RANDOLPH Sharon Rives strolled into the basement of the Bethany United Church of Christ in Randolph on Saturday morning holding a cardboard box filled with tangled headphone wires, three broken CD players,and a dream of one day getting to listen to.
COURTESY OF TIM CALABRO/FIRST LIGHT STUDIOS Actors in Family Holiday, a 2017 Vermont Pride Theater production After 10 years hosting festivals and benefits to celebrate LGBTQ theater, the Vermont Pride Theater at the Chandler Center for the Arts is relaunching as the Vermont Social Justice Festival. The event, which will begin in summer 2022, is widening its scope to examine diversity, inequality and other issues. Vermont Pride Theater began a decade ago to bring LGBTQ voices to the stage in Randolph and has since presented more than 50 events. According to Chandler executive director Karen Dillon, 10-year lifespan was always the plan; that milestone gave the Chandler board a chance to deliberate on what would come next.
Actors in Flash Forward: Voices From the Future
(left to right) top: Ronni Lopez, Ro Boddie, Susan Palmer; center: John Nagle, Haley Rice, Gary Smith;
Among many other losses, the pandemic resulted in darkened stages and empty theater seats. But that, of course, is not the whole story: Thespians, like other performing artists, have found ways to keep on acting out. Even in the dead of winter, we have much theater news to report. So let the virtual curtain rise.
Middlebury Acting Company
, streaming Saturday, February 6, 7 p.m. Free. middleburyactors.org, townhalltheater.org
In addition to its monthly interactive play reading/discussion series, the American Dream Project,
Vermont Pride Theater kicks off last production
The Raggedy And poet Jennifer Lord (upper left) makes a surprise announcement overheard by her wife Andra Kisler, upper right, son Peter Ruiz, lower left, and Inaugural Committee member Pedro González, lower right. Photograph courtesy of Vermont Pride Theater
Modified: 1/27/2021 9:57:16 PM
RANDOLPH When Vermont Pride Theater at Chandler, an outreach program of the Randolph-based Chandler Center for the Arts, began a decade ago, its founders’ mission was simple: to amplify the voices of LGBTQ folks both on stage and in the community.
“For these 10 years we’ve been focusing on ways to have LGBTQ people appear as regular people in the theater,” said Pride Theater producer Sharon Rives. “They have issues with their families, they have issues with the communities and it gives a chance for the rest of the community to see that they are ‘just like us,’ quote unquote.”