Arts
Coffin’s New Book Connects Civil War History to Present-Day Vermont
by Max Shenk History is not a static thing, fixed in the past without any relevance to the here and now. History, ideally, connects us to who we are and where we live today and, if we understand it correctly, points us to the future. Vermont author Howard Coffin understands this and, through his writing [...]
On Reading and Enjoying Poetry: A Conversation with Ellen Bryant Voigt
by Max Shenk PoemCity 2013, Montpelier’s April-long, citywide celebration of National Poetry Month, kicked off officially at the State House on Monday night with a reading by Vermont poet Ellen Bryant Voigt. Voigt, who was Vermont’s poet laureate from 1999 through 2003, read new, unpublished work to an attentive audience in the House chamber. Her [...]
Toward a Sustainable Regional Cinema
by Jay Craven My new film, Northern Borders, marks the completion of my quintet of films based on fiction by Northeast Kingdom writer Howard Frank Mosher. I live in the Kingdom and began this journey 26 years ago, when I tried to option the rights for Disappearances, which were tied up. So, I set my [...]
ESSAY: To View or Not to View: A Preview of Promising Films
by John O’Brien As shoppers, why do we pick one product over another? If we know the product and like it, that’s one thing, but what makes us select, when given the choice, unknown A instead of unknown B? Looking through the 16th Annual Green Mountain Film Festival’s catalog of coming attractions, I circled the [...]
PoemCity 2013: Off the Page and into the Street
by Max Shenk April is National Poetry Month, and for the fourth year in a row, Montpelier will be celebrating all month long with a series of events that designates the capital as PoemCity. PoemCity, cosponsored by Montpelier Alive and the Kellogg-Hubbard Library, brings poetry off the printed page and puts it in front of [...]
Piecework: When We Were French: Abby Paige’s Play Uncovers Treasure
by Bob Nuner Several years ago, Stone, Lost Nation Theater’s production about the Barre granite industry, acknowledged the animosity that greeted French Canadians who’d immigrated into the area. People who’ve lived here a while may well recall hearing old-time Vermonters use the word Frenchman derisively, or spin a narrative that involved a Frenchman as the [...]
Midsummer in Mud Season
by Robbie Harold What could be a better antidote to cabin fever than a romantic summer night’s romp? Especially one you can—and should—take the kids to. For many of us, A Midsummer Night’s Dream was our joyful introduction to Shakespeare. It drops us into a magical world in which everybody makes crazy fools of themselves [...]
Still Learning to See: John Snell Photo Exhibit
by Joyce Kahn If your visual senses are crying out, deprived by the stark landscape of a winter that seems to relentlessly drag on and on, they will thank you for feeding them when you visit John Snell’s exhibit of 31 photographs at the Central Vermont Medical Center Art Gallery, for it is a feast of [...]
Action! VCFA’s New Film MFA Program Is Rolling
by Nat Frothingham Filmmaking and film distribution are changing dramatically. In an interview with Tom Greene, president of the Vermont College of Fine Arts (VCFA), he explained how big changes in filmmaking and distribution have provided a very strong logic for a VCFA decision to inaugurate a new MFA degree program in film. For a [...]
Plenty to Do in February: Montpelier Alive Launches New Festival
by Bob Nuner Montpelier Alive, working with the city, has put together the MontPolar Frostival, a major new community festival for the first three days of February. The weekend festival will open Lost Nation Theater’s Eighth Annual WinterFest, a monthlong series of theater performances. The Snow Ball dance party, featuring three different bands, kicks off [...]