When Pembroke City Limits scheduled its grand opening last year, owner Rob Azevedo had Ward Hayden & the Outliers booked to play, but the debut of the Suncook music bar and restaurant was delayed. Instead, the Boston country stalwarts performed in Azevedo’s barn, the place that gave him the idea to start his own club.
Hayden will finally make it to PCL on May 17, to do a trio show with bass player Greg Hall and guitarist Tyler Marshall. His latest project is two albums of Bruce Springsteen songs done in Outliers style. The first, Little By Little, arrived last month, and the next, Piece By Piece, is due for release in October.
Little By Little is a mix of familiar hits like “Dancing in the Dark” and “Cadillac Ranch” alongside deep cuts, such as the brooding “Youngstown” and “Two Faces.” One track, “Promised Land,” bubbled up after Azevedo gave Hayden a book on tape of Bruce’s autobiography when he complained about not having time to read his hard copy.
“It’s a driving song that Springsteen wrote before he even really knew how to drive, which — I think that is so cool when it comes to creative writing,” Hayden said by phone recently. The episode happened when his band lost a car and driver on its way west. “He has to learn how to drive, but he can’t shift … to be in that moment, and put that song together.”
One bit of inspiration came about when Hayden patiently endured a drunken fan’s attempt to tell him about two stripped down concerts Springsteen did in 1990. “He wasn’t giving up on trying to try to communicate with me, so I put my hand on his shoulder, looked him in the eye and said, ‘Tell me what you’re saying.’”
“Ward, you gotta hear the Christic shows,” came the reply. So he found them on YouTube. “I was blown away.”
For the same reason Springsteen’s Nebraska is revered by many as his best album, the music is spellbinding; it’s raw and revealing. But a story Springsteen told to introduce “My Father’s House,” about asking a therapist to help him understand why he drove around late at night looking at places he once lived and being told he was trying to make a bad thing right is what closed Hayden.
“The value of that song became clear to me at that point, I was so moved,” he said. “I don’t know if that song is going to be a single or anything, but I think it’s my favorite.” That and another song from Nebraska, “Reason to Believe,” will be on the Piece By Piece collection. The latter almost didn’t get recorded.
“I wanted to rock that song … but it just was not coming together in our very last day in the studio,” Hayden said. They got unstuck by reducing the backing track to Hall’s upright bass, a bit of strumming and tambourine. “All it really needed was a very steady and driving bass to tell the story. I was trying to bring it somewhere it didn’t need to go.”
The effort, its names drawn from “Racing in the Street,” came about for a strange but fitting reason. While Hayden and his band were driving to a show in the Midwest a couple of years ago, an interview came on the radio. A former rocker, a tick away from Nickelback, was attempting to jump-start a new country direction by urging people not to listen to The Boss.
“Everyone’s trying to find an angle and work it, it’s the nature of the entertainment business,” Hayden said. “But I felt he was trying to take away something that shouldn’t be taken away. Springsteen’s music has been such a huge part of so many people’s lives, myself included. I think there’s some things of value that should be sacred, or at least protected.”
What followed was “a project without an endgame,” he continued. The initial plan was to record two songs. “The first day we turned two into three … we ended up doing about a week more of recording a little later that month, and then we just didn’t stop. We chipped away, little by little, piece by piece, for about two years and ultimately ended up with 16 songs.”
Along with all the Boss’s songs, he wrote enough original material for a new album. His last was 2023’s introspective South Shore. On his website, Hayden said his Springsteen reinterpretation helped him “say some things that I’ve not been able to say myself yet in my own work.”
Asked to elaborate, he replied, “Some subjects … are hard to face … and not always easy to share. He had a challenging relationship with his father; the autobiography really laid that out. It was important to do a couple songs like ‘My Father’s House’ and ‘Walk Like a Man’ [that] really hit home. There are things I haven’t been able to dive into yet myself, but he did it so well.”
Ward Hayden & the Outliers (Trio)
When: Saturday, May 17, 6 p.m. Where: Pembroke City Limits, 134 Main St., Suncook More: wardhaydenandtheoutliers.com
• Mixed media: The Currier’s monthly Art Off the Walls event has Black Pudding Rovers providing music, with their guitarist and keyboard player Mike Becker contributing solo songs, along with visiting artists from the current Nashua Sculpture Symposium in conversation and poetry performances from Slam Free or Die. Ongoing is the exhibition Nicolas Party & Surrealism. Thursday, May 15, 5-8 p.m., Currier Museum of Art, 150 Ash St., Manchester — more at currier.org.
• Rock revival: A performance by Zach Nugent’s Dead Set is much more than a tribute. The group grew out of a weekly residency in Burlington, Vermont. Before that, Nugent played with ex-JGB member Melvin Seals, who’s leading a three-night 60th Dead Anniversary show in San Francisco in August. It goes with saying that the guitarist is a lifetime fan of the jam band standard-setters. Friday, May 16, 8 p.m., Nashua Center for the Arts, 201 Main St., Nashua, $40 at etix.com.
• Party weekend: Another harbinger of spring for real is the annual Wake The Lake gathering, three days of live music and revelry at the edge of Lake Winnipesaukee. Among the bands playing on three stages near the pier are Deja Voodoo, a raucous band led by Eric Gagne that mixes ’90s favorites with classic rock, and Leaving Eden, an original metal five-piece fronted by singer Eve. Starts Saturday, May 17, 4 p.m., The Big House, 322 Lakeside Ave., Laconia.
• Funny lady: Here’s proof that telling someone they’re funny can lead to a comedy career. Annie Powell got her start back in 2014 when a guy sitting next to her at a Los Angeles bar asked her, “Can you tell that story on a stage the same way you’re telling it right now?” She did, and 11 years later she’s headlining both coasts, telling jokes about her “bizarre and chaotic life.” Saturday, May 17, 8 p.m., Headliners Comedy Club, 78 Elm St., Manchester, $20 at headlinersnh.com.
• Studious play: Check out the state of youth music in the region as the Perimeter Jazz Ensemble performs an early set. The 18-piece group is composed of the state’s top high school jazz musicians. They’re directed by Peter Hazzard; a former Berklee College of Music staffer who came out of retirement in 2021 to teach in Hollis, he’s currently at the Founders Academy in Manchester. Sunday, May 18, noon, Rex Theatre, 23 Amherst St., Manchester, $14 at palacetheatre.org.
Among the many hard-luck stories to come out of the pandemic, the story of Nashua Artists Association’s ArtHub Gallery stands out. NAAA opened it in February 2020, only to have the world shut it down a month later. The place remained a memory until now, but the rebirth is even better than the original.
To start with, the new location on Main Street has twice the room of the ill-fated Pearl Street space, and it’s in the heart of downtown. More room makes it easier to display larger objects, like the interesting work from sculptor George Eross, a T. Rex with duck feet and stubby arms made from dinner forks that serves as a de facto gallery mascot.
The addition of 3D art is a big part of ArtHub’s goal of including more artists.
“There is an amazing amount of talent in this area,” ArtHub co-manager Jacqueline Barry said in press release. “To bring that talent to our new downtown location will not only give the community the opportunity to see the local talent but inspire them to do their own work.”
A members-only quiet opening on May 8 also drew the curious, gallery co-manager Sonia Lee said recently, a marked difference from the light foot traffic at the old place.
“We had about 40 members come,” Lee said by phone. “And, there were two couples, not related to us, having dinner next door. They stopped in to see what we were doing.”
On May 14 the gallery will do a soft opening, followed by a grand reopening on Saturday, May 17. A wide range of work will be on display and available for purchase, from paintings and textile arts to ceramics made by artists like Nancy Barkman.
“One of the missions that we have is to give a place for the craftsmen, not just people who do wall art,” Lee said. “She’s a good example of that. Her work is artistic. You can say, well, it’s just a pot. Well, yeah. But it’s also artistic in that not just anybody can do that work. And there are a limited number of places where people who are craftsmen can show their work other than arts and crafts shows.”
Other artists displayed in the spring opening include Steve Goldstein, a Massachusetts photographer who works in black and white. Goldstein said, “creative image … serves as an antidote to all the screen time I encountered in my career as an electrical engineer.” Teresa Moller’s paintings are both colorful and whimsical. The Nashua artist will also present a puppet show during the grand opening.
Brenda Noiseux is a Granite State artist “encouraging conversations through artistic activism” who’s exhibited around the country including in Chicago and New York City, Kansas and Oregon. One of her pieces is a delicate heart-shaped bouquet surrounding the words, “Asylum was granted.” Another shows a faded student visa with “REVOKED” stamped on it, laid under a spray of flowers. Both are part of a series called “Awaiting Justice.”
The downtown gallery sits in what was formerly the League of New Hampshire Craftsmen’s gallery. Its centrality allows NAAA to take part in citywide efforts in a way they couldn’t previously, like the annual Holiday Stroll. “If you’re way off the main street, people aren’t going to come that way when you do the downtown events,” Lee said.
For nearly 75 years, the NAAA has served to advance art in Nashua and its surrounding communities. Their membership is composed of visual artists working in a variety of media as well as patrons of the arts. The organization welcomes all levels of experience, from students to established artists.
A few years after the organization formed, it launched Art in the Park, an effort that continues to this day. Through these combined efforts, they aim to foster collaborative efforts, Lee said. “Part of what I’m doing is reaching out to those other groups and recruiting, if for no other reason than just passing the word around. Because our mission is to encourage the arts, and it isn’t just our members that we’re talking about.”
Nashua Area Artists Association’s ArtHub Gallery – Grand Reopening
When: Saturdays, May 17, 2-7 p.m. with reception 5-7 p.m. Where: 98 Main St., Nashua More: On Facebook, search for “ArtHub – Downtown Gallery, Nashua Area Artists Association”
Featured photo: Work by George Eross & Work by Brenda Noiseux. Courtesy photo.
Cooperation, collaboration and interdependence are all hallmarks of New Hampshire’s theater scene, and the upcoming summer schedule exemplifies. For the second year in a row Symphony NH, the state’s biggest orchestra, will share the stage for a production at New London Barn. An independent theater company again will direct this year’s Shakespeare on the Green show Saint Anselm College, with Ballet Misha providing the choreography.
Area venues are in on the act, so to speak. Derry’s Opera House hosts multiple youth theater groups, and the Capitol Center in Concord supports an area performing arts company. Nashua’s Janice B. Streeter Theatre also opens its doors to multiple troupes.
Youngsters are a big reason for the theater season, and a good number of the listings here are performances done as part of summer camps, workshops and other efforts to get kids interested in showbiz, or get them to come out of their shells through singing and acting.
All this comes at a challenging time for the arts, as a threat to many organizations of losing longtime funding from the State of New Hampshire and the federal government is ever present.
Actorsingers
Janice B. Streeter Theatre, 14 Court St., Nashua, actorsingers.org
Teen Actorsingers performs Teen Anastasia on July 11 through July 13 (tickets, showtimes TBA). The musical takes its cues from the Disney movie. With actors ages 13-19, the group’s most recent production was Frozen Jr., which ran in April. The mainstage company recently wrapped the Legally Blonde. Actorsingers also has a Second Stage & Fringe company; its last show was 2024’s Monstersongs.
Bedford Off Broadway
Bedford Town Hall, 3 Meetinghouse Road, Bedford, bedfordoffbroadway.com
This community theater company stages three plays a year. The second of 2025 is a drama, 12 Angry Jurors, adapted by Sherman L. Sergel from Reginald Rose’s 1954 teleplay 12 Angry Men. It runs June 6 through June 15, with 7:30 p.m. shows on Friday and Saturday, and 2 p.m. Sunday matinees. Their final production, the northern small-town comedy Icehouse, is scheduled for November.
Bedford Youth Performing Company
155 Route 101, Bedford, bypc.org
Actors ranging in age from kindergarten through sixth grade perform Moana Jr. on May 17 and 18 at 1 p.m. at Goffstown High School (27 Wallace Road, Goffstown). The show is a musical adaptation of the Disney movie about a spirited island girl who teams up with a demigod. Together, they encounter all manner of adventure. BYPC offers arts instruction and experience for youths in Bedford and the surrounding communities.
The summer Children’s Theatre Project Summer Camp, booked since mid-April, commences Aug. 3 and runs through Aug. 8, ending with a performance of Moana Jr. for family and friends and Concord City Auditorium, 2 Prince St., Concord.
Cue Zero Theatre Company
Arts Academy of New Hampshire, 19 Keewaydin Drive, No. 4, Salem, cztheatre.com
An arts world early adopter, Cue Zero boasts that every one of their shows “features an element of ‘new’ or ‘first time’ to it,” so it’s fitting they’re doing a musical based on the movie Amelie, its New Hampshire debut and, director Heidi Krantz believes, the initial New England production. It plays June 20 and June 21 at 7:30 p.m., and June 22 at 2 p.m.
Debrah Hernandez as Jane Seymour in Six. Courtesy photo.
Heidi Krantz, Cue Zero Theatre Company
Heidi is directing Amelie, a musical version of the movie favorite
First of all, why Amelie?
This is one of my all-time favorite shows, and I realized that the rights were available.
This is Amelie’s first New England production. What’s the background on it?
I believe it hit the Broadway stage in New York 2016 or 2017 and only had about a month of a run there. When it came to the U.K. in 2020 they did kind of an updated version of it that is more similar to the production that we’re doing. The U.S. version sounds a lot more clean-cut. I think the U.K. version brought more of a whimsical vibe, like the movie is just so whimsical. It’s crazy. It’s all over the place. And the music really captures that.
What’s your impression of the southern New Hampshire theater scene?
I really enjoy the theater community in southern New Hampshire. I do feel like there’s a lot of room for it to expand. I find that it’s a lot easier to just frequently work with the same companies, and I have had a lot of experiences with multiple companies. I’ve had that perspective, and I would just encourage people to try to branch out more. I think we’re all in it for the same purposes, the same passions, and I feel like just getting to network more is just so important, too.
With performers from Epping Middle School, Brothers Grimm Spectaculathon has two narrators and several actors in a race to combine all 209 Grimm stories, from familiar ones like Rapunzel, Rumpelstiltskin and Sleeping Beauty to stranger, less well-known tales like Lean Lisa and The Devil’s Grandmother. Plays May 16 at 7 p.m. and May 17 and May 18 at 2 p.m. July 18 through July 20, it’s Seussical the Musical from Epping’s Main Stage company.
Kids Coop Theatre
232 N. Broadway, Salem, kctnh.org
Founded in the late ’90s by a group of parents looking to engage their kids in the performing arts, KCT offers workshops, classes and performances that revolve around the ideas “that every child has something valuable to contribute, and the experience of being part of a production can be transformative.” A cast ranging in age from 12 to 19 performs Hadestown Teen Edition Aug, 1 through Aug. 3 at Derry Opera House (25 Broadway, Derry).
Majestic Theatre
880 Page St., Manchester, majestictheatre.net
The busy company has The Emperor’s New Clothes, a musical with an eclectic score including Celtic songs, Roaring Twenties jazz and 1950s rock, May 16 through May 18. The Hart & Kaufman play George Washington Slept Here, about a couple that moves to the country with their daughter to find life more chaotic than bucolic, opens June 20. With a new Pope picked, Joseph & the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, Webber & Rice’s follow-up to Jesus Christ Superstar; it opens July 11 at Derry Opera House. Living Together is a sophisticated comedy that won a Best Revival Tony in 2009. All shows are performed four times: Friday at 7 p.m., Saturday at 2 and 7 p.m., and Sunday at 2 p.m.
Photo above and top photo on page 10 are of a previous production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream by Theatre Kapow at Saint Anselm College. Photo by Matthew Lomanno.
Robert Dionne, Majestic Theatre
Robert co-founded The Majestic with Matt Morin in 1991.
What he likes about the upcoming season…
Each show brings its own benefits by coming to see it. George Washington Slept Here is a classic comedy … a big cast show. We have a lot of really great actors that have appeared on a stage over the years, and it’s very funny. Joseph is a big, flashy musical with a cast of all ages at this big opera house. Then we end the season with a smaller show at the studio theater, Living Together, another comedy, but a little more sophisticated than maybe what they saw with the previous two shows.
Why they’re able to maintain such a busy schedule.
For the most part, we have separate teams working on each show … other than myself as the through-piece, as the producer, and our Technical Director, Matt Morin, as the technical guy, all the other teams and actors on those shows are different. So that allows us to kind of, at any given time here, we might be rehearsing four or five shows that are getting ready to go up.
Living Together is a new show, while the others have been done by Majestic before. Here’s why it was chosen.
That was brought, Greg Parker, who’s directing…. A lot of times I’ll go to directors and say, hey, what are some shows that you’re interested in or passionate about? Because obviously if it’s something they want to do, it tends to be a better process of production, because they’re very well-known and within the show.
On The Majestic’s longevity, and the New Hampshire theater community.
We have a very faithful following, not only with actors but also with audience members. We have audience members that are with us all 35 years. If you don’t have that support, then, as a head of a theater, you get to the point where you kind of get sick of spinning your wheels and maybe putting your own money into all the shows. But when you get that community buy-in — we’ve been very lucky in Manchester and southern New Hampshire, the audience members, the donors and the actors and everybody helps keep our day-to-day stuff going, [and] that kind of makes it all worth it. We build off of that every single season.
After successfully staging The Bridges of Madison County in late April and early May, MCTP is preparing for the fall season. Shrek the Musical will open on Oct. 17 and run for six performances. Auditions happen June 30 and July 1.
Nashua Theatre Guild
Janice B. Streeter Theater, 14 Court St., Nashua, nashuatheatreguild.org
An outdoor performance of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night in Greeley Park, directed by Katie Sibley, happens July 26, July 27, Aug. 2 and Aug. 3 at 2 p.m. In September, The Tin Woman, written by Sean Grennan and directed by Stephen Post, will be performed daily Sept. 19 through Sept. 21.
Spamalot by Ovation Theatre Company. Courtesy photo.
New London Barn Playhouse
84 Main St., New London, nlbarn.org
With almost a century’s worth of history, this venerable venue helped launch the career of Stephen Schwartz, who worked on Godspell there while doing summer stock. Over the years, Laura Linney, Taye Diggs and Tony winner Judy Kuhn also spent time treading its boards. Recently the Barn has branched out, with live music and collaborations like Annie Get Your Gun with Symphony NH Collaboration, which opens the new season on May 30, running through June 1. The traditional Straw Hat Revue introduces this summer cast June 4 through June 8. The first musical is one of three inspired by a movie: The Bridges of Madison County, June 11 through June 22, followed by Sister Act June 25 through July 13, then Mary Poppins July 16 through Aug. 3. Perennial favorite Hairspray runs Aug. 6 through Aug. 17, then it’s The Cottage, a stage comedy, Aug. 20 through Aug. 31. The Sea & The Stars, a romantic comedy that’s part of the Barn’s Nest new works collaboration with Transport Group, runs Sept. 4 through Sept. 7.
New London Barn plus Symphony NH
Keith Coughlin, Executive Artistic Director atNew London Barn and Deanna Hoying, Executive Director of Symphony NH, talk about their organizations collaborating for the second year. A production of Annie Get Your Gun in late May and early June will again bring together 25 Symphony NH musicians and nine singers from New London Barn.
The idea, Hoying and Coughlin both said in separate interviews, grew out of regular Zoom meetings held during the dark days of the pandemic, as everyone was wondering what might come next.
Hoying: I’ve worked for a lot of arts organizations in a number of different states, and this is the tightest group I’ve ever seen. I have to give credit to the New Hampshire State Arts Council and Jeanne Lupe, who was leading it at the time [of the Zoom meetings].
Coughlin: Through these Zoom meetings, we were creating relationships with arts organizations all over New Hampshire. When we started talking about this idea, my managing director, Elliot Cunningham, said, ‘Why don’t I reach out to Deanna at Symphony New Hampshire? This sounds like a great collaboration moment.’
Hoying: So, a couple of years ago, Elliot and Keith reached out and said, ‘Hey, we’ve got kind of a crazy idea. And I said, ‘I love crazy ideas, hit me with it. What you got?’ And they said, ‘We want to do a musical and concert.’ I said, ‘I love musical theater. We love doing that stuff.’
Coughlin: We did South Pacific in concert, and it went over just wonderfully. Our audiences ate it up. So we said, could we do it again? And we’ve expanded it, a couple more performances than we did last year.
Hoying: We’re going to have a wonderful young guest conductor, Britney Alcine, leading the orchestra. Our outgoing music director, Roger Kalia, has worked with her at his Lake George Festival. He felt very confident that she could take on this role, so we’re very excited to be able to work with her.
Ugly Lies the Bone, a drama about trauma and how we learn to live with it while healing, runs through May 18. Next it’s Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, directed by Kat Mail, opening June 6, with performances on Friday and Saturday at 7:30 p.m. and 2:30 p.m. matinees Saturday and Sunday, through June 15.
Peacock Players’ past productions. Courtesy photo.
Ovation Theatre Company
61 Harvey Road, Londonderry, ovationtc.com
Now in its sixth year, Ovation Theatre Company offers both education and entertainment, with classes and summer camps leading up to productions like the staging of Annie Jr. on May 30 and May 31. Later this summer Ovation performs The Hunchback of Notre Dame July 24 through July 26. Both shows will be held at Derry Opera House (25 Main St., Derry).
Something for everyone at Ovation
Six years ago Meg Gore traded teaching in public schools for the private sector and started Ovation Theatre Company. She teaches young actors acting skills and organizes shows, with help from her family. Daughter Katie is an ace choreographer, son Tim keeps the company website up and running, and husband Dan takes care of the business side of things.
“I do have a lot of family support,” she said. “They’re all involved, and that’s the only way that it really works.”
Gore explained that she brings an inclusive approach to Ovation, so each of her charges can shine.
“Every year with our season, we try to offer something for everyone, at least one show for everyone. So, for example, our first show of 2025 was Mousetrap. It was a play that we actually did at our studio. And that was all adults. But then we did Spamalot, which was kind of our teen show. And so that was our 13-to-19 age range. And then Annie Jr. is our show where we’re involving more of the age range from 7 to 16. And when you do different ages like that, it just offers different opportunities for different age groups. So, for example, in Annie, your 15-, 16-year-olds can play the lead because they’re the oldest and the ones with the most experience in the cast. And normally in a teen show they might not get that opportunity because in the teen show we go up to 19, and so your 17-, 18-, 19-year-olds might have those opportunities over the younger ones. We’ll always cast the best people for the roles, irrelevant of the age. But it just a lot of times will play out that way because of experience. So Annie kind of provides that younger involvement. Then our summer camps over the summer, definitely those are 7 to 13. So that’s our youngest one having opportunities to get on stage and do some stuff with those.”
Palace Theatre
61 Hanover St., Manchester, palacetheatre.org
Though A Chorus Line, opening May 30 with four performances every weekend through June 22, will close out the main stage season at Manchester’s premiere downtown venue, The Palace’s Youth Theatre Program will barely take a breath before continuing. The Dungeons & Dragons-inspired She Kills Monsters on May 28 and May 29 and Anything Goes June 4 and June 5 will complete the current PYT season. On June 10 and June 11, the 12- to 18-year-old “JV” Palace Teen Apprentice Company does 13 Jr., followed June 17 and June 18 by the Palace Teen Company’s staging of Urinetown. PYT Camp (grades 2-12) shows start soon after, with James & the Giant Peach Jr. on July 2 and July 3 followed by A Year With Frog & Toad Kids July 11, Junie B. Jones Jr. July 25 and July 26, Annie Kids Aug. 1, Mean Girls Jr. Aug. 15 and Aug. 16, and a youth version of The Addams Family Aug. 22. Summer Series happen every Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday at 10 a.m. and 6:30 p.m. as well as Friday at 10 a.m. starting with a show TBA July 8 through July 11, followed by Peter Pan Jr., Annie Jr., Madagascar Jr., Berenstain Bears On Stage, Willy Wonka Jr. and Shrek Jr. Tickets for these shows are just $10.
Palace productions
Megan Quinn is Director of Youth Programming at the Palace Theatre in Manchester. In that role she oversees the many programs offered over the summer, like PYT Camp, where young actors spend 10 days rehearsing and performing a show on the Palace Stage (three of six camps are sold out, but slots remain for James & the Giant Peach, A Year With Frog & Toad and Junie B. Jones). Young Stars Camp is geared to the youngest, 5 to 8 years old, while the others welcome grades 2-12. On hiatus is Palace Teen Company, focused on kids looking to get serious about acting or use the skill to help with their college search.
This is the time of year when it heats up for you.
Literally! Everyone’s like, after A Chorus Line, we have the summer off. I’m like, ha ha, that’s funny.
What’s the makeup of the Palace’s summer program?
The majority of the summer camp kids are probably entering second, third, fourth grade. We split them up into probably four groups, you know, and they all learn different things and come back together at different times. But there are kids who literally have never been in a theater before, up to our kids who we see all year round … it’s definitely a nice mix of all different kids. We do have older kids as well, sophomores and juniors who just want to come spend a week and do a show. It always blows my mind with these kids. We had 68 in our April vacation camp, which was Finding Nemo Kids, and they memorized an entire half-hour show in three days. It’s crazy.
How many kids wind up in a full Palace production?
I was in Margaritaville and I think there were about five or six teens in the ensemble, and for Jesus Christ Superstar I think there were three or four teens in that. Then we are going to have a lot of our teens featured in Chorus Line as cut dancers at the beginning of the show, and some of them will also do understudy roles. For these kids who want to do theater potentially in college and beyond, it looks great on their resume that they were in a professional show.
Ballet Misha and Theatre Kapow collaborated on A Midsummer Night’s Dream at Saint Anselm College. Photo by Matthew Lomanno.
Peacock Players
Janice B. Streeter Theatre, 14 Court St., Nashua, peacockplayers.org
For more than 40 years this nonprofit has brought and taught performing arts to the area’s youngsters. Weeklong camp sessions with themes like Getting Spooky and All About The Mouse start July 14. A current production of Chicago Teen Edition runs through May 18. A cast of 6- to 15-year-olds will do Beetlejuice Jr. for three nights starting July 27. On Aug. 15 Hadestown Teen Edition, performed by 13- to 19-year-olds, begins a three-show run.
Players’ Ring Theatre
105 Marcy St., Portsmouth, playersring.org
This Seacoast company, founded in 1992, is focused on new and original works by regional artists. End of the Rainbow, the current production, ends May 18. The Terrence McNally musical A Man of No Importance opens May 30 and runs Thursday through Sunday, with two shows Saturday, through June 15. The show is directed and choreographed by Ro Gavin, who also helms the summer musical Freaky Friday for the Prescott Park Arts Festival. That musical runs most Thursdays through Sundays at 7 p.m. from June 20 through Aug. 10.
Powerhouse Theatre Collaborative
401 Gilford Ave., Suite 30, Gilford, powerhousenh.org
After the two-day Play Fair on May 31 and June 1, there’s just one summer production from Powerhouse, who produced the much-lauded Tuck Everlasting last year. Elf the Musical Aug. 8 through Aug. 10 at the Colonial Theatre is a Christmas-in-August fundraiser for the Lakes Region Children’s Auction. In September, it’s Best of Broadway ’60s Edition (Sept. 6, BNH Stage) and Journey Through Neverland, an interactive theater adventure through the grounds of environmental education nonprofit Prescott Farm (Sept. 14, Sept. 20 and Sept. 21, 1 to 4 p.m., with 45-minute slots every 20 minutes).
Festivals at Powerhouse
Fifteen plays, 15 days, 15 writers and 15 directors — that’s the idea behind Powerhouse Theatre Collaborative’s annual Play Fair, happening May 31 and June 1 at Prescott Farm in Laconia. Powerhouse co-founder Bryan Halperin said recently that the idea started as a workshop during his time at Winnipesaukee Playhouse, which he helped to launch in 2004. “I think we did it four or five times there,” he said. “This is the fourth time Powerhouse has done it.”
How are festival plays selected?
For 10 weeks, beginning in January, I have a class full of students that meets once a week on Google Meets to share work. Every week they get a homework assignment with a different sort of theme or aim to practice skills. The first five weeks, they write, the last five weeks, they work on their final projects. Anyone who completes the class gets to have their play produced in the festival.
What, if any, experience do the playwrights have?
They tend to be people who have some connection to Powerhouse and want to try something new. Some people have done it every year because they love writing and they enjoy the class and they enjoy seeing their work produced.
What motivates them?
The carrot is … a lot of times you write a play and it lives in a void on the computer; it never sees the light of day. These folks, by taking the class, have the incentive that if they do the work and complete it they will actually get to see it performed. It also provides an opportunity for people to try their hand at directing because each play is directed by a different director. So it’s an opportunity for directors and actors and playwrights to essentially create a world premiere.
Do they hope to go on to greater things in the theater world?
No, because most of these people are not playwrights who are wanting to do it for a living. They’re doing it either because they just enjoy writing or for some of them, it’s the first time, and they just want to see what it’s like. Somebody this year just said, ‘I’m going to go out of my comfort zone and try this new thing.’
RB Productions Theatre Company
PO Box 67, Concord, rb-productions.com
Founded in 2003 by 18-year-old Ryan Brown, RB Productions is the youth theater company for Concord’s Capitol Center for the Arts. The troupe also performs at Concord City Auditorium. Summer shows include The Wedding Singer (July 11 and July 12), Wizard of Oz Youth Edition (July 18 and July 19), Aladdin Kids (July 19), Alice In Wonderland Jr. (July 25 and July 26) and Beetlejuice Jr. (Aug. 1 and Aug. 2).
Riverbend Youth Company
56 Mont Vernon St., Milford, svbgc.org
Affiliated with the Boys & Girls Club of Souhegan Valley, and based at the Amato Center for the Performing Arts in Milford, this troupe has Finding Nemo Jr. on May 27 and May 28, followed by The Lightning Thief – The Percy Jackson Musical for three shows beginning June 6.
Seacoast Repertory Theatre
125 Bow St., Portsmouth, seacoastrep.org
Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Cinderella opens May 15 and runs through June 15, Hadestown: Teen Edition has a two-week run beginning May 28. Shrek The Musical runs for a month starting June 26, and Into The Woods opens on Aug. 7 for a run that closes Sept. 7.
Theatre Kapow
66 Hanover St., Manchester, tkapow.com
Wrapping up a season that began last September is The Best We Could, performed at BNH Stage in Concord at 7:30 p.m. on June 14 and June 15, and 2 p.m. on Sunday, June 15. The debut from playwright Emily Feldman is a “funny, wise” look at a road trip taken by a despondent daughter and her father to pick up a rescue dog. Feldman drew heavily from two iconic American plays, Death of a Salesman and Thornton Wilder’s Our Town. Theatre Kapow’s summer schedule has just one production, but it’s big: Romeo and Juliet, part of Shakespeare on the Green at Saint Anselm College, over the last two weekends of July.
Kapow on the green
Emma Cahoon of Theatre Kapow in Concord is directing the Shakespeare on the Green production of Romeo & Juliet at Saint Anselm College, with choreography by Manchester’s Ballet Misha. It runs the weekends of July 17 through July 19 and July 24 through July 26. Tickets will be available through Saint Anselm’s Dana Center.
How did Theatre Kapow get involved with Shakespeare on the Green?
Two summers ago we did a Weekend of Macbeth and the Weekend of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. That production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream has since had many iterations. Last summer, when we remounted Midsummer again, we connected with Amy Fortier at Ballet Misha. It was Joe’s idea [Joseph Deleault, Dana Center Director] to have Theatre Kapow and Ballet Misha combine together as we’re two Manchester-based arts organizations who both have really long existing relationships with Saint Anselm. Also we have known Amy for a very long time. There’s so much overlap in the people that we work with and the people who came up training with her or work with Ballet Misha at some point. It was a collaboration just waiting to find the right thing, and then it was like Joe who kind of pushed us together to make it happen last summer.
What prompted the switch from Midsummer to Romeo and Juliet?
I like taking texts that people feel they really know [and] doing something different with them to see if we can encourage audiences to experience that story in a new way. That’s totally what we did with Midsummer every time. It was a cast of seven, six, seven all-female presenting people…. Once we got Ballet Misha involved, that also sort of added a new medium to exploring this text that like we have all encountered a number of times in various different capacities throughout our lives. I think people have their own assumptions of what Romeo and Juliet is. I mean, I feel like everyone refers to it as the greatest love story of all time, but it’s not.
Above: The Little Mermaid Jr. by RB Productions Theatre Company. Courtesy photos.
Village Players
51 Glendon St., Wolfeboro, village-players.com
This company began in the 1930s as a fundraising tool for the Wolfeboro Garden Club. It’s had some ups and downs, but in 1978 it became The Village Players and it has been going steadily since. This season’s show is Calendar Girls, based on the English movie inspired by a true story about a group of female friends putting together an artistic nude calendar to raise money for a friend with leukemia. It plays July 25, July 26, Aug. 1 and Aug. 2 at 7:30 p.m., and Aug. 3 at 2 p.m. The Players will perform Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd on Halloween.
Founded in 2004 by siblings Lesley Pankhurst and Bryan Halperin and their spouses Neil and Johanna (Bryan and Johanna now run Powerhouse Theatre Collaborative), the Playhouse has become a force in the state’s theater world. This summer there are productions of The Wedding Singer (June 12 through June 21), the timely POTUS (June 27 through July 5), Little Shop of Horrors (July 11 through July 19), Fully Committed (July 25 through Aug. 2) and The Woman in Black (Aug. 22 through Aug. 31).
Featured Image: A previous production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream by Theatre Kapow at Saint Anselm College. Photo by Matthew Lomanno.
It’s been two years since post-hardcore alt metal band House Lights released their debut album, What It Means To Feel. The Manchester alt-metal band has a new EP, The Past is Ours to Leave, and will celebrate its release with a three-city tour that kicks off at Shaskeen Pub on May 9.
The new disc shows strong musical growth and offers the group’s first collaboration. Rapper Animatronic, The Abolisher contributed words and vocals to “Heavenfall,” a song with a strong Linkin Park feel. House Lights singer and lyricist Sam Beachard first gave the song to the band’s composer Matt Laramie, who thought the rapper could provide something extra.
“That was a really fun collab,” Beachard said in a recent phone interview. “It’s such a dynamic and unique track for us, where it’s something we haven’t really explored before, getting into more of the nu-metal and adding rap into the music style. What he did on it was really cool, and really special.”
At Laramie’s urging, Beachard sent the song’s chorus to Animatronic. “He wrote around it; his verses were a million times better than what I came up with; they fit the song perfectly. He understood the emotion, the feel of the song. He knocked it out of the park.” The rapper will join the band to perform the track at the Shaskeen show.
Along with Manchester, the mini-tour stops in Lowell and Worcester.
“We wanted to do a weekend tour … an experience none of us really have yet,” Beachard said. “We’ve got the EP release coming up, so what better reason to do it than for that? Make a whole weekend out of it … maximize the promotion and the scale of what we’re trying to do.”
The new EP has a unifying theme of an addictive relationship and its consequences. This is a band that dropped a cover of Olivia Rodrigo’s “Driver’s License” a while back, a punked-up rager that made a few wonder what might have been if she chose an edgier artistic path. So it’s not a stretch, really.
“Butterfly-inducing love has devolved into a harmful cycle of gaslighting and psychological abuse,” Beachard explained. “The victim is aware of every betrayal and malicious act, but has dealt with it for so long as a tradeoff for how the good times make them feel, that they can no longer extricate themselves from this negative environment.”
This mood is best represented on the driving “Forget You,” which traces a path from “seventeen, when everything was bare and bittersweet” to “walking hand in hand together with knives behind our backs.” The song is carried by a jagged rhythm of switching melodic vocals and growling metallic screaming, and it’s a gem.
It’s also not autobiographical, Beachard said. “A lot of the songs I write are about things within my own brain. Oftentimes you get into this mode where you live a version of yourself. Sometimes your mind can kind of wander on you and explore. You start to think about what the other versions would be like and how would my life be different.”
Beachard books most of his band’s gigs, but the Shaskeen show is under the auspices of Aaron Shelton’s Kinetic City Events. Outside of House Lights shows, he’s been working with the organization more. “Aaron’s got a lot of opportunities coming his way, a lot of people reaching out for him to help them get a solid program going; but he’s only one guy.”
He’s worked on similar efforts since House Lights formed.
“I want to be part of whoever and wherever people are helping other bands get opportunities in the scene,” he said. “There are a lot of incredible musicians right now, and all they need is opportunity, people to get eyes on them, and people that are looking out for them as well.”
House Lights Release Show w/ Sleepspirit, Moments Of and Empty Halls When: Friday, May 8, 8 p.m. Where: Shaskeen Pub, 909 Elm St., Manchester Tickets: $15 at the door, 21+
• Two covers: Paying tribute to two classic rock bands in one show, Foreigners Journey appears in Nashua. The double doppelgänger group is led by American Idol finalist Rudy Cardenas, who switches between Lou Gramm doing “Urgent” and “Hot Blooded” and Steve Perry singing “Lights” and “Don’t Stop Believing.” Idol alum Constantine Maroulis sings lead occasionally. Thursday, May 8, 7:30 p.m., Nashua Center for the Arts, 211 Main St., Nashua, $39 and up at etix.com.
• Barn back: New England roots supergroup Barnstar! is touring behind new LP Furious Kindness. Founded in 2011 by Zachariah Hickman, who plays bass, it includes guitarist Mark Erelli, Charlie Rose on banjo, Taylor Armerding on mandolin, and fiddle player Jake Armerding, with everyone singing. Friday, May 9, 7 p.m., The Word Barn, 66 Newfields Road, Exeter, $38 at thewordbarn.com.
• Side man: Enjoy a special afternoon concert from Eliot Lewis, a multi-instrumentalist who’s worked with a wide range of stars, including Daryl Hall & John Oates — he’s the only musician to appear on every episode of Live at Daryl’s House. “Eliot is a musician who can do it all,” Hall said of Lewis, who’s a whiz on guitar, piano, bass and drums. His latest LP is Sonic Soldier. Saturday, May 10, 1 p.m., Axel’s Throw House, 4 Bud Way, Unit 2, Nashua, $30 at axelsthrowhouse.com.
• Mama jazz: Promising a slate of songs beloved by her own mom, Sharon Jones performs a Mother’s Day brunch with support from piano player Tim Ray, John Schultz on bass and drummer Les Harris Jr. Portsmouth native Jones started singing professionally out of high school, and then moved west. She was popular in the clubs there before returning to be a local fixture. Sunday, May 11, 12 p.m., Rex Theatre, 23 Amherst St., Manchester, $33 and up at palacetheatre.org.
• Horn time: A gathering of virtuosos from around the world, Rodney Marsalis Philadelphia Big Brass brings brass to the next generation of music lovers. Recently the band, led by a New Orleans music royalty, went to the Cayman Islands for a retreat that included many other talented brass musicians. Ensembles from Pinkerton Academy will also perform at this show. Wednesday, May 13, 8 p.m., Stockbridge Theatre, 44 N. Main St., Derry, $30 at stockbridgetheatre.com.
