Performance Series

Dirt Gerts

PuppetKabob DIRTY GERTS

September 15 - 17

Have you ever heard the phrase: “She thinks she’s Queen Elizabeth, but she’s Dirty Gerts to me!” No? Well now that you have, come and explore the story behind the saying in PuppetKabob’s latest pop-up creation “Dirty Gerts” – a show about growing up pains; made entirely out of re-purposed paper products.

PuppetKabob’s latest creation “Dirty Gerts” is a paper pop-up extravaganza. A groovy blend of historical fiction, 60s pop culture and colorful confetti. Come and get happy with middle schooler Carol Lee Bell  – as she finds the fold to fitting in –  and discovers the best way is not to actually fit in at all.

Sarah Frechette, founder of PupptKabob, is a graduate of the University of Connecticut’s Puppetry Arts Program. She studied marionettes in Germany with legendary Master Puppeteer Albrecht Roser and has performed across the U.S., Canada, Germany, Austria, France and China.

Great Small Works • WE LOVE TREES

October 20 - 22

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“We Love Trees” is a toy theatre piece created by John Bell and Trudy Cohen in collaboration with classical musicians Marji Gere and Daniel Sedgewick. It’s the story of a copper beech tree in Somerville, MA, which once stood in front of the house of a 19th century Somerville composer, and later became the anchor for a green oasis called Symphony Park. 

Also on the program is a second toy theatre show, “Living Newspapers, Episode Two: Sidewalk Ballet,” about Robert Moses and Jane Jacobs struggle over Washington Square Park in NYC in the 1960’s – and a musical interlude by Dan Sedgwick (on piano) and Marji Gere (on violin).

Great Small Works was founded in 1995 by a collective of six artists, all veterans of Bread and Puppet Theater, to create theater of high artistic quality and to keep theater at the heart of social life. The company draws on puppet, avant-garde and popular theater traditions to tell contemporary stories.

Pontine Theatre
A NEW ENGLAND CHRISTMAS

November 24 - December 3

CapnEli

Each season, Pontine’s artistic directors ring in the holiday season by staging a selection of stories and poems by New England authors. This year, Pontine presents an original adaptation of Frank Stockton’s “Captain Eli’s Best Ear,” the story of a widowed sea captain who cleverly engineers his Christmas celebrations to get him his heart’s desire – a new family! Also on the program, music by Ellen Carlson, founder and leader of the New Hampshire Fiddle Ensemble.

Pontine Theatre
ROBERT FROST’S NEW HAMPSHIRE 

March 15 - 24

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Pontine Theatre’s Co-Artistic Directors created a new work based on the early poems of Robert Frost in 2019, which, due to the COVID pandemic, has never been performed before a live audience. The 2023-24 performance series will conclude with its long-delayed premiere.

Frost, a long-time summer resident of Franconia NH, received the first of four Pulitzer Prizes in 1924 for his volume: “New Hampshire: A Poem with Notes and Grace Notes.” Known for his New England settings, his down to earth, stark depictions of the difficulties of rural farm life, and his use of colloquial speech, Robert Frost is widely admired as a true American Master. 

Harriet Munroe, publisher and editor of “Poetry,” wrote that “perhaps no other poet in our history has put the best of the Yankee spirit into a book so completely.” She notes that while Frost's narrative, character-based poems are often dark and satirical, Frost always has a “sympathetic humor” towards his subject.



 

© Pontine Theatre  2023