"Broad Brook Anthology", a Play for Voices by Verandah Porche, will be the next Guilford Center Stage production, finishing out the 2024 season. The play was originally performed as part of the Guilford 250th celebration in 2011, and repeated as a Center Stage production in 2018. This is the second revival of this popular work, which celebrates Guilford and its history through the voices of Town elders.
The play, with projected photographs by Jeff Woodward and music by Don McLean, will be presented on Friday, October 25th, and Saturday the 26th at 7:30 pm, and Sunday the 27th at 2 pm. General Admission is $14.
Over several years, Guilford poet Verandah Porche met with elders to transcribe their recollections of life in town going back as far as the 1920s. As many of these conversations took place in that most important room of a Guilford home, the published books of these narratives were titled "Kitchen Talks".
The narratives, read by six of the areas finest actors, include memories of one-room schools, the hurricane of 1938, rural electrification, courtship and hardship, and youthful mischief.
Porche has distilled passages from these narratives and woven them together with her poems into a play for voices, named for the brook that passes many of the homesteads in the play, as well as the former Broad Brook Grange building, where these performances take place. Most of these narrators courted at the dances there.
Director of the reading is Michael Fox Kennedy of West Brattleboro, who directed both of the previous productions. Verandah Porche will serve as narrator.
Actor/readers also include Christopher Coutant, Gay and James Maxwell and Robin Wolf, all of Brattleboro. Arthur Pettee of Guilford rounds out the cast.
Historic photographs and portraits of each elder, taken for this project by Jeff Woodward of Guilford, will be projected onto the walls of the theater, as the actors read.Incidental music, written for the play by Don McLean of Guilford, will be performed by a trio of area musicians. The play is produced in collaboration with Monteverdi Artists Collaborative of Guilford.
During the weekend, there will also be both a raffle and a silent auction benefiting Guilford Center Stage.
All seating is General Admission. Tickets, at $14, may be purchased at the door, using cash or a check made payable to Guilford Center Stage. Venmo and PayPal are also now accepted. To pre-buy tickets with a credit card, you may purchase on Brown Paper Tickets.
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