Category: Q&A

Town Hall Theatre hosts Silent Film Comedy Week

The Town Hall Theatre in Wilton restarted its silent film series in July, featuring live music by accompanist (and Hippo co-founder and associate publisher) Jeff Rapsis. After attracting more of a crowd than its first-run movies had, theater owner and operator Dennis Markaverich decided to forgo new movies until the fall and host a Silent Film Comedy Week at the theater from Aug. 10 through Aug. 14. Rapsis talked about the event and what viewers can expect.

How did this week of silent films come about?

It was an invention born of necessity. … Dennis … programmed [first-run films], but nobody was coming to them. … He was sitting there some nights with only one person in his two theaters. … I’ve done two silent film screenings there since the theater reopened, and we were surprised that the silent films actually attracted the largest audiences since reopening. … We thought … why not take some of the great comedies from the 1920s, which are always crowd-pleasers, and run them instead of first-run films?

Why do you think the silent film screenings are so popular?

There are people who really love this art form and come from far and wide to see these films. … We’ve been running silent films with live music at the Town Hall Theatre regularly every month for 13 years … so we’ve sort of developed a loyal audience for it, and a momentum.

Why comedies?

Comedies are really special because during the silent film era a comedy was not about telling jokes or stories; there was no sound, so the humor was all visual, not verbal … and an accident of that type of humor is that it still holds up really well today. If [comedians] were doing standup in the 1920s … we wouldn’t understand any of the jokes today … but visual humor is timeless … and works in different cultural contexts. … Anyone, no matter where they were in the world, could follow the story and enjoy it.

When and how did you start doing this?

I’ve been doing it regularly since about 2007. … The Palace Theatre in Manchester didn’t have anything planned for Halloween, so I volunteered to do the music for a screening of the silent film Phantom of the Opera. … I really enjoyed doing it and kept doing it … and now I do about 100 shows a year, generally two shows a week in New Hampshire or Boston. Sometimes, I travel across the country … and I’ve played in London a couple times. It’s been interesting … to go around the world, trying to bring silent films from a century ago to life for today’s audience.

How does the live musical accompaniment work?

I use a keyboard. It’s a digital synthesizer, so it’s not just piano. … One of the stereotypes about silent films is that they had some kind of rinky-dink piano accompaniment on an out-of-tune piano, but that isn’t how it was for these films. Nobody would have accepted that at the time, because the music was always such an important part of the experience. … With the synthesizer, I can create a score with everything from strings and woodwinds to bass drums, cymbals and percussion. It can recreate the texture of a full orchestra remarkably well.

How does live music enhance the experience?

Music plays quite a different role between [silent] films and contemporary film. In contemporary film, the music is all written out [by] one person. … For [silent] films, there was no official score. Most of the films were released by the studios to local theaters, and it was up to local musicians to come up with the right music for their audience. … In most cases, [the musician] would improvise the score on the spot. It was a skill that you can develop, which I have done, to create music in real time that responds not just to the film but to the audience’s reaction to the film, so every screening is a unique experience.

Why go?

It’s a great chance for people to experience something that they can’t get anywhere else. You can watch these films at home on video, but it’s not the same, because the nature of [silent films] is the idea of showing them in a theater with an audience and live music, and [the screenings] really recreate those conditions that these films were intended to be shown in. … I encourage people to give it a try. It’s unlike anything you may have experienced at a theater before.

Silent Film Comedy Week
Where: Town Hall Theatre, 40 Main St., Wilton
Schedule:
Monday, Aug. 10, 7:30 p.m. – The General (1926), starring Buster Keaton
Tuesday, Aug. 11, 7:30 p.m. – Tramp, Tramp, Tramp (1926), starring Harry Langdon
Wednesday, Aug. 12, 7:30 p.m. – The Kid (1921), starring Charlie Chaplin and Jackie Coogan
Thursday, Aug. 13, 7:30 p.m. – Grandma’s Boy (1922), starring Harold Lloyd
Friday, Aug. 14, 7:30 p.m. – Steamboat Bill Jr. (1928), starring Buster Keaton and Ernest Torrence
Cost: $10 per person|
More info: Call 654-3456 or visit wiltontownhalltheatre.com

Uncommon Art event is on in Goffstown

The Goffstown Main Street Program will host its 12th annual Uncommon Art on the Common Saturday, Aug. 1. The art show and sale has been scaled back but will feature the same variety of handcrafted items by local and regional artists. Nina Duval has participated in the show as an artist every year since its inception, and in recent years also as a volunteer. Now she is leading the organizing committee and talked about what the show will look like this year.

What is Uncommon Art on the Common?

It’s an art show and sale where local and fairly local artists come into town for the day, pitch a tent and set up their displays, sell their art and interact with the fairgoers who come around. … One of the other things we do … is the Uncommon Bling Project. It’s a voluntary project where artists, if they want to, can create little items that can be strung on a cord, kind of to show a little example of what they do. People go around to each tent and put [the artists’ bling] on a cord and wear it. … We try to do little things like that to get the community involved.

What has been your involvement?

I’ve been a part of the show every year since the beginning. I started off as an artist, and then I started volunteering, doing ancillary jobs, nothing really big. This is the first year that I’ve gotten to spearhead the Uncommon Art Committee on the [Goffstown] Main Street Board of Directors.

What kinds of arts and crafts will be represented at the show?

We have oil painters; acrylic painters; artists who do watercolors, pastels and pen and ink; woodworkers. We have one person who works with leather and metal, as well as some digital art. We have potters; jewelry makers; stained glass artists. Sometimes we also have writers from a local writers group, and sometimes even published authors who sell their books.

What kind of art do you do?

I started out doing multimedia, like painting and photography and things of that nature, and then, seven years ago, I kind of branched out into jewelry creation. Most of what I do is chainmail and wire wrapping beadwork; that’s become the bread and butter for me as far as sales. … I try to get into different media, too. I have a lot of ideas for new things that I want to do. This year I’m actually branching out into upcycled plastic, like rugs, mats and totes that are created from plastic shopping bags.

Why did Goffstown Main Street decide to move forward with Uncommon Art this year?

This event was probably just as close to not happening as it was to happening. Goffstown Main Street has had to shut down two of its events already, and it gets a good portion of its funds from those events, so we thought, ‘Let’s see if we can still do this.’ Also, there are a lot of artists that have had their events canceled this spring and summer, and those events are where they make a good bit of their income.

How did artists feel about participating in the show this year?

Pretty much all of the artists who are participating have been indoctrinated that [following Covid-19 guidelines] is what they have to do now, and most of them have been very cool with it. They understand what’s expected of them. … Of course, we didn’t really expect that we would get our normal number of applicants. Normally we get roughly about 50, but right now we’re at 25. … For some artists [the Covid-19 guidelines are] a problem because of the media they work in. For example, we have a woodworker who was concerned about having to use disinfectant wipes on her products because it would absolutely toast the finishes.

What is the event committee doing to make sure that the show is safe?

In other years we’ve had different things, like face painters, but for obvious reasons we’re not really doing that this year. We’re also limiting the number of artists so that social distancing will be easier to do. … We have brightly colored mats that we’re going to set in front of the tents for social distancing, and we’ll ask people, ‘If you see two or three guests inside a tent, please wait outside until they leave.’ … We’ve purchased a lot of masks, and the artists are told to wear masks and have hand sanitizer on hand for their guests. A lot of artists, especially ones like jewelry makers, want you to be able to handle their items and look at their items up close, so we tell them to make sure that people use hand sanitizer before they touch anything. They’ll also be using disinfectant wipes to wipe down tablets, phones, pens and things like that.

What makes Uncommon Art unique?

I think it’s the scale of it. It’s kind of like a mini version of the [Craftsmen’s] Fair at Sunapee; it’s not huge, but we still get pretty good traffic. It’s a good place for a lot of [art fair] beginners to get their feet wet and start doing outdoor fairs.

12th annual Uncommon Art on the Common
Where: Main Street, Goffstown
When: Saturday, Aug. 1, 9 a.m. to 3 p.m.
Cost: Free admission and parking
More info: Call 497-9933 or visit goffstownmainstreet.org