Guilford Center Stage concludes its second season with A Battle of Wits by Vermont scenic artist and showman, Charles W. Henry. The 4-act comedy-melodrama will be performed this coming weekend, with shows on Friday and Saturday, October 7 & 8, at 7:30 pm, and Sunday, October 9, at 2:00 pm, upstairs at Broad Brook Grange.
General Admission tickets are $10, available in advance at: guilfordstage.bpt.me or 1-800-838-3006, or at the door.
William Stearns, of Brattleboro, directs the play, using Broad Brook Grange’s own, century-old scenic curtains and flats, painted by Charles Henry for this stage around 1900.
Our cast, from Guilford, Brattleboro and Bernardston features Joel Kaemmerlen and Julie Holland as the protagonists, caught in Germany at the outbreak of World War I, with fellow American tourists played by Gay Maxwell and Marvin Shedd. Cast as German officers are Anders Burrows and Joshua Cunningham, assisted by Glenn Letourneau. The Americans make their way to the French border, given temporary refuge along the way by a friendly innkeeper played by Bob Tucker, and are welcomed by a French General, portrayed by Skyler Heathwaite.
Sue Shedd is Stage Manager, with lighting by Maria Pugnetti, wardrobe by Gina Davis and Laura Lawson Tucker, and settings managed by Nancy Detra and Don McLean.
Charles Washington Henry was born in Guilford, Vermont in 1850, and died in North Ferrisburgh, Vt. in 1918. Henry was Vermont’s most prolific and accomplished scenic artist. As well as painting at least 60 theater curtains —38 are known to remain — he wrote songs and plays, produced vaudeville skits, played several instruments, acted, and managed the Henry Family traveling troupe.
The Henry Family Company produced theater curtains and booked shows at Town and Grange Halls throughout Vermont, in a caravan of horse-drawn wagons and then Model T Fords, carrying costumes, paints, play scripts, musical instruments and personal belongings.
This is one of only two of his plays currently known to survive, and is both an example of the melodramas popular during the era and a comic treatment of the durable Yankee character for which the prototype was first seen on stage in the 1787 play, The Contrast, by Royall Tyler, who lived a short walk from Broad Brook Grange in the first decade of the 19th century.
The setting of this play, at the outbreak of World War I, continues Guilford Center Stage’s 2016 theme of works set during these years, following the production of one-acts by Michael Nethercott in June. This was a golden age of touring troupes who brought musical and dramatic productions to small Town Halls and Granges, such as Broad Brook, throughout the region. After the War, motion pictures, the phonograph and radio ended those vibrant forms of entertainment.
Christine Hadsel, who spearheaded the cataloguing and restoration of scenic theater curtains thought the region, including ours, will attend the opening night performance, briefly address the audience, and offer for sale her recent book on the subject, Suspended Worlds.
Guilford Center Stage is a project of Broad Brook Grange, initiated by Grange members Don McLean and Laura Lawson Tucker in 2015 to make greater use of the building’s 19th century stage. Its particular goal is to present “place-based” plays, which have regional or local connections.
