Arts

Guilford Center Stage’s first autumn production in four years brings Haunts of the Season to the stage at Broad Brook Community Center on October 20-22. Shows are Friday and Saturday at 7:30 pm, Sunday at 2:00 pm. The production is helmed by local playwright/director Michael Nethercott with a cast of sixteen. The show is a combination of original plays by Nethercott and a bevy of creepy classics.

Included are monologues, songs, and poems by Edgar Allan Poe, William Shakespeare, Emily Dickinson and others. Robert Frost’s poem/play “The Witch of Coos” is among the offerings. Also featured are several works by Nethercott himself, with influences by Vermont legends, ghost lore, and The Twilight Zone.

The veteran cast includes (in alphabetical order) Cyndi Cain Fitzgerald, Richard Epstein, Jennifer Gagnon, Jenny Holan, Archer Holland, Julie Holland, Cassandra Holloway, Joel Kaemmerlen, Cassidy Majer, Stewart McDermet, Aaron Morse, Hunter Savage, Marvin Shedd, Carolyn Taylor-Olson, and Bob Tucker. Nethercott acts as host. Stage Manager for this production is Sue Shedd, with tech work by Maria Pugnetti. Don McLean is producer.

Guilford Center Stage will perform Thornton Wilder’s play, Our Town, at the Broad Brook Community Center in Guilford onFriday and Saturday, May 5 & 6, at 7:30 pm and Sunday, May 7 at 2:00 pm. Ian Hefele directs a cast from the tri-state region.

A theatrical groundbreaker when it debuted in 1938, Our Town was written at the nearby MacDowell Colony in Peterborough, NH, and the town of Grover’s Corners in the play is based upon that locale.

Among the innovative features of the play is Wilder’s use of a central character, the Stage Manager, who communicates directly to the audience, and both moves the action along and interrupts it with commentary. Jennifer Gagnon plays this pivotal role.

Next Stage Arts is excited to welcome Sara Juli, a celebrated solo-performance artist, for a three-day artist-in-residence program. During her residency, Juli will develop her latest work, “Naughty,” a piece commissioned by the Strand Theatre in Rockland, ME.

The residency will culminate in two free lecture/demonstration showings on April 29th, at 11:00am and 2:00pm. This showing of the piece in development will include an audience discussion with the artist on process, feedback, and dialogue.

“Naughty” is a performance piece that explores the impacts of trauma on the brain stemming from sexual assault as a child. Interweaving regressed thinking with a conflicted inner voice, coupled with finding the humor in the tragic, the work breaks down victimhood to ultimately reclaim the mind.

Guilford Center Stage announces a GoFundMe campaign to help improve the space it uses at Broad Brook Community Center, in Guilford. The fundraiser will continue the improvements achieved with the recent renovation of the building, with two acquisitions.

First, the theater group is purchasing four air purifiers, to be used both in the auditorium and backstage, to protect the health of actors and audiences. These Oransi brand purifiers have state-of-the art HEPA filters and will recirculate all the air in the auditorium and stage area twice each hour, removing 99.97% of dust, bacteria, even viruses.