Category: Art & Theater

Interactive mystery show at Majestic Theatre

Last year the Majestic Theatre staged Murder’s In The Heir, a comedic mystery about a billionaire, a will and an untimely demise, with the audience voting via secret ballot to name the perpetrator. The show was a hit, so when time came to pick a show for the 35th season, Majestic director Robert Dionne looked for another work from that play’s writer, Billy St. John.

He found Southern Fried Murder. It hews to the idea of “where there’s a will, there’s a play,” but with a difference. The story centers on a dinner party in a hotel dining room organized by a matriarch named Magnolia Capote. She’s devised a sort of scavenger hunt that’s detailed on the last page of her will. It will reveal who gets her money.

Magnolia dies early, killed with her walking stick. The so-called fourth wall dissolves as cast members wander through the audience to look for clues, about the money, and her murder. Interactions begin when patrons are seated by actor/ushers; in character, they begin dishing on fellow cast members.

That back-and-forth continues throughout the performance, as the cast veers away from the script into a blend of improv and standup crowd work that includes accusing audience members of committing the crime. Occasionally, they wander into the crowd, looking for clues and asking for input.

At the end, there isn’t a vote to name a killer; the deed-doer’s identity is already known. The challenge for the audience is to guess it correctly. One other twist not in last year’s production is that someone from the crowd will be drafted into the cast and given a script to play the small but important role of Terry, the hotel’s manager.

It’s directed by Becky Rush, who also helmed Murder’s In The Heir. In a recent phone interview, Rush explained that it’s a choose your own adventure show that can be done as dinner theater or something else. Majestic chose the latter, more or less.

“We’re passing out recipes and serving refreshments, bottled water, after-dinner mints and whatnot,” she said.

An observant person will be able to glean a clue or two while they quaff, but Rush was careful to withhold any details.

“Billy St. John always has some really interesting audience twists,” she said. “So this is another way that he gets them involved with his shows.”

Four actors from Murder’s In the Heir are returning this year: Natasha DaCunha Lund is Maggie St. Lawrence, Matthew Davis plays Ben Parker, the lawyer, Ilana Pete is Stump, and Katie Davis is Magnolia Woods. “They just really enjoyed the Billy St. John last year,” Rush said.

Other performers include Krystal Timinski, Chad Boutin, Aimee Baker, Jordan Gagan and Jeff Caron, who’s a veteran of the company.

“He’s been around The Majestic for many, many years; I actually was in a show with him in February, Last of the Red Hot Lovers,” Rush said. “So Jeff is no stranger to The Majestic stage.”

Boutin is, Rush continued, “sort of a surprise, playing both the role of the mother who gets killed and the son, Lou. So he’s doing some really cool stuff. We’re trying to get some nuance to this character, where the mother stands a certain way and then Lou stands in the exact same way, but with a little twist …mirroring those two characters.”

Rush has been with the company for 30 of its 35 years and is enjoying the current anniversary season.

“I’m so proud to be affiliated with The Majestic,” she said. “Even though we’ve lost our space a couple of times, we just keep getting back up and fighting the good fight and being an active part of the community. I believe 100 percent in this organization and what we do for the community.”

Southern Fried Murder
When: Friday, Oct. 31, at 7 p.m.; Saturday, Nov. 1, at 2 and 7 p.m.; Sunday, Nov. 2, at 2 p.m.
Where: Majestic Theatre, 880 Page St., Manchester
Tickets: $15 to $20 at majestictheatre.net

First-timers gather for Not Afraid to Fail Fest

By Michael Witthaus
mwitthaus@hippopress.com

Stepping out of one’s comfort zone to try something new is daunting, often frightening. However, at the upcoming Not Afraid to Fail Fest, it’s the whole point. Hosted by Manchester-based Queerlective, it’s billed as “a celebration of queer expression, risk-taking, and community care,” and a reflection of the nonprofit’s core values.

Among the first-time performers on stage Oct. 24 at BNH Stage in Concord are Ann Kinne, a farmer, woodworker and slam poet who will sing and play guitar, and Alysa Hemcher, who works by day as an operations director for a regional nonprofit and plans to cross standup comedy from her bucket list.

A pair of spoken word artists will try to up their game. Avery Bondra left the stage a decade ago, but they’re back to share some poems “that capture the essence of love and vulnerability,” according to a press release. Cory MacEachern has done open mics before but plans a much more personal performance that addresses the death of her brother last winter.

Both Cecilia Kiely and Star are taking the stage for the first-ever time. Star, who works in special education, will perform the Ethel Cain song “Janie” and accompany herself on guitar. Kiely is an aspiring writer who hasn’t revealed what she will share for her debut, but promises “a unique blend of humor and heart.”

The comedy-packed night continues with Michelle Rebidue, who mixes standup and animated storytelling for an act called Life In a NutChelle. Kelso & Aoife are a married couple with a skit that begins with an attempted handshake and devolves into a chaotic stew of awkwardness. Jay Galloway’s standup set will focus on being a New Hampshire newcomer.

The bold cast is rounded out by two members of the Queerlective working board. Jason DeYoung coordinates large events for the organization. A member of the New Hampshire Gay Men’s Chorus, he will step into the spotlight to sing “Who’d I Be,” one of his favorites from Shrek The Musical.

Executive Director Randall Nielsen doesn’t have a performing slot, but is making his debut in another way. “Somebody asked about me having my own thing, and I’ve never emceed an event,” he said in an interview that included DeYoung recently, adding, “and Queerlective has never put on an event like this before.”

The spark for the effort came from strategic planning sessions last January. They discussed ways to reflect the boldness that was required to form an organization in 2022. “Not being afraid to fail was very key to us, starting from scratch and not knowing anything about nonprofits,” DeYoung said.

Nielsen spoke of his interest in using art as a tool for community building.

“I just had too many ideas, so I thought, ‘let’s just let people bring their own ideas as well.’ If you’ve ever wanted to try something, or need a reason to learn a new skill, that’s kind of what we were thinking of as well when we were putting this together.”

A call for participants went out, and all who applied will perform in the show.

“That’s a goal for this project, along with encouraging the community to be more adventurous,” Nielsen said. “We see a lot of hesitation and anxiety from people just to even go out and attend an event, let alone to put together something on their own.”

In late September, everyone attended a workshop led by a local clown to work on stage presence and getting comfortable in performing a show that Nielsen described in a Facebook post as “part open mic, part talent show, part joyful mess and one hundred percent about showing up with courage, creativity and the community behind you.”

To that end, guidelines will be spelled out when the show commences to foster an environment of encouragement and support for performers who are taking a big risk.

“That’s one of the big things,” Nielsen said. “No matter what happens, we’re clapping, we’re cheering, we’re supporting these people. If they mess up, it’s OK. We’re all going to mess up at one point or another. That’s life.”

Not Afraid to Fail Fest

When: Friday, Oct. 24, 7 p.m.
Where: BNH Stage, 16 S. Main St., Concord
Tickets: $18 at ccanh.com

Children’s Theatre Project’s Something Rotten spoofs Shakespeare

When the cast of Something Rotten! Jr. steps on stage at Concord Auditorium on Oct. 17, it will mark the beginning of the 30th season at Community Players of Concord’s Children’s Theatre Project. Karen Braz co-founded it in 1996 and has led the effort for most of its existence. Once a theater kid herself, she saw the need a few years after joining the company.

“Back then, there were not the plethora of programs that there are now,” Braz said in a recent phone interview. She wanted to launch something similar to a program her mother helped run in North Conway when she was young. “Peacock Players and Andy’s Playhouse were around, but nobody had youth theater. So we started ours.”

Looking back on her time at CTP, Braz hopes she’s given the many generations of participants a love for theater, both on stage and behind the scenes.

“There were a lot of kids that got to do a lot of things,” she said, like lighting and costumes. “Hopefully, they are now people who treasure the performing arts, and support them.”

Braz believes theater is about more than just providing entertainment to audiences.

“It is a microcosm of what life is going to be,” she said. “You put in the work … it’s not just theater, it’s everything.” The discipline needed to pull off a show, she continued, reflects the determination needed to achieve anything meaningful in life.

Braz has wanted to do the upcoming production, a musical comedy set in Shakespeare’s era about two down-on-their-luck playwrights who live in the shadow of the rock star Bard. The Bottom Brothers, Nick and Nigel, are told by a soothsayer that the next big thing in theater will be the musical. Though baffled — musicals don’t yet exist — they get to work.

She saw the musical comedy 10 years ago in New York City, when she attended a three-day Music Theater International workshop while celebrating her 60th birthday.

“They gave us tickets to four Broadway shows, and one was Something Rotten,” she recalled. “It had just come out, and I thought it was the most hilarious thing I’d ever seen.”

When the rights to perform it became available last spring, Braz pounced and began planning for the fall production.

“It might not have been the best-known choice for a 30th anniversary, but I loved the characters, the era, the jokes,” she said. “The way it references so many other musicals is just brilliant.”

The show’s meta-theatrical humor, clever references and reimagining of Shakespeare as Mick Jagger with a quill pen resonated with Braz.

“I love the way they contextualize it in the modern era,” she said. “It’s easily the most sophisticated junior production we’ve done.”

To that end, in recent years, CTP has moved to casting more older teens in its centerpiece productions, with a wider age range for its summer and winter vacation theater camps. This allows them to portray more complex relationships, such as the Bottom Brothers and their romantic subplots, with authenticity and nuance.

“To do justice to the [collective] visions for the shows … even on a junior level, I shy away from 10-, 11- and 12-year-olds,” Braz said. Raising the age limit, she continued, means experienced actors who “bring a level of maturity to the characters, and to the story, that wouldn’t ordinarily be at all possible with much younger kids.”

Last year the Concord Community Players created an annual award in Braz’s name, making her the first recipient. Such a tribute might signal the beginning of an end for the theater den mother and self-described “cat herder” of young actors. But 30 years on, she has no plans to exit the stage.

“I just want to keep on going, I don’t want to just shut it all down,” she said. “Eventually I guess I’ll have to, or I’ll pass the torch to somebody else if there’s anybody that wants to do it. But every milestone — the 10th, the 15th, the 20th — it’s always like, wow, this has been going for a while. This is a lot of shows.”

Something Rotten! Jr.
When: Friday, Oct. 17, at 7 p.m. and Saturday, Oct. 18, at 2 p.m.
Where: Concord City Auditorium, 2 Prince St., Concord
Tickets: $15 at communityplayersofconcord.org

Sidewalk chalk colors Nashua’s Main Street

As the colors of autumn foliage begin to fade, the streets of downtown Nashua will brighten, as a community-wide effort will turn patches of sidewalk into the pages of a coloring book. On Oct. 11 the city’s Great American Downtown booster group will host Coloring Main Street, inviting artists and art lovers to fill in a life-size coloring book.

From Main Street Bridge to the public library and City Hall, chalk outline murals will be ready for coloring. The project was sparked by Great American Downtown Executive Director Alyssa O’Mara, who assumed the leadership role at the organization in June. She envisions the “inherently temporary” art form as a good way to unify the community for a day.

O’Mara talked about Coloring Main Street, and Great American Downtown’s future plans, in a recent email interview.

If the Coloring Main Street templates were a coloring book, how many pages would it be?

Fun question! I’d say at least 15 pages. We’ve given the artists creative freedom to design their sections of sidewalk however they’re inspired. Each will complete two to three separate pieces, with some areas intentionally left open so our attendees have room to kneel or sit while coloring them in. Students from the Nashua High School Art Honor Society will also be working in pairs on their sections.

What are some of the pictures that artists will fill in, and where are they located?

Each artist was asked to create something positive and family-friendly, with full freedom over the subject matter. Some designs include animals, spooky Halloween themes, flowers, and more. Styles range from simple, kid-friendly outlines to more intricate designs that older children and adults will enjoy coloring. The murals will be spread along Main Street, from the Pearl Street area down to the bridge and over by the Nashua Public Library.

What was the inspiration for doing this event?

When I started in this role in June, I was already attending meetings of the Downtown Business Roundtable, a group of local business owners working to promote each other. We often collaborate by providing outdoor music for their Third Thursday events. During one of my first meetings as Executive Director, we were brainstorming ideas for fun, unique, family-friendly programming. What began as a chalk walk suggestion from Liz Hannum, Director of Economic Development, quickly evolved into this coloring book concept. One of my favorite things about downtown Nashua is its public art, and this felt like a wonderful opportunity to create a new kind of canvas for the community.

How is the event funded?

When City Arts Nashua closed in 2024, they generously donated funds to Great American Downtown specifically for arts programming. From that donation, GAD is compensating the professional artists and covering supplies. Student artists are volunteering their time, and downtown businesses will also be putting out colorful chalk for attendees to use.

How does the event further Great American Downtown’s mission?

GAD’s mission is to provide coordination, collaboration, and partnerships that unify Nashua around a common vision for an attractive, vibrant downtown that truly reflects the character of our city. Downtown Nashua already showcases murals by Positive Street Art, sculptures from the International Sculpture Symposium, historic theaters like the Janice B. Streeter, and the new Center for the Arts with performances and gallery exhibits. This event adds to that legacy in an especially interactive way. Coloring Main Street invites our residents and visitors to become the artists themselves, while also bringing people together in celebration of creativity. Street art is inherently temporary, especially when created with chalk, but the experience lasts. That’s what we’re really working for.

Anything you’d like to add?

This is the first of five events we’ll be hosting between now and the end of November. Next up is the Main Street Monster Mash on Saturday, Oct. 25 … immediately following the library’s story time and Halloween celebration. Kids can enjoy trick-or-treating on Main Street, a Howl-oween Puppy Parade with prizes for the best costumes (in partnership with the Humane Society for Greater Nashua), and a special surprise performance by the ActorSingers. We’re thrilled to keep building on Downtown Nashua’s reputation as a hub of arts, culture and community fun.

Coloring Main Street
When: Saturday, Oct. 11, from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m.
Where: City Hall, 229 Main St., Nashua
More: linktr.ee/downtownnashua

Mosaic Arts hosts ‘Exquisite Corpse’ group exhibition

The Surrealist movement believed that art happens at the point of juxtaposition. “Exquisite Corpse,” an exhibition that opens Monday, Oct. 6, at Mosaic Arts Collective, will explore that idea. The show’s name comes from a game beloved by artists that begins with a folded piece of paper that each participant draws on, leaving a small trace on the next segment for another creator.

“Hidden hands shape unexpected creations,” the Mosaic call for submission said of the show, which runs through Nov. 2 and has an official reception Saturday, Oct. 11, at 4 p.m. The exhibition, it continues, “celebrates the strange, the uncanny, and the beauty that emerges when fragments of imagination collide.”

One of the early submissions came from the husband-and-wife team of Karl and K.D. Schmitz, who rent studio space at Mosaic; it combines painting and poetry. Gallery owner Liz Pieroni is also part of a group effort, but not all submissions are collaborative. More than a few have a touch of the eerie and spooky — fitting, considering how October concludes.

“We do like Halloween, I think the artists like it too, and in general I think our community gets very much into the spirit,” Pieroni said during an interview at Mosaic, located on a second floor to the left of the Palace Theatre. “It seems to be one of our higher-selling shows, which is always kind of surprising…. A lot of people come in collecting creepy, weird art.”

In a nod to the macabre, the Oct. 11 opening has been dubbed Calling Hours.

“We’ll have a tarot card reader, who we’ve had the past couple years as well, she’s phenomenal,” Pieroni said, adding that Roots and Rhythm, a dance studio located at street level, plans an appearance. “An ‘Exquisite Corpse’ performance perhaps.”

Additionally, See Saw Art, a micro gallery situated inside the Mosaic space and run by Rochester Museum of Fine Arts co-founder Amy Regan, is part of the event.

“She’ll also have an opening, of kind of creepier, interesting themes as well,” Pieroni said of that show.

On Oct. 12 there will be a family-friendly event at Roots & Rhythm that includes a workshop for parents and children that Pieroni described as “a create-an-Exquisite Corpse activity.” The drawing game has always been a favorite of youngsters, who particularly delight in discovering what a group will make together sharing only the tiniest of prompts.

Along with the month-long exhibition, Mosaic will host an Artist Talk event with Karen Jerzyk on Oct. 22, from 5:45 to 7 p.m. Jerzyk is described as “a surrealistic photographer who combines elements of sci-fi and fantasy with elaborate environments to create visual narratives.” Her work includes an album cover for Manchester pop punk band Donaher.

Beyond that, Pieroni is a driving force behind a recently launched Second Saturday art walk, happening next on Oct. 11. Participating are Creative Framing Solutions, Art House Studios, Dew Collective, Studio 550, Bookery, Woodstacker Brewery, The Terracotta Room, Arts Build Community, the Palace and newest addition Gallery At The Block.

As the gallery celebrates its third anniversary, Pieroni feels optimistic despite the many challenges faced by organizations like Mosaic. Strong community support, volunteer engagement and notably the acquisition of their first grant, have set up a sustainable future and reinforced her original mission.

“Three years has been forever and no time at all,” she said. “It’s been a wonderful ride and it’s also been challenging at times. I’m glad we’re still here and I think we’re here for the long haul. I’m beyond happy for sure. There’s just been an amazing amount of support for what we’re doing.”

Exquisite Corpse
When: Monday, Oct. 6, through Sunday, Nov. 2; opening reception Saturday, Oct. 11, 4-8 p.m.
Where: Mosaic Art Collective, 66 Hanover St., Suite 201, Manchester
More: mosaicartcollective.com