Annie Landenberger
‘Just three musicians together, playing for each other’
Known locally in several circles from restorative justice trainings to fine cabinetmaking, Dan DeWalt is, at the core, a musician: a solo and ensemble player on piano and trombone, an accompanist, and a composer.
Heard on other artists' albums and having produced a couple of his own in recent years, DeWalt is in a prolific season, now working on four new recordings simultaneously, the recently released Time to Face the Music among them.
Making the rounds
With a new study underscoring the economic impact of the arts in the state, the new head of the Vermont Arts Council offers encouragement and ideas to arts venues in a tour of the region and a discussion in Brattleboro
On a tour of southern Vermont arts sites, Susan Evans McClure, newly appointed executive director of the Vermont Arts Council (VAC), addressed about 40 area artists and arts leaders at Brattleboro's Epsilon Spires on the evening of Nov. 27. Leading Vermont's primary provider of funding, advocacy, and information for...
Holiday arts roundup 2023
A winter season of creative arts activity
This season seems to be the perfect time to support area artists and presenters, performers, and craftspeople - an apt opportunity to show gratitude for the riches that the arts bring to our lives in southern Vermont. This year's abundance runs the gamut, promising chances to buy great one-of-a-kind...
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A whimsical comedy unburies emotional truths
David Stern and the Wild Goose Players (WGP) partner again with Sean Hurley to produce Hurley's latest, Claire in the Chair in the Cimetière. It opened Nov. 10, and the production's offered again this weekend at Next Stage. "This is another world premiere from our playwright-in-residence," says Stern of the play, described in its publicity materials as "a whimsical comedy about life and death and finding one's purpose in the unlikeliest of places." It's both a "comedy and a moving...
Dirt behind the daydream
Rock River Players (RRP) revels in the eclectic. From Mary Chase's Harvey offered earlier this fall to David Mamet's Pulitzer Prize–winning Glengarry Glen Ross [story, this issue], opening Nov. 10, is about as far a stretch as one could make in modern American theater. Players' fare is as diverse as its Players. According to director Bahman Mahdavi, Glengarry Glen Ross is "masterfully written - an unrelenting story of small-time, cutthroat real estate salesmen trying to grind out a living by...
In Leland & Gray theater, a room of collaborators
When the Leland and Gray (L&G) Players, the theater program at Leland & Gray Union Middle/High School, was left without direction at the end of the summer, the administration hustled: "It was very funny, actually," recalls Doran "Dory" Hamm, 38, the newly appointed Players' director. "The previous theater director left relatively quickly, so they put out a call." The three "main people who applied were us three," Hamm said, referencing himself and the other two people in a Zoom interview...
A cat’s tale
Even a dog person who'd shoo a cat goodbye would be hard put to resist Don Pedro Pepito, the orange tabby at the center of Kate Spencer's children's book, The Cat Who Walked the Camino, released in September. The writer, illustrator, and independent publisher, who has lived over the border in Montague, Massachusetts for decades, might best be remembered locally for traveling north daily to run her Brattleboro store, Maple Leaf Music, for 33 years before selling the now-defunct business...
Film shines light on domestic abuse, ‘a silent epidemic’
Hide, a psychological thriller about a resilient woman fighting back against her husband's escalating gaslighting and abuse during the pandemic lockdown, is coming to the Latchis Theatre on Saturday, Oct. 21. The screening of the feature-length film, written and directed by Ben Samuels, is in collaboration with the Women's Freedom Center (WFC) in recognition of Domestic Violence Awareness Month. Samuels, based in Brooklyn, New York, is a 2009 graduate of Tufts University, where he double-majored in psychology and drama, "but...