Category: Art & Theater

Faithless is a fast-paced look at modern religion

By Michael Witthaus

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A play with humor, intelligence, drama and the pacing of a West Wing episode, Jon Klein’s Faithless arrived on director Monique Peaslee Foote’s desk at an inconvenient time. New Hampshire Theatre Project head Sean Robinson gave her the script, asking if she’d give it a read, when “I was in no position, with no desire to do it,” she said by phone recently.

Then she dug into the story of a family crisis confronting Gus, an aging atheist, and his two grown stepchildren; Calvin, a minister, and Claire, who teaches comparative religion but is a skeptic until a head injury causes her to think she’s seen the divine. The cause of the conclave is Gus’s adopted teenage daughter Rosie, who’s decided she wants to become a nun.

“I was hooked after three pages,” Foote said. “Number one, it’s funny, and I think we’re at a time in life where that’s good. It’s witty, and it’s fast-paced…. I’m all about a 90-minute show, no intermission these days. Get me there, tell me the story, and then I’m going to peace out. And that’s what this piece does.”

Foote describes the play’s four actors as “whip smart” — Jim Sears playing Gus, Stephanie Lazenby as Claire, Matt Recine in the role of Calvin, with Michelle Levine playing Rosie. “Each of them, their comedic timing is everything,” she said. “I mean, I have to do little to no work, because they’re bringing all of it.”

Preparation began at a pace befitting the script. “I knew the rehearsal process wasn’t super long, so as a director, I set the scaffolding,” Foote said. “Sometimes you get those golden groups of people where they all kind of get it, and we started that way — everybody got it. We’re all on the same page at the same pace.”

Blocking done, the cast was ready, she continued. “Now we get to play. Let’s dig into the layers of these guys. The biggest problem for us in rehearsals is to stop them from laughing. I’m like, all right, guys, get [it] together, like, let’s go. Because they’re funny, they’re just hilarious people. So we’re all there just laughing our tails off. It’s great.”

Faithless is the first Klein work that Foote’s been involved with. “He’s pretty clever,” she said. “Quite frankly, I haven’t done a ton of research on Mr. Klein, but what he has right is the story, and the way people talk to each other. The banter, the way they just throw it back and forth is really wonderful and real.”

In a review of a Washington, D.C., production of the play, DC Theatre Arts writer Amy Kotkin agreed. “The playwright’s sure-fire dialogue combines lofty questions with very funny analogies to popular culture,” she wrote. “Watch how he references time-shares, dodgeballs, crowbars, and Little House on the Prairie as his all-too-human characters slug it out.”

Foote joined New Hampshire Theatre Project in 2009 as an actor. Directing “is fairly new to me, but I really think I love it,” she said, Collected Stories, a two-woman play she directed last year starring Genevieve Aichele and Amy Desrosiers, was nominated for multiple New Hampshire Theatre Alliance awards.

“We didn’t win, but it was nice to be seen,” she said, adding that the experience reinforced her commitment to NHTP.

“I have a personal passion for the organization because it does really smart theater, and it tells really smart stories,” she said. “The foundation of their work is starting a conversation [and] that’s what I’m here for. They want to bring the tough stuff out and get people talking about it, because that’s where community starts. That’s where we find our humanness, in the conversation.”

Faithless
When: Fridays, 7:30 p.m., Saturdays, 4 p.m. and Sundays, 2:30 p.m. through March 9
Where: New Hampshire Theatre Project, 959 Islington St., Portsmouth
Tickets: $28 and up at portsmouthnhtickets.com

Featured photo: Jim Sears, Stephanie Lazenby, Michelle Levine, and Matt Recine. Courtesy photo.

Lend Me A Tenor playwright’s latest hits Concord

The old adage “Be careful what you wish for” guides The Gods of Comedy, the latest production from Community Players of Concord. The 2019 Ken Ludwig play makes its New Hampshire debut on Feb. 14 at Concord City Auditorium. It looks at what happens when a pair of deities are beseeched from the heavens and actually arrive.

The story begins when two professors, Ralph and Daphne, find a rare manuscript while on a holiday in Greece, only to see it inadvertently destroyed when they return to their Ivy League university. This prompts a cry for on-high assistance that miraculously produces Dionysus, the god of misrule and partying, and Thalia, who’s the muse of comedy.

It’s classics weekend at the college, so the gods are sidetracked by costumed students and campus partying, while the frazzled professors try to solve the problem of the lost work, a Euripides play. Meanwhile, additional gods of varying demeanor manage to make things more complicated.

“It’s part fantasy and classic literature — there’s a lot of Shakespeare references, which I really appreciate,” Elizabeth Lent, the play’s director, said by phone recently. “There are ancient Greek references as well, but also a lot of silliness, as they get into a lot of interesting antics and situations.”

This is the Players’ fifth play by Ludwig, well-known for his 1986 Tony winner, Lend Me a Tenor. Lent has directed two of them, 2004’s Shakespeare In Hollywood and Ludwig’s 2017 revival of Murder on the Orient Express. She’s pleased to present a relatively fresh work with up to date elements.

“I really do like the fact that it’s contemporary,” Lent, who’s been with Concord Community Players since the early 1980s, said. “I’ve been directing for a very long time and have directed lots of old stuff. I was really interested in trying something new, and Ludwig appeals to me.”

The cast includes Emily Thompson playing Daphne, John Julian, Alex Hutton, Kal Hachi and Suzanne Watts as Dionysus and Thalia, along with Heather Carmichael, Dana Sackos, Griffin Stuart, Seth Bunke and, making her Players debut, Jeri Lynn Owen. Set designer is Craig Walker, costumes are by Suzanne Potoma and Gay Bean, and lighting by Steven Meier.

Lent had the play cast the night auditions were finished.

“The chemistry is so good with these folks,” she said. “They’re all very talented and dedicated. Everyone comes to every rehearsal, even the tiniest little roles. They all like each other, which is really kind of wonderful, and they’re having such a good time. It’s so joyful to watch them work.”

Among the hijinks occurring is one of the gods inhabiting two of the other characters.

“They get possessed, and these two actresses that are making the transformation are hilariously funny doing it,” Lent said. More importantly, everything ends on a happy note. “For me, it’s exciting to watch these folks just having such a blast with it.”

Lots of laughs, a cast enjoying themselves and an upbeat finale is just what’s needed at this particular moment in time, and The Gods of Comedy is poised to provide all that.

“When the gods come down, they’re given a mission; this woman, Daphne Ring, needs an adventure and a happy ending, and they deliver,” Lent said, who described the play as “a clever mashup of the best kinds of knockabout comedy across the ages” in a press release. “We’d love to see everybody in the audience. Because it’s so new, it’s very exciting for us to be performing it.”

The Gods of Comedy
When: Friday, Feb. 14, and Saturday, Feb 15, 7:30 p.m.; Sunday, Feb. 16, 2 p.m.
Where: Concord City Auditorium, 2 Prince St., Concord
Tickets: $20 ($18 under 18 and 65+) at communityplayersofconcord.org

Featured photo: L to R – Kal Hachi, Emily Thompson and Suzanne Watts. Photo by Michael Von Redlich.

Colby-Sawyer showcases Italian program

By Michael Witthaus

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Having a community conversation was Theatre Kapow’s goal when its season began last fall. This continues with Every Brilliant Thing, a play that will spend a weekend at BNH Stage in Concord, then move to Winnipesaukee Playhouse two weeks later for three final performances.

About a child trying to encourage their mother, hospitalized after a failed suicide attempt, with a list of “brilliant things” that are worth living for, it’s technically a one-person play. However, an in-the-round crowd plays a big role, even for a theater company that’s always strived to bring it close to the action.

“Throughout … the audience is relied on quite heavily to make the story actually happen, to get the character through each scene to the next point,” Director Emma Cahoon said by phone recently. This begins when attendees enter the venue; each gets a card with a numbered “thing” written on it to call out when prompted. Bolder souls can choose bigger roles.

Playwright Duncan McMillan, she continued, tells a story about how depression can be contagious without tools to take it on. His message: People can’t go it alone, they need help. To that end, the National Alliance for Mental Illness, Capital Art Therapy and the Jason R. Flood Memorial Fund are all community partners for the production.

“He tells a story about a person discovering how important it is to talk to other people, in a way that requires the audience to be in conversation with the piece the whole time,” she said. “So the function of the storytelling is proving the narrator’s point [that] I could not get through this on my own … I had to turn to other people.”

Though the material can be dark, it radiates hope with happy thoughts of “ice cream, water fights, and knowing someone well enough to get them to check your teeth for broccoli.” There’s also an improv comedy mood; an exchange between the main actor and a volunteer co-star could go anywhere, after all.

In a Jan. 28 blog post, Eric Gutterson, a longtime patron who’s served as test audience for rehearsals, said the play evokes “laughter, sadness, joy, longing, and a sense of togetherness,” adding that it “doesn’t shy away from being real. There are dark tones, but you come up for air early and often with frequent moments of comic relief.”

Matt Cahoon co-founded Theatre Kapow with his wife Carey; Emma is their daughter and this is her second directing role. Matt, who’s also Academic Dean and Theatre Director at the New Hampton School, has taught Every Brilliant Thing to his students. He called the feelings Gutterson described in line with his company’s mission.

“Sometimes contemporary theater can feel like you’re taking your medicine, because you’re having to have these difficult thoughts,” he said by phone. “But there’s also a lot of sugar that goes with that medicine.”

The decision to make conversation a focus of their season was deliberate, in anticipation of a contentious election and its aftermath. Matt thinks Every Brilliant Thing transcends that.

“In a polarized and often isolating world, the play’s format… emphasizes shared vulnerability and collective healing,” he wrote on their website.

“There’s a stripped down, base human aspect to all of us,” he continued in conversation. “With the audience for this show, we’re not Republicans and Democrats, we’re not even men and women or old and young. We’re just humans in the space together … here’s an entry point for every single person who lives and breathes on this planet into this play.”

Though she was 6 when her parents founded the company, Emma Cahoon wasn’t always certain that it was her destiny. During her rebellious middle school years she even planned on being a nurse. Last May, however, she graduated from BU with a BFA in Theatre Arts. She’s in it for the long haul now, and comfortable with that knowledge.

“Everything I said I was going to do that wasn’t theater was, in some ways, theatrical,” she said. “I never imagined myself not in a caretaking or community-based position, and when I got over that period of time, I was like, ‘Yeah, actually, this is what I wanted to do.’ Then I went to school for it, and here we are.”

Every Brilliant Thing

At BNH Stage, 16 S. Main St., Concord
Friday, Feb. 7, and Saturday, Feb. 8, 7:30 p.m. and Sunday, Feb. 9, 2 p.m.

At Winnipesaukee Playhouse, 33 Footlight Circle, Meredith
Friday, Feb. 21, and Saturday, Feb. 22, 7:30 p.m. and Sunday, Feb. 23, 2 p.m.

Tickets: $25 and up at tkapow.com

Starring Peter Josephson on Feb. 7, Feb. 9, Feb. 22, Carey Cahoon on Feb. 8, Feb. 21, Feb. 23.

Content Transparency:
Verbal descriptions of depression, self-harm, suicide and suicidal ideations.
There will be some warm and inclusive audience participation.

Featured photo: Emma Cahoon. Photo by Sarah Coleman.

Colby-Sawyer showcases Italian program

By Michael Witthaus

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Every year for more than two decades, students from Colby-Sawyer College in New London head to Italy for a semester at the Florence School of Fine Arts. The city serves as the study abroad program’s laboratory and studio. For the first time, an upcoming exhibition will show some of their works, along with those of the artists who run the school.

“Florence is filled with antiquities, art objects, museums and cathedrals; it’s very inspiring,” Jon Keenan, a professor who also runs the Davidow Fine Art Gallery at Colby-Sawyer, said in a recent phone interview. “These students are translating their experience of their studies there, and we’re able to exhibit it.”

Keenan got the idea during a visit last year with Florence School of Fine Arts founder Melania Lanzini, and photographer Charles Loverme, Lanzini’s husband, who runs the school with her. “I’ve been working with them pretty much since they started up,” he said. “We were saying, ‘We should have an exhibition, to highlight and celebrate our relationship.’”

Lanzini and Loverme will both display works.

“Melania does a lot of lithography and collage work,” Keenan said. “She’s combining both traditional and contemporary approaches, working with some found objects, as well as depicting scenes in and around Florence and the area that they live in.”

In an artist statement, Loverme described the work he’ll bring to the exhibit: “For the past two decades, Italy has been both my home and my muse. Living in the historic center of Florence for 20 years, and now amidst the rolling hills of Chianti, I’ve found inspiration in the juxtaposition of city and countryside. This series explores these contrasting worlds.”

His black and white images primarily capture what Loverme calls “the timeless geometry of urban life, the interplay of light and shadow [that] highlights the city’s elegance,” while his color work focuses on rural subjects that “draw the eye to the small, overlooked details of the natural world — fallen leaves, scattered fruit, and the quiet poetry of decay.”

Representing Colby-Sawyer are Brian Cal-Mallo, who’s both a painter and photographer, printmaker Alex Jenkins, and Sota Morishita, a photographer. All are studio art and graphic design majors who studied in Florence during the summer program in 2024.

“Though varied in their chosen media, each artist shares common ground in finding inspiration in the contrasts of beauty in Florence, the birthplace of the Italian Renaissance, and the Tuscan region,” Keenan said. “This exhibition reminds us not only that art is a joy to experience but also a universal language and a vibrant expression of our shared humanity.”

The exhibit will open on Jan. 30 with the three student artists in attendance.

“We always do a nice reception to celebrate the audience and create community through the arts,” Keenan said. “We’re going to have lots of great food and beverages.”

It runs through April 2, and Loverme will visit on the final day for a meet and greet, and to discuss his work.

Funded by William H. and Sonja Carlson Davidow, the latter a 1956 Colby-Sawyer graduate, the gallery opened six years ago. Keenan was involved in the conception and execution of the state-of-the-art facility where it resides, which also has a black box theater and multiple facilities for students to create in.

It sits amidst natural beauty, with Mt. Kearsarge in view, and Keenan hosts six events a year in the gallery.

“My goal is to create community, bring people together through the arts,” he said. “This venue is the ideal place to do that — to provide learning for the public, and to support the arts. Whatever we can do to keep it happening is our privilege.”

Opening Reception: The Florence School of Fine Arts & Colby-Sawyer College Art Project

When: Thursday, Jan. 30, 4-6 p.m.
Where: Davidow Fine Art Gallery, 541 Main St., New London
More: colby-sawyer.edu

Featured photo: Courtesy photo.

Music school series begins with contradance

By Michael Witthaus

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An evening devoted to a centuries-long American folk music tradition will launch a series of public events from Concord Community Music School dubbed New England Roots & Branches. Contradance Music: The New England Contradance Repertoire will include a community jam session followed by a contradance called by a veteran and scholar of the style.

David Millstone began attending contradances soon after moving to New Hampshire’s Upper Valley in the early 1970s. Within a couple of years he was regularly attending dances led by Dudley Laufman. Millstone called Laufman the most influential figure in spreading contradancing across America and especially in New England.

“People would refer to Dudley dances,” Millstone said by phone recently. “He was a charismatic individual, and he was calling essentially every night from Maine to Connecticut back in the day. Other callers got interested, other musicians started playing, and the whole scene … really took off.”

Millstone was one of those inspired by Laufman; he began calling in the mid-’70s, and 50 years on he’s doing it still, in addition to writing books and album liner notes and making movies about contradance. As a caller he becomes an integral part of the band, and at the Jan. 25 event he’ll be working with four leading lights of New England acoustic music.

Guitarist Dan Faiella will accompany fiddlers Jordan Tirrell-Wysocki, Audrey Budington and Liz Faiella, who organized the series. She’s excited to have Millstone calling.

“My brother and I’ve worked with him through the years, and I used to go to his country dances,” Liz Faiella recalled in a recent phone interview. “He’s great at working with absolute beginners and really advanced dancers, getting everyone on the floor dancing comfortably and enjoying themselves.”

In 2015 Liz received a New Hampshire Arts Council grant to explore contradancing across the state. “I got to bop around, visit all of these different contradances, talk to the people who organized them and get a sense of the history,” she said. “I came away with a sense of how central it was to people’s lives here.”

As a musician she’s also impressed by the many tributaries joined together to make New England’s contradancing scene unique. “There’s stuff from Ireland, England, coming from Cape Breton, and we’ve got Quebecois music coming down here,” she said. “We’ve also got music from Appalachia, that sort of thing, and it’s all been integrated into this really rich contradance music tradition.”

All the band members are part of Concord Community Music School’s folk department.

“It really is a dream team; I can’t believe I get to work with these guys,” Liz said. “We all have been immersed in this scene and yet have our own takes on it. So it was kind of an opportunity to do some of what we do best, in sort of disentangling some of the genres.”

Beginning with a dance was the logical way to kick off the series, she continued. “We’re sort of starting out with ‘OK, here’s what we experience … this convergence of all of these different styles.’ Then, let’s pick that apart a little bit, and in the next few concerts, we’re going to celebrate different places that that music comes from.”

On Saturday, April 5, Transatlantic Tunes: Celtic & British Isles Folk Tunes celebrates music from the United Kingdom that became part of New England’s folk repertoire, and Music From North & South: Canadian & Appalachian Folk Tunes finishes the series on Friday, June 13.

Don’t fret about fitting in at the upcoming event, cautions David Millstone.

“If you can walk, you can do these dances,” he said, and welcoming newbies is a hallmark. “Experienced dancers will go up, say hello and invite people to dance, because that’s how we all learned how to do this. You don’t go to class for eight or 10 weeks … you learn it on the fly.”

Contradance Music: The New England Contradance Repertoire
When: Saturday, Jan. 25, 6 p.m.
Where: City Wide Community Center, 14 Canterbury Road, Concord
More: ccmusicschool.org/event/ne-roots-and-branches-1

Featured photo: Liz & Dan Faiella. Photo by Elizabeth Frantz.