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September 30 - October 20, 2021
The Mystery of Irma Vep opens this weekend at Silverthorne Theatre Company, and there is a Climate Change Play reading at LAVA Center - make a Greenfield weekend of it! Or if you are closer to West Springfield, there's still time to catch The Marvelous Wonderettes at the Majestic.
The next issue will include events from October 7-27. 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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Exit Seven Players LTD presents The Who's Tommy
October 22, 23, 28, 29, 30 at 8PM and Oct 24, 31 at 2PM
Exit7players.org
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YOUR EVENT HERE
$5 per week for your poster and ticket link in top billing!
Email me to reserve your dates.
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THIS WEEK IN THEATRE NEWS:
from Howlround
Trauma in Theatre: Considerations for Arts Leaders as In-Person Theatre Returns
by Molly W. Schenck
From the article:
As the founder of a trauma-informed arts organization who creates original work on social emotional well-being, I’m constantly thinking about how stress, trauma, and burnout may show up in individuals, the creative process, the organization, and myself throughout a production period. Over the past several years, I’ve focused my research on understanding how trauma, nervous-system responses, and creativity intersect. In response to the pandemic, I’ve noticed an increase in conversations about trauma and a desire to create performances as a way to process lived experiences.
Have you read an interesting article about theatre recently? Send it to me! pioneervalleytheatre@gmail.com
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MAJESTIC THEATER LAUNCHES 24TH SEASONS WITH THE MARVELOUS WONDERETTES: DREAM ON SEPTEMBER 9 – OCTOBER 17
The Marvelous Wonderettes: Dream On will kick off the Majestic Theater’s 24th season of plays on September 9 at the West Springfield venue. The musical, written and created by Roger Bean, will run through October 17.
A sequel to The Marvelous Wonderettes, which the Majestic staged just over two years ago, the first act focuses on the Wonderettes, a female singing quartet, who have returned to Rockville High School to throw a retirement party for a favorite teacher in 1969. The second act, set in 1978, celebrates the 20-year reunion of the ladies’ graduating class, and their performance for that event. Some of the 60’s and 70’s most famous pop songs like “Gimme Some Lovin’,” “Downtown,” “Build Me Up, Buttercup,” “Love Will Keep Us Together” and “I’ve Got the Music in Me” are featured.
The Wonderettes are played by Kaytlyn Vandeloecht (Cindy Lou), Kait Rankins (Missy), Mollie Posnick (Suzy) and Tina Sparkle (Betty Jean). Danny Eaton is the producing director, music director is Mitch Chakour, and the set design is by Greg Trochlil. Costume designer is Dawn McKay and lighting designer is Dan Rist. Stephen Petit is production manager, and Aurora Ferraro is associate production manager.
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Irma Vep Haunts the House – Hilariously
Silverthorne Theater Announces Its First Season Show
Silverthorne Theater Company’s first production for the 2021-22 Season will be Charles Ludlum’s uproarious two-hander The Mystery of Irma Vep, opening October 1 and running through October 16 in The Perch at the Hawks & Reed Performing Arts Center, Greenfield.
Veteran actors Sam Samuels and Noah Tuleja star in this spoof of Gothic melodramas and vintage horror movies. It’s a madcap quick-change marathon in which the two actors play all the roles: the lord and lady of the manor, the starchy maid with a bloody secret, the groundskeeper with an even bloodier one – plus a werewolf, a vampire, an ancient mummy and a lingering ghost. Chris Rohmann directs this non-stop delight.
Tickets for The Mystery of Irma Vep are on sale now through Eventbrite. The Silverthorne web site has full details. For more information, write to silverthornetheater@gmail.com or call 413-768-7514. Group rates are available. This play is suitable for children age 10 and up.
Patrons should note our venue requires that they must be able to show proof (a card or photo of card) that they are fully vaccinated against Covid. Masks are required for all patrons, regardless of vaccination status.
Set in the dismal halls of Mandacrest Manor in the English moors, Lord Edgar and his new bride Lady Enid try in vain to overcome the violent past and lurking terrors that haunt the house and its unhinged inhabitants. As the director points out, “Ludlam produced his masterpiece during the AIDS epidemic, when its mockery of creeping horror served as both escape and defiance. In our own fearful time, Irma Vep offers laughter and release with a welcome return to live theater.”
Valley theatergoers will remember Sam’s appearance as Orgon in Silverthorne’s premiere of the musical Tar2f! in 2018, also directed by Chris Rohmann. Locally he has performed often with New Century Theatre and with PanOpera, and has a number of film, commercial and off-Broadway credits. Noah has appeared locally in productions at the Majestic and New Century Theatre, and in Gloucester Stage and Boston’s Actors’ Shakespeare Project and Commonwealth Shakespeare Company productions. Christina Beam costumes this show; her creations were a high point in Silverthorne’s 2019 production of The Revolutionists. The show’s Stage Manager, Cate Boram, was Sound Engineer for this summer’s radio drama production of Foxfinder. Silverthorne’s Technical Director, John Iverson will design the sets, lighting and sound for the production.
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Climate Change Theatre Action 2021 launches Saturday, Oct. 2 at The LAVA Center
The first Climate Change Theatre Action 2021 short play reading and discussion
Saturday, Oct. 2, 11:30 a.m.
Facebook
The LAVA Center, 324 Main St., Greenfield, MA 01301
https://localaccess.org
The LAVA Center’s series of short climate change plays, collectively titled “A Global Green New Deal,” opens this Saturday, Oct. 2, 11:30 a.m., at 324 Main St. in downtown Greenfield with a program of five plays bringing the voices of playwrights from Canada, Chile, Malaysia, the Philippines and the United States to LAVA audiences.
Each session will be moderated by a local playwright who has participated in previous Climate Change Theater Action readings and productions. Moderators share a bit of their own work in addition to leading the reading and discussion.
Saturday, Oct. 2, JuPong Lin will moderate. Topics identified by the playwrights in the first set include economic inequality, uprising, environmental justice, noise pollution, clean air, clean water, connecting to nature, Antarctica, climate deniers, Mumbai and Chile.
Volunteers from the audience are encouraged to participate in reading the lines. No previous acting experience is required: the focus is on sharing the points of view of writers from around the globe on how climate change impacts where they live, and what “A Global Green New Deal” might look like from their standpoint.
The readings will be followed by discussion of the issues addressed in the plays, of how those same issues play out in our local community, and what we can do to participate in meeting the challenge of climate change.
“A Global Green New Deal” is funded in part by Greening Greenfield, concerned citizens building a more resilient Greenfield by advancing sustainable practices.
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TICKETS NOW ON SALE FOR WAM THEATRE’S KAMLOOPA
Presented live in the Berkshires October 7-24, 2021
Streaming digitally November 1-7, 2021
WAM Theatre is excited to present the US premiere of KAMLOOPA: AN INDIGENOUS MATRIARCH STORY by Kim Senklip Harvey, winner of Canada’s prestigious Governor General’s Award for English Language Drama, directed by EstefanÃa Fadul (WAM’s Native Gardens, The Oregon Trail). COVID safe live performances of this new comedy, will be presented at Shakespeare & Company’s Elayne P. Bernstein Theatre in Lenox, MA, from October 7-24. A digital streaming version of the production will also be available in the United States only from November 1-7. Tickets are on sale now.
“When I read KAMLOOPA, I got goosebumps and knew immediately that it was a play our WAMily would love,” exclaimed WAM Producing Artistic Director Kristen van Ginhoven. ”With its magical realism, its heart, its activism and its ceremony, KAMLOOPA is the perfect play to close out our 2021 season.”
Come along for the ride to KAMLOOPA, the largest powwow on the West Coast. This high energy comedy follows two urban Indigenous sisters and their encounter with a lawless trickster, as they explore what it means to honor who they are and where they come from. Follow their journey in this captivating, contemporary new play, as the courageous sisters turn to the ancestors for help to reclaim their power.
The play opens on Indigenous People’s Weekend, and in line with WAM’s philanthropic mission and accountability work, a portion of proceeds from KAMLOOPA will be donated to women and girls initiatives of the Cultural Affairs office of the Stockbridge-Munsee Band of the Mohican Tribe, upon whose lands WAM lives and works.
Harvey is Syilx and Tsilhqot'in with Ancestral ties to the Dakelh, Secwepemc, and Ktunaxa communities. In May 2021, she became the first Indigenous playwright to win Canada’s prestigious Governor General’s Award for English Language Drama. The judges said: “The brilliance, the irreverence, the fire of KAMLOOPA sweeps us into the world of three Indigenous women on a mind-bending quest. The audience is seduced by the love, humour and depth of these matriarchs as they embrace and celebrate who they are in the world and with each other.”
Playwright Kim Senklip Harvey explains: “I created KAMLOOPA to ignite the power that lives within Indigenous femmes and peoples. This transformation story is an offer for all of us to be bold and passionate about having the courage to fully become ourselves.”
Director EstefanÃa Fadul agrees, stating that: “WAM’s mission of combining arts and activism and creating theatre that centers women could not align more with my own work. I am grateful to call WAM one of my artistic homes and am excited to return to direct Kim’s beautifully visceral play. From the moment I read it, the journey of the three women at the heart of the story, as they struggle to define their identities within a diaspora, resonated deeply with me. It's a story of sisters, of coming into one's own power, and finding one's place within a larger community. It is told with so much joy, heart, and imagination, and I cannot wait to share it with audiences.”
Three Indigenous actors are making their WAM Theatre debuts in KAMLOOPA. Sarah B. Dennison (Soledad at the American Indian Community House in partnership with Carnegie Hall; The Assasination of J Kaaisar at Theatre for the New City), a New York-based actor, writer, and director, originally from the Spokane Reservation, will be playing the role of Kilawna. Jasmine Rochelle Godspeed (Leonora’s World and the touring production of Leonora and Aljehandro in collaboration with Double Edge Theatre) a Massachusetts based Native American actor and playwright from the Nipmuc Nation will be playing Indian Friend #1 (Edith), and Ria Nez (Mother Courage and Her Children and The Last Days Of Judas Iscariot both at the Frederick Loewe Theater), an Indigenous (Nahautl) actress, director and artist based in New York, will play Mikaya.
Returning artists include company dramaturg Tatiana Godfrey; Stage Manager Amanda Nita Luke, who served in the same capacity this season for WAM’s online reading of The Light; and costume designer Calypso Michelet, who was the Assistant Costume Designer for WAM’s 2020 streaming production of ROE. Making their WAM debuts on this production are lighting designer Emma Deane, sound designer Caroline Eng, and costume designer Lux Haac, whose work was last seen in the Berkshires in Barrington Stage Company’s 2018 production of Well Intentioned White People.
For tickets to the live performance or digital stream of KAMLOOPA please call (413) 637-3353 or visit WAM online here. For more information about the 2021 Season and WAM Theatre’s programs, events, and artists, please visit www.WAMTheatre.com.
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What will you take with you?UMass Theater's Everybody tackles big questions about death with humor.
Everybody
by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins
Directed by Rudy Ramirez
Oct 15, 16, 21, 22 at 7:30 p.m., Oct. 23 at 2 p.m.
The Rand Theater, Bromery Center for the Arts (formerly the Fine Arts Center), UMass
Tickets sold through the Fine Arts Center Box Office and at the door.
Prices: $15 general admission, $5 youth, students, and seniors |
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A mysterious figure tells you that you will have to die today. What do you do? Well, we hope you'll laugh, for starters.
Running Oct. 15-23, UMass Theater's production of Everybody by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins follows an unfortunate soul grappling with their imminent death, while also confronting the important parts of their life…in a comedy?
Yep. As Death personified says, “figure it out? What does it mean when God just leaves you to figure it out?”
Figuring it out is a laugh-out-loud funny journey with these characters, who aren't always their best — or smartest — selves in the moment.
So, why a comedy about Death during a global pandemic?
“We have entered a time in our history when we are reestablishing our relationship with death,” director Rudy Ramirez says. “Jacobs-Jenkins play asks us to see how death plays over different kinds of bodies so we can experience our profound differences with one another over a shared connection: we will come to an end.”
Family, friends, money — what will matter the most to everybody in the end? What will become of Everybody in the end? What can we do in the meantime?
“The fact that this play asks these questions with such a great sense of humor and a vivid theatricality makes it all the richer.” Actor Percy Hornak believes that the most important takeaway from the show is “you have so little control in the grand scheme of things. You have to be intentional about what you do have control over.”
In this show, our actors are also presented with a unique challenge to their own control: Their character will be chosen randomly, giving us a different show: Every. Single. Night.
Come see this production (maybe more than once) to see what becomes of Everybody.
Get your tickets today!
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Tickets can be purchased through the Fine Arts Center Box Office (click here to go directly to our events) or at the door before each performance. |
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Exit Seven Players LTD presents The Who's Tommy
October 22, 23, 28, 29, 30 at 8PM and Oct 24, 31 at 2PM
Exit Seven Theater, 37 Chestnut Street Ludlow, MA 01056
Based on the iconic 1969 rock concept album, The Who's Tommy is an exhilarating story of hope, healing and the human spirit. The pinball-playing, deaf, dumb and blind boy who triumphs over his adversities has inspired, amazed and puzzled audiences for more than 50 years. The story is so compelling that it was produced as a world-touring ballet, a campy, over-the-top 1970's movie, then finally brought to Broadway as a brilliant, dramatic reimagination. This five-time Tony Award-winning musical version was translated to the stage by theatrical wizard Des McAnuff into a high-energy, one-of-a-kind theatrical event. With a live rock band on stage, outstanding regional talent, inventive staging, costuming and choreography driving the non-stop action, Exit 7's performance of The Who's Tommy is not to be missed.
Directed by Michael O. Budnick
Music and Sound Supervised by George Garber Jr.
Choreography by Stephanie Gilbert
Instrumental Accompaniment by Cadre Prime
Exit7players.org
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