Art Notes: Upper Valley fall arts and entertainment lineup

The big event in this fall’s season of arts and entertainment is the reopening of Dartmouth College’s Hopkins Center for the Arts after a nearly three-year, $89 million renovation and expansion. There’s a big opening weekend planned for Oct. 16-19, featuring many of the stars in the Big Green sky — Shonda Rhimes, Mindy Kaling, Rachel Dratch, the celebrated dance company Pilobolus, you get the idea — and fancy guests, including Yo Yo Ma. The Ivy League prestige meter will be turned up to 11.

We’ll get to that closer to the date. In the meantime, the new, expanded Hop is up and running, hosting the Telluride at Dartmouth film screenings last week, among other events.

This week, the first performances are taking place in the Hop’s new Daryl Roth Studio Theater. “Firebird” is a reimagining of Stravinsky’s “Firebird Suite” by the Dutch arts collective Touki Delphine. With neither musicians nor dancers, the movement and music are communicated by an installation of 500 recycled car taillights. Tickets for the 45-minute show are pay-what-you-can, with a minimum price of $5 and a suggested price of $15.

“Firebird” and the opening weekend at Northern Stage tell us that the arts are already on the move. Here’s a list, by no means exhaustive, of what’s coming at us this fall.

Theater

Two upcoming shows at Northern Stage beam viewers down into distant lands, one real, the other fictional. First is the musical, “Come From Away,” which began previews on Wednesday and tells the true story of the 38 planes that were rerouted to Gander, Newfoundland following the Sept. 11 attacks. Northern Stage’s Artistic Director Carol Dunne directs, and the cast includes homegrown talent in the form of Kate Budney, a Hanover High School alum who now lives in Brooklyn.

Northern Stage’s former Director of Education, Eric Love, returns to the theater to direct “Peter and Wendy,” a musical based on J.M. Barrie’s beloved tale of Peter Pan. The play opens on Dec. 4 and runs through New Year’s Day.

Tickets to both productions are $37-$100 for general admission; $28 for students and people ages 25 and under; and pay-what-you-can starting at $10 on preview days.

Artistree Community Arts Center’s production of “Urinetown, The Musical,” a satire about a dystopian community whose government has banned private toilets amid a 20-year drought, opens next week at the Grange Theater in South Pomfret. The play feels especially prescient given the drought that’s been afflicting the region this summer. Tickets are $40 for adults; $35 for children and seniors. The matinee on Oct. 8 is free to seniors and members of Zack’s Place, the Woodstock-based education and resource center for people with disabilities.

As one can imagine, only a handful of tickets remain for David Sedaris’ reading of new essays at Lebanon Opera House on Wednesday, Oct. 8 ($71-$91). The lucky few who nab one will be privy to a Q&A with the author followed by a book signing.

Parish Players’ longstanding Tens Festival is back at the Eclipse Grange Theater in Thetford starting Oct. 2. This year’s roster of 10-minute plays features a wide swath of Upper Valley talent including longtime theater director Hetty Thomae; Samantha Davidson Green, the executive director at JAM (Junction Arts and Media) in White River Junction, and burgeoning actor and Hartford High School alum, Alex Rushton. Tickets are $25; $20 for seniors; $15 for students; and $10 on Thursdays.

Speaking of the Briggs, Shaker Bridge Theatre starts its season on Oct. 2 with Jonathan Spector’s “Eureka Day,” in which a progressive California school board is forced to confront their consensus-based, everyone-is-valid, decision-making process when a bout of mumps sparks panic on campus.

The theater will switch gears in December with a production of “Dear Jack, Dear Louise,” a strangers-to-lovers two-hander set against the backdrop of World War II that details the epistolary exchange between a military doctor stationed in Oregon and a New York City actress.

Tickets to the two productions are $38-$45 for general admission; $25 for people under 35; and pay-what-you-will on the first Thursday show.

Dance

As part of a statewide tour, Vermont Dance Alliance, a Burlington nonprofit that helps artists develop new work, will present “The Institute for Folding” at Briggs Opera House on Oct. 29 ($20). Michael Bodel, who works in external affairs at Dartmouth, developed the piece over the course of a yearlong Alliance residency. The finished work centers around the manipulation and movement of 30 slabs of cardboard, with music composed by Rodrigo Martínez Torres, who recently completed an MFA in Sonic Practice at Dartmouth.

Across the river, on Nov. 11, student-led groups performing a range of dance styles will grace the Hopkins stage for Dartmouth’s annual fall dance showcase. Tickets to the two-hour event are $20 for the general public; $12 for students and youth.

Ukrainian dance company Grand Kyiv Ballet will bring to life Tchaikovsky’s “Swan Lake” at Chandler Center for the Arts in Randolph on Oct. 18 ($40.95-$71.85). The company will return later in the season to perform “The Nutcracker” on Dec. 12.

Music

After a dynamic celebration of its 100th birthday last year, Lebanon Opera House is keeping the bar high with performances from some big names. Jeff Tweedy, front man for two leading alt-country bands, Uncle Tupelo and Wilco, performs on Oct. 14 ($68-$88), and the graceful singer-songwriters Patty Griffin and Rickie Lee Jones drop in on Oct. 20 ($62.50-$82.50). (To be fair, Natalie Merchant might be a bigger name, but that show, on Nov. 14, is sold out. The Tweedy and Griffin-Jones shows don’t have many seats left.)

The opera house also continues its tradition of strong traditional music programming, with mandolinist Sierra Hull and singer-songwriter-storyteller John Craigie (Oct. 2); the Cajun band BeauSoleil and British folk-rock maestro Richard Thompson (Nov. 21); A Cape Breton Christmas (Dec. 6) and the folk trio the Wood Brothers (Dec. 13). The year ends with the final Midwinter Revels (Dec. 20 and 21).

Of all the drag names in all the world, Flamy Grant might be the best. With a voice that’s been described as a mix of “Wynona Judd smokiness and Dolly Parton realness,” Grant comes from a religious background and sings in the gospel tradition, so it’s fitting the opera house is staging the Nov. 6 show at First Congregational Church of Lebanon ($23). Grant is also an artist-in-residence at LOH.

Outside the Hopkins Center’s massive opening weekend in October, its musical offerings consist of the college’s own ensembles performing with guest artists. It’s going to take time to grow into the new space.

In the meantime, many of the area’s smaller venues will be busy.

Randolph’s Chandler Center for the Arts continues its resurgence under director Chloe Powell. The hall hosts Puuluup, an Estonian “neo-zombie-post-folk” duo that compose and play on talharpas, a lute once common to northern Europe, on Oct. 3. Tickets are pay-what-you-can, from $10 to $40, free for children under 12.

Further along, look for the double bill of two masterful string bands, Canada’s The Fretless and Vasen, from Sweden, on Oct. 28 ($10-$45, free under 12); Leroy Preston and the Unknown Blues Band, on Nov. 8 ($10-$40, kids free); and two performances of William Grant Still’s “A Bayou Legend,” by Opera Vermont, on Nov. 14 and 15 ($25-$65).

Court Street Arts, which programs shows at Haverhill’s Alumni Hall, is unusual in that patrons can order dinner ahead and eat before the concert. Shows run in the Americana vein, including an Oct. 10 performance by The Rough & Tumble, and their fellow Americana duo The Honey Badgers ($25 for the show, $20 for dinner). The two duos are releasing a new EP together in November and plan to perform it in Haverhill. Further shows include jazz guitarist Frank Vignola’s Birdland Trio, on Oct. 17 ($25, plus $20 for dinner); New York State singer-songwriter Reese Fulmer and his band, on Nov. 14 ($20, plus $20); and Maine’s The Mallett Brothers, on Dec. 12 ($25, plus $20).

For more Americana, keep an eye on the Anonymous Coffeehouse, which brings in local and regional artists for free, Friday night (and sometimes Saturday night, including this week) shows at Lebanon’s First Congregational Church.

Artistree Community Arts Center starts a busy slate of concerts with two this weekend: Friday night, Leslie Neighbor Stroud, flute, and Matthew Odell, piano, play classical compositions by Schubert, Connesson, Weinberg and Ravel (pay what you can, with a suggested donation of $20). And Sunday afternoon, the contemporary jazz trio Tone Forest performs with special guest Michael Zsoldos ($31.50).

The great outdoors

There are a couple of music festivals planned for Oct. 11. The Vermont Food and Music Festival at Mount Ascutney in West Windsor includes a range of bands, headlined by country artist Brent Cobb. Gates open at 11 and music starts at noon. Tickets are $45 in advance, $60 the day of, free for kids 12 and under. For more information go to vtfoodandmusicfest.com.

And you know that -palooza is a universal term when you hear about Grafton Palooza, a music festival held at the Mascoma Valley town’s rec field, with food trucks and other vendors. Tickets are $5 and the bands sound pleasingly earnest and obscure, among them Astra Mortis, Sunset Sloth, Pointless Culture, and Broke.

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