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Food: Green Cuisine
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Green Cuisine
Where To Go For St. Patty's Day Eats
Written By Angie Sykeny (asykeny@hippopress.com)
Images: Courtesy Photo
From traditional corned beef and cabbage dinners to green-themed pub crawls and cake classes, here are some local places where you can find St. Patty’s fare. All meals and events listed take place on St. Patrick’s Day, Friday, March 17, unless otherwise specified. For more bars and restaurants offering St. Patty’s nightlife and entertainment, see p. 52 in the Nite section.
Restaurant Specials & Meals
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News: Antennas & Rockets
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Antennas & Rockets
New Hampshire’s Link to the Recent Space Missions
Written By Ryan Lessard (news@hippopress.com)
Images: Courtesy Photo
If you watched the live feed of SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket launch from the Kennedy Space Center on Feb. 19, you might have heard the commentator talk about data coming in from New Hampshire.
That data, it turns out, came from the New Boston Air Force Station, and it’s been helping out with space launches like these since the 1960s.
Falcon 9
Major Nathaniel Markley is the director of operations at the New Boston Air Force Station, which is located on an old World War II bombing range. He said three antennas there — which look like mini Epcot center globes — are dedicated to the Air Force Satellite Control Network. The network site has the codename BOSS and is operated by the 23rd Space Operations Squadron.
Markley said whenever there’s a launch on the East Coast, BOSS is usually involved in the mission.
“We’re usually the first site that will be called up to help track the telemetry from that rocket or the satellite vehicle that is sitting on top of the rocket,” Markley said.
During the last launch, BOSS was one of three network sites around the globe that helped relay telemetry, tracking and commanding data from the Falcon 9 rocket to mission control. The other two were LION in Oakhanger, England, and REEF in Diego Garcia, a small island in the Indian Ocean.
While BOSS plays an important role, its main function isn’t to examine the data; it’s just to make sure mission control gets it.
“We don’t actually see the data,” Markley said. “The analogy we like to use is that we’re just a real complex telephone operator [using] the old patch cables.”
The antenna operators, of which there is one for each antenna always on duty, make sure the antenna is aligned correctly and is beaming at the right signal frequency and power, and that the data link-up is working.
Usually, an East Coast launch will rely first on BOSS, and then, as it moves farther east, other sites like LION and REEF will take over the task. Ahead of the launch, operators are on the phone with mission control personnel to make sure the antenna is tuned to the appropriate, unique frequencies and to troubleshoot any issues that might arise mid-mission.
Space Connection
The BOSS station is in operation 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days of the year. Its first antenna was installed in 1961 and it’s been involved in space missions ever since.
Because it’s located on an old bombing range, the Air Force has spent the past several decades cleaning up the land and getting rid of old bombs in unspent ordnance remediation efforts.
On any given day, they’re talking to about 80 satellites in orbit and helping the satellite owners track them. Markley said BOSS handles around 67,000 launch or satellite supports each year.
The most recent launch (CRS 10) was the 10th of 12 resupply missions to the International Space Station that NASA has contracted with SpaceX to conduct.
On average, the New Boston station helps with about 10 SpaceX launches each year, about two to five of which are NASA resupply missions, according to Markley.
The 23rd Space Operations Squadron covers all the sites around the Atlantic Ocean, whereas the 21st Space Operations Squadron covers the Indian and Pacific Oceans.
Arts: Tiny Art, Big Punch
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Tiny Art, Big Punch
NHIA Hosts 15th Minumental Show this Weekend
Written By Kelly Sennott (ksennott@hippopress.com)
Images: Courtesy Photo
The New Hampshire Institute of Art’s 15th Annual Minumental Exhibition and Art Sale is all about access — for both artists and buyers.
Music: Green Friday
FEATURED MUSIC
Green Friday
St. Patrick's Day Around The Region
Written By Michael Witthaus (music@hippopress.com)
Images: Courtesy/Stock Photo
Every St. Patrick’s Day, there are two kinds of taverns. Most offer corned beef dinner specials and stock extra Guinness and Harp Lager. The rest serve Jameson-braised short ribs and Irish nachos year-round, and go deep on Irish whiskey, with Green Dot, Tullamore Dew and others on offer. For those, March 17 is a holiday akin to July 4, with lines out the door at daybreak. In New Hampshire, they include The Shaskeen and Wild Rover in Manchester, Portsmouth’s Rí Rá Irish Pub and Kathleen’s Cottage in Bristol. Salt hill Pub has four locations (with one more later this year in the West Lebanon space formerly occupied by Seven Barrel Brewery). Here’s a rundown of all the happenings. Sláinte!
Film: Logan
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Film Review
Logan (R)
Written By Amy Diaz (adiaz@hippopress.com)
Images: Movie Screenshot
In a dark future for mutants, Wolverine and Professor X are chased (as always) by anti-mutant bad guys in Logan, allegedly the final Hugh Jackman outing as the X-Men’s Wolverine.
It’s the year 2029 and while Logan (Hugh Jackman) can still mow down a group of guys trying to steal the hubcaps off his car, he isn’t the warrior he used to be. His metal claws don’t always extend as far — or extend at all without ever greater pain — and he appears to be crumbling from the inside. To make money he drives a limo for bachelorette parties and casino patrons across the southwest.
He uses that money to fund a wreck of a compound in an abandoned factory in Mexico. There, a sun-sensitive mutant named Caliban (Stephen Merchant) helps Logan care for a wrecked Charles Xavier (Patrick Stewart). Frequently ranting and confused, Charles is kept in an old water tank and kept medicated. On one occasion we see what happens when he isn’t doped up: he has seizures that sort of radiate out, causing everyone around him to shake and writhe as though they are about to implode.
We don’t know why Charles is there, where all the X-Men of movies past are or why there haven’t been any mutants born in more than two decades.
At least, any mutants that people know about.
A woman named Gabriela (Elizabeth Rodriguez) comes looking for Logan — for Wolverine, really — with a young girl in tow. Gabriela wants Logan to protect her and young Laura (Dafne Keen) and get them to a spot in North Dakota where they will meet up with others and cross the border into Canada and safety. What exactly they’re trying to get away from isn’t immediately clear but it’s likely that Pierce (Boyd Holbrook), an ex-military mercenary-type with a biomechanical arm, has something to do with it. He shows up to tell Logan that Gabriela is looking for him and to insist that Logan call him when she finds him.
Eventually, Logan reluctantly finds himself acting as Laura’s protector. Even through his mental fog, Charles urges him to accept this duty.
Perhaps because it’s stripped of the X-Men and of most other mutants, Logan feels very different than any of the X-Men movies that have come before. (Also there’s the R rating. You can’t discount the ability of characters to realistically swear and of the movie to show off some realistic gore in upping the “grittiness” factor.) I’ve seen coverage of this movie compare it to a Western, specifically (in a headline somewhere, Slate maybe) to Unforgiven. This movie does have that downbeat, futile-stand-against-black-hats feel. All other X-Men movies, even the other Wolverine movies, have somewhere in their makeup the idea of the plucky band of X-Men protecting mutantkind and providing them with some kind of family. Here, it’s a sort of hopeless Children of Men world for the mutants and Logan is just trying to get by and trying to protect Charles, from the world and from himself. This isn’t the familiar underdogs putting up a fight against overwhelming odds. There is a sense that we are seeing two heroes after they’ve already lost the war and been broken by the aftermath. (It should also be said that while Logan definitely has a more realistically dark and gritty feel than all previous X-Men movies, it isn’t glum, like the various DC movies of late.)
Where is all of this in the X-Men timeline?, you might ask. I’m not sure and I don’t think it matters. I think Logan is best when you think of it as a bottle episode. Generally, if you know that Wolverine can fight and has metal claws, Charles Xavier was once a teacher at a school and the two men have a complicated past, you can get along.
Because you don’t have to know every minute of Logan’s backstory or Charles’ work setting up the school and mentoring the X-Men to understand the very father-son relationship these men have. As what Logan is doing becomes clear, it also becomes clear that he unreservedly loves Charles very much. And Charles, despite some very fatherly words about being disappointed in Logan, also clearly loves Logan, deep in the part of his mind that is still there. He loves Logan and wants to protect him with whatever abilities Charles has left as well — and protecting Laura, who could represent a nobler path for Logan, is part of that. This relationship between a fading Charles and an ailing Logan, as much as anything about supernatural powers, is what is at the core of this movie.
That relationship is also what gives this movie its heft and its stakes. I basically enjoyed this movie when it focused on these characters in the present and their relationships to each other. Occasionally, I would try to fit these character portraits with some previous iteration of them and that, I don’t know, hurt my brain. When the movie just gives us these men, aged in the movie and aged some 17 years in real life from when they started playing these characters, acting the heck out of these roles they’ve lived with for so long, Logan is pretty fantastic.
I don’t think the franchise has given Stewart anything this interesting to do in years. This isn’t the serene, wise Professor X. He is the depressed Charles Xavier of X-Men: Days of Future Past, but with a finality and a regret that still-young character didn’t have. Here, Charles is fragile, weak, needy, battered and mentally cracking while still also the kind, desperate-to-help character we’ve seen in all these movies.
Jackman’s Logan, meanwhile, has a heft his character has seldom had. Wolverine has always been the most fun of the X-Men but here he also seems the most human.
Logan isn’t perfect. I found myself wanting more information on this bleak new world and how it came to be and yet also feeling like there was borderline too much private-army-chase stuff and not as much character study as I wanted. But overall if this truly is the end, at least for Stewart (who media reports has maybe considering this his last X-Men hurrah as well) and Jackman, Logan is a pretty solid way for these actors and these characters to say goodbye to each other.
Grade: B
Pop: New Hampshire To Broadway *
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New Hampshire To Broadway
A Look at the Road to Stardom for Granite State Performers
Written By Kelly Sennott (ksennott@hippopress.com)
Images: Courtesy Photo
Caroline Burns made her national television debut last March as a contestant on The Voice — a whirlwind experience not only because she worked with pop stars like Adam Levine and Christina Aguilera, but because she finally nailed her big break.
Impossible Dream?
Promising Starts
The Route
Skipping Steps
Family Sacrifices
Learning Show Business
Keep Trekking
NH’s Next Broadway Stars
Where to see the next generation of theater talent or inspire a future actor
The Wizard Of Oz: Palace Youth Theatre production at the Palace Theatre, 80 Hanover St., Manchester, Thursday, March 9; Wednesday, March 15, and Thursday, March 16, at 7 p.m.; tickets $14, visit palacetheatre.org or call 668-5588
A Year With Frog and Toad: Peacock Players production at the Janice B. Streeter Theater, 14 Court St., Nashua, Friday, March 10, at 7 p.m.; Saturday, March 11, at 2 and 7 p.m.; Sunday, March 12, at 2 p.m.; Friday, March 17, at 7 p.m.; Saturday, March 18, at 2 and 7 p.m.; Sunday, March 19, at 2 p.m.; tickets $12-$17, visit peacockplayers.org
The Drowsey Chaperone: Derryfield Upper School Players at the Nancy S. Boettiger Theater, 2108 River Road, Manchester, Friday, March 10, at 7 p.m., and Saturday, March 11, at 2 and 7 p.m.; tickets $15
James and the Giant Peach, Jr.: Kid’s Coop Theatre production at the Derry Opera House, 29 W. Broadway, Derry, Friday, March 10, at 7 p.m.; Saturday, March 11, at 1 and 6 p.m.; tickets $12, visit kids-coop-theatre.org
Annie: Bedford Youth Performing Company production at the Derryfield School’s Nancy S. Boettiger Theater, 2108 River Road, Manchester, Friday, March 17, at 7 p.m., and Saturday, March 18, at 1 and 7 p.m.; tickets $15.50, visit bypc.org
The Lion King: Junior Majestic Academy of Dramatic Arts production at the Derry Opera House, 29 W. Broadway, Derry, Friday, March 17, and Saturday, March 18, at 7 p.m.; and Sunday, March 19, at 2 p.m.; tickets $15, visit majestictheatre.net or call 669-7469
Fame: Maskers Drama Club and Central Community Players production at Central High School, 207 Lowell Road, Manchester, central.mansd.org, Friday, March 24, and Saturday, March 25, at 6:30 p.m., tickets $12
Seussical: The Musical: Pinkerton Players, Friday, March 24, at 7 p.m.; Saturday, March 25, at 1 and 7 p.m.; Sunday, March 26, at 2 p.m., tickets $12, stockbridgetheatre.com
The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee: Windham High School theater department at 64 London Bridge Road, Windham, Friday, March 24, at 7 p.m.; Saturday, March 25, at 2 and 7 p.m.; Sunday, March 26, at 2 p.m., tickets $13
Ryan Dever
Exeter mom Maribeth Dever remembers her first panic at seeing her son Ryan Dever onstage. He was 8 and starring as Amahl in Amahl and the Night Visitors at the Leddy Center for the Performing Arts. It helped prepare her for seeing him as Bruce Bogtrotter on the Broadway national tour of Matilda: The Musical this past spring.
“I sat down in my seat for opening night … and all of a sudden I thought, holy crap. If he screws up, the whole show is toast! … I don’t think I breathed until it was over. And he did fine! But there is that sense of, that’s your kid. … You don’t want them to feel like they failed, and you certainly don’t want to disappoint other people. And Broadway’s Broadway. That’s a bigger deal.”
Ryan Dever, 13, is home now with the rest of his siblings, who all love theater. His latest gig was as Scar in the Palace Youth Theatre’s The Lion King with his younger brother. What’s next is uncertain; after all, he only just entered his teen years.
“I can see myself doing musical theater in the future, but as of plans, I’m 13! I have no idea what I’m going to do yet,” he said.
Caroline Burns
Hollis teen Caroline Burns is readying for Brooklyn: The Musical, which starts with a four-week show in Dallas this summer, but you might know her from The Voice, where she competed on Team Adam Levine.
Since then she’s remained busy, making frequent trips to Los Angeles and New York to meet with directors, producers and potential cast members, and flying to Nashville to record music. Before The Voice, Burns traveled the New Hampshire theater circuit, performing with the Palace Theatre (its youth and teen company), the Peacock Players and the Riverbend Youth Company and singing the national anthem at local sporting events.
Alexandra Socha
Alexandra Socha has been living in New York for 10 years, but her biggest claim to fame is the job she got when she first moved to the city, replacing Lea Michele as Wendla in
Spring Awakening on Broadway in 2008. The Nashua native was performing with the Peacock Players under directors like Keith Weirich, Scott Severance and Tim L’Ecuyer when she went to the Boston open calls with a few other Peacock Players students. After the audition, she had one callback and then heard nothing for ages.
“I sort of thought I’d never hear anything again. And then two months later I got a call saying one of the ensemble members was leaving and they were going to have callbacks in New York to replace her — and would I come?” Socha said.
She got the part. She was 17. She joined the ensemble in 2007 and took the title role a year later.
“As far as Spring Awakening goes, it was about being in the right place at the right time in the right role,” she said. “I got to cut the line in a very big way, but after Spring Awakening closed is when my career as an actor started. I learned how to go to auditions and how to file for unemployment, and what it takes to really get the work.”
She’s since taken up a number of projects, from Broadway (Brighton Beach Memoirs) and off-Broadway (Fun Home, Death Takes a Holiday) to Netflix. Ten years later, her Spring Awakening days still carry weight. At the time of her call, she’d just finished a four-week development workshop with a new musical, Head Over Heels.
“There are only so many productions and a million actors,” Socha said. “I joke that I spend a lot of time doing work that potentially nobody will ever see. But you know, sometimes you strike gold, and the thing you’ve been working on gets a production and moves to Broadway. You never know what’s going to happen.”
The Claytons
Missy Clayton
If you’re a regular Palace Theatre audience member, you might recognize Manchester native Missy Clayton, a frequent dancer on the Manchester stage, her most recent credits being Hairspray (still running) and Smokey Joe’s Cafe.
She and her brother, Max Clayton, were part of the theater’s first Teen Company, now in its 10th year. Artistic Director Carl Rajotte said Teen Company is like the “varsity” of the theater’s youth programming; Teen Apprentice Company is “junior varsity” and Palace Youth Theatre is for all levels.
“Not everybody is going to be a theater professional, but it will help them with everything — learning how to speak, learning how to cooperate with people, learning how to create art,” Rajotte said during an interview at the theater. “The mission of the teen program, casually, is it’s for the serious musical theater student who might want to continue theater as a professional or at least through college as an arts degree. It guides them and makes them know what the professional business is like.”
The Claytons danced in a variety of the Palace’s youth and mainstage shows. During an interview before the theater’s Hairspray production, Missy Clayton pulled out a photo of the two as the salt and pepper shakers in the theater’s take on Beauty and the Beast on her phone.
“That was a huge stepping stone for myself and for my brother, getting the opportunity to be pushed on a higher level than most kids our age,” she said.
Max Clayton
Max Clayton is currently deep in ensemble rehearsals for Bandstand on Broadway, with previews beginning March 31. The Manchester native studied at the University of Cincinnati’s College-Conservatory of Music and also performed in Broadway’s Gigi, On the Town and Something Rotten. He never took formal voice or dance lessons in high school; most of his training was at the Palace. He lives with his sister in New York and sees friends from New Hampshire all the time.
“For such a crowded, busy city, it’s also very small; it’s so nice, leaving your stage door, walking one block and running into your best friend,” he said via phone between rehearsals.
“It doesn’t feel like work at all. And that’s the goal — the second it starts feeling like work, I’m doing something wrong and I need to change up my routine. But performing on Broadway is a very special feeling that I haven’t gotten over yet.”
Peter Mazurowski
Bow native Peter Mazurowski, now 20, is a company member at the Charlotte Ballet in North Carolina; at 13 he was cast in the lead of Billy Elliot on Broadway, which he performed in until the show closed a year and a half later.
Mazurowski caught the theater bug as a kid, performing with companies like the Children’s Theatre Project, the Palace Theatre and the New Hampshire School of Ballet. He was advised to audition for the role of of Billy at a national dance competition with his studio. His voice teacher at the time, Joel Mercier, helped him with the vocal audition.
“I was a local kid from New Hampshire. I wanted to make it someday, but I didn’t expect to have a dream like that come to reality when I was that young,” he said via phone.
The experience was amazing but difficult on his parents, who took turns staying with him in the city. When he returned home, he decided to pursue dance over musical theater and studied at the Boston Ballet School for two years before securing his current position.
“[Billy Elliot] definitely opened up a lot of doors for me. I was surprised how much of a pull it had, and how many connections I now had in the ballet world because of it,” he said.
Kaleigh Cronin
Kaleigh Cronin, a Manchester native currently in the ensemble of A Bronx Tale on Broadway, fell in love with theater when she first saw people on the Palace stage.
“I knew instantly that I needed to do that. I auditioned for my first production of Annie at age 5 at the Palace and was cast as one of the orphans,” Cronin said via phone.
She performed in youth productions as a kid but was often cast in mainstage shows as a teen.
“Lots of times people would come in from New York City and I’d be working alongside them. You can’t ask for better training as a kid,” said Cronin, who in addition to Palace work took dance classes at the Bedford Dance Center with Missy and Max Clayton and performed with the Bedford Youth Performing Company before studying at Carnegie Mellon University. “When I got to Carnegie Mellon, which is a Top 3 musical theater school, most of the people in my class came from performing arts high schools. … I remember thinking how awesome it was I was able to have a phenomenal public high school education through Central High School, and having participated in all the shows at the Palace, not only being on the same level as these kids, but in some ways more advanced. I had so many more real-life experiences.”
Cronin was cast in the national tour of Jersey Boys after her first audition in New York. Two years later she scored an ensemble role in Cabaret and played understudy for Emma Stone and Michelle Williams. She still hangs out with the Claytons all the time. “It’s so cool the three of us stuck together. We all did the Bedford Dance thing, and we all worked at the Palace, with the dream of someday performing in New York,” she said.
Mia Moravis
Keene artist Mia Moravis is on the Van Dean/Stephanie Rosenberg production team of Anastasia – The Musical, with Broadway previews starting March 23, opening officially April 24. It features more than a dozen new songs by Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty, and the story is one that resounds with Moravis personally, having recently rediscovered long-lost family members.
“I love this show. It’s all about home, love, family, self-discovery and self-empowerment,” she said via phone, days after returning from the Grammy Awards, of which she’s been a voting member for 25 years. She credits this first Broadway stint to a long career of hard work and patience.
In addition, she had her off-Broadway co-producer debut last year with You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown and is an Emmy-nominated producer and a filmmaker, actress, songwriter and voice-over artist, for Wonkybot Studios’ podcast The Secret Diaries of Tara Tremendous, which is now No. 1 in the Kids & Family category on iTunes.
Courtesy photo.
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Arsenic In Water
Arsenic In Water
State Ramps Up its study of Uranium and Arsenic in Wells
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Scope
Health Issues
In Search of Blood
In Search of Blood
Red Cross Month Highlights Need for Donations
Written By Ryan Lessard (news@hippopress.com)
Images: Courtesy/Stock Photo
In 2010, when Pierce was born, he needed an immediate transfusion of blood. His mother, Tricia Eastman of Merrimack, said that was even before the doctors diagnosed him with leukemia six months later.
“He is a harder blood type to match so we were very fortunate that [the hospital] had what he needed,” Eastman said.
Pierce’s blood type is O-negative, which is a universal donor type but can only receive the same blood type.
Pierce had to go through two years of treatment with regular transfusions, since leukemia, a type of blood cancer, seriously reduces a patient’s red blood cell and platelet count.
He’s now in remission.
As far as Eastman is concerned, regular blood donors save her son’s life.
“If it weren’t for people donating blood, he wouldn’t have been able to survive,” Eastman said.
Today, Pierce is in first grade. He enjoys writing and drawing.
Heroes
“March is Red Cross month and it’s a time to recognize the heroes who support the Red Cross mission and help those in need in their communities,” said Mary Brant, communications manager at the Red Cross of Northern New England.
Brant said it’s a constant struggle to maintain enough of a blood supply, in part because of the limited shelf life.
Red blood cells can be stored for 42 days and platelets last only five days. Plasma can be frozen and used for up to a year.
Nationally, the Red Cross needs to collect 14,000 red blood and platelet donations daily to keep up demand. That’s about 700 daily donations in the Northern New England region alone.
A typical red blood donation is a pint of blood, but donors can choose to be what’s dubbed a “Power Red Donor” where they give a concentrated donation of roughly double the red blood cells but plasma and platelets are returned.
The hardest thing to get are platelets.
“We’re always looking for platelet donors,” Brant said.
Since only 3 percent of the U.S. population donates blood each year, Brant said the nation’s blood is supplied by an “elite group” of people. Still, since 38 percent qualify for blood donations, plenty more people can help out.
While regular blood donors can return every eight weeks, platelets regenerate faster, enabling donors to give platelets every two weeks.
Blood can be given at blood drives or at the donation center in Manchester and takes about an hour for the whole process (the actual blood donation takes about 10 minutes). But platelet donations can only be done at the donation center and take two to two-and-a-half hours.
While O-negative is the universal donor type, AB type blood is the universal recipient for red blood cells and the universal plasma donor.
“We always encourage people of all blood types to donate,” Brant said.
The process generally involves a quick physical check-up that includes taking your temperature, blood pressure and iron levels. Typical disqualifiers include not feeling well, frequent travel outside the country, certain medications and getting a recent tattoo.
Recent Shortages
Inclement weather and natural disasters can have ripple effects on the blood supply gathered by the Red Cross. And in a small state like New Hampshire, travel isn’t always easy.
“Here in New Hampshire, there is only one donor center and that’s not always going to be convenient for people going to donate blood,” Brant said.
That’s why there are blood drives scheduled virtually every day across the state. But when the roads are undriveable, that throws a wrench into their plans.
“We had two winter storms that caused the cancellation of quite a few blood drives,” Brant said.
By mid-February, snow and icy roads caused a dozen blood drives to cancel, resulting in about 355 donations not being collected.
That’s on top of regular dips in donation patterns.
“There are two times of the year that the Red Cross always struggles to maintain an adequate blood supply,” Brant said.
Those times are the winter, starting around the holidays, and the summer, when people are often traveling.
The storms this winter caused a temporary shortage. In response, Brant said, the Red Cross reached out to regular donors to ask them to give again. And wherever blood was in demand and local donations couldn’t meet that demand, blood was imported from out of state.
“The Red Cross is a national organization and has the infrastructure to move blood where it’s needed, when it’s needed,” Brant said.
Scars
Scars
The Seacoast Rep presents Violet
Written By Kelly Sennott (ksennott@hippopress.com)
Images: Courtesy Photo
The Seacoast Repertory Theatre’s upcoming production, Violet, is about scars, both visible and imaginary, and it hits the Portsmouth stage March 10 through April 2. Its designer run-through a week before showtime left Artistic Director Miles Burns “crying like a baby.”
“There are so many messages you can get out of Violet,” Burns said via phone. “It’s gritty, and it’s real, and it’s true to life.”
Violet is based on the 1973 short story The Ugliest Pilgrim by Doris Betts, with music by Jeanine Tesori, lyrics and book by Brian Crawley. It went off-Broadway in 1997, and its 2014 Broadway run won four Tony Awards.
The musical takes place in 1964 and follows a country girl, Violet Karl, whose face was disfigured in an accident as a child. Hoping to find a preacher in Tulsa, Oklahoma, who can heal her scar, she boards a Greyhound bus in North Carolina and is later joined by two soldiers along the way, Monty and Flick, the latter of whom is African-American. The men challenge her faith in the preacher and compete for her affections while the world judges their mixed-race group.
The play is not one audiences see often, but it’s the kind of theater Burns has been itching to see at the Rep for a while. It features an 11-person cast and intricate sets by Brandon James and Ben Hart, who also designed for Avenue Q and Reefer Madness in Portsmouth. Burns said the music blends country, rock ’n’ roll, bluegrass, gospel and musical theater styles.
Makeup design is less intensive than you might think; for this production, the scar on Violet’s face isn’t painted on, but imagined. Audiences see the scar in observing what others say and how they react to Violet.
“It’s one of the beautiful things about theater; if the story is told in the right way, they’re going to feel like she has a scar on her face based on how she associates with other people,” Burns said.
Performing as Violet is Alyssa Dumas, a Plymouth State grad who made her Rep debut performing in The Marvelous Wonderettes last year. She said Violet’s mannerisms have been choreographed carefully to create the illusion.
“She’s obviously very self-conscious about this scar. She makes sure to leave her hair down, leaning against one side of her face,” she said.
Dumas was surprised to be cast as Violet because, at five feet, one inch, she’s much shorter than the role’s Broadway originator, Sutton Foster. It goes against her “type” as an actress. But that’s why she likes the Rep.
“They go for talent and people who are passionate, and that’s huge today when it comes to auditioning for shows. For [other companies], it’s about, do you have the look, and do you look good next to this person? It’s just about how much you have to give at the Rep,” Dumas said.
A lot goes into deciding a theater season. You want to present something new, but you also want to sell tickets. Sometimes it means creating a fine balance of new and recognizable plays, and sometimes it means building trust from audiences. Burns has seen that trust growing, with strong ticket sales to lesser-known productions like Satchmo at the Waldorf and Laughter on the 23rd Floor.
“Violet is about how, wherever there’s darkness, you can find light, and that there’s more to see of a person, and more to see of yourself than what’s on the outside,” Burns said.
“It’s so relevant. … It’s a show I thought we wouldn’t be able to do for years, but people are taking a chance on new theater, and while this play isn’t new, it’s something our audiences haven’t seen before.”
Skate Night
Skate Night
Granite State Independent Living Hosts Fundraising Skate-a-Thon
Written By Matt Ingersol (listings@hippopress.com)
Images: Courtesy Photo
The first annual Granite State Independent Living Skate-a-Thon will take place at the John F. Kennedy Memorial Coliseum in Manchester on Saturday, March 11, from 4 to 8 p.m. and will include open ice skating, demonstrations, a DJ, food and games.
“I’ve been a figure skating coach for 35 years and I’ve done Skate-a-Thons in the past, so we thought, why don’t we try it as a fundraising event for GSIL?” said Teri Nordle of the Southern New Hampshire Skating Club, who proposed the idea for the event.
All proceeds will benefit home care and disability support programs at GSIL.
Tickets can be purchased either at the door or in advance online. If you pay in advance, you will receive three pledge sheets for fundraising — one for yourself and two to give away to others. Skaters who return the pledge sheets at the registration table at the Skate-a-Thon are eligible for different prizes and giveaways depending on how much money is raised, like free food, T-shirts and access to games for the duration of the event.
Activities at the Skate-a-Thon will include an open ice skating party complete with a DJ and games on the ice, like Four Corners, and “Icesketball,” a version of basketball played on ice skates.
“We’re also going to have glow skating for about a half hour or so, when all the lights will be turned off and we’ll have glow-in-the-dark sticks that are up,” GSIL Marketing and Communications Manager Jen Carrigg said.
Members of the Southern New Hampshire Skating Club will be there to offer live skating demonstrations and performances.
“Everyone will be taking their breaks so that people at the Skate-a-Thon will also have the opportunity to watch some skaters who are working on the professional level,” she said.
“Some of them will also be offering lessons in basic skating skills, so people who have never skated before and want to learn will be able to work in small groups with professional coaches [from the club] who will help them get up on the ice.”
Also planned are penny sale drawings to take place about every 15 minutes, with chances to win anything from small prizes like GSIL-branded hats, knapsacks and other gear to larger winnings like cash prizes and free skating sessions.
Pizza and hot chocolate will be available for purchase. Skate rentals are also available onsite for $3 per person.
GSIL has nine offices throughout the state and holds several other fundraising events throughout the year, including comedy nights, the annual Hoops on Wheels wheelchair basketball tournament in May, and the Chipping in FORE! Independence golf tournament in September.
“What you’ll find [at the Skate-a-Thon] is a great family event … and our goal is to bring families together to raise community awareness for people with disabilities and to hopefully make it an annual event for GSIL,” Nordle said.
Weekly Music Review
Weekly Review
Thievery Corporation & More
Written By Eric Saeger (news@hippopress.com)
Images: Album Artwork
Thievery Corporation, The Temple of I and I (ESL Records)
This Washington, D.C., collective hasn’t had a lot of hits, but over the past 20-odd years they’ve put on a DIY clinic, putting out all eight of their LPs on their own Eighteenth Street Lounge record label. In spite of their East-Coast-ness, their fetish is for world music, especially bossa nova during their early years, African beats on 2002’s The Richest Man in Babylon, which finally led to a more dub-oriented sound, the game afoot here but writ large. Jamaican sounds have been a huge part of their sound, but for this album’s sessions the band operated out of Port Antonio, generally cited by natives as “the real Jamaica,” an area that’s hard to get to both artistically and logistically. Opening tune “Thief Rockers” is a deep piece, light 1970s synths slowly mobilizing over a trappish beat and punctuated by lazily sung lines that walk a tightrope between progressivism and subversion. Former Miss Jamaica contestant Racquel Jones gets assigned two songs, adding an annoyed slam-poet edge to her rhymes, a contribution that helps to keep the album’s overall vibe smoother than a pina colada in July.
Grade: A
Iron Reagan, Crossover Ministry (Relapse Records)
If the last metal-punk crossover thing you heard was a Cro-Mags or Suicidal Tendencies record and it caused you to give up, don’t feel alone. That whole deal was doomed from the start to have a short shelf life, as we’ve talked about here many times before (to reiterate: the punks couldn’t take those bands seriously, but even more fatally, the death metal patrol did take them seriously). So it’s come around again, this time with a more workable aesthetic, and this Richmond, Virginia, band are at the spear’s edge, with this, their third album, showering us with 18 tracks in 30 minutes — that’s got to be enticing math for punks who don’t completely despise metal (cripes, if they’d just asked me in 1989, I would have told them short, deranged outbursts was the way to do it in the first place). This stuff is faster than its granddaddy’s technique, but there’s still a little too much DRI in there for my taste, threatening to wax anthemic at times even with black-metal drumming — don’t get me wrong, it’s cool, but I suppose I was expecting something a bit more chaotic.
Grade: B
Literature Lovers 2017
Literature Lovers 2017
Writers Move Away From Desks for Readings, Writers’ Day
Written By Kelly Sennott (ksennott@hippopress.com)
Images: Stock Photo
The New Hampshire Writers’ Project’s upcoming programs are all about experiencing writing aloud, from its new Hatbox Readings series to its biggest event of the year, Writers’ Day, on April 1.
Hatbox Readings
The organization’s next Hatbox Readings night is Sunday, March 12, at the Hatbox Theatre and features three pieces — Nails: A Tale of Japan by Ian Rogers, But I Already Said
Goodbye by Wendy Jensen and A House Divided by Ed Jacobs.
NHWP Vice Chair Masheri Chappelle said via phone that the series idea started with NHWP member Gary Devore, who came to her last summer with the concept of performing readings by local writers at the new theater, which is home to diverse programming like comedy nights, plays, magic shows and storytelling events. Actors would read 10- to 20-minute selections of work by local novelists or short story writers, polished and entertaining but still in progress. Audience members would offer critiques, with the goal of strengthening the next draft. The first event was July 17 and featured snippets of work by Chappelle, Devore and Jeff Deck. The second was Dec. 11 and included writing by Karen Goltz, Josh Bresslin and Mary Downes.
“It’s something that allows me as a writer to see how people perceive my work — if it’s too far out there for them, or if it’s something that opens a door to something they didn’t know existed, and that they want to come through,” said Chappelle, whose The Oracle Files is being published by Black Rose Writing this May thanks to the feedback. “[Audiences] have been asking some great questions, getting authors to think about what they’ve written.”
Over the course of the readings, now occurring quarterly, organizers have fine-tuned the process of curating a balanced evening of stories. The waiting list of writers wanting to participate is full, though priority goes to those who attend readings.
“It’s really taking off now; I couldn’t even make it to intermission without authors approaching me, asking me to have their work be done,” Chappelle said.
New Hampshire Writers’ Day
The 29th New Hampshire Writers’ Day happens Saturday, April 1, from 9 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. at Southern New Hampshire University. It’s a day of workshops, readings and panel discussions, this year with a “spring training” theme.
Keynote speaker is Ann Hood, who has written 15 books and holds the record for publishing the most essays in the New York Times Modern Love column. Her most recent project is an anthology, Knitting Pearls: Writers Writing About Knitting. Also speaking is New London writer and illustrator Tomie dePaola.
The day is divided into four workshop periods, and during each attendees can pick from a wide selection of topics, both new and old to the event, ranging from writing (beginnings, characters, short stories, poetry, memoir) to business (query letters, promotion, book proposals and book launches).
This year’s Writers’ Day is very active, said Kathy Gillett, chair of Writers’ Day, via phone — for example, the “Literature Out Loud” session features professional actors reading work by New Hampshire students, submitted by teachers (due by March 15; email submissions@nhwritersproject.org). Lots of sessions contain read-aloud or panel elements, and two are free of charge for New Hampshire teachers, aimed at making writing more fun for students (space is limited for those; email kgillett@snhu.edu to register).
“The goal is to give teachers the tools to help their students understand that literature is meant to be read, and that stories are meant to be heard,” Gillett said.
At the end of the day is a Red Sox pep rally, with readings by Bill Littlefield (author of Take Me Out) and Glenn Stout (author of The Selling of The Babe), who will then be interviewed by NHPR’s Virginia Prescott. Gillett said the organization is readying for its 30th birthday, with the next big-name keynote speaker to be announced April 1. Planning begins April 2.
“We’re an all-volunteer board doing what used to be done by staff. We want to keep the cost down and make this as accessible as possible to every writer in New Hampshire,” Gillett said.