The Art Roundup 25/02/20

The latest from NH’s theater, arts and literary communities

• Art Off the Walls: The Currier Museum of Art (150 Ash St. in Manchester; currier.org) is kicking off a new “Art off the Walls” evening event series on the third Thursday of each month, starting with Thursday, Feb. 20, from 5 to 8 p.m. when admission is free, the band Pickleback Jack will perform and gallerist Bill Stelling will discuss the 1980s New York City art world, inspired by the Jean-Michel Basquiat and Ouattara Watts exhibit, which will close Feb. 23, according to the website. The Winter Garden Cafe will be open during the event.

• Free jazz: The Capitol Center for the Arts (44 S. Main St. in Concord; ccanh.com) will present “Sittin’ In & Groovin’ Out: An Evening of Jazz with Metta Quintet featuring the Concord High School Jazz Ensemble” on Thursday, Feb. 20, at 6:30 p.m. The event, part of the Gile Concert Series, is free; reserve tickets online.

• Hatbox carries on: The Hatbox Theatre (hatboxnh.com) doesn’t have a physical location but it is presenting monthly shows “Discovering Magic with Andrew Pinard” on select Wednesdays at 7:30 p.m. in the Kimball Jenkins carriage house, 266 N. Main St. in Concord. The next show is Wednesday, March 19. The Hatbox is also looking for singers for an upcoming production of An Evening Wasted (… with Tom Lehrer) in April; contact [email protected], according to a Facebook post.

• Art and nature: The New Hampshire Audubon’s McLane Center (84 Silk Farm Road in Concord; nhaudubon.org) will open the exhibit “Simply Nature” on Wednesday, Feb. 26, to run through Saturday, May 3. The exhibit features a small portion of photographer Pierre Garand’s catalog of nature photography. An artist reception will be held on Thursday, March 6, 4 to 6 p.m.

At the Audubon’s Massabesic Center (26 Audubon Way in Auburn), the Manchester Artists Association is partnering on “Nature’s Gallery,” an art exhibit to “celebrate creativity and nature’s beauty” via pieces in a variety of media from 15 local artists, according to the website. This exhibit will run from Thursday, March 6, through Friday, April 25. Both McLane and Massabesic centers are open Wednesdays through Saturdays, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.

• Jury duty: Bedford Off Broadway is holding auditions for 12 Angry Jurors, the company’s spring show, which will be performed June 6-8 and June 13-15, according to a press release. Rehearsals are Sunday afternoons and Monday and Wednesday nights. Auditions will be Monday, March 10, and Tuesday, March 11, from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. at Bedford Town Hall (70 Bedford Center Road, across the street from the public library) and will consist of cold readings, “monologues are appreciated,” the release said. Contact [email protected] with questions.

• Paint! The Center for the Arts, 428 Main St. in New London, has several painting classes on the schedule. “Beginner Paint with Zoey Parys” will run Monday, Feb. 24, from noon to 4 p.m at 428 Main St. in New London. Paint on a 5-inch by 5-inch canvas with oil paints (materials provided); cost is $35 per person. “Perfecting Birches with Kim Schusler” will be Saturday, Feb. 22, from 9:30 a.m. to noon, 428 Main St. in New London, and feature instruction in painting birches using watercolor; BYO supplies. Cost is $35. A four-week “Oil/Acrylics Fundamental Painting Approaches with Tatiana Yanovskaya-Sink” class will run Tuesdays, March 1-25, from 9 a.m. to noon; the cost is $300. Also in March, “Painting Spectacular Flowers in Watercolor with Robert O’Brien” will run Saturday, March 22, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.; cost is $120 plus materials. See centerfortheartsnh.org/classes.

• On stage: Described as a “darkly comic, atypical love story,” Gruesome Playground Injuries will run at the Players’ Ring Theatre (105 Marcy St. in Portsmouth; 436-8123, playersring.org) Friday, Feb. 28, through Sunday, March 16 — 7 p.m. on Thursdays, 7:30 p.m. on Fridays and Saturdays and 2:30 p.m. on Saturdays and Sundays. Tickets cost $29, $26 for students, 65+, military and first responders.

• Fairest of them all: Southern NY Youth Ballet will present Snow White at the Palace Theatre (80 Hanover St. in Manchester; palacetheatre.org) on Sunday, March 30, at 1 and 4 p.m. The show is “appropriate for children and young ballerines of all ages” with an approximately 90-minute runtime and a brief intermission, according to a Palace email. Tickets cost $24 to $29. Tickets to a pre-show tea with Snow White cost an additional $20. The tea starts 45 minutes before showtime.

A priest, an atheist and a teacher walk onto a stage

Faithless is a fast-paced look at modern religion

By Michael Witthaus

[email protected]

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.

This Week 25/02/20

Thursday, Feb. 20

The Nashua Center for the Arts (201 Main St., Nashua, 800-657-8774, nashuacenterforthearts.com) will host Less is More: An Evening with Joss Stonetonight at 8 p.m. Joss Stone is a Grammy and Brit Award-winning artist who released her acclaimed debut album, The Soul Sessions, in

Thursday, Feb. 20

Mosiac Art Colletive (66 Hanover St. in Manchester; mosaicartcollective.com) will host Gelli Jam, a workshop on Gelli printing, tonight at 5:45 through 8 p.m. Suggested donation of $5 to $10. Some materials available for use. Register on the website.

Thursday, Feb. 20

LaBelle Winery Derry (14 Route 111, Derry, 672-9898, labellewinery.com/labelle-winery-derry) will host Harvest & Rust, a Neil Young tribute concert, tonight at 8 p.m. Harvest and Rust represents the wide range of Neil Young’s six-decade career,. Tickets are $40.

Friday, Feb. 21

The Warren Haynes Band will play the Chubb Theatre (Capitol Center for the Arts, 44 S. Main St., Concord, 225-1111, ccanh.com) tonight at 8 p.m. as part of its Million Voices Whisper Tour. Tickets start at $55..

Friday, Feb. 21

Tonight marks the first of three nights of one-act plays from the Nashua Theatre Guild (14 Court St, Nashua, 978-300-2444, nashuatheatreguild.org). The plays will include a noir play, The House on the Hill on the Boulevard at the End of the Sidewalk; Neil Simon’s Rumors; Big Al, and Hammered: a Thor and Loki Play. The curtain will go up tonight and tomorrow, Saturday, Feb. 22, at 7:30 p.m., and Sunday, Feb. 23, at 2 p.m. Tickets are $20 ($18 for students and seniors) through the Guild’s website.

Saturday, Feb. 22

The New Hampshire Philharmonic Orchestra (647-6476, nhphil.org) will perform Eroica Inspirations: A Journey from Beethoven to Torke tonight at 7:30 p.m. and tomorrow, Sunday, Feb. 23, at 2 p.m. at the Seifert Performing Arts Center (Salem High School, 44 Geremonty Drive, Salem, 893-7069, ext. 5601, sau57.org/pac), with special guest pianist Taige Wang. Tickets are $35 for adults, with reduced prices for seniors, students, Salem students, and streaming. Visit The Phil’s website.

Saturday, Feb. 22

There will be an Apokriatiko Greek Dance tonight at the Saint George Greek Orthodox Cathedral (650 Hanover St., Manchester, 622-9113, stgeorgenh.org) tonight from 7 to 11 p.m. in the church hall, DJed by the Salonica Boys. There will be Greek and American dancing, hot hors d’oeuvres and a cash bar. There is a suggested donation of $25; children 12 and under are free.

Save the Date! Saturday, March 1

The Red Hot Chilli Pipers will bring their hard-rocking bagpipe fusion to the Nashua Center for the Arts (201 Main St., Nashua, 800-657-8774, nashuacenterforthearts.com) Saturday, March 1, at 8 p.m. The band has been described as “AC/DC meets the poet Robert Burns.” Tickets start at $29 through the Nashua Center’s website.

Featured photo: Courtesy photo.

Quality of Life 25/02/20

Headed for the Big Show

Venomous snake on Aisle Four

As reported by WMUR in a Feb.16 online article, an employee at the Manchester Market Basket received a surprise on Friday, Feb.14, while unloading a box of bananas: a venomous snake. According to New Hampshire Fish and Game, the snake was a 2-foot-long Ornate Cat-eye, a mildly venomous snake species native to Central America. “The snake was not harmed and given to Rainforest Reptiles Shows,” the WMUR article reported, and went on to quote Mack Ralbovsky, Vice President of Rainforest Reptiles. “We get something like this maybe three or four times a year,” Ralbovsky said. “A lot of the invasive species we see come from situations like this where an animal might be shipped in produce.”

QOL score: -1 because SURPRISE!

Comment: According to Ralbovsky, while technically venomous, this species feeds mostly on lizards and amphibians, and poses little danger to humans.

NH Super Bowl bets

According to a Feb. 14 press release from the New Hampshire Lottery Commission, New Hampshire football enthusiasts wagered more than $7.5 million on last week’s Super Bowl game between the Philadelphia Eagles and the Kansas City Chiefs. “Of those who wagered on the outright winner, 89% of them were correct in their bet on the Eagles,” the Lottery Commission wrote, then went on to quote Charlie McIntyre, New Hampshire Lottery’s Executive Director. “Between the standard touchdown, yardage, or MVP and the Swiftie Special betting options, the Super Bowl certainly lived up to its reputation as New Hampshire’s largest sports betting event of the year.”

QOL score: +1

Comment: “Since the New Hampshire Lottery and DraftKings launched mobile sports betting in New Hampshire on December 30, 2019, bettors have wagered more than $3.5 billion,” the press release reported.

Joann Fabric holding on by a thread

In a Feb. 12 online article, WMUR reported that troubled fabric and craft chain Joann Fabric has announced it will close more than half of its 800 stores, including seven of eight stores in New Hampshire. “According to court filings, the Hooksett location is the only one of the state’s eight stores expected to stay open,” the story read.

QOL score: -1

Comment: “Joann has filed for bankruptcy twice in the past year and is looking for a buyer,” WMUR reported.

Do not disturb until August

In a Feb. 15 online article, New Hampshire Public Radio reported that “New Hampshire farmers can now apply for funding in exchange for leaving their hayfields alone in the early summer.” The conservation group the Bobolink Project hopes to preserve a strong breeding environment for bobolinks, small migratory birds that nest in New England in the spring. As reported by NHPR, the group will “compensate farmers for the income they might lose by not haying in early summer, paying them to keep their fields as habitat for the birds. Keeping that habitat also helps other birds, like meadowlarks and grasshopper sparrows.”

QOL score: +1

Comment: Farmers can apply to be part of the project at bobolinkproject.com/farmers.php. Applications are due by March 31.

QOL score: 53

Net change: 0

QOL this week: 53

What’s affecting your Quality of Life here in New Hampshire?

Let us know at [email protected].

Sox finally open the wallet

The Big Story – Alex Bregman: There is an old adage that says it’s not how much you spend, it’s how you spend it. That is the opening discussion point for the Red Sox signing Bregman to a contract that will pay him $40 million a year for the next three years. Even before you get to the fact that his RBI total dropped from 98 to 75, giving a guy who hasn’t driven in 100 runs since 2019 an annual salary that’s larger than all but four MLB players seems like a massive overpay. Which could have been applied to get top-of-the-line FA starters like Max Fried or Corbin Burnes. There’s also the fact that he’s ticketed to play second base, where he’s only played seven games in the majors — last done in 2017.

On the bright side he’s a needed right-handed batter, a solid to very good fielder at least at third base, with major playoff experience, and is the kind of willing leader this young team needs.

Plus John Henry finally acted like a major market owner with a deal that’s only three years. So it won’t strangle them if he’s deeper on the back nine than they think.

Sports 101: Who’s the only player in college basketball (Division I) to lead the nation in scoring and rebounding in the same season?

News Item – Have Celtics Righted the Ship? In winning eight of 10 going into the All-Star break some think they have. Me, not so much. They have a focus problem that has them play down or up to the competition on a nightly basis. Like beating Cleveland and New York in recent high-profile games and losing to Dallas just after they traded Luka Doncic. And that lack of urgency has them an embarrassing 17-10 at home, while it’s a league best 22-6 on the road. Something that suggests their underwhelming 39-16 overall record is more a function of head/motivation issues than physical ability.

News Item – End-of-Year NFL Awards: With football over, here are a few random awards for the just concluded 2024 season.

MVP – Josh Allen –One of the harder choices since 1963 with voters having to decide between Allen, Saquon Barkley and Lamar Jackson.

A Little History – 1963 MVP Vote –Y.A. Tittle threw arecord-setting 36-TD-pass season and Jim Brown ran for all-time records 1,837 yards and 6.7 per carry average. Tittle won.

Most Ironic Story – The Jets, of Course – Seeing their high draft pick QB bust Sam Darnold in the MVP conversation for leading Minnesota to an unexpected 14-3 season, just as they went 5-12 with supposed QB savior Aaron Rodgers.

Worst Decision – Player Category – Has to be Atlanta giving 36-year-old Kirk Cousins a four-year guaranteed deal for a bazillion dollars and then seeing him benched over the rookie they drafted right after signing him. And now they’re on the hook for around $100 million.

Worst Decision – Coach Category –The over-his-head Jerod Mayo. Bob Kraft, why would you hire a guy because he was polite on a trip to Israel?

Worst Decision by an Owner – Bob Kraft – First there was hiring Mayo, then compounding the problem by keeping the same personnel people in place (except Coach B) that had been drafting terribly for several years, which is what they did again after Drake Maye fell in their lap at third overall.

The Numbers:

6.5 – million dollar net loss for Pennsylvania sportsbooks on bets they handled in Pennsylvania on the Super Bowl.

30,000 – career points scored platinum reached by Kevin Durant with a free throw vs. Memphis last week.

Sports 101 Answer: The late Hank Gathers, Loyola Marymount.

Final Thought – The GOAT Race at QB: The dumbest post-Super Bowl comment I heard came not so surprisingly from Steven A. Blowhard on ESPN that the GOAT race between Tom Brady and Patrick Mahomes was overbecause he dropped to 3-2 in SBs after his less than stellar effort vs. the Eagles. Guess he forgot Brady was 3-2 in SBs after losing for a second time to the Giants in 2011. It’s silly to say it’s over after Mahomes’ first seven full seasons. Especially since Brady didn’t win his fourth SB until his 14th season.

Thus all you can compare is after their first seven seasons, and I hate to tell the homers in the crowd, Mahomes has got Brady in playoff appearances (7-6), playoff record (17-4/14-5), playoff one-and-dones (PM none, Brady 2), TD passes (46-26) and QB rating (105.4-87.1).

That puts Mahomes in position to catch Brady if he’s able to match his amazing longevity. And if so, will he be able to manage the tall task of winning four more in his late 30s, which Brady needed to do after going 10 years between winning his third and fourth SB?

So actually the race is just getting started, not the done deal some guy on TV proclaimed. Email Dave Long at [email protected].

Future homeowners

New Hampshire Housing helps Granite Staters find their home

New Hampshire Housing was established by statute in 1981 and is, according to its website, a self-supporting public corporation that promotes, finances and supports housing solutions for the people of New Hampshire. It operates rental and homeownership programs to help those with low or moderate incomes obtain affordable housing. It has assisted 55,000 families in the purchase of homes and helped finance the “creation of more than 16,000 multifamily housing units,” while receiving no operating funds from the state government. Etienne LaFond, the Director of Communications and Marketing for New Hampshire Housing, spoke to the Hippo about what New Hampshire Housing does. Visit nhhfa.org.

Can you give a brief overview of what New Hampshire Housing does?

New Hampshire Housing is a housing authority for the state of New Hampshire. We are a public company with a board that is appointed by the governor. We help administer rental assistance programs. We work with our partners in multi-family development in order to fund and execute on the construction of various developments throughout the state of New Hampshire and we also have a home ownership division which helps people get affordable single-family home loans, down payment assistance and various other programs.

What is rental assistance and what sorts of services do you provide for people looking to rent in the state?

We provide direct assistance to very low-income households. We help them maintain decent and affordable housing through HUD’s Housing Choice Voucher Program. This program, it’s always pretty much been set up to help prevent homelessness and offers stable housing for thousands of Granite State residents. Through that program a qualified household pays a portion of their income toward rent and utilities, and New Hampshire Housing will pay the balance directly to the landlord … [also] emergency housing resources, we provide a lot of those to renters. Normally, setting up the voucher and wait list program, we’re mainly administering that program. HUD also supports the program in which the voucher can also be used for home ownership mortgage assistance, which is actually one of our favorite programs here. It kind of gives the ability to take these people who, home ownership is just never in the cards, but it’s possible to kind of convert that voucher to sort of help with mortgage payment assistance. This has helped hundreds of participants purchase their own homes.

Can you expand on the home ownership aspect of New Hampshire Housing?

We work statewide with a larger network of lenders and real estate professionals, so Realtors, etc., to offer single-family mortgage programs. These also can include purchasing your home yourself, refinancing, or even a purchase slash rehabilitation. It’s primarily used by moderate-income buyers, but we have low down payment options. We have various programs where people can get up to $5,000, $10,000 and $15,000 in cash down payment assistance. We also provide programs that have closing costs assistance, discount mortgage insurance and rehab options.

Can you talk about the work you all do with lead removal?

We have a Lead Hazard Control and Healthy Programs program (NHH LHCHHP) that helps to basically eliminate childhood lead poisoning. We provide educational tools, resources and funding. We get those through federal grants but also state loans, and that’s to assist homeowners, property owners of rental apartments, and even child care facilities so they can be lead-safe certified. That grant funding comes from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. So that’s been a pretty big thing for people to apply for that grant. We prioritize a property where there’s a poisoned child under 6 years of age with an elevated blood level of lead…. It’s something we’re pretty active with. Those are actually federal grants, so it’s not a loan….

Do you all have any events or new programs coming up?

We often send out, like TEFRA, notices of public hearing for certain places where we’re developing. I know that we had one in the rail yard. We also have an upcoming home ownership conference, which is coming in three weeks. That is going to be talking to Realtors and professionals and the bank industry about the current state of single-family home ownership and what tools are at their disposal in order to make home ownership possible, especially in an area of high demand but low supply. One thing that I think that has been really of note is that there’s a new Opioid Use Disorder Supportive Housing Capital Program. We launched this new initiative to provide stable housing for people who have been impacted by opioid use disorder. So there’s a notice of funding opportunity. We still have applications all the way until March 11.

Is there anything else you’d like to mention about New Hampshire Housing that I haven’t asked you about?

One of the other things that is lesser-known in our various divisions is from our research and advocacy wing. We look into the way that local municipalities and citizens can find ways to tackle housing challenges. So most recently on Feb. 7 we released a case study. We had a housing opportunity planning program where we gave grants to a lot of local municipal communities and we had case studies about people who had used those funds, Bethlehem, Berlin, Canterbury, Keene, Plymouth, there’s quite a few. It shows how they’re addressing housing challenges through changes to their zoning, their planning ideas, and actually updating their master plans to deal with innovative housing solutions. That report is actually currently up and available on our website. It’s pretty awesome to see some of the innovative ways people have done things. For example, Keene, they created a cottage court overlay district, which is encouraging more pedestrian-friendly housing downtown. Canterbury, for example, made a farmstead design alternative for more flexibility through a view process about what’s required in a property and offered design incentives to protect the towns for people who have often been worried about the rural character or something like the open space. Perhaps there’s other ways to figure out the actual design of housing to not lose the character but still provide it for a population that increasingly has to move out in order to find new opportunities. —Zachary Lewis

Stay in the loop!

Get FREE weekly briefs on local food, music,

arts, and more across southern New Hampshire!