By Jeanné McCartin
ACT ONE shortens season
ACT ONE’s (Artists’ Collaborative Theatre of New England) summer season will be significantly shorter this year. Executive Director Stephanie Voss Nugent finished the company’s brochure, finally got it in the mail – and life happened.
Two weeks ago, she made the difficult decision to cut half its programming.
“I’m not able to do a full season this year, due to unforeseen circumstance,” Voss Nugent says. “But we will do an abbreviated season and be back with bells on – as they say – or in full force for 2019.”
“I called 35 artists, and technicians, and directors, and designers to tell them and they were all wonderful. … It was difficult,” she says. “But we have two weeks of performances in August, and two in September, and some wonderful stuff is coming in to WEST (West End Studio Theatre) this summer.”
Nugent is working with New Hampshire Theatre Projects Founding Artistic Director Genevieve Aichele to fill in a few dark weekends. “So there will still be wonderful theater for the summer folks that love being at WEST.”
Aichele is already in talks with at least one local playwright to fill the spots.
Still on for the August session: Caroline Wood’s “The Immigrant Garden” and Susan Poulin in “I Married An Alien.” Cut this time around was the company’s production of “I Ought to be in Pictures” and Antonio Rocha in “Brazil-iance!”
September will keep four guest slots: Norm Foster’s “On A First Name Basis,” Lee Blessing’s “Two Rooms,” Ed Gerhard and True Tales Live. This session loses David Kaye and Roland Goodbody’s original “Twists of Fate – Two Parallel Journeys” and Tuckermans at Nine.
Voss Nugent says this should be temporary. “We will do everything we can to bring back a full season in 2019,” she says.
‘Merrill Sings’ returns Sept. 7 and 8
“Merrill Sings” was actress and singer Merrill Peiffer’s first attempt at a solo cabaret show. The three-night event, held late April at the Rochester Performance & Arts Center, was deemed a success, which means if you heard great things and regretted missing it – or want more – don’t fret. It’s coming.
“It went so incredibly well. It exceeded their expectations as well as mine,” Peiffer says. “When you venture out into something new, with a solo show, well, I was expecting maybe my parents and a handful of friends, you know?”
“My parents did come every night, of course, but it was full of people in the community! … There were people that just walked in off the street, that read it in the paper or saw a poster and thought it looked interesting and came,” she says. “I was really afraid. … It’s a different market. It’s not a musical, it’s a concert. I just didn’t know what to expect.”
Peiffer selected a broad range of music, tunes by artists that inspired her such as Patsy Cline, Bonnie Raitt and Janis Joplin, plus musical songs and standards, “songs that have spoken to me as an artist.”
She was accompanied in song and banter by Miles Burns (artistic director at Seacoast Repertory Theatre) each night. She was joined one evening by musician Jamie Bradley, and on another by Chris Bradley as Hillary Clinton, “quite a hoot and a crowd-pleasing moment.”
“It was so awesome, it was well received,” she said. “A lot of people who didn’t know who I was were asking if I was coming back and doing more.”
After the shows’ success, the Performance Center was thinking the same thing. They’ve already booked Peiffer for a return performance, Sept. 7 and 8.
The experience has opened Peiffer’s eyes to a new avenue in her performing career. Cabaret proved fulfilling, she says. “It does bring me a lot of joy, especially when I’m getting to a place in my life and age, where I’m more comfortable with being who I am, and that’s all I am, me on a stage (in cabaret) singing songs that speak to me, and connecting with the audience, through humor and experience,” Peiffer says. “It was a lot of fear to get over, doing a solo show, because we’re all afraid of failing – of thinking no one will show up. But, it’s just something that speaks to me and it’s fun. I have to thank Danica (Carlson, RPAC’s director of Education and Programming) who pushed me to do it. Yeah. I’m thankful she did that.”
Peiffer is already talking to Seacoast Repertory Theatre and Patrick Dorow Productions about the possibility of doing something in the Portsmouth area. “The nice thing is it’s (mobile) and simple to put together,” she says. “It doesn’t have a lot of needs to get it done.” (Clips from first show are available on YouTube at https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=7iYaI0XsEac; https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=TknEJlf4Ksg.)
Kirkwood publishes a book
Actress Kate Kirkwood can now add author, and TedX presenter to her resume. Kirkwood called from a hotel in Wilmington, Delaware, to catch up, shortly after delivering her talk on childhood lead poisoning at the TedX event.
Both talk and books are related to the day job, educating people regarding lead poisoning. The presentation focused on lead poisoning in newer homes and structures.
“The whole point of the Ted talk and the books is to get the word out to a bigger audience. I teach classes of 12 people at a time. That’s not going to fix the problem. … There’s so many more people that need to know about it; 1.2 million are poisoned … but don’t know.”
The books, on the same topic, were published in March: “Skylar Learns About Lead Poisoning” for children, and “A Parent’s 5-Step Guide to Lead Poisoning: Lead Paint, Clear and Simple Book 1.” Both are available on Amazon.
“I’m working on the next one which is a contractor’s guide,” she says. “There’s so many small contractors, handyman, painters, maintenance workers and do-it-yourselfers, that are poisoning kids without meaning to.”
Kirkwood’s decades-long acting career has helped immensely with her day job, notably teaching and the TedX talk, she says. “It’s very theatrical, … it is story-telling.”
Kirkwood, last seen in “Odd Couple” at New Hampshire Theatre Project in 2017, has appeared with one or all of her children at times throughout her career. For a number of years, she and different configurations of her kids appeared in the annual Players’ Ring “Christmas Carol.” (“All but one has been Tiny Tim,” she says.)
All grown and gone now, they continue to perform, Kirkwood says. The rundown: Samantha has graduated as a musical theater performance major and is a NYC based-actress, currently on a five-month contract doing a show in Skagway, Alaska. Jessyka graduated as a dance major from Dean College, and is currently in Arlington, Virginia, teaching dance and working as a nanny. Alanna is a junior at Hofstra – a theater major – and is performing in a show this week. Skylar is a freshman at the University of Vermont, majoring in engineering, “but still singing and acting when he can, and just took second place in an national debate competition at Stanford, so his acting training is serving him well!” she says. “He’s also CEO of his own company in Burlington, VT, where they are developing renewable energy devices.”
Theater, she says, has served her family well.
You can catch Kirkwood performing in “Calendar Girl” at the Garrison Players in its 2018-19 season.
Jeanné McCartin has her eyes and ears out for Seacoast gossip. E-mail maskmakernh@gmail.com.
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