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By ALEX HANSON

The distance from Strafford to Hollywood is almost unthinkably vast, at least in social terms. People who go to the former often are fleeing everything the latter represents.That was true of Austen Earl’s parents.“Both of them were kind of hippies who...

By ALEX HANSON

During her upbringing in the Netherlands, Ria Blaas didn’t have Bertolt Brecht on her reading list.Come to think of it, who does? Even among theater aficionados, Brecht seldom rises to the top of the list when a season series is assembled.“He’s not...

By ALEX HANSON

Over the last several years, Barnard native Chloe Powell has made a niche out of bringing the world to her small town.She started the music series at Feast & Field, Barnard’s well-loved summer farmers market. She regularly brings in not only the cream...

By ALEX HANSON

The late Joan Didion published hundreds of thousands of words but is likely still best known for a single short sentence: “We tell ourselves stories in order to live.” The weight of that line varies depending on the circumstances of the storyteller....

By ALEX HANSON

Tommy Crawford has become known for his work as both an actor and a musician. That mix of theater and song has been with him pretty much from the start.Theater exposed him to music in the public schools of Montclair, N.J., where he grew up. He picked...

BY ERIC SUTPHIN

Steve LeBlanc began writing “The Silenced Lyre,” an original musical based on the classic Russian novel “Eugene Onegin,” over 20 years ago.His interest in Russian literature was sparked in high school after reading Dostoevsky’s 1880 novel “The...

By ALEX HANSON

James Graham first picked up a guitar at 14 and has played music ever since. Writing songs gives voice to his inner life.“I think (for) most people (who) come to the singer-songwriter thing is, it’s a refuge when you’re a kid,” Graham said in a recent...

By ALEX HANSON

Even before it was a Christian holiday, Easter was a time of rebirth. Perhaps in that spirit, though more likely because it’s warming up, there are a lot of vibrant arts events taking place around the Upper Valley over the next few days. Rather than...

By ALEX HANSON

WHITE RIVER JUNCTION — Last summer, as JAG Productions was preparing for its second year of Theater on the Hill at King Arthur Baking Co., Jarvis Antonio Green said he could envision a physical home for the company he started.“I’m not the only...

By ALEX HANSON

Since its founding in 2004, WRIF (White River Indie Films) has held its annual festival all over the calendar.Sometimes that meant the festival happened when the weather was so nice that it could be hard to lure people out of their gardens and into a...

By ALEX HANSON

ROYALTON — Making music on her own has been part of Alison Turner’s life since middle school. For a shy, self-described “reticent” child, music was an outlet.“I think I got my first Mac computer when I was in seventh grade,” Turner, a Royalton native...

By ALEX HANSON

Travis Ramsey’s two kids were still small when they inspired him to start writing a string quartet about childhood back in 2017.Ramsey, who teaches music at Marion Cross School, also had just read a book about Wagnerian childhood that guided his...

By ALEX HANSON

Newspapers occupy a strange place in our material culture. Even in their diminished state, millions of them land on doorsteps and on newsstands every day, a blizzard of paper and ink. By dark, they’re out of date, standing by to help light the...

By ALEX HANSON

Around 18 months ago, John Stomberg pitched the idea of curating a show at AVA Gallery and Art Center as part of AVA’s 50th anniversary year.It was not the kind of pitch AVA staff had to puzzle over. Stomberg, director of Dartmouth College’s Hood...

By ALEX HANSON

WHITE RIVER JUNCTION — Over the last few years, one of the pleasures of shopping at the Upper Valley Food Co-op has been seeing what Denver Ferguson is working on.With his long frame folded into the space behind the express checkout line, Ferguson is...

By ERIC SUTPHIN

HANOVER — The construction fencing along East Wheelock Street signals the beginning of the $88 million expansion and renovation of the Hopkins Center for the Arts. The iconic 1962 building is anticipated to reopen in 2025. In the interim, the Hop’s...

By ALEX HANSON

Two longtime Upper Valley performers are each bringing to the stage productions that are departures from their past work.First, on Friday evening, Alan Haehnel opens My Ode to Joy — a performance of spoken-word poetry mixed with music — at Parish...

By ERIC SUTPHIN

A phrase I’ve often heard in reference to Lois Dodd’s work is “deceptively simple.” In fact, there it is, right at the beginning of the wall text for “Natural Order,” a retrospective of Dodd’s work at the Hall Art Foundation in Reading, Vt....

By ALEX HANSON

WHITE RIVER JUNCTION — For the past few years, Ben Finer and Bevan Dunbar have been mulling over what they would want an art gallery to look like.At first, they considered opening a gallery in a room of their Hartford Village apartment, which would...

By ALEX HANSON

It is a measure of how far comics have risen in stature that they are now being used to teach schoolchildren and adults alike how American democracy is supposed to function.Or is it a measure of how diminished our government is that cartooning has to...