Annie Landenberger

The Vermont Suitcase Company puppets on display when they aren’t in a show.

Delving deep between the stanzas

Vermont Suitcase Company packs up and goes on a tour around Windham County with ‘The Continuing Adventures of King Wenceslas and his Page, Edith’

BRATTLEBORO-Vermont Suitcase Company (VSC) players know how to get folks laughing - belly laughs, slapstick laughs, laughs at poignant ironies, at itchy truths, at innocent manifestations of good-heartedness.

Following the success of 2023's popular VSC play about Wenceslas, the 10th-century Duke of Bohemia whose kind and generous spirit made him worthy of his own Christmas carol, the company presents The Continuing Adventures of King Wenceslas and His Page, Edith: A Winter Tale for Winter People, with performances throughout the region over the next couple of weeks.

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Beyond carrots and parsnips

Brattleboro Winter Farmers Market offers the unexpected and strives to make it affordable for all

BRATTLEBORO-According to the Vermont Agency of Agriculture, Food, and Markets, there are approximately 60 summer farmers markets and 15 winter markets in the state. Of those 15, a key player is the continuously running, November-through-March Brattleboro Winter Farmers Market (BWFM) which is in its 19th season. Support structure under...

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A new owner revives the Old Newfane Inn

Lori Damato envisions the village landmark - built in the original town center in the earliest days of Newfane history - as a hub of community and a center for wellness

NEWFANE-Many in the West River Valley remember the inn at the center of Newfane village, right across from the general store, for its old-world-y ambience, the local-color charm of owners Eric and Gundela "Gundi" Weindl, and the exquisite meals served in dining room on the southwest side. The inn...

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New art gallery opens in Newfane

NEWFANE-The former office of John Morrison, a longtime broker with Barrett & Valley Associates Real Estate Office on Route 30 - a little boxcar-like building - has been transformed into a small gallery with an artists' workspace in the back. While it's been open on weekends and had a soft opening in October, Ed Jekot's 1330 Gallery formally opens on Friday, Nov. 22. Freshly renovated, the space at 561 Route 30 welcomes area artists' paintings on warm gray walls under...

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Horror with heart

BRATTLEBORO-Austin Rice, lead producer and production coordinator at Brattleboro Community Television and a key player in the area's film scene, is becoming known for idiosyncratic comedy woven with camp horror. Having given us the shorts Lil' Balzac 1 (2018) and Lil' Balzac 2 (2022), Rice and company have a new film project in the incubator: Nightmare at Nana's. This feature-length film, according to a project press release, aims to be "a nostalgic tribute to '80s genre films, blending classic horror...

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Planting musical seeds

GUILFORD-On a 2017 YouTube video, the popular, multistyled, genre-molding English singer/songwriter Ed Sheeran calls Luke Concannon his "childhood hero." "I grew up listening to him, I went on tour with him, doing guitar checking and learning everything there is to know about performing, writing songs, singing, playing guitar," Sheeran says. "So I owe a large amount of my career to him." Since those days, Concannon and his wife and music partner, vocalist Stephanie Hollenberg, have settled in Guilford, entering the...

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A feel-good play it’s not

BRATTLEBORO-Rock River Players presented Jean Genet's The Maids last weekend at the Williamsville Hall. This weekend, the edgy 1947 drama plays the Hooker-Dunham Theater in Brattleboro. As Hilton Als wrote of The Maids in a 2014 review in The New Yorker of a revival production, "It is an unequivocally literary work," one that inspired the 1933 Papin case in France in which two sisters, employed as maids, infamously lashed out against their employer. "Much was made of the scandal by...

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‘Halloween is Rocky Horror season’

BELLOWS FALLS-Having started its zany, twisted life locally in Brattleboro in April, The Ones from the Vaults, a Vermont-style Rocky Horror Picture Show, is now rebooting at the Bellows Falls Opera House. Directed and managed by Stephanie Abrams of Kinetic Theory Theatre, a company of 12 will offer this monthly event - complete with shadow cast and all its quirky culture - at least until the end of the year. Abrams said in a recent interview with The Commons that...

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