Category: Art & Theater

Bookery talk fosters appreciation

By Michael Witthaus
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Visual artist and critic Franklin Einspruch will appear at an upcoming Bookery Manchester event to discuss Aphorisms for Artists: 100 Ways Toward Better Art. Edited by Einspruch and written by the modernist painter Walter Darby Bannard, the book is a guide to seeing as much as a source for creating, and Einspruch’s talk will also appeal to non-artists.

Anyone who’s ever stared blankly at a wall of paintings in a gallery, or puzzled over an article packed with critical terms, will be relieved by the book’s simplicity. “Good art is good art. Period.,” it begins, followed by an explanatory page; this format continues for the rest of its 240 pages.

“Way down deep we are all the same,” Bannard writes. “Taste, if we have it, is what takes us down to where art lives.”

In a recent Zoom interview, Einspruch explained that his discussion at Bookery is a way in for anyone who’s had an unpleasant experience looking at art.

“This is for folks who’ve gone into a museum and just felt bewildered,” he said. “The refreshing message is you’re allowed to have your own experience. You must learn to trust that … because it’s yours.”

The inspiration to collect Bannard’s Aphorisms for Artists was born in the early 2000s, when Einspruch was a writer for Artblog.net, one of the first blogs about visual art. His old professor frequently responded to his articles, using an alias.

“He left all these jewels of wisdom in the comments section; I said, ‘We ought to assemble this into readable form.’” Over the years, “we went back and forth developing the aphorisms. It was all his creation, but I would give feedback on some of them and advice … once he was done, I wrote a foreword.” Sadly, Bannard, “Darby” to his friends, passed away in 2016 and wasn’t able to witness the first edition of his book sell out in 2022.

Bannard, whose works are in New York City’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Smithsonian and the National Gallery in Washington, D.C., and San Francisco’s Museum of Modern Art, was integral to Einspruch’s growth as a painter. He came to the University of Miami in the early ’90s with a newfound interest in abstract painting, sparked by seeing a Willem de Kooning work in a New Orleans museum.

“I tried to figure out what was going on by making abstract paintings in this very de Kooning mode,” he said. “Darby, who with Frank Stella was thrown out of de Kooning’s studio as a young painter, knew this material very, very well. I’d make a bunch of paintings, and he’d say, ‘OK, well, that’s your best one, and that one’s OK, the one next to that is no good, and

the fourth one will be fine if you rotate it 90 degrees.’”

He was right every time, Einspruch added. “The manner in which Darby could troubleshoot paintings was unbelievable.”

Those who don’t spend their days with a brush in hand shouldn’t be intimidated by the depth of this knowledge, however.

“Art is,” he declares early on, and it’s for everyone. One of the book’s key aphorisms is, “An ivory tower is a fine place as long as the door is open.” By that, Bannard meant that, like all specialties, art is elitist. “There’s nothing wrong with that,” he wrote. “Art may be for the privileged few, but they have earned the privilege and deny it to no one.”

A passion for helping others find their “eye” — a conduit to beauty — drove him as a teacher and creator. “There is no way to specify what good art is or how to create it,” he wrote in the book’s introduction. There was a caveat, however. “Certain principles, like gold in a pan, eventually wash clear enough to express in a few words.”

The many nuggets sprinkled on the pages of Aphorisms for Artists are a treasure for anyone hoping to connect with art.

“This is a book written by someone who knew very well how to make art, and he knew it so well that he could help other people,” Einspruch said. “That turns out to be a very rare skill, partly because his talent was of such extraordinary degree, but also he was able to articulate what he was doing.”

Franklin Einspruch discusses Aphorisms for Artists
When: Friday, Sept. 20, 5 p.m.
Where: Bookery Manchester, 844 Elm St., Manchester
Tickets: Free; register at eventbrite.com

Featured image: Franklin Einspruch. Photo from Zoom call by Michael Witthaus.

Palace reimagines Oliver!

By Michael Witthaus
[email protected]

Musical theater season opened at the Palace Theatre on Sept. 6 with a timeless Tony winner, Oliver! With an ensemble cast significantly drawn from the Palace’s youth program, it was also a continuation of a summer effort that included “Jr.” productions of Willy Wonka, Little Mermaid and Moana at the downtown venue.

The Palace’s annual slate of musicals — this year’s include Jersey Boys, Piano Men, Escape to Margaritaville, Jesus Christ Superstar and A Chorus Line — is a shining example of quality professional theater, and the city of Manchester deserves to be proud. The first production continues their winning streak.

The story of an orphan’s travails in Victorian London was given a makeover by director Carl Rajotte, a steampunk motif with shiny colorful costumes designed by Jessica Moryl. Some of the inspired touches included a coat worn by villain Bill Sikes (Jacob Medich) festooned with cogs and gears, along with a top hat wrapped in goggles.

Avery Allaire is brilliant in the title role, quite a feat for the young actress, who was present in nearly every scene. Her heart-rending performance of “Where Is Love” was a show highlight, setting the tone for the rest of the evening. Another young actor delivering a star turn was Chris Montesanto, most recently seen in The Prom, as The Artful Dodger.

Oliver! has some difficult moments, touching topics like human trafficking and domestic violence, but its book is packed with enough joyous songs like “Consider Yourself” and “It’s a Fine Life” to rise above it. There are enough moments of peril for its various characters for the audience to know the source material comes from Dickens.

The undeniable star of the show is Palace veteran Jay Falzone in the role of Fagin, the irascible ringmaster of the young pickpocket gang that Oliver is recruited into after being discharged from an orphanage and sold to an undertaker he later escapes from. Falzone balances Fagin’s avarice with his love for the kids in his sway, delivering plenty of laughs along the way.

The love/hate relationship between Mr. Bumble (Cody Taylor) and Mrs. Corney (Jill Pennington), who run the orphanage, provides ongoing hilarity. Longtime Palace alum Michelle Rajotte also shines as Nancy, navigating her brutal relationship with Sykes and delivering one of the show’s best vocal performances, “As Long As He Needs Me.”

Most impressive are the young actors in the cast, who handled challenging choreography assignments flawlessly and performed as a chorus with the skill of professionals. Also remarkable are on-stage musicians who augment the orchestra with violins and horns played with both precision and attitude.

Director Rajotte said after the opening night performance that a new group of kids will be on stage each weekend, through the show’s closing Sept. 29, noting that all of the PYT actors began rehearsing in mid-August. “On Wednesday, we do their costume fittings and get them up on stage to rehearse again,” he said.

Rajotte chose the steampunk costume and staging direction after re-reading Dickens’ Oliver Twist.

“Everyone should read a Dickens novel,” he said. “I found myself wondering what an 11-year-old would think reading this. That pushed me to sci-fi, and that’s what steampunk is about in the Victorian age. I thought that a child’s imagination would go that way if they were reading it chapter by chapter. That’s when we went full throttle.”

Oliver! is special, Rajotte continued. Like Phil Collins, the Monkees’ Davy Jones and Peter Noone of Herman’s Hermits, each of whom played the Artful Dodger in their teens, he experienced it as a springboard. “It was my first professional show as a kid as a performer,” he said. “I was the understudy for Oliver and Dodger, and I was a pickpocket. I just love it so much. This is my fifth time; I’ve directed it three times.”

Oliver!
When: Through Sept. 29. Fridays at 7:30 p.m., Saturdays at 2 & 7:30 p.m., Sundays at 2 p.m.
Where: Palace Theatre, 80 Hanover St., Manchester
Tickets: $45 and up at palacetheatre.org

Featured image: Photo by Michael Witthaus.

The New Hampshire State Community Theater Festival shows off NH and Mass. theater companies

By Zachary Lewis
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The New Hampshire State Community Theater Festival at the Concord Auditorium opens on Saturday, Sept. 7, at noon. The Festival is put on by the New Hampshire State Community Theater Association in conjunction with The Community Players of Concord.

“Anybody can participate in it,” said Festival Chair Joe Pelonzi. “They have to be a member of good standing with AACT, which is the American Association of Community Theater.”

“This is for people who like to do theater but they’re not professionals,” he said.

And it’s a Festival that has been drawing curtains for many decades. “You can say 50-plus years safely.”

Essentially, if this black box were in a nutshell, it would be a four-show festival cracked into two sessions. “The first session is the New Hampshire shows, and there are two New Hampshire shows. Then there’s a second session, which will be the two Massachusetts shows,” Pelonzi said.

The AACT required that the festival have two separate sessions, one for each state, according to Pelonzi. Tickets are $15 for individual sessions or $25 for the whole day.

The results of the Festival will determine the New Hampshire state winner from among the New Hampshire shows, and each performance has a chance of being chosen to represent the region, Region 1, at the national competition.

What types of plays can participants expect to see? “The acts don’t matter; the show must be performed in 60 minutes or less,” Pelonzi said.

Physical limitations go along with the temporal one.

“We just tape off a 10-by-10 square on the stage,” he said. “They start at a 10-by-10 square. And that includes all your set pieces and everything. You have 10 minutes to set up your set. You have 60 minutes to perform your show, and then you have 10 minutes to put everything back into the square.”

Any genre or style is welcome. “They can do whatever they want as long as it fits within an hour time slot for a performance,” Pelonzi said.

The Festival starts at 12:30 p.m. with a performance from Bedford Off Broadway of Sammy’s Game. “That’s the only show we know exactly what time it will be starting because everything after that is dependent on how long each of the shows are,” Pelonzi said. He is the artistic director at Broadway Off Bedford but is not involved with their performance at the festival.

After that show, the Windham Actors Guild from Windham will be presenting The Yellow Boat in the 10-by-10 square.

Then there will be a short intermission immediately followed by a panel-style adjudication of those performances. “We have three adjudicators so there are no ties,” said Pelonzi.

The panel is like a master class in theater.

“The best part, I think, of Festival is the adjudications, because they tell them what they did well and what didn’t work. They always keep it positive and they tell them how they can do better if they do go on. They’re very good at what they do,” Pelonzi said.

Cut to: a short break and then the second session, the Massachusetts session, begins. First the Burlington Players will present Natural Shocks. The Quannapowitt Players from Reading, Mass., will follow with their performance of Time Stands Still. Then there will be another judging.

After a dinner break the awards ceremony will commence, where the New Hampshire winner will be presented as well as who will be going on to the national competition.

Individual awards will be presented as well. “They also give out awards for acting excellence, directing excellence, they might give out awards for lighting, for sound, for ensemble,” Pelonzi said. “The adjudicators have a wide range of awards that they can choose individually or to a group.”

Pelonzi is excited for the contest and what to expect from the performances. “You’re going to see four quality shows. Shows that the groups have been working on all summer long. So you’re going to get the best of the best and get to see four of them in one day.”

The New Hampshire State Community Theater Festival
Saturday, Sept. 7, at 12:30 p.m.
Concord Auditorium, 2 Prince St., Concord, 344-4747
$15 for one session; $25 for both sessions

Featured image: Courtesy photo.