Category: Art & Theater

Uncommon cutlery at North East Artisan Knife Show

There’s a world of difference between knives bought at the mall, even ones with hard to pronounce brand names, and the cutlery to be found at the upcoming North East Artisan Knife Show. One might need to be replaced a year or two after it’s purchased, while the handmade blades on offer at this event should last a lifetime — or more.

Happening Dec. 13 at Jewel Music Venue in Manchester, the show is the creation of Shannon Cothran — people call him Bear. For 10 years his one-man company Old World Ironworks has made heirloom-quality knives for camping, hunting, woodworking, historical reenactment and food preparation.

The latter is a guiding philosophy for Bear.

“I try to focus predominantly on kitchen knives, things that are going to appeal to home chefs, food enthusiasts,” he said by phone recently. “I like the idea that I can make something someone may find beautiful … to use to create something that sustains, nourishes and brings joy.”

More than 75 vendors will be on hand at the all-day gathering, showing off wares that cover a wide range of uses. For example, Benjamin Williams’ Rock Maple Forge, in Burlington, Vermont, makes not only historically accurate seax knives used by English Saxons in the ninth and 10th centuries, but also hardwood-handled kitchen cutlery and other blade types.

Apprentice Alex’s Anachronistic Armory is a Manchester forge that, as the name implies, preserves the past with absolute precision. Alex Silverman has smithed for the past seven years, along the way competing on the History Channel reality series Forged in Fire in 2022.

“He really hyper-focuses on … reproducing swords, daggers, hunting spears, things like that, in the quality and style that you would have seen carried historically by your everyman,” Bear said. “It’s a very realistic look at something that we’ve glorified in modern media and zeitgeist.”

Another forge at the show will be Anger Knives of Johnson, Vermont. It’s run by Nick Anger, a bladesmith, woodworker, chemist and metallurgist who specializes in customer Damascus steel knives that are both functional and lovely. His other interesting pieces include an axe and a trident, but neither is made for cosplaying.

That’s because most pieces at the show will cost hundreds of dollars, though Bear is bringing a few entry-level items and expects others to as well.

“We have a run of patterns designed that we then either water jet or plasma, then we do the hand grinding, finishing and hand hilting,” he said of the ready-made pieces. “So you’re not paying for the forge time as well.”

The show will be fun even for those who might not be ready to jump into collecting. It’s an opportunity to learn about the process of creating these sharp-edged works of art, from the creators. That said, Christmas is near, and this is the place to find a special tool that stands apart from everything else in an ordinary arsenal of kitchen tools.

“This is going to be an opportunity to meet some incredible artists who are working locally, an opportunity to support a local economy, and the chance to grab something that may or may not ever be able to be picked up again,” Bear said. “A lot of these pieces are one of a kind.”

Though there are plenty of events with knives, like Renaissance Faires, gun shows and hunting and fishing, this will be the first time they’ll have the spotlight in the region.

“Aside from a few shows that are predominantly collector-focused, with a lot of antiques or military and a smattering of artisan knives in there,” he said, “we don’t really have, to the best of my knowledge, any shows in New England that are specific to artisan knives.”

Bear particularly enjoys the artisan knife community’s eclectic makeup, and its sense of purpose.

“It transcends social class,” he said. “At any artisan knife show, you will be in a true American melting pot. Because these are tools that have defined human history and are ubiquitous across time, culture, language, everything. One of the things that brings us together is the human ability to make tools. You get to see people who are making tools that go beyond function into art.”

North East Artisan Knife Show
When: Saturday, Dec. 13, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Where: Jewel Music Venue, 61 Canal St., Manchester
Tickets: $10 at gopassage.com ($5 youth, $20 family of four)

Featured photo: Symphony NH Brass, 2024. Courtesy photo.

Symphony NH holiday shows, and conductor news

It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas at Symphony New Hampshire. The venerable orchestra will be represented in a variety of forms at five upcoming area events. After that, the work of finding a new leader continues.

A brass quintet will perform two holiday concerts, in Manchester and Concord, and the Symphony’s string quartet is at Canterbury Shaker Village’s holiday festivities. Nine Symphony New Hampshire musicians will join Mannheim Steamroller at their Concord show and, finally, there’s a full orchestra Holiday Pops concert in Nashua on Dec. 13.

With the new year, the search for a new musical director again heats up, as five candidates vie to succeed Roger Kalia. The first, Tiffany Chang, launched the season with a program called “Unexpected Stories.” It included a symphony by Jean Sibelius that was a favorite of Chang’s.

Symphony NH Executive Director Deanna Hoying recalled that she urged Chang to do the Sibelius piece.

“She had something else in mind, but when I said, ‘Show us who you are through your programming,’ she was like, ‘Oh, this might give me an opportunity,” Hoying said by phone recently. “It was a wonderful [one] for her too — not only to learn, but get in front of an orchestra and do this piece that she’s always wanted to do.”

Each of the remaining four candidates will take the stage at Keefe Auditorium in Nashua to support their bids to lead the orchestra, beginning with Filippo Ciabatti. On Jan. 17 he’ll conduct the orchestra in a program called “From Fire to the Stars.” It includes works by Jessie Montgomery, Manuel de Falla and Mozart. Each musical director candidate will participate in a pre-concert talk one hour before their concerts.

Hoying said the season has been challenging. A Halloween concert was canceled due to poor ticket sales, and adjustments are ongoing: “It’s tight; I’m not terribly surprised. I’m hearing that from a lot of organizations, both here and around the country. As the economy is shifting, people are more thoughtful about how [they] spend that discretionary income.”

Christmastime, though, seems to be bringing a welcome respite.

“People are very nostalgic for classic holiday music, and I think people spend their entertainment money differently now than during the rest of the year,” Hoying said. “I am encouraged to see some good [and] pretty stable numbers right now, for really all of the shows, and that makes me happy.”

Hearing “Sleigh Bells,” “Silent Night” and “Winter Wonderland” performed by a classical brass group or a violin quartet is a great recruiting tool, Hoying continued. The same is true of an inspirational Pops Christmas concert.

“People may not come to see you doing Beethoven, but they will come and see holiday things,” she said. “That’s a wonderful entry point.”

Symphony NH Holiday Appearances

Jingle Brass – Manchester
When: Thursday, Dec. 4, 7:30 p.m.
Where: Rex Theatre, 23 Amherst St., Manchester
Tickets: $34 and up at palacetheatre.org

Jingle Brass – Concord
When: Saturday, Dec. 6, 3 p.m.
Where: BNH Stage, 16 S. Main St., Concord
Tickets: $34 at ccanh.com

Mannheim Steamroller Christmas (joined by Symphony NH musicians)
When: Friday, Dec. 5, 7:30 p.m.
Where: Chubb Theatre, 44 S. Main St., Concord
Tickets: $63.50 and up at ccanh.com

Christmas at Canterbury
When: Saturday, Dec. 6, 4 p.m.
Where: Dwelling House Chapel, Canterbury Shaker Village, 288 Shaker Road, Canterbury
Tickets: $50 at shakers.org

Holiday Pops
When: Saturday, Dec. 13, 7:30 p.m.
Where: Keefe Center for the Arts, 117 Elm St., Nashua
Tickets: $35 and up at symphonynh.org

Featured photo: Symphony NH Brass, 2024. Courtesy photo.

One-man Christmas Carol back for final bow

By Michael Witthaus
mwitthaus@hippopress.com

For three decades in the United States and the past 15 years in Nashua, the great-great-grandson of Charles Dickens has performed his beloved novel, A Christmas Carol, as a one-man show, bringing 26 characters from the holiday classic to life, each given distinct and unique touches and mannerisms.

Alas, this year marks the show’s final trip ’cross the pond. A farewell tour begins Nov. 28 at Nashua’s Center for the Arts.

“It’s just been an incredibly wild ride … such fun,” Gerald Dickens said during a recent Zoom call from his English home in Abington, Oxfordshire. “But, for a number of reasons — family considerations at home and all sorts of things — I thought 30 years is a pretty good number to hang up the top hat on.”

When he first performed it in 1993, Dickens believed it would be the only time.

“It was an absolute one-off … I insisted I’d never do it again,” he said of the reading, held to commemorate the novel’s 150th anniversary. He used an annotated script that the author had worked from in the 1860s, a time when he was doing more touring than writing.

Dickens’ notes about his characters made them come alive for his descendant.

“You get to the first description of Scrooge,” he recalled, rising to the role. “It says, ‘he was a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous old sinner. He was hard and sharp as flint, secret, self-contained.’ At the end of it, you’ve just turned into him — you can’t help it.”

One reason that so many Dickens works have been adapted for stage and screen is probably that he was an aspiring actor for many years before starting his career as a writer.

“He was a passionate theatrical man,” Gerald Dickens explained. “He auditioned at the Covent Garden Theater in London, the leading theater in the country at that time. Well, he didn’t audition. He had an audition scheduled, but he was ill on the morning of it. He didn’t have a voice, so he couldn’t go. So, yeah, that’s what he wanted to do.”

Giving readings allowed him to re-indulge that passion, he continued. “He absolutely loved … that direct contact with his audience that, of course, you don’t get as a novelist.” His final completed novel, Our Mutual Friend, came in 1865. “For the rest of that decade, he didn’t write anything. He was purely on the road, touring and performing.”

Dickens had a particular affinity for New England. On a U.S. reading tour in 1867 and 1868, he made Boston’s Parker House Hotel a home base, and performed at the adjacent Tremont Temple. Gerald Dickens has also appeared at that venue.

For the past several years, Gerald Dickens’ annual Christmas Carol tour has been sponsored by collectibles maker Byers’ Choice, whose caroler figures are de rigueur holiday decorations in many American homes. To commemorate the farewell tour, the Pennsylvania company released a special edition caroler in his likeness.

In a recent blog post, Dickens wrote about “the huge sense of honour — no, I shall write honor in deference to my hosts” he felt seeing his miniature likeness. It wears a gray frock coat over a red and gold waistcoat, along with a top hat and green knitted scarf. One hand holds a wooden cane that represents Tiny Tim’s crutch, the other a gold pocket watch chain.

“They’ve done a really great job with it,” he said. It’s likely they’ll be available at his Nashua show, he added, and if not, they can be ordered direct from the company, perhaps containing a special touch. “I have no doubt they’ll have me sat in a little boardroom somewhere, signing hundreds of copies.”

He’s eager to begin the farewell tour.

“I love coming to Nashua,” Dickens said. “Over the last three years, I’ve been able to perform in the beautiful Center for the Arts there … what a facility; a great, great theater … a real treat.” For anyone with any preconceptions about the show, he shared this message.

“It’s not a stuffy, dusty old Englishman doing a lecture,” he said. “There’s a lot of chance for the audience to join in, shout out and get involved in the story. We have a lot of fun with it. There’s a lot of laughter, and a few tears. It’s a bit scary sometimes, joyous other times. You get to see me dance. No one else in the world ever sees that.”

A Christmas Carol with Gerald
Dickens – Farewell Tour
When: Saturday, Nov. 28, 7 p.m.
Where: Nashua Center for the Arts, 201
Main St., Nashua
Tickets: $24 and up at etix.com

Featured photo: Gerald Dickens. Courtesy photo.

Writing Gallery opens in Concord

By Michael Witthaus

mwitthaus@hippopress.com

A new space featuring works of art accompanied by text both inspirational and challenging, The Eleventh Letter Writing Gallery opened in downtown Concord ahead of November’s First Friday Art Walk. Passers-by are drawn in by a modern white nightstand stacked with books and topped by a small pumpkin, with a wooden letter K on the floor underneath it.

Hung on the wall to the left of the arrangement are collages of book covers and pages from works by different authors. In the back of the foyer room are two chairs, one with postcards and artful photos on it, the other with pencils and notebooks. They surround an alcove with a sign reading, “Kismet: Defining Patterns.”

The overall effect is warm and welcoming, as well as an invitation to the creative imagination. There are writing prompts tucked into the free notebooks. “What signs and symbols do you see all the time?” reads one, others asks for a paragraph on “an amazing coincidence” or “a wish for one thing to manifest.”

Its intent is to unify images and phrases — and build a community around them.

“We affirm that all the arts are in dialogue with each other; our mission is to start the conversation,” owner Jocelyn Winn wrote in late October. The gallery, she continued, “champions the written word and elevates the creative vibration within the … arts community through monthly text-art exhibitions, workshops, and literary events.”

It also offers professional writing and editing services, something Winn has done as owner of The Eleventh Letter since it opened in 2014. The Writing Gallery, across from the Statehouse on North Main Street, is the first retail location. In a sit-down interview during Art Walk, Winn talked about how it came to fruition.

“It’s always been my dream to have a brick-and-mortar space where people can actually come in and enjoy writing,” she said. “So this is sort of a play on the idea that writers are artists … everything here, every piece, is art, but it has to have a word or text element to it.”

There are two exhibits currently running at the gallery. One features erasure and collage works by artist in residence Laci Mosier. Many are provocative, like “Froot Loops: The Fungus Among Us,” which combines the cut-up profile of a naked woman and a boy on a tricycle with phrases like, “How much Windex do men go through to create history?”

“Kismet” is Winn’s artwork. On one piece, “Manifest,” a framed photo of cut-up lemons sits next to a few paragraphs delving into the title’s etymology — manus combined with festus, two words that respectively mean “hand” and “joy” — and how its meaning has shifted since it was first coined in the 14th century. It ends with a meditation on ellipses.

Winn is big on vision boards. She calls them “manifestation posters,” and the path to opening a writing gallery was lit by hers.

“I got very specific,” she explained. “I said I want a Main Street space. My name is Jocelyn Winn. It’s in Concord, New Hampshire, 03301. A couple months later, I could see these spaces opening up, and so I took my chances.”

An array of activities is ahead in the coming weeks, like a workshop on making holiday cards, a class on the art of letter writing, and a session on appreciating winter, perfect for folks prone to seasonal affect disorder. “It’s based on the book Wintering, about how to love winter,” Winn said. “Which is my favorite season, true.”

There are also two free events: a writing circle led by local arts writer Rachel Wachman, and Solstice Open Mic, which invites writers to read their work. “Five minutes each, and everyone is welcome, even if they’re not reading,” Winn said.

In January there will be two six-week sessions, on fiction and nonfiction writing.

“The gist is every month there’s an array of workshops for advanced writers as well as those looking to start or curiously dip their feet,” Winn said. Along with classes, the gallery will have a monthly main exhibition with a local writer-artist, with works from an artist or writer in residence showing for three months.

“I do have a lot of opportunities and plans for the future, bringing writing to the community,” Winn said. “I think a lot of people are maybe scared of writing, or they shy away from it.” She hopes her workshops, along with the writer’s utensils she’ll be selling soon, will inspire many to the impulse of turning words into art — and vice versa.

The Eleventh Letter Writing Gallery
Open: Monday through Friday, noon to 5 p.m., and Saturday, 11 a.m. to 4 p.m.
Where: 146 N. Main St., Concord
More: theeleventhletter.com

Upcoming Events:
The Art of Letter Writing – Wednesday, Dec. 3, 6-7:30 p.m., $22
Winter Is My Favorite Season – Monday, Dec. 8, 6-7:30 p.m., $33 (includes free copy of Wintering by Katherine May)
Holiday Card-Making – Tuesday, Dec. 9, 6-8 p.m., $40 (led by Art Plus NH owner Karen Hicks)
Writing Circle – Wednesday, Dec, 9, free (led by local arts writer Rachel Wachman)
Solstice Open Mic – Wednesday, Dec. 17, free (five minutes each, all welcome even if not reading)

Featured photo: Courtesy photo.

Icehouse is hilarious, with a heart

If Lake Wobegon had a Hallmark stage division it might come up with something like Icehouse, a Bedford Off Broadway production with three more performances through Nov. 16. Making its first New England run, the Peter Bloedel farce is a funny, heartfelt and warm look at friends helping a friend.

The end-of-the-20th-century comedy is about a Minnesota ex-pat, now living in Florida and lonesome for the cold air, and his buddies, as they try to build an epic ice chateau and keep it a secret from their wives.

There’s a great line toward the end of Act I that sums up the haplessness of five buddies trying to lure a sixth pal back for an ice fishing holiday, only to stumble due to kind-hearted incompetence.

“Every village needs an idiot,” one of them tells his suspicious spouse. “Ours just has more.”

What makes the play succeed is a solid cast that plays well off each other even while managing set changes throughout the production. The family-friendly farce centers on Oskar (Rich Hurley), trapped in Florida with Ingrid (Deb Lund) after she has coerced him to move there for her many climate-related maladies.

When Oskar and Ingrid return for the wedding of Erik (Tigran Kotsinyan) and Michelle (Abby Lefebvre), his friends Arn (Glen Grimard) and Conrad (Declan Lynch) share their plan to build a structure fit for an ice-fishing billionaire, with a full kitchen, sleeping quarters and sauna, an idea they got during a fishing conversation.

Oskar’s in and the six are soon working on their respective co-conspirator tasks.

The machinations employed to get Oskar home again are comedy gold in the hands of Wilhelm (John Decareau) and Lars (Matt Bader). Conrad, Arn and reluctant recruit Erik persuade them to concoct a story to fool Ingrid, delivered from a pay phone (back when they were common) in fake voices.

Of course, the effort only makes things worse — albeit funnier.

Let’s just say that Wilhelm takes his method acting task a bit too seriously, Lars starts to share his enthusiasm, and the two have the audience thoroughly entertained. The pair’s across-the-wire shenanigans, with hilarious support from fellow cast members, are aided by the impressive set design of director Judy Hayward and Daro Fuchs.

The hallmark of a great community theater is often its ability to do a lot with a little, and BoB achieves this with Icehouse. The play opens with a spare set; a couple of hardware store bucket stools for Arn and Conrad to sit on while they fish later becomes a series of different furniture. Then the wall behind the stage moves and it’s all transformed.

The wives, first fooled out of Middle Creak, Minnesota, by Oskar, who turns out to be talented at subterfuge, will find their fury when Lars and Wilhelm’s stunt backfires. Camilla (Lisa Colburn), Helen (Deb Curtis), Rita (Natasha DaCunha-Lund) and Sarah (Julie Shea) all have great moments confronting their respective husbands.

Claire Fry, as mother of the bride Lenora, deserves praise for helping to give the play its heartfelt quality. She’s the wild card. To know what that means, one needs to buy a ticket, but rest assured the experience leaves a sweet finish.

Ultimately it’s chemistry that carries Icehouse to the finish line. It’s Judy Hayward’s first time directing a BoB show and during rehearsals in September she praised the cast while rehearsals were underway.

“One thing that’s nice about it is that everybody pretty much has an equal part,” she said. “It’s quite an ensemble show.”

The opening night crowd agreed. The smiles began with an introductory explanation that the play was being performed in a foreign language (Minnesotan) and continued as the show bounced along merrily through laugh after laugh. With a cast working at a very high level, and a script that’s new to these parts, Icehouse is a must-see.

Icehouse – A Comedy by Peter Bloedel
When: Friday, Nov. 14, and Saturday, Nov. 15, at 7:30 p.m., and Sunday, Nov. 16, at 2 p.m.
Where: Bedford Off Broadway at Bedford Town Hall, 70 Bedford Center Road, Bedford
Tickets: $15 ($12 seniors and students) at brownpapertickets.com

Featured photo: Icehouse. Courtesy photo.

New Hampshire writer pens historical novel

Award-winning journalist and former New Hampshire Public Radio host Laura Knoy recently published her first novel, and it’s a gem. The Shopkeeper of Alsace is historical fiction, drawn from real events during the two world wars and in between. At the story’s center is Sarah Seibert, an amazingly resilient Jewish woman.

During World War I, Sarah fled her Polish village and occupying Russian forces as a teenager, first moving to Warsaw, and emigrating to France two years after WWI ended. There, she ran a shop with her family, as well as meeting and marrying her future husband, Melach Seibert. A few moves and upheavals later, they settled in Colmar, Alsace. The rumblings of a new war were beginning.

Knoy expertly pulls the reader into the menace of multiple wars in Poland, the later horror of World War II, and the stench of prejudice that spans generations and takes multiple forms. Setting the novel in the border region of Germany and Alsace instead of Paris is another aspect that sets it apart from historical fiction of that era.

How the Seiberts avoid the Nazi peril, along with Vichy turncoats and other threats, is at the novel’s heart. Knoy has a deft ear for detail, such as how the similarity of Yiddish and Alsatian dialects helped Sarah blend in. However, the greatest gift was one bestowed to her, when she was a college exchange student in Strasbourg, France, during the mid-1980s.

There she met Seibert’s real-life daughter, Annette. The two were paired together during a school-organized weekend trip to Colmar and formed a friendship that lasted decades. Knoy would hear of her friend’s childhood war experience only in fragments. That changed when she spoke with Annette’s daughter Brigitte Aumont in 2018, three years after her death.

“I always wanted to tell your mother’s story, but now it’s too late,” Knoy said while the two had dinner in New York City. It wasn’t — she learned there was an uncle, still living, who “remembered everything.” So she flew to France and met 95-year-old Jacques Seibert. Later, she listened to an oral history compiled by the family in 2005 that included Annette.

This treasure trove of information, along with dogged research and truly stellar skills for a first-time novelist, makes for a lively, entertaining and frequently harrowing read. The facts of the story are true, but Knoy chose to write a novel as a way to give it color, shape and depth. What results is a page-turner that’s satisfying throughout.

In a recent Zoom interview, the former host of NHPR’s The Exchange said much inspiration for her novel came from The Blue Bicycle (La Bicyclette Bleu), a series of wartime books by French writer Régine Deforges.

“I didn’t realize until I read Régine,” she said, “just how big, and complicated, and awful, and messy, and difficult it was.”

The Alsatian people were tempest-tossed by war for generations, she continued. One of the book’s characters was born a French citizen in 1870, became German in 1871, was again French in 1918 with the end of WWI, then became German in 1940 when Alsace was annexed. “And you’re French again in 1945,” she said.

Knoy expertly weaves that history into her novel. “I think that’s what makes my book different,” she said. “It’s a World War II story, but it starts in World War I — because I would contend that’s really where World War II starts…, It’s about a war-torn region, Europe.”

Some of the historical documents she cites, like a xenophobic newspaper left in Sarah and Melach’s Colmar shop, serve as reminders of the axiom that while history doesn’t repeat, it often rhymes.

“A lot of the language that the Nazis and French fascists used,” Knoy said, “is the same language that was used in Rwanda.”

The newspaper warned that “Jews, and mixed-race mongrels” would destroy France. The Rwandan genocide of 1994 was preceded by warnings of “bugs, cockroaches and dogs” posing a similar threat.

“Language skillfully used is a great way to divide people,” Knoy said. “And again, once you divide people, you can do whatever you want.”

Knoy is embarking on a short book tour to support her book. It begins Wednesday, Nov. 12, at BNH Stage in Concord, an event sponsored by Gibson’s Bookstore. She’ll be joined by Rick Ganley, host of NHPR’s Morning Edition, with a book signing following their conversation.

Authors On Main at the BNH Stage – Laura Knoy
When: Wednesday, Nov. 12, 7 p.m.
Where: BNH Stage, 16 S. Main St., Concord
Tickets: $30 includes copy of The Shopkeeper of Alsace, $15 admission only at ccanh.com
More: lauraknoy.com
Also Monday, Nov. 15, at Saint Anselm College in Manchester and Tuesday, Nov. 18, at Music Hall Lounge in Portsmouth