In January 2020, our building partner APE@Hawley, in collaboration with the School for Contemporary Dance and Thought, will be hosting the Bodies in Motion Festival, an incredible lineup of artists, classes/workshops, and performances in the Flex space. Please visit APE@Hawley for more information!
Completely Ridiculous Productions presents "Cooking With Kathryn"
Saturday, January 11 at 7pm
Northampton Center for the Arts at 33 Hawley
Tickets: https://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/4483444
General Admission $12
Students $8
Military $5
Follow a down-home, liquored-up southern belle as she stumbles her way to her own birthday party with more wine in her veins than Jesus. Kathryn rewards her party guests with an easy-peasy egg-bake cooking demo… the problem is, she can’t even see straight, much less teach a cooking lesson.
The PortFringe review team called Cooking with Kathryn “A no-fear comedy, this show is a must see,” as well as “Furious, gratuitous, and moving" and maybe "the best show...at PortFringe.” A digital series of Cooking with Kathryn is in post-production and will debut in Spring 2020.
Kate Owens:
NYC-based, award-winning comedy actor, writer, and professionally-trained clown Kate Owens’s dark comedy Cooking with Kathryn has played throughout NY (LadyFest, Solocom, The PIT, The Tank, Dixon Place, The Shitshow, Personality Test) as well as at the PortFringe Festival (Critics Choice for Best Acting) and Los Angeles (Moving Arts Theatre). Known for her commitment to characters & fearless comedy style, Kate has toured her clown work in Brighton, England and Prague, Czech Republic. Her sketch team, GROUP KID, performs bi-monthly at The PIT and recently headlined at the Chicago Sketchfest. In addition to comedy, Kate spent a year as an apprentice at the Alabama Shakespeare Festival and has worked with Live Source Theatre Company in NY. More info at: www.kate-owens.com
Yin Yoga — Full Moon Workshop
Friday, January 10
6:30 – 8:30 PM
Tickets: $40
Sign-up: themosscollective.org/yinlivemusic
Yin Yoga — Full Moon Workshop, led by Megan Moss Freeman
With live music by bass player Garth Stevenson
The energy of winter beckons you to snuggle up into yourself for some loving self-inquiry. In this slow and dreamy Yin Yoga practice led by Megan, we will rest in gentle postures with plenty of time and space to explore our interior world . . . all the while being serenaded by the magically soothing sounds of Garth Stevenson and his double bass. In the stillness that we'll cultivate we can start to connect with our more hidden layers and observe the deeper patterns that weave throughout our physical and energetic forms.
First Night at 33 Hawley!
On Tuesday, December 31st, the Northampton Arts Council and PeoplesBank welcome you to the 35th edition of our city-wide New Year's Eve party. Since 1985, First Night Northampton has filled the Paradise City with a 12-hour, family-friendly festival of the arts, culminating in a traditional ball-raising from the roof of the Hotel Northampton. Gather with friends, neighbors and visitors at 20 terrific downtown venues for an astounding array of entertainment presented by hundreds of talented performers. Our efforts are supported by generous local sponsors and dedicated volunteers. Proceeds benefit community arts.
WITNESS AT TORNILLO
TUESDAY, DECEMBER 17
7 – 9 PM
FREE
Activist Joshua Rubin is the subject of Witness at Tornillo, a new documentary film by Carbon Trace Productions and directed by Shane Franklin. He will be on hand at a screening of the film to talk about it and his important work as a solitary witness reporting about the first detention center for migrant teens in Tornillo, Texas. This free event is organized by Western Massachusetts Jewish Activists for Immigration Justice; voluntary donations will be accepted at the door.
Scorpio Rising: The Power We Possess to Completely Transform Our Selves
December 15, 1:00-8:00pm
Classes 1:15-4:15pm
Performance 6:00-8:00pm
Performance Tickets $15-$25: https://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/4428964
Scorpio Rising features an eclectic group of multicultural artists, musicians, singers, and dancers offering classes and performances. Proceeds will go to Dance to be Free, a nonprofit that brings urban dance choreography into women's prisons.
From 1:15-4:15pm there will be discounted dance classes by local teachers: Latin, modern, and hip hop, classes are for adults and children and are $6/person/class (payable by cash or check at the door).
From 3:00-6:00pm we will be selling small plates of vegan, nutrient-dense small plates, a variety of sweet treats and warm teas.
Performances will run from 6:00-8:00pm and are recommended for teens and adults, as some sections contain adult content, and are sliding scale $15-$25/person.
Come out dance and enjoy some fabulous performances! See you there!
https://www.facebook.com/events/424035034970385/
This event is a celebration of the power of transformation and how we as humans have access to the consciousness to constantly remake ourselves to be closer and closer to our true essential being.
Classes:
1:15 Moving with the Tarot of Undiscovered Self with Stacey Phillips
2:15 Kukuwa African Dance with Aisha Russell
3:15 Puerto Rican Folk Dance with Brendaliz Cepeda
Performances:
Opening Puja and Pranayama with Susan Elena and Heather Cohen
Luna and the Lost Souls: Music, Dance, and Percussion Trio with Angela Luna, Stacey Phillips, and Christopher Phillips
Dance of Joy with Aisha Russell
What Our Voices Carry with Voices From Inside
Musical Presentation by Savohna
Wendell Community Chorus
Closing Ceremony with Amanda Turk, Stacey Phillips, and Heather Cohen
Coming to Light — An Advent Progress
Saturday, December 14
7:30 PM
$10 GENERAL
$5 SENIORS / STUDENTS (age 13+ recommended)
Cash / Check at the Door
Online tickets:
https://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/4450604
Pierrot Productions presents a new, innovative comic drama for the holiday season, featuring twenty-eight original spoken-word songs. Three actors, two young and one “old,” engage the audience and give voice to the songs in a journey of both heart and mind. Jim Armenti adds klezmer music and his own ballads to help light the way.
A SUPER SERIOUS AND NOT AT ALL FUNNY READING OF STORIES I WROTE AFTER BRAIN SURGERY
READING and RECEPTION: Saturday, December 14
7 PM
$10 in advance / $12 at the door
$8 student tickets
$5 seniors / military
ARTIST LED WORKSHOP: Sunday, December 15
12 – 2 PM
$20 at door / $5 discount with program from the reading
TICKETS: https://completelyridiculousproductions.brownpapertickets.com/
Last summer Gabe had brain surgery, which left him with a whopping dose of Speech Aphasia. After that Gabe moved back to Northampton to recover. After that Gabe began writing short stories as part of his speech therapy. And now, after all of that, Gabe is going to read some of them out loud for the first time ever in front of mostly strangers and some friends and family. What could possibly go wrong?
Join us as we travel into the post-operative mind of a comic performer, his journey back to coherent speech and the birth of Completely Ridiculous Productions.
Reception to follow.
ARTIST LED WORKSHOP: Intro to The Fun of Failure!
The following day, Sunday December 15th, Gabe will run a 2-hour workshop focused on Games and the reclamation of each individual’s ability to play with ease, wonder and reckless abandon. No experience required.
Sign up after the show Saturday night, or on the day of!
And bring your program from Saturday night’s show for a $5 discount!!
Lisa Leizman Dance Company presents the lasting
the lasting
Friday, December 13th , 2019 at 7:30 pm, with a dinner reception following the performance
$17.00 adults in advance/ $20 at the door
$10.00 children under 10 in advance/ $12 at the door
https://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/4433058
As the winter days grow colder and the dark nights grow longer, as the end of another year draws closer, what endures? What persists through change? What lasts?
Join the Lisa Leizman Dance Company for an evening that celebrates the lasting—what remains constant over time. The dance group, a resident company of the Northampton Center for the Arts, digs into its repertory with All Blues, set to the classic Miles Davis composition, recorded in 1959. The concert also includes Evening Song, from the opera Satyagraha, with music by Philip Glass and text from the ancient Indian epic, Bhagavad Gita. And set to magnificent music from Cantata 51 by J.S. Bach, the group will perform a new work that features shapes and movements repeated and recombined in shifting figural fields.
Though every performance disappears in time, dance works live in the performers, resonate in audiences, persist in the ongoing traditions, innovations and artists who share a love of this seemingly impermanent art form. So linger longer. Stay for a festive dinner reception following the performance.
Winter Craft Night
FRIDAY, DECEMBER 13
4 TO 6 PM
FREE!
Join the Northampton Center for the Arts at 33 Hawley on Friday, December 13th from 4 to 6 PM for a creative afternoon of winter crafts. Supplies will be provided. Kids will have the option to display their crafts at 33 Hawley during that evening’s Arts Night Out! This event is appropriate for all ages. Milk and cookies will be served!
Northampton Book and Book Arts Fair
Friday, December 6th, 5 to 8pm
Saturday, December 7th, 10am to 4pm
FREE ADMISSION
The Fifth Edition of the Northampton Book and Book Arts Fair is set for Friday, December 6th 5 to 8pm and Saturday, December 7th 10am to 4pm at the Northampton Center for the Arts at 33 Hawley Street in downtown Northampton. The fair will feature used and antiquarian booksellers; ephemera, print, autograph, & map dealers; and book artists including hand paper makers, fine letterpress printers, hand bookbinders, book designers, & artists working on paper and other media.
The fair is produced by Book Arts Promotion, a collaboration between Mark Brumberg, an independent bookseller from Northampton and Duane A. Stevens, of Wiggins Fine Books from Shelburne Falls, Massachusetts.
For more information and a full list of exhibitors, go to: www.northamptonbookfair.com
Birds of Mars
Saturday, November 30
7 – 11 PM
Free
An evening of original silent QVGA movies with soundtracks performed live by the Birds of Mars Ensemble.
7 PM: Selected Scenes (2016-2019)
7:30 PM: Another Game of Pool (2019)
8:30 PM: Midnight (2019)
9:30 PM: The Plague Doctor (2019)
10 PM: Friends & Strangers (2018)
K and E Theater Group Presents ASSASSINS
Thursday, November 14 – 7:30-9:30 PM
Friday, November 15 – 7:30-9:30 PM
Saturday, November 16 – 7:30-9:30 PM
Sunday, November 17 – 2:00-4:00 PM
$25 General Admission, tickets available at ketg.ticketleap.com/assassins
A multiple Tony Award-winning theatrical tour-de-force from John Weidman and Stephen Sondheim, Assassins combines Sondheim's signature blend of intelligently stunning lyrics and beautiful music with a panoramic story of our nation's culture of celebrity and the violent means some will use to obtain it, embodied by America's four successful and five would-be presidential assassins. Bold, original, disturbing and alarmingly funny, Assassins is perhaps the most controversial musical ever written.
This production includes themes of violence, abusive behavior, suicide, death and there is use of racist language infrequently, and may not be suitable for all audiences. There will be flashing lights, loud bangs including gun shots. It may also include strobe lighting.
Book by John Weidman
Music and Lyrics by Stephen Sondheim
Music Direction by Bill Martin
Direction by Eddie Zitka
For more information, please visit www.KETG.org
Divinatory Poetics: Composing and Encoding Collage
Wednesday November 13th 7pm-8:30pm
In this workshop we will investigate composition through the art of
collage: approached as an inquiry, an experiment in decision-making
and an opportunity for unexpected revelations. We will explore texture, the aesthetics of text and the possibilities of asemic (wordless) writing. We will examine the concept(s) of wabi sabi (un-tamed beauty) and abstraction, and attempt to meet at the crossroads of spontaneity and design. Each of us will emerge with an original piece(s) of work, which we will then deconstruct/decode/decipher to reveal elements of our own
personal symbolism. Open and accessible to all manner of the curious, intrepid and the skeptical.
Materials will be provided, but do bring any scraps of interesting
text or images, old books, (to be torn) or other 2-dimentional
ephemera, as well as any (quick drying) inks, markers or paints you'd
like to work with.
UnSungStudio.net
There will be an anonymous contribution box at the door.
Suggested value is $35.
Cash, check, or PayPal.
Contact Regan with any questions:rdrouin26@gmail.com
The Northampton 24 Hour Theater Project
Saturday, November 9: Performances at 7 pm and 9 pm
$20 general/$15 students https://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/4428753
Let the countdown begin to the 24 Hour Theater Project, a dramatic race against time to bring five short plays to life. The Center for the Arts is proud to continue its role as host for this beloved and highly anticipated event founded in 2002 by playwright Tanyss Rhea Martula.
While the premise is simple, the execution is anything but: within 24 hours, five ten-minute plays will be written, rehearsed, directed, produced, and staged. The culmination of this day-long burst of creativity are two public performances, often standing-room-only, showcasing local writers, actors, and directors.
The time-limited and adrenaline-filled process begins on Friday evening, when five playwrights meet to draw cards with unnamed actors’ descriptions out of a hat. Once they have their cast information, the playwrights have 12 hours to create a ten-minute play. In the morning, they hand off their scripts to five directors who then read the script for the first time, gather their actors, and spend the next 10 hours rehearsing, while others gather props, costumes, and set pieces.
While there are always many returning favorites among the writers, directors, and actors, the committee continues to make it a priority to seek out some fresh new voices for each year’s event. “The Northampton 24-Hour Theater Project is not just about the plays that come and go,” noted Apgar, “it’s about building the Valley’s theater community by growing our relationships with one another, and with our audience.” The committee is delighted to again partner with the Northampton Center for the Arts for this year’s Project. Veteran Northampton 24-Hour Theater Project playwrights Susanna Apgar, Siobhan McManamon, and Tomàs Roche will be joined by Peter Shelburne, who returns to the project after five years, and acclaimed playwright Liz Duffy Adams, whose play Or led her to off-Broadway success.
The Northampton 24-Hour Theater Project directors feature Ezekiel Baskin, Mark Gaudet, Tatiana Godfrey, Caitlin Guzman-Bailey, and Gina Kaufmann. This year’s actors include Judge Bean, Kyle Boatwright, Scott Braidman, Nichole Calero, Michael Charland-Tait, Deveir Cockett, Bill Dwight, Judith Fine, Melenie Flynn, Tosh Foerster, Michael Garcia, Becca Greene-Van Horn, Matt O’Reilly, Linda Putnam, Myka Plunkett, Jay Sefton, Sarah Marcus, Woody Mcloyd, Miriam Sirota, and Brianna Sloane.
DARLA Volunteer Information Session
Wednesday, November 6
6:15-7:30pm
Free
For both CURRENT AND POTENTIAL Volunteers! Please come to connect with us and with each other; learn what DARLA is about, what we are doing, and what we are planning. We will discuss core values as well as logistics of training and volunteering. PLEASE JOIN US EVEN IF YOU HAVE ALREADY COMPLETED ABORTION DOULA TRAINING!
Perugia Presents: A Poetry Reading for Veterans Day: Two Poet Laureates Explore Their Military Ties
Friday, November 8, 2019 7:00pm-8:30pm
Free and open to the public
During November’s Arts Night Out, Perugia Press will hold a poetry reading at the Center for the Arts in honor of Veterans Day, featuring Abby E. Murray & Karen Skolfield. Murray is Perugia Press’s latest winning poet and will be traveling here from WA State (where she is Tacoma, Washington’s current poet Laureate) to celebrate her new Perugia Press book, Hail and Farewell. Skolfield is a friend of Perugia Press and is the current poet laureate of Northampton, Massachusetts. Her latest book is Battle Dress, out this fall from W.W. Norton. This event is the book launch for these new releases by Murray and Skolfield. Both poets explore their military ties in their poems, Murray as the pacifist, feminist wife of an active-duty soldier, and Skolfield as an Army veteran. The event is a bridge-building, community enhancing occasion that welcomes military and literary communities, as well as the general public. This event is sponsored in part by the Northampton Arts Council.
Juanito Pascual Trio w/ guest dancer Neli Tirado
Sunday, November 3, 2019
4:00pm
Tickets: $20 https://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/4416853
Virtuoso flamenco guitarist/composer/improviser Juanito Pascual has been called "one of the hottest flamenco guitarists in recent years" by National Public Radio, a major accolade which in this case is just the jumping off point for the Minneapolis native's musical style. His sound is a truly organic blend of a mastery of traditional and contemporary flamenco plus influences ranging from Jimi Hendrix and the Grateful Dead to Miles Davis and J.S. Bach.
The Juanito Pascual Trio features two highly versatile and dynamic musicians, Grammy-nominated percussionist Tupac Mantilla (Bobby McFerrin, Julian Lage, Bob Moses) and stunning bassist Brad Barrett (Jason Moran, Ran Blake, Joe Morris). By combining their distinct musical backgrounds with a powerful personal chemistry, the Trio has created a dynamic, exhilarating and constantly evolving sound, performing to enthralled audiences throughout the U.S. and abroad. The Trios 2014 release Juanito Pascual New Flamenco Trio was included in NPR critic Milo Miles Best World Music Albums for that year. They are currently preparing to release a recently recorded 3-song EP in addition to work on a new full length album.
Joining the Trio is renowned flamenco dancer Nelida Tirado, bringing the fire and passion of flamenco tradition while embracing the evolving nature of this vibrant art form.
In addition to featuring Ms. Tirado, the Trio will perform new material from a forthcoming EP release as well as material from their debut CD released 2014. The album received much critical acclaim including a spot on NPR critic Milo Miles Top World Music Albums of 2014 list.
Since the 2003 release of his debut solo recording "Cosas en Comun", Pascual's international touring schedule has brought him to venues including the Tanglewood Jazz Festival, New York's Lincoln Center, and Blue Note Jazz Club, The Panama Jazz Festival and Madrid's renowned Casa Patas. He has performed with a lengthy 'who's who' of top flamenco artists including 2016 tour dates with Jorge Pardo (of Paco de Lucias legendary Sextet) in addition to collaborations with a diverse range of musicians including Grammy-winning soprano Dawn Upshaw, bassist John Patitucci (of Chick Corea's Band), pianist Danilo Perez (of the Wayne Shorter Qt), percussionist Jamey Haddad (of Paul Simon's group), virtuoso guitarist Grisha Goryachev, and many others.
Photo credit: Eric Antoniou
Western Mass Comedy Group's Super Spooky Showcase
Friday, November 1st, 2019
Doors open at 7:30pm. Show at 8:00pm.
On the show will be Nick Caron, Lisa Wentworth, Jess Burlingame, Danny New, hosting Ezra Prior, and closing the great Jimmy Blair!
Tickets are pay what you can (suggested donation of $20). Money from the event will go back to HIV/AIDS services, to the performers, and lastly to Western Mass Comedy Group, which functions to put on comedy entertainment, and build a community around laughter.
Buy advance tickets here. Tickets will also be available at the door.
FOCUS ON THE ARTS
Friday, November 1st, 2019
6-9 pm
$50.00
Buy your tickets here: https://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/4318551
Join us on Friday, November 1st for FOCUS on the Arts, an event celebrating the arts and supporting our FOCUS program, bringing essential resources to young adults in Massachusetts who have aged out of foster care. This event takes place in the beautiful new Northampton Center for the Arts space at 33 Hawley Street in downtown Northampton.
Bid on the work of local and regional artists, concerts, museums, destination packages and other exciting items in our silent and live auctions. Enjoy live music, delicious food from Seth Mias Catering, fun cocktails and more!
6:00pm Cocktails, appetizers & silent arts auction
8:00pm Live arts auction
Tickets are $50 each and all funds will go to supporting our FOCUS program.