GUILFORD — Guilford Center Stage opens its third season at Broad Brook Grange not with a play but with a square dance on Saturday, April 8, at 7 p.m.
The event is a benefit for the Grange's resident theater company and features Bob Livingston, caller, with the Falltown String Band. Admission is $10 for adults, $5 for kids 12 and under, and the maximum for a family is $25. The dance and all performances are up a flight of stairs.
Square dances were a tradition at grange halls throughout the region, and were important social occasions throughout much of the past century at Broad Brook Grange, with its stage for the band and large dance floor.
In addition to continuing a Grange tradition and serving as a fundraiser, the dance is presented by Guilford Center Stage to showcase the Falltown String Band, from nearby Bernardston, Mass., according to a news release. Two of the band's members, Marvin and Sue Shedd, have acted in or stage managed all three Center Stage productions to date.
The band was formed in 1987 and has played throughout the tri-state area, and in Connecticut. In addition to square dances, they perform in schools, historical societies, nursing homes, and at funerals, weddings, fairs and festivals.
Caller Bob Livingston, from Middletown, Conn., was honored in 2010 with a Local Legend Award by the Square Dance Foundation of New England. He has been promoting square dancing, both traditional and modern western, for 48 consecutive years, and has called dances in Toronto and throughout four New England states.
The 2017 Guilford Center Stage season, which continues upstairs at Broad Brook Grange, features the premiere of a full-length play, Our Enemy's Cup, by Guilford playwright Michael Nethercott, May 5-7. The fall production is the first performance of the one-act plays by Jean Stewart McLean.
Also this season there will be a summer theater camp for students in grades 5-8.