Music
Brattleboro Women's Chorus concerts: World class pianist Alki Steriopoulos joins the Brattleboro Women's Chorus in its 15th annual spring concert on Saturday, May 7, at 7:30 p.m., and Sunday May 8, at 3 p.m.
Director Becky Graber leads a chorus of local women in three- and four-part harmony, with songs ranging from Jean Ritchie's The Cool of the Day, to the jazz standard Comes Love, to Nobel Peace Prize winner Wangari Matthai's treeplanting song from Kenya. Tickets to the concert are available only at the door.
Admission is $15 generous, $10 adults, $8 seniors and children. Extra donations for the Brooks House fire survivors will also be gratefully accepted at the door. For more information, visit www.brattleborowomenschorus.org, or call Becky Graber at 802-254-8994.
Performing arts
NEYT Theatre Adventure Youth Troupe presents “The Pride of the Lions”: The newest production of the New England Youth Theatre's Theatre Adventure Youth Troupe is The Pride of the Lions. There will be performances on Wednesday, May 4, at 10:30 a.m., and Thursday, May 5, at 10:30 a.m.
With creativity, spunk, and aplomb, this jungle tale rocks! A percussion band sets the rhythms for acts of bravery and devotion while the pridelands come to life with dancing. When the lions gather to discuss the news of the day, the audience will hear the blowing grasses of the Savannah. New England Youth Theatre's mixed abilities youth troupe stretches the limits of possibilities with their presentation of this tale of belonging.
The Theatre Adventure Program has classes for adults and youth with mixed abilities, and uses theater arts to help empower, strengthen, and embolden troupe members as valued and contributing members of our community. The show will be interpreted with ASL. The theater is wheelchair accessible. Tickets are $6, plus sales tax, and available only at the door.
Lyena Strelkoff returns to Sandglass Theater: Sandglass Theater's Voices of Community Series opens May 6-8 with the highly anticipated return of Lyena Strelkoff.
An acclaimed actress and dancer from Los Angeles, Strelkoff, who performs in her wheelchair, is one of the country's foremost spokespeople for those with disabilities. Lyena will begin her two-week stay in Vermont at Sandglass Theater with three empowering performances of her acclaimed solo show, Caterpillar Soup, a searing, honest, irreverently funny, and irresistibly uplifting play about her two years after a life-changing spinal-cord injury.
Voices of Community, now in its seventh year, seeks to create a sustained dialogue between nationally acclaimed artists and our local community members about issues of diversity and identity. The series is made possible by funding from The National Endowment for the Arts and the National Performance Network. Shows are Friday and Saturday, May 6 and 7, at 8 p.m., and Sunday, May 8, at 3 p.m. Tickets are $15 general admission, and $12 for students and seniors. For more information, contact Sandglass Theater at 802-387-4051 or info@sandglasstheater.org.
Trauma, healing are focus of original autobiographical play: The lives of a Vietnam veteran, a street musician, and a therapist collide, and their compelling stories are revealed through dialogue, music, poetry, and storytelling in Ambush on T Street, an original theater performance created and performed by longtime and well-known Pioneer Valley residents Court Dorsey, Al Miller, and John Sheldon.
The trio brings its autobiographical exploration of trauma and healing to the SIT International Center (1 Kipling Road, Brattleboro) on Friday, May 6, at 8 p.m. Tickets are $15 and are available at the door (free to SIT students). The performances are made possible with the generous support of SITSA, SIT Student Activities, and the CT and EI neighborhoods.
Ambush on T Street centers on the soulful sharing of each man's personal story - alternately funny, sad, outrageous, and painful - to help each confront his personal demons, to leave isolation behind, and to start the process of healing old wounds.
NEYT alumni present “Cyrano”: Big beaks, brazen beauties, and bashful beaus – the tale of Cyrano is one that will have you in stitches, wiping away tears of laughter! But you might be surprised how soon those happy tears turn sad. A story of unrequited love, mistaken identity, and the power of language, Edmond Rostand's Cyrano de Bergerac has delighted audiences for centuries.
The NEYT Alumni, under the direction of Ben Stockman, are in the middle of mounting a stage production of this great play in June, and would like to invite you to get excited about this fantastic show. Join them for a screening of the timeless Cyrano de Bergerac, starring Jose Ferrer, on Saturday, May 7, at 7:30 p.m., at the New England Youth Theatre at 100 Flat St. in Brattleboro.
Admission is free, but the alumni will welcome any donations to support their upcoming show and will also sell concessions to raise money. Doors open at 7 p.m., so come early to get your popcorn and treats.
Road trip to NYC: The Rockingham Free Public Library invites you to its second annual Trip to New York City. Join us on Saturday, May 14, for a day trip to see the 2010 Tony Award-winning Memphis, the Musical on Broadway.
This trip will leave by motorcoach at 7 a.m. from the Bellows Falls Transportation Center, and arrive in New York with plenty of time for a bit of sight-seeing, shopping, and lunch before the 2 p.m. matinee performance at the Shubert Theater. The bus will leave for the return trip at 5:30 p.m., with a dinner stop at the Blue Colony Diner, arriving back in Bellows Falls at 11:30 p.m.
Tickets for the trip, which is also a fundraiser for the library, are $125 and include all transportation and a mezzanine theater ticket. Call 802-463-4270 to reserve a seat.
NECCA hosts graduation performances: The New England Center for Circus Arts (NECCA) presents the graduation performances of the 2011 Professional Training Program at the NECCA studio at 76 Cotton Mill Hill #300 in Brattleboro.
The program features 18 students who are completing the nine-month program for aspiring performers. The students have trained in a variety of acrobatic and aerial apparatus, as well as ballet technique and theater/performance skills. The acts range from trapeze to handbalancing, aerial fabric to partner acrobatics, juggling to invented apparatus.
Previous NECCA graduates are performing for circus companies around the world, including Cirque du Soleil, and Ringling Bros. & Barnum and Bailey Circus.
Performances of Clockwork Circus take place on weekends from May 14-21. In order to present all the acts that the talented students have been developing, there will be two different shows. All performances are appropriate for all ages, and the shows have sold out in past years, so the pre-purchase of tickets is highly recommended.
Performances are Saturday, May 14 (3 and 7:30 p.m.); Sunday, May 15 (3 p.m.); Friday, May 20 (7:30 p.m.); and Saturday, May 21 (3 and 7:30 p.m.). Tickets to the shows are $12 for adults, $8 for kids, and free under 2. They are available online at www.necenterforcircusarts.org, or by calling 802-254-9780.
Visual arts
In-Sight Student Exhibition: In-Sight Photography's annual student exhibition is Friday, May 6, from 5:30-8:30 p.m., at the Hooker-Dunham Theater and Gallery in Brattleboro. The playful, thoughtful, and experimental photographs from In-Sight's 2010-2011 Intro, Intermediate, and Advanced black-and-white and digital photography classes will be on display.
This exhibition demonstrates In-Sight's invaluable contribution to the lives of young people. In-Sight offers photography classes to youth ages 11-18, regardless of their ability to pay the suggested class fees. For more information, call 802-251-9961, or visit www.insight-photography.org.
Film
“Mondragon Experiment” in Putney: Transition Putney will be screening the film Mondragon Experiment on Friday, May 6, from 7-9 p.m., at the Putney Library.
This film examines the industrial cooperatives that arose in Mondragon in the Basque region of Spain in the second half of the 20th century. In the 1940s, Don Jose Maria was sent to the village of Mondragon, where the Basque church was a bulwark against the dictatorship of the Franco government.
In this situation of poverty, few opportunities for employment, and limited available education, he opened a technical school. Five of Don Jose Maria's students opened a factory of their own as a worker cooperative. The factory opened by the students was such a success that, by 1979, there were 80 worker-owned industrial cooperatives in the Basque region, and not one of the cooperatives has failed.
The film will be followed up on Monday, May 9, with a presentation on cooperatives by Erbin Crowell at the Putney Library from 7-9 p.m. For more information, visit http://transition.putney.net or contact Paul LeVasseur at paull@sover.net or at 802-387-4102.
Ask Us Who We Are comes to Brattleboro, Bellows Falls: Ask Us Who We Are, a documentary film, directed and produced by Bess O'Brien, that focuses on the challenges and extraordinary lives of youth in foster care, will be at the New England Youth Theatre in Brattleboro on May 11, and at the Bellows Falls Opera House on May 12.
Both showings are at 7 p.m., and tickets are $10 for adults, and $5 for students. Discounts are available for low-income foster families at the door.
The film is a reflection on loss, and on the search for belonging and finding family. Although the film highlights the heartbreak that many foster care youth carry with them as they move through their lives, the documentary also reveals the tremendous strength and perseverance that grows out of their determination to survive and thrive.
The documentary also focuses on the lives of foster care parents and kinship families that open their homes to children. Through small and large acts of kindness, these adults can change the course of children's lives and give them a sense of place, if only for a brief time. In addition, the film highlights two parents who lose their children to the system and struggle to be reunited with them.
For more information about the film, visit www.kingdomcounty.com.