Arts

Guilford Center Stage will perform Thornton Wilder’s play, Our Town, at the Broad Brook Community Center in Guilford onFriday and Saturday, May 5 & 6, at 7:30 pm and Sunday, May 7 at 2:00 pm. Ian Hefele directs a cast from the tri-state region.

A theatrical groundbreaker when it debuted in 1938, Our Town was written at the nearby MacDowell Colony in Peterborough, NH, and the town of Grover’s Corners in the play is based upon that locale.

Among the innovative features of the play is Wilder’s use of a central character, the Stage Manager, who communicates directly to the audience, and both moves the action along and interrupts it with commentary. Jennifer Gagnon plays this pivotal role.

Next Stage Arts is excited to welcome Sara Juli, a celebrated solo-performance artist, for a three-day artist-in-residence program. During her residency, Juli will develop her latest work, “Naughty,” a piece commissioned by the Strand Theatre in Rockland, ME.

The residency will culminate in two free lecture/demonstration showings on April 29th, at 11:00am and 2:00pm. This showing of the piece in development will include an audience discussion with the artist on process, feedback, and dialogue.

“Naughty” is a performance piece that explores the impacts of trauma on the brain stemming from sexual assault as a child. Interweaving regressed thinking with a conflicted inner voice, coupled with finding the humor in the tragic, the work breaks down victimhood to ultimately reclaim the mind.

Guilford Center Stage announces a GoFundMe campaign to help improve the space it uses at Broad Brook Community Center, in Guilford. The fundraiser will continue the improvements achieved with the recent renovation of the building, with two acquisitions.

First, the theater group is purchasing four air purifiers, to be used both in the auditorium and backstage, to protect the health of actors and audiences. These Oransi brand purifiers have state-of-the art HEPA filters and will recirculate all the air in the auditorium and stage area twice each hour, removing 99.97% of dust, bacteria, even viruses.

Once more, Sandglass’ signature event, A Rafter of Crankies, will take place on Thanksgiving weekend in the atmospheric big hall of Green Mountain Orchard. Performances will take place on Friday November 25 at 7 PM and on Saturday November 26 at 5 PM and 7:30 PM.

This year’s crankie artists include annual favorites Eric Bass and Ines Zeller Bass, Anna Patton, and Brendan Taaffe. Donald Saaf will be rejoining the crew with something brand new. And, for the first time, Mary Fraser will bring one of her beautiful crankies to the event!

The Fine Arts Gallery at Landmark College will host an artist reception for the “Forest Composition” exhibit on Friday, November 11 from 5-7 p.m.

“Forest Composition” is a multimedia exhibition with works by Brantner DeAtley, Betsey Garand and Gina Siepel. The works by these three artists explore themes of nature and environment, our place within it and our human connection to it.

Landmark College Associate Professor of Fine Art and Gallery Director Samuel Rowlett says the exhibit is inspired by shinrin-yoku, the Japanese practice of “forest bathing”, and the health and wellness benefits of spending time interacting with the natural world and nature’s ability to counteract some of the effects of the “technostress” of our increasingly digital world.

I’m pleased to invite you to this free program at Brooks Memorial Library next Wednesday evening. This is a wrap-up of the Words Project, which has focused on Lucy Terry Prince, Royall and Mary Tyler, and Mary Wilkins Freeman, authors from the past, who lived in Guilford and/or Brattleboro. The Wednesday program serves as a prelude to this year’s Brattleboro Literary Festival, which runs from Thursday through Sunday.

Now we turn to a more recent author, poet William Mundell (1912-1997), lifelong resident of South Newfane. Both his life and his work are of interest. At 6 pm we’ll have our traditional roundtable discussion with his nephews and with Andy Burrows, who worked with the poet on publication of his first book, Hill Journey, by the Stephen Greene Press. We’ll tell you about Mundell’s life as not only a fine poet, but a painter, photographer, town official, ski area developer, State Highway Foreman, stone mason, house builder …. There will also be a small exhibit at the library of Mundell items.