmen with a LatinX cast exploring borders of gender, genre and geopolitics, and Queen Marinette, a new indigenous and non-indigenous collaboration musical about connecting to ancestry in America.
“They’re giving us space to learn about ourselves together. Not only making a show together, but making our own projects at the same time, in relation to one another. That we get to do that in this place where we have dedicated time to work on our own practices—it’s very hard to come by,” says Amelia Rose Estrada, who played La Presy in CarmXn.
Adrian Kramer, Don José in CarmXn says, “Edwin and Matt really believe philosophically that a show is only enhanced when each performer brings themselves as fully as possible, and that’s borne out by the invitation to explore these other parts of our artistic output and see if they can manifest in the piece.”
Summer 2026 flagship production will be Wholly Unwinding, a new musical by Hailey McAvoy. The show captures Hailey’s experiences growing up with cerebral palsy, difficulties she faced, and her journey to embodiment through the Alexander Technique. It’s part musical, part folk songs, spirituals, and stories around the campfire that invites us all to come home to our bodies by singing the songs of scars.
Before the show, the audience will be treated to stories and artwork from the local disability community, curated in collaboration with the Double House Arts Collective. A post-show inclusive dance party created in collaboration with Sparks Inclusive Arts will break down traditional barriers between artist and audience. This production will be the first that began its life as a regenerative arts seed project by an artist-in-residence.
The story of Hogfish winds through the personal and professional lives of founders Edwin and Matt Cahill. Edwin was born in Portland and Matt in Baltimore. Both left home for New York City to pursue a life in the performing arts. Edwin performed in television, film, and on Broadway, getting to work with his childhood heroes Stephen Sondheim and Hal Prince, artists responsible for musical theater hits like West Side Story, Sweeney Todd, and Phantom of the Opera. Matt danced in the movie The Producers! and starred in legendary director Peter Brook’s adaptation of Mozart’s Magic Flute. They had made a life in the performing arts and yet both felt dissatisfied—cut off from family back home, separated from nature while in major metropolitan areas, and largely from their own lived experience as gay men as the stories they were hired to tell were “straight.”
Seeking to change some of that, Edwin founded the Fire Island Opera Festival in 2013 and programmed a queer retelling of the Versailles party-piece opera, The Magic Tree by Gluck. Edwin cast Matt as one of the leads who is caught in a gay love triangle. That production was the first time that Matt had ever been cast in a role that matched his sexual orientation. He realized the great gift of being able to act in love without having to act straight first. And perhaps an even greater gift is the risk of sharing your true self and being truly appreciated by an audience shouting, Bravo!” It was a transformative moment for both Edwin and Matt as humans and artists.
Afterwards, Edwin and Matt realized they wanted to share that transformational moment for everyone, not just those who shared their background and identities. But where would they find a Fire Island for all? On their way back home to Baltimore, they visited the National Aquarium and were stopped in their tracks by a big, beautiful fish with wild colors and a pig-like snout that lives its life as two distinct sexes—the hogfish, a natural-world embodiment of the beauty of celebrating difference. They found their name. On trips back to Portland for the holidays, they realized that southern Maine had everything else they had wished for. They found their place.
In 2018, Edwin and Matt married at Wolfe’s Neck Center for Agriculture and the Environment in Freeport, one of the national leaders in regenerative agriculture. They realized that their goals in the arts were a lot like regenerative agriculture principles—increasing diversity in storytelling, establishing “living roots” in the community, and making an effort to enrich artists, nature, and communities, creating a kinder, gentler, non-extractive way of making art. Hogfish—celebrating the regenerative arts in southern Maine—was born in 2021.
Hogfish will kick off the 2026 season with its fundraiser Kegs & Roses, on Saturday June 27. It’s the once-a-year chance for the public to experience the spiritual home of the regenerative artist residency and the internationally recognized rose garden of historic Beckett Castle on the rocky cliffs of the Atlantic Ocean in Cape Elizabeth. Every year is different, with the roses at peak bloom and artists from Maine and around the world serenading visitors.
Says mezzo-soprano Kim Mendez, Ljubica in Svadba “I’m a different person now, and that’s all thanks to everybody at Hogfish who’s worked so hard to create this space. It’s the best experience I’ve had in a really, really long time.”
