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August 11-31, 2016
Becky's New Car opens tomorrow night at Gateway City Arts in Holyoke. If you haven't checked out that space yet, Ghost Light Theater's production should be reason enough! More information listed below.
The next issue will include events through September 7. Submit upcoming events via the link below or by emailing me before Tuesday at midnight. Any questions, comments or feedback? Email me at pioneervalleytheatre@gmail.com
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THIS WEEK IN THEATRE NEWS:
from Howlround
What Is a Feminist Play Anyway?: Getting Specific
by Catherine Castellani
From the article:
Last year, playwright Elaine Romero put out an informal call for feminist plays. I wanted to participate, and as I looked at my body of work to select a play, I went into a bit of a tizz. What is a feminist play? Are all my plays automatically feminist just because I am a feminist? I’ve had that call for scripts in the back of my mind for a while, wondering what it means for my own work and for interpreting work generally. In this series of blogs, I will open that question up to the hive mind. What is a feminist play? Can a feminist play be written by a man? Does the main character have to be a woman? Does that woman have to be “good” or “right” or fighting for her rights or what, exactly, what? In starting to stir these questions in my own mind, I decided to go back to the source, and get a definition from Elaine Romero.
Have you read an interesting article about theatre recently? Send it to me! pioneervalleytheatre@gmail.com
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Double Edge Theatre presents Once a Blue Moon (Cada Luna Azul)
August 11-22
Wednesdays - Sundays at 8 p.m.
All performances will take place at Double Edge's Farm, 948 Conway Road in Ashfield, MA
Once a Blue Moon (Cada Luna Azul) is inspired by magic realism and many Latin American stories, including Alejandro Jodorowsky's Where the Bird Sings Best, Isabel Allende's Eva Luna, writings by Borges and Marquez, as well as poetry by Pablo Neruda and Octavio Paz, Imagining Argentina by Lawrence Thornton and the film Black Orpheus. The story reflects an increasingly universal situation in which “progress” displaces people, in this case causing a flood. It is a story of memory, culture, and song, imbued with the excitement of Latin American carnival. Audience members, traversing the landscape, encounter and mingle with the townspeople of Agua Santa.
For tickets and more info., visit the website.
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Ghost Light Theater Presents: Becky’s New Car
By Steven Dietz
Directed by Joe Van Allen
Gateway City Arts
Judd Paper Hall
92 Race Street, Holyoke
Friday, August 12, 8:00 pm
Saturday, August 13, 5:30 pm
Sunday, August 14, 2:00 pm
Thursday, August 18, 8:00 pm
Friday, August 19, 8:00 pm
Sunday, August 21, 2:00 pm
Have you ever been tempted to flee your own life? Becky Foster is caught in middle age, middle management and in a middling marriage—with no prospects for change on the horizon. Then one night a socially inept and grief-stricken millionaire stumbles into the car dealership where Becky works. Becky is offered nothing short of a new life… and the audience is offered a chance to ride shotgun in a way that most plays wouldn’t dare. The cast includes Sue Dziura as Becky, Ethan Blake as Chris, Patrick Healey as Joe, Emily Smith as Kenni, Luke Smith as Steve, Kevin Tracy as Walter and Christine Voytko as Ginger.
All tickets are $10 and are available at the door or online or on the Facebook page. Facebook event here.
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Hampshire Shakespeare Company presents Young Company's A Midsummer Night's Dream
August 12, 13, 14 at 7:00 PM
Massachusetts Center for Renaissance Studies, 650 E Pleasant St, Amherst MA 01002
Each summer Hampshire Shakespeare's Young Company takes part in a two-week rehearsal intensive to bring you their version of one of Shakespeare's classics. Come check out the hard work of these aspiring young actors.
Athens, CT, 1995. Colors are muted, rooms are air-conditioned, and expectations for boys and for girls are clear. When one young woman resists the expectations of her father, she and her friends must flee into the wood- where the summer night is hot, the balance is off, and the rules are very, very, different.
All tickets $10. More information online.
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This month, The Ha-Ha's are joined by our special local friends GerryNuggeT, a two-person improv group featuring Mosie McNally and Kristina Smarz.
The Ha-Ha's will perform "The Armando" with a special guest storyteller, Jay Sefton, who will inspire a series of wacky improvised scenes!
About our monologist:
JAY SEFTON is the writer/performer of The Most Mediocre Story Never Told!, for which he was the recipient of the LA WEEKLY award for best solo performance 2008. He lives in Hadley with his wife and three cats. He is a recent graduate of Lesley University’s Graduate School of Arts and Social Sciences with a master’s degree in psychology.
Saturday, Aug. 13th at 8pm - doors open at 7
Arts Block Cafe
289 Main St., Greenfield, MA
Tickets available online and at the door: $13
(Click the ticket link and scroll to the bottom of the page to choose single or multiple tickets.)
Audiences can look forward to a full evening of comic entertainment rated PG-13 in this handicapped-accessible space. For more information about The Happier Valley Comedy Show, visit the show website at www.happiervalley.com.
(Please note: There will be no after-show/jam in August. But it will be back in September!)
All-new shows every month!
The Happier Valley Comedy Show are
on the SECOND SATURDAY of every month
8:00 - 10:00pm
at the beautiful, first floor Arts Block
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MAJESTIC THEATER SUMMER CHILDREN’S THEATER presents
TREASURE ISLAND
Sunday August 14 - 2pm & 6:30pm
Monday, August 15 - 10am, 1pm & 6:30pm
Tuesday, August 16 - 10am, 1pm
Wednesday, August 17 - 10am, 1pm
The Majestic will also present children’s theater this summer. “The Frog Prince: A Musical," "A Little Princess" and "Treasure Island" will be presented in July and August. Admission is $9 per person. Those who purchase tickets to all three plays at the same time join "The Snack Club," which entitles them to get free snack at each play.
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The Majestic Theater presents Improvisational Comedy with The Majesters
Featuring a troupe of the best improv comics from across the Pioneer Valley and beyond for an evening of unscripted comic mayhem. The program begins with improv scenes similar to "Whose Line is it Anyway," and is followed by a storyline that's developed with help from the audience. Improvisational Comedy with The Majesters takes place Wednesday nights at 7pm July 6-August 24. Tickets are $7.
IMPROVISATIONAL COMEDY WITH THE MAJESTERS SCHEDULE:
Wednesday, August 17 - 7pm - $7
Wednesday, August 24 - 7pm - $7
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Introducing our ALL NEW Show...
The Happier FAMILY Comedy Show!
Funny for the whole family (and perfect for kids 5-12 and their adults)! Get your family-friendly funnies in this totally interactive, high energy improv comedy show on the third Saturday of every month.
Our next show is coming up!
Saturday, August 20th
4-5 pm (doors open at 3:45)
The Community Room of the Eastworks building (116 Pleasant Street, Easthampton)
Tickets at the door: $5 Kids, $10 Adults, $30 Immediate Family Max. **Payments by cash or check only**
For more info on the show click here. Facebook event here.
Answers to your FAQs:
IS THIS SHOW FAMILY FRIENDLY? Um, yeah! By its very definition and design. This show is rated G. We think it's most appropriate for kids 5-12, but everyone is welcome.
WHAT MAKES A FAMILY? Love makes a family. You don't need to be related to come to the family show. You don't even need to be a kid!
WHAT IS THE FAMILY MAX TICKET THING? It's our immediate family discount. So you pay only $30 max for an immediate family circle. But our tickets are super reasonable anyway: Kids are only $5. Their adults are $10.
Any more questions? Email info@happiervalley.com or post them below!
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Conclusion of new opera on 1960 ‘Scarlet Professor’ case in free preview staging
A free workshop performance of the concluding half of The Scarlet Professor, a new opera based on the celebrated 1960 arrest and trial of Smith College professor Newton Arvin, will take place on Sunday, August 21 at 3:00 p.m. in Buckley Recital Hall at Amherst College. The semi-staged performance will be followed by a discussion with composer Eric Sawyer, librettist Harley Erdman, and author Barry Werth, on whose book the opera is based.
The Scarlet Professor recounts the story of Newton Arvin, a nationally renowned literary critic and English professor who was arrested in 1960 along with two younger colleagues for possessing ‘beefcake’ pornography. The opera blends the human drama of men caught in a national crusade against perceived indecency with fantasy based on scenes from the book Arvin wrote about most passionately: Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, with its depiction of sin, secrecy, and shame in small-town New England.
Today, this nationally famous case is seen as an historical fulcrum, perched between the cultural McCarthyism of the 1950s and the “new world” of personal liberation ushered in by the 1960s.
The August 21 workshop is a final sneak preview to the world premiere production of The Scarlet Professor to be performed at Smith College in September 2017.
Sawyer, a music professor at Amherst College; and Erdman, a theater professor at UMass Amherst, collaborated previously on The Garden of Martyrs, an opera premiered in 2013 by the Springfield Symphony at Northampton’s Academy of Music. Werth’s award-winning account of the events first appeared in The New Yorker magazine in 1998.
Directing the stage will be Ron Bashford, a theater professor at Amherst College and a member of the Lincoln Center Theater Director’s lab, who brings his production of Shakespeare’s Pericles to Amherst next September. The performance will also feature dance and choreography by Paul Matteson, and Eduardo Leandro will conduct.
The cast will include seven leading opera vocalists from the New England region including UMass faculty tenor William Hite, as well as a chorus led by Gregory W. Brown.
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