Pioneer Valley Theatre News October 19, 2017

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Pioneer Valley Theatre Newsletter View this email in your browser  October 19 - November 8, 2017 Live Art Magazine is tomorrow! And if you haven't heard, all of the proceeds from the show go to disaster relief non-profits in Puerto Rico. Come see this incredible one-night-only show! Congratulations to the Northampton Arts Trust on their new grant. In case you haven't heard the news: "The Commonwealth's Secretary of Housing and Economic Development, Jay Ash, along with State Senate President Stan Rosenberg stopped by 33 Hawley Street to announce a grant of $500,000 to help complete Phase 2 renovations... This funding will us to direct our attention to a build out of restrooms, parts of the lobby, and the street level flexible performance and event space, all of which will allow more of the building to be open to community use." The next issue will include events through November 15. 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 Submit Your Theatre Event THIS WEEK IN THEATRE NEWS: from Howlround Welcome to the Catalan Republic: Street Theatre and Protests in Barcelona by Alicia Hernandez Grande From the article:  On September 9, 2017, the Spanish federal police, la Guardia Civil, raided a small newspaper El Vallenc in the Catalan town, Valls. The Guardia Civil was operating on the suspicion that El Vallenc was using its presses to print ballots for Catalonia’s October 1 independence referendum. As they searched, four imposing Guardia Civil officers guarded the newspapers’ doors against local neighbors who had begun to gather in protest. The alarm spread on Twitter: after growing tensions between the Spanish and Catalan governments, the federal police were now shutting down an independent newspaper. Then, a set of photos began to spread. The protesters outside El Vallenc had placed a ballot box in front of the Civil Guards and had begun voting with ballots they had just printed at home. As the box filled, the Guardia Civil finished their raid, turning up no evidence of any ballots printed within the offices of El Vallenc. Have you read an interesting article about theatre recently? Send it to me! pioneervalleytheatre@gmail.com PERFORMANCES REFUGEE a new play by Milan Dragicevich  with music by Tim Eriksen  October 19-21 at 7:30  October 22 at 2pm  The Shea Theater  3rd Steet , Turners Falls, MA  Two sisters gaze across an endless stretch of barren desert at the El Shatt refugee camp in 1943, while a war rages across Europe. In the hollows of southern Appalachia, an idealistic guitar-strumming activist fights to preserve a way of life. On the streets of embattled Belgrade, a hustler struggles to survive in the underground markets of a desperate people. What binds them together? Where is home? When we cross borders, what do we become? This new play with music jumps across time and place, with a multigenerational story of displacement, capricious destiny, and the search for identity. Tickets The Mount Holyoke College Department of Theatre Arts opens is Fall Season with Jonathan Yukich’s Frankenstein, an adaptation of Mary Shelley’s novel. The production is directed by Noah Tuleja and features set design by Vanessa James, lighting design by Lara Dubin, and costumes by Sam Eisenstein-Bond ‘18. Victor Frankenstein, obsessed with finding the secret to recreating life famously succeeds, but fearing he has overstepped the bounds of science, quickly abandons his creation and the promise to make it a mate. The Creature, betrayed and forsaken, vows to ruthlessly destroy all that his creator loves and cherishes. Performances: Oct 19, 20, 21 at 7:30pm, Oct 22 at 2:00pm at the Rooke Theatre on the MHC campus. Buy Tickets Now at: https://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/theatre For reservations: (413) 538-2406 or email rookeboxoffice@gmail.com Reserved tickets must be picked up 1⁄2 hour prior to the performance Tickets: $8 general | $5 Students and senior citizens Suitable for ages 10 and up The Majestic Theater presents THE BRIDGES OF MADISON COUNTY October 19 - 22 Majestic Theater, West Springfield The Tony Award-winning musical was adapted from Robert James Waller's 1992 book, which also inspired the hit film starring Meryl Streep and Clint Eastwood.   The story revolves around Francesca Johnson, an Italian war bride living in Winterset, Iowa in 1965. She has had eighteen years of a largely unfulfilling farm life, and when her husband Bud and two teenage children leave Iowa to attend a national 4H fair, she looks forward to a weekend free from responsibility. But then a stranger named Robert Kincaid, a photographer for National Geographic, drives up seeking directions to the covered bridges he's been assigned to photograph, and from that moment both of their lives change.   Cast members include Heather Hannon (Francesca), John Baker (Bud Johnson), Joe Casey (Robert Kincaid), Bryan Austermann (Michael), Molly Damon-Rush (Carolyn), Margie Secora (Marge), Kevin Reid (Charlie), and Kaytlyn Vandeloecht (Marian/Club Singer/Waitress). Theater Project Founder Danny Eaton is producing director, Mitch Chakour is music director and set design is by Greg Trochlil. Costume design is by Dawn McKay, and Dan Rist is lighting designer. Cate Damon is stage manager, and production manager is Stephen Petit.   Ticket for the play range from $23-$33 and are now available by calling or visiting the box office during its hours of operation, which are Monday through Friday 10am – 5pm and Saturday 10am – 1pm. For additional information, visit the website.   New England Public Radio and LIVE ART MAGAZINE Present a special FIVE-year anniversary issue! Friday Oct 20 at 7:30 PM Northampton’s Academy of Music Theater Live Art Magazine is a pop-up performance art event structured like a magazine, with shorts, features, and interstitial delights. Its editor-in-chief, artist and photographer Amanda Herman, stages a fast-moving series of introductory pieces, a collection of eight minute main articles, and a string of surprises—like a magazine’s cartoons, verse, pensive reflections and memoir.  The performers are local and regional—writers, poets, artists, musicians, dancers, filmmakers—risk-takers all.  For the fifth straight year, we ‘publish’ their new work and work-in-progress on the stage.  To celebrate this five-year milestone, we’re collaborating with local design group The Idea Collective to present SPARK! The Ideas Issue featuring an evening of fresh, innovative, sometimes wacky and always compelling ideas dreamed up by local creatives including: Whiting Award winner Vietnamese-American poet Ocean Vuong, jazz musician Khalif Neville, radio producer Karen Brown, National Geographic photographer Maria Stenzel, astronomer and cognitive scientist (AKA Mr Universe), Salman Hameed, animator and musician Matt Newman, aerialist Hayley Brown, music historian Steve Waksman – not to mention our regular contributors and audience favorite, the Sci-Tech High School Band from Springfield. We don’t document the evening in a traditional sense – we have a team of illustrators drawing each performance as it happens. No video or photography is allowed. For artists, Live Art offers a space for them to try new – even risky – collaborations. For guests, it is one time only experience – you won't be able to find the work anywhere else. It happens ephemerally and only for you.  The evening is fast paced and textured, a mix of contemplation, wit, visceral visuals, and stomping rhythms.  There’s no host--instead, we structure playfully in run-throughs.  The Magazine’s sections include readings (poetry, fiction, essay), performances (music, dance, theater), film, photography and live radio. THE SHOW ITSELF starts at 7:30 p.m. Two hours long. No intermission.  BUY YOUR TICKETS before we sell out through the Academy of Music.  Admission: $14 by web (but $18 at the door).  Students: Just $10 always. Join us! Live Art Magazine is non-profit arts organization, fiscally sponsored through Fractured Atlas. Check out our website for the full lineup:www.liveartmagazine.org Full Disclosure Festival: RADICAL INTERCONNECTEDNESS  October 20 - 21, 2017 on Town Common & a variety of spaces all in walking distance of Downtown Amherst. Tickets: $20 for everything at:  eggtooth.org Regional artists are commissioned to create work within the theme of our inter-connection with one another and to the earth. Art includes original dance, theater, sculpture, film, immersive theater, folk opera, music, spoken word, and a woven natural web of connection built on the Common. Conversations with thought leaders will be offered in nooks and crannies of local businesses including: State Rep Solomon Goldstein-Rose, Alice Nash, Mari Castañeda, Terry Jenoure, Salman Hameed, Monte Belmonte, & David Teeple.   The Women of Lockerbie - A Wilbraham United Players production Friday October 20 - 7:30 Saturday October 21 - 7:30 Sunday October 22 - 2:30 All performances on the Fellowship Hall Stage at Wilbraham United Church written by Deborah Brevoort A mother from New Jersey roams the hills of Lockerbie, Scotland, looking for her son's remains that were lost in the crash of Pan Am Flight 103. She meets the women of Lockerbie, who are fighting the U.S. government to obtain the clothing of the victims found in the plane's wreckage. The women, determined to convert an act of hatred into an act of love, want to wash the clothes of the dead and return them to the victim's families. Directed by Deborah Trimble Featuring: Jim Martin Shannon Martin Janet Crosier Kate Hebert Bill Terbush Julie Datres Tracy Hebert Michelle McBride Tickets are available on the players website www.wilbrahamunitedplayers.com $25 - reserved premium seats $20 - general admission $15 - Students & Seniors Smith College Department of Theatre presents CREATURE by Heidi Schreck directed by Isabelle Brown October 20, 21, 26, 27, 28 at 7:30 PM in Theatre 14 Mendenhall Center for the Performing Arts  122 Green Street, Northampton, MA   After being pestered by devils for more than half a year, Margery Kempe – new mother, mayor's daughter, and proprietress of a highly profitable beer business – is liberated from her torment by a vision of Jesus Christ in purple robes.  Visions are hard to come by, even in 1401. Should we trust the new Margery, with her fasting and her weeping and her chastity fixation, or burn her with the other heretics? Can a woman of insatiable appetites just up and audition for sainthood?  Playwright and OBIE-winning actor Heidi Schreck conjures a collision of contemporary and medieval imaginations: a very funny, a little bit scary new play about faith and its messengers. $10 General, $5 Students/Seniors, Free for Smith Students Buy tickets online or call 413-585-3220   Exit 7 Players present The Addams Family - a New Musical Comedy 10/20, 10/21, 10/27, 10/28, 11/3, 11/4 at 8PM; 10/22, 10/29 & 11/5 at 2PM Exit 7 Players Theatre, 37 Chestnut Street, Ludlow, MA The Addams Family - America's darkest family, comes to life in this hilarious original musical about love, family, honesty and growing up. The Chicago Sun-Times had this to say about the Drama Desk, Outer Critics Circle and Drama League Award-winning adaptation - "Note to Broadway (and not for the first time): If you want to see how to make a musical really snap into place — how to connect with an audience in that uncanny way that is so crucial for success, how to delineate characters so that we cannot help but cheer for them, and how to turn every production number into a giddy explosion of song and dance — pay a visit..." to the Addams Family Musical. In the upside-down world of the Addams Family, to be sad is to be happy, to feel pain is to feel joy, and death and suffering are the stuff of their dreams. Nonetheless, this quirky family still has to deal with many of the same challenges faced by any other family, and the spookiest nightmare faced by every family creates the focus Lippa, Brickman, and Elice’s musical: the Addams kids are growing up. The Addamses have lived by their unique values for hundreds of years and Gomez and Morticia, the patriarch and matriarch of the clan, would be only too happy to continue living that way. Their dark, macabre, beloved daughter Wednesday, however, is now an eighteen year-old young woman who is ready for a life of her own. She has fallen in love with Lucas Beineke, a sweet, smart boy from a normal, respectable Ohio family — the most un-Addams sounding person one could be! And to make matters worse, she has invited the Beinekes to their home for dinner. In one fateful, hilarious night, secrets are disclosed, relationships are tested, and the Addams family must face up to the one horrible thing they’ve managed to avoid for generations: change. The Saturday October 28 and Sunday October 29 performances will be ASL (American Sign Language) interpreted. For those audience members who will be needing the interpreters they should sit on the left side of the house (section 3) if at all possible. Tickets Happier Valley Comedy presents Happier FAMILY Comedy Show October 21 at 3:00 PM The Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art Let's make your happy family HAPPIER! Join us at 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, October 21st 3-4 pm (doors open at 2:45) The Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art, 125 W Bay Rd, Amherst, MA 01002 Tickets at the door*: $5 Kids (4 years+), $10 Adults, Kids 3 years and under are FREE! *Attendees do not need to purchase museum entrance.  **Note: Museum members get a discount for Show tickets. This month's show will benefit The Hitchcock Center! The Hitchcock Center’s unique programs for children, adults, and schoolteachers foster a greater awareness and understanding of the environment. Using the best practices of environmental education, we help an average of 8,200 people a year to develop the skills, aptitudes, and attitudes needed to care for our planet’s ecological systems and create environmentally sustainable communities. To find out more. We'll also have facepainting available at the show artfully applied by our good friend, Emma Rose Huse! For more info on the show click here. Serious Play Theatre Ensemble presents... Staged Reading: Love and Information  Written by experimental British playwright Caryl Churchill Directed by Sheryl Stoodley Performances: 8p.m. - Sat., Oct. 21, Sun., Oct. 22, and Mon., Oct. 23 Location: A.P.E. at Window, 126 Main St, Northampton, MA Tickets: All tickets $18 - Fall fundraising event. Performances appropriate for 14 yrs. and up. Available online. Box office opens at 7:30p.m. at A.P.E. on nights of performance  Originally produced at the Royal Court Theater in London, experimental British playwright Caryl Churchill's "Love and Information" ingeniously mirrors our age of splintered attention span. Each of the self-contained scenes, often seconds long and caught in mid conversation, deals with the ways we lust for, process, and reject knowledge. The play focuses on individuals trying to connect with, and understand each other in the 21st century. Each segment presents a situation likely to be familiar, and each seems as contemporary as cellphones and as eternal as humanity itself.  The cast includes Natalie Djondo, Lisa Enzer, Nanette Mendeita, Dan Morbyrne, David Regan, Patrick Ryan, and Linda Tardif. The play is directed by Sheryl Stoodley with Stage Manager Gabe CiFuentes. Many of the cast have previously worked with Serious Play, but included are some new faces of theatre students from Holyoke Community College, where Stoodley is a Theatre professor.  This play is part of Serious Play's new Perspectives Through Performance initiative, a program designed to set up a cultural exchange between theatre performers in the U.S. and the U.K., particularly those involved with the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Later this season, Serious Play will host Scottish actress and musician Mairi Campbell in her critically acclaimed one-woman performance, "Pulse". "Love and Information" will be the first performance from "across the pond." On Wednesday, October 25, in collaboration with Passport Theatre, Silverthorne Theater Company will present  LUNGS, by Duncan Macmillan, performed by Stephanie Carlson* and Lindel Hart under the direction of Ellen Kaplan. Curtain time is 7 pm in The Wheelhouse at Hawks & Reed Performing Arts Center, 289 Main Street, Greenfield.   Seating is limited: tickets are available by calling 413-768-7514 or online at Eventbrite or www.silverthornetheater.org.   The world is getting hotter, there’s unrest overseas—the seas themselves aren’t very calm—and one couple is thinking about having a child. LUNGS is a smart and funny drama that follows a couple through the surprising lifecycle of their relationship as they grapple with questions of family and change, hope, betrayal, happenstance, and the terrible pain that you can only cause the people you love.    "Duncan Macmillan's distinctive, off-kilter love story is brutally honest, funny, edgy and current. It gives voice to a generation for whom uncertainty is a way of life through two flawed, but deeply human, people who you don't always like but start to feel you might love." The Guardian.   Plans are to move this play from the West End to New York, so this will be the last time it will be possible to see this important play for months or possibly years. Ms Carlson performs with permission of The Theatre Authority, Inc.   This special one-time performance will benefit Silverthorne Theater Company's upcoming community event, Your Voice, Poet - a free public performance/ discussion featuring the play by Haitian playwright Jean Dany Joachim, winner of STC's 2016 Playwrights of Color competition.    Your Voice, Poet, addresses the question of the function of art in a dysfunctional world, and will be performed at the Bing Arts Center in Springfield on November 25, and at the Hawks & Reed Performing Arts Center in Greenfield on November 26. This performance/discussion event is partially supported by MassHumanities. More information about this event. UMass Theater presents Runaways Music, lyrics, and book by Elizabeth Swados Directed by Lou Moreno, artistic director of New York City's INTAR Theatre Nov. 1, 3, 4, 9, 10, 11 at 7:30 p.m., Nov. 11 at 2 p.m. School matinee Nov. 8 at 10 a.m.   The authentic and diverse experiences of homeless youth come alive on our stage through the characters in Elizabeth Swados' Runaways, running Nov. 1-11 at UMass Theater. The authentic and diverse experiences of homeless youth come alive on our stage through the characters in Elizabeth Swados' Runaways, running Nov. 1-11 at UMass Theater.  Shaping these stories into theater that is truthful and sensitive to the issue of youth homelessness, which is central to Runaways, is guest director Lou Moreno. He brings to bear his professional credentials as a director and as artistic director of New York City's INTAR Theatre, as well as his experience working with homeless LGBTQ youth. He's motivated by a desire to portray these tossed away youths as real people who often fade into the background of our everyday lives.   Interviews with homeless youth in New York City formed the basis of Swados's musical, which premiered on Broadway in 1978 featuring some of those very same homeless youth. And as our artists tackled the play in 2017 at UMass, they quickly found that the stories are compelling and relevant in our time and place.  The diverse cast, which includes community members as well as actors-in-training at UMass Theater, has come together as an ensemble to bring truth to characters who are by turns energetic, angry, joyful, and wounded as they tell of their experiences in a society that stereotypes, disrespects, or dismisses them. What happens to them, they want you to realize, happens not only in big cities but in smaller towns and even on this campus. $5 students/seniors, $15 general admission Visit the Fine Arts Center Box Office in person, online, or by calling 1-800-999-UMAS The Majestic Theater presents Crimes of the Heart by Beth Henley November 2 through December 10 The Majestic, West Springfield The story is set in Hazelhurst, Mississippi in 1974, and focuses on the gathering of the three Magrath sisters; Lenny, Meg and Babe. The trio has come together at the home of their grandfather, who is living out his last hours in a local hospital. Lenny, the eldest sister, is unmarried and facing few prospects. Meg, the middle sister, has had an unsuccessful attempt to launch a singing career in California, and Babe, the youngest, is out on bail after having shot her abusive husband. Joining them are their cousin Chick, an old boyfriend of Meg's named Doc, and Barnette, an awkward young lawyer attempting to keep Babe out of jail. As one critic put it, "It's a play with heart, wit, and zany passion."   Cast members include Emily Bloch (Lenny), Suzanne Ankrum (Meg), Katie Sloan (Babe), Dan Whelton (Doc), Josiah Durham (Barnette) and Elizaeth Drevits (Chick). The play is directed by Cate Damon, and producing director is Danny Eaton. Set designer is Greg Trochlil, Dawn McKay is costume designer and lighting designer is Dan Rist. Stephen Petit is production stage manager. Ticket for the play range from $23-$30 and are now available by calling or visiting the box office during its hours of operation, which are Monday through Friday 10am – 5pm and Saturday 10am – 1pm. Ja’Duke Center for the Performing Arts presents SISTER ACT the Musical Friday, November 3 @ 7pm - Saturday, November 4 @ 7pm - Sunday, November 5 @ 2pm Greenfield High School, 21 Barr Avenue, Greenfield, MA  This hilarious and joyful musical, based on the hit Whoopi Goldberg film with book by Emmy and Golden Globe Award winning duo Cheri and Bill Steinkellner, follows Deloris Van Cartier, a wannabe diva whose life takes a surprising turn when she witnesses a crime and the cops hide her in the last place anyone would think to look - a convent! Under the suspicious watch of Mother Superior, Deloris helps her fellow sisters find their voices as she unexpectedly rediscovers her own. This sparkling musical comedy was nominated for five Tony Awards, including Best Musical, and features original music by Tony Award and 8-time Oscar Award winner Alan Menken, with lyrics by Broadway’s Glen Slater. The New York Post called Sister Act “ridiculously fun,” and audiences around the world have jumped to their feet in total agreement. Don’t miss the heavenly musical comedy of the season SISTER ACT THE MUSICAL. PURCHASE TICKETS AT THE DOOR OR ONLINE Valley Light Opera presents My Fair Lady November 3, 4, 10, 11 at 7:30 PM November 5 and 12 at 2:00 PM Academy of Music, Northampton In a brand-new, glittering and richly imagined production, Valley Light Opera brings Lerner & Loewe’s classic musical My Fair Lady to the Academy of Music in Northampton November 3rd, 4th, 10th and 11th at 7:30 and November 5th and 12th at 2:00PM. Nearly everyone knows the story – based on Shaw’s Pygmalion – of Eliza Doolittle, the Cockney flower girl transformed into a grand lady by the eccentric Professor Henry Higgins. But the VLO gives this old favorite a new dimension, continuing its tradition of looking deeply into the hearts of its characters and bringing them vibrantly to life as complex and fascinating human beings. Since opening 61 years ago, My Fair Lady has been beloved not only for its deliciously witty lyrics and enchanting music – including tender ballads, hilarious monologues, a racetrack Gavotte and boisterous barroom numbers – but also for the visual delights of the Edwardian period with swanky ballrooms, top hats, and sweeping gowns contrasting with colorful pubs and seedy street life. The show critics called “wise, witty, and winning . . . a miraculous musical” has only gained in stature over time. In today’s world, its grand themes have special resonance: the clash of cultures, the relations between men and women, class resentments – and the power of love to bridge all gaps. Valley Light Opera will be performing My Fair Lady as a fully-staged and orchestrated production, complete with the sumptuous costumes and splendid sets for which the company is renowned.  Artistic Director: Drew Gilbert Music Director: Michael Greenebaum Choreographer: Nicole Newell Presented by Arrangement with Tams-Witmark.  Valley Light Opera  Facebook Tickets online or contact the Academy of Music Box Office at 413-584-9032 AUDITIONS & OPPORTUNITIES Pioneer Valley Theatre Companies Is your theatre company missing? Email me! Academy of Music Theatre Arena Civic Theatre Black Cat Theater Chester Theatre Company The Country Players Eggtooth Productions Exit 7 Players Ghost Light Theater Hampshire Shakespeare Company Happier Valley Comedy Ko Theater Works/Ko Festival of Performance Majestic Theater New Century Theatre PaintBox Theatre Pauline Productions Real Live Theatre Red Thread Theater Serious Play Theatre Ensemble Silverthorne Theater Smith College Department of Theatre St. Michael's Players TheatreTruck Westfield Theatre Group Wilbraham United Players Hampshire Shakespeare Company is currently seeking a Production Manager, a Fundraising Director, and a Publicist for the 2018 Summer season of “Shakespeare Under the Stars,” which will include the adult productions of Othello and Twelfth Night and the Young Company production to follow. Please see the website for more information on how to apply! WORKSHOPS & CLASSES Submit your workshop or class here! 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