Bluegrass & Old-Time Mountain Music

at Brunswick Music Fest

Featuring the Best in Original and Traditional Blues, Bluegrass and Old-Time Mountain Music

Blue Moon Rising                                        Hardline Drive                                            Martin Family Band

  Saturday, June 19, 2010

Railroad Square, South Maple Street, Brunswick, MD 21716

www.brunswickmusicfest.com

11:00am

Gates Open

Come on in and Pick your Spot!

Be greeted by the music of The Polka Dots as you enter.

12:00pm – 1:00pm

The Martin Family

Award Winning Old-Time Music

1:15pm – 2:30pm

Hardline Drive

Bluegrass with High-Powered Female Harmonies

2:45pm – 4:15pm

Chocolate Thunder

A not to be missed Blues Band coming all the way from

South Carolina making it’s First-Ever Appearance in this Region

4:30pm – 6:00pm

Blue Moon Rising

 This Bluegrass Band’s music repeatedly hits the Bluegrass Music Charts!

6:15pm- 7:45pm

Kelly Bell Band

Voted Best Blues Band in the Mid-Atlantic Region 11 Years in a Row!

Tickets:

15/Adults in Advance  $20/Adults at the Gate

$10/Students and Seniors

FREE/Children ages 5 and under

To Purchase Advance Tickets:

Call 240-347-8760 or visit www.BrunswickMusicFest.com

Tickets are Non-Refundable

The festival will feature a beer garden and specially selected food vendor who will provide a full menu from which to choose.

Bring your lawn chairs. No pets, coolers or outside alcohol allowed.

Brunswick Music Fest is a Brunswick Main Street Event supported by the

City of Brunswick and the Frederick County Tourism Council. Brunswick Main Street is a non-profit organization.

Bluegrass and Old-Time Mountain Music

On Saturday, June 19th the Brunswick Music Fest will open it gates at 11am for a day of blues, bluegrass and old-time mountain music. Chocolate Thunder, a not-to-be-missed blues artist from South Carolina, will make her first appearance in this region of the US. She’ll be performing along with The Kelly Bell Band, which has been named Best Blues Band in the Mid-Atlantic Region for eleven years in a row, the multi award-winning Martin Family Band, which will bring old-time mountain music to the stage, and bluegrass groups Blue Moon Rising, whose music repeatedly hits the bluegrass charts, and Hardline Drive.

Blue Moon Rising brings the sounds of East Tennessee to their live performances and chart-topping albums. A national touring band, Blue Moon Rising is comprised of Chris West on lead vocals and guitar, Tony Mowell on bass and vocals, Brandon Bostic on mandolin, guitar and vocals and Owen Piatt on banjo.  This year the band will celebrate the release of their fifth album.

The group garnered international recognition with the release of their third album, On the Rise. The name of the album proved to be a symbolic title for the group, because in 2005 the album debuted at #14 on the BILLBOARD Top 50 Bluegrass Chart.  On the Rise received tremendous recognition. Along with numerous other honors, it made CMT.com’s Top 10 Bluegrass Albums, Gritz Magazine’s Top Overall Albums of 2005 and spent ten months on Bluegrass Unlimited Magazine’s Bluegrass National Survey Top 15 Album Chart. 

The single, This Old Martin Box, spent the entire 2006 calendar year in the Top 30 Singles. And, IBMA members honored the group with a nomination for Emerging Artist of the Year with band leader Chris West performing in the Songwriter’s Showcase.

Blue Moon Rising is lead by multi-talented guitarist and acclaimed songwriter, Chris West, who writes many of the band’s songs.  His original tunes have become the signature sound of the band. Simply put, this band has it all.  They play well, sing well, and write well. To learn more and listen to a few tunes, visit www.bluemoonrisingband.com.

It’s not very often that two women front a bluegrass band, but the high-powered harmonies and lead vocals of Toni Erskine and Danielle Smith are the core and essence of Hardline Drive. 

Michigan’s Hardline Drive came together in 2006. Each member has years of experience in traditional and contemporary bluegrass, but their focus is on producing original material highlighted by solid timing and tight harmonies. 

Toni Erskine, a fiddler and gifted songwriter, sings powerful lead vocals with a bluesy feel. Danielle Smith, who started singing at the age of four and playing mandolin at the age of eight, sings, plays mandolin, up-right bass, fiddle and saxophone. Greg Fuson, who grew up in a family of bluegrass musicians, sings harmony, plays a mean dobro and is a phenomenal guitarist. Wes Pettinger gets the band really cookin’ with his banjo, guitar and harmony vocals. And, special guest, Izzy Daniels, adds his touch on upright bass.

In 2008 Hardline Drive released its first CD, Gonna Be Alright. “Hardline Drive is the complete package,” says Bill Keith of Trinity House Theatre, “great songs, inspired musicians and wonderful singers. One of Michigan’s best kept secrets will soon be the Bluegrass world’s favorite new band.” To learn more about Hardline Drive, visit www.hardlinedrive.com.

The Martin family used to play music together at home just for fun. But, it wasn’t long before they were performing throughout the region as The Martin Family Band. This talented group performs a rich and unique blend of Irish, 18th century Colonial and old-time mountain music and has been the informal “house band” at Mt. Vernon for 15 years.

Locally, they have performed at events such as the Sheep and Wool Festival and the Washington Folk Festival. Internationally they have performed in Ireland, Scotland and Germany. Their unique mix of instruments includes hammered dulcimer, mandolin, fiddle, banjo, guitar, button accordion, piano, lap dulcimer, recorder and tin whistle.

Carl, the father, plays mandolin and tenor banjo and is also a member of the Common Ground Ceili Band.  He has traveled extensively playing music in Ireland, Scotland and Germany as part of the Cimbalom World Association.  Jeanean, the mother, plays hammered dulcimer and guitar. She sings and has been performing and teaching music for 20 years. She is also a talented visual artist who teaches and exhibits in the Washington, DC area. Both Jeanean and Carl are fine musicians who have encouraged their family and others to play music. 

Children Lydia, Emily and Claude have all followed in their parent’s footsteps. Lydia plays piano, 5-string banjo, recorder, guitar, button accordion and sings. At the age of 17 she had the distinction of performing for President Clinton at the White house. She received a scholarship from the Levine School of Music in Washington, DC where she studied classical piano, and she studied 5-string banjo with banjo master Dwight Diller.  

Lydia is the recipient of many awards including 1st Place in the Old-time Banjo and band competition at the Deer Creek Fiddler’s Convention, Westminster MD and was recently featured on the banjo staff at the Folk Alliance in Memphis, TN.   

Emily plays tenor banjo, mandolin, lap dulcimer and tin whistle. She is a natural musician, mostly self-taught, who learns her music by ear in the true folk tradition. She has the distinction of winning two consecutive 1st place medals at the Mid-Atlantic Irish Music Competition. She also received 1st place in mandolin at the Deer Creek Fiddler’s Convention. Emily heartily pursues her interest in old-time music, playing and singing mountain ballads with sister Lydia. And together, they are studying Appalachian ballad singing with Ginny Hawker.  

Claude began playing fiddle at the age of seven.  An award-winning fiddler, he took 1st place at the Deer Creek Fiddler’s Convention and the Speedy Tolliver Fiddle Contest and 2nd place at the George Mason Traditional Fiddle contest. Claude performs with his family and also with his own band Fauntel.  He sings and plays his own compositions, as well as contemporary arrangements of traditional music.

An exciting new addition to the band is Josh Henderson who brings it all together with his steady bass rhythms. At the Deer Creek Fiddler’s Convention he took 1st place in the bass competition. To learn more about the musical adventures of the Martin Family band, visit www.themartinfamilyband.com.

The Brunswick Music Fest will take place in downtown Brunswick, Maryland at Railroad Square, South Maple Street. As festivalgoers arrive they will be greeted by The Polka Dots, a young trio from Loudoun County, who will be performing near the entrance. On stage at noon the Martin Family Band will kick off the day. They’ll be followed by Hardline Drive at 1:15pm, Chocolate Thunder at 2:45pm, Blue Moon Rising at 4:30pm and the Kelly Bell Band at 6:15pm.

Tickets are $15 for adults in advance, $20 for adults at the gate, $10 for students and seniors and FREE for children ages 5 and under. Advance tickets may be purchased by calling 240-347-8760 or via the festival’s website at www.BrunswickMusicFest.com.

Festivalgoers are encouraged to bring lawn chairs. The festival will also feature food and merchandise vendors, as well as a beer garden. No pets, coolers or outside alcohol will be allowed. Brunswick Music Fest is a Brunswick Main Street Event supported by the City of Brunswick and the Frederick County Tourism Council. For more information, contact the Brunswick Music Fest at 240-347-8760 or info@BrunswickMusicFest.com.

Friday and Saturday May 29th and 30th The Arts Centre is pleased to present the “14th Annual West Virginia Wine & Arts Festival” located on the grounds of historic Boydville.  Tickets are $20 for adults (21+), $10 for young adults (13-20), and free for children 12 and under.  Saturday Arnold Smith, Todd Coyle and Band, The Shemacians, Giants of Tiny Town, Chef Eric and Sunday The Speakeasy Boys, Lisa Laffery and Band, Ginada Pinata, The Gypsy Ramblers.  See schedule times and details at www.wineandarts.com.

Thursday through Sunday June 3d-6th  “Herdon Festival“ events include Live Entertainment on 3 stages, Carnival Rides and Games, Fireworks Displays, Arts & Crafts www.herndonfestival.net for more information.

 “Fourth Annual North Mountain Arts Festival”  Saturday June 5thfeaturing local and regional artists, live music, food, llamas and fun! Saturday, 9 am – 4 PM; Free.  201 North Mary Street, Hedgesville, WV 304 754 5727; www.northmountainarts.com.   Located in Historic Hedgesville, West Virginia.  Featuring, pottery, weaving, wood turning, photography, painting, jewelry, fabric art, stained glass, fused glass, dichroic glass, quilts, wall hangings, greeting cards, hand carved eggs, blanket chests and more.

“Jewelry: From Basics to Beauty”.  Wednesdays from June 2nd 6:00-9:00 PM   In this 6-session class, learn to create and cast jewelry and sculpture.  Learn to use the tools of the craft, shape metal, set stones, creating your cast from wax. Cast your creation in bronze or silver into a piece of jewelry or small sculpture @ CraftWorks In Town, corner of Washington and Duke streets tuition $288.00 for series of 6 classes.  Teaching Artist:  Bradley Sanders.   Registration and more information at www.wvcraftworks.org.

Starting in September, Wee Naturalist sessions will be held there the third Thursday of each month. PVAS will continue to offer Wee Naturalist sessions at its Yankauer Nature Preserve north of Shepherdstown the third Wednesday of each month. At both locations, each session will last from 9:30 a.m. to 11:00 a.m., and each month’s program will be different.

All sessions will be led by Suzi Taylor, of Sharpsburg MD, a veteran PVAS camp director who has a degree in environmental education. The program is open to children ages 3 to 5. All participating children must be accompanied at each session by a parent, grandparent or other adult relative, or guardian.

The program is aimed at providing regular opportunities for small children and loving adults to explore nature together safely under the guidance of an experienced PVAS instructor.

All sessions are conducted rain or shine and use a hands-on discovery approach. To ensure that everyone receives close, personal attention, enrollment is limited to ten child/adult teams per session.

Families may register for one, several, or all of the sessions at either the CraftWorks or Yankauer locations but pre-registration is required. The fee will be $7 per child/adult team per session for one or two sessions, and $5 per session for three or more sessions.

For more information about the Wee Naturalists program, contact Ms. Taylor at tomandsuzi506@cs.com.

To register, go to the CraftWorks website at www.CraftWorksatCoolSpring.org.

The  Potomac Valley Audubon Society is a nonprofit organization, and a member of the United Way of the Eastern Panhandle and the Combined Federal Campaign. CraftWorks at Cool Spring is a nonprofit center for craft and creative learning.

She and her husband, Roland, a geography professor at Shepherd University, have always been interested in travel and other cultures. Originally from Minnesota, they met in their senior year at college. Both had studied Spanish, and she had spent three months in Mexico on an American Friends service project. That same year, he had attended a language school in Cuernavaca, Mexico. They found they had a lot in common, married, and went to Madison, Wisconsin, where he attended graduate school.

His graduate studies took them to Mexico, Costa Rica, and eventually to Peru where he had a Fulbright Scholarship to work with Shipibo Indians. By then the Bergmans had a five-month-old baby.

“He picked a village easy to live in,” Bergman laughed. “It was only five hours by river to a town with a hospital. And there was a missionary base he could affiliate with so he could call in a float plane if necessary.”

Bergman was comfortable as a young mother living with the Shipibos. “Living as the wife of a grad student in Madison was harder,” she said. “There were no other young mothers, and the baby cried a lot! It was always a struggle to keep the baby quiet and out of the way.”

In the Shipibo village, babies were part of the community. Bergman became interested in traditional weaving and textiles. “The women spent seven or eight hours a day doing handcrafts. They would rock their babies in hammocks, tie a cord to their big toe and rock the hammock while they worked.”

When she went back to visit years later, they remembered her. They even remembered the song she sang as she rocked her baby.

The Shipibos have their own language, but they have been speaking Spanish for about 100 years. Bergman learned Shipibo. “It is an easy language to learn,” she said. “It doesn’t have any complicated grammar structure.”

At that time of her stay, the people were mostly hunter-gatherers, picking tree fruits that ripened at different times. They did some farming, growing bananas, corn, tomatoes, and watermelons to sell in Pucallpa, the nearest town. She described the children as very healthy, with plenty of protein in their diets because the people were adept at fishing. “They’d stand up in log canoes and use harpoons or bows and arrows to fish,” she recalled.

A second Fulbright later returned the Bergmans to Peru, where they lived in Puna on Lake Titicaca for two years. By this time, they had three children. Their youngest was three, in nursery school; their middle child was six and in grade school; and their oldest son was 14 and went to high school. There were more amen-ities in Puna, and Bergman had an opportunity to help out in a crafts program in a children’s library.

After a 16-year absence, Bergman visited Peru in 2001 and found the village where they had lived was still there, but the teens were not learning to spin and weave. “I bought cotton thread and told the girls that if they went to their grandmothers and learned to make traditional woven bracelets, I would sell them in the U.S. and send them money. The grandmothers were so happy to pass on the weaving tradition.”

“Thirty years ago, women were proud of their traditional clothing,” she said. “The girls don’t wear it any more. Shipibo teens wear western clothes, although they might have a set of traditional clothes for special events, but babies and small children don’t have any traditional clothes at all.”

This year, the Bergmans visited Puna. She had found the Shipibos to be very artistic people, but, says Berman, it is harder now to find traditional spinning and weaving. When we give used clothes to charities, much of it is sent to developing countries where it is sold as used clothing. Bergman believes that has a destabilizing effect on the makers of traditional clothing. “They can’t compete with the cheap T-shirts from the U.S. It’s changed the dress habits of people. Thirty years ago, women didn’t wear shorts, short sleeves, or low necks.”

The Shipibos had a tradition in which grandparents took the first child of each of their children to raise. This bonded families of generations together. The children raised by grandparents learned traditional skills needed for living in the rainforest, like climbing trees, fishing, and using a bow and arrows.

Much of traditional culture is quickly being lost as people move out of villages, primarily for education. Educated people must go where they can find employment—so many never return to their villages.

Bergman sees people at a crossroad, trying to figure out who they want to be. “Many don’t just want to be known as Indians,” she said. “They are proud of their traditions but want manufactured clothes, sneakers, makeup. There’s a difference between throwing away all traditions and deciding what you want to keep.”

The Bergmans have lived in West Virginia since 1973. They were always looking for ways to use the traditional skills they learned in their travels, so they decided to build their own adobe house like those in Peru and Mexico. They used 12,000 adobe bricks made from the red clay of their property, adding only some sand.

Their walls, says Bergman, are about 12 inches thick, made with one layer of bricks. “Adobe is a wonderful building material,” she said. “It’s efficient in hot and cold weather. It absorbs heat slowly during the day and releases it slowly at night over about 12 hours. It’s good as long as the roof keeps the rain, especially freezing rain, off the walls.”

Barbara Bergman studied biology and sociology, and now works part-time at Fountain Rock Nature Center near Frederick, Md., as a naturalist. She also works on the family’s small farm where they raise their vegetables and keep a cow and goats for milk and cheese.

Bergman is in a national weaving group, Weave A Real Peace (WARP). They hope that if people come together in valuing beautiful things made by hand it will develop respect for all people and human rights.

What’s the best way to categorize this year’s crop of playwrights at the Contemporary American Theater Festival? The five faces are largely new: one returning writer from 1996 and four rookies (including an esteemed 65 year old). Their themes are topical: one brutal dissection of marriage and four dramas that feel torn from the headlines. The demographics are, well, retro: one black woman and four white men.

A simple way to sort this year’s slate, which runs from July 8 through August 2, would be between the bluntly political works in the Frank Center—Beau Willimon’s campaign drama “Farragut North” and Steven Dietz’s 9/11 conspiracy thriller “Yankee Tavern”—and the romantically oriented duo in the Studio, Michael Weller’s marital slugfest “Fifty Words” and Eisa Davis’s era-hopping “The History of Light.” Victor Lodato’s “Dear Sara Jane,” the solo show in the Center for Contemporary Arts, straddles both worlds as a woman contemplates her absent husband’s role in a foreign war—but then love and politics were clearly on of all these playwrights’ minds lately.

* * *

Writer-performer Eisa (sounds like “Lisa”) Davis was a Pulitzer Prize finalist in 2007 for “Bulrusher,” and just two months ago starred in her own play “Angela’s Mixtape” in New York. That well-received show, the 38-year-old Davis says, was “explicitly memoir – how I remember things.” The play’s promotional tagline was “Just your average black macrobiotic revolutionary dancing family,” and it chronicled Davis’s childhood as the niece of the famous activist Angela Davis.

Naturally, Angela Davis showed up at the Ohio Theater in Manhattan to see herself portrayed. So did Eisa’s mother and nearly three dozen more family members.

“It was a true event,” the playwright says. “It’s one thing to write a play; it’s another to be in a play where you’re depicting your family and doing it to their faces.”

Davis puts “The History of Light,” which investigates the obstacles in two tempestuous interracial relationships across two generations, in the mold of “Bulrusher” and “Angela’s Mixtape.” “They are all very much like family plays that are very explicitly about love,” she says. “All of my work is politically aware, because that is my legacy and also who I am. But ‘Angela’s Mixtape’ is really about how do you place the politics you inherit into a life that doesn’t have the same circumstances?”

“History of Light,” by slight contrast, involves “politics related to the characters, and how they look at things.” Turner, the black father figure in the play, is a radical, which has a profound impact on the romantic decisions he makes, while the white woman he is involved with prioritizes differently. (Davis compares this character favorably to Barack Obama’s mother.) Turner’s daughter is an artist involved with a white man, and Davis says their relationship is “more of a class thing, or something between a business person and someone who’s an artist.”
In addition to writing and performing (she was in the cast of last year’s offbeat Broadway musical, “Passing Strange”), Davis also composes songs, and she has a CD out. She credits her mother and grandmother with encouraging creativity at a young age, and notes that most of her shows – including “History of Light” – are infused with music, a subject that practically makes her sound bubbly.

Politics, on the other hand, just sort of happens in her plays, whether she starts out with that intention or not. And she’s fine with that, reckoning that the question for writers isn’t whether they can make a difference.

“You always are,” Davis says with a matter-of-fact air. “So the question is, What difference do you want to make?”

* * *

Twist of fate: Davis did graduate work at the New School, and one of her brief mentors there was longtime playwriting professor Michael Weller—who knows Davis’s famous aunt Angela.

Weller came to fame with “Moonchildren,” his 1972 Broadway play about student unrest in the mid-1960s, and he has tackled his share of timely topics. The screenwriter for Milos Forman’s film versions of “Ragtime” and “Hair” recently unloaded on the Iraq war in “Beast,” a drama about a wounded war veteran. That’s one of two Weller dramas that premiered in New York last fall; the other is “Fifty Words,” part of a trilogy of plays dissecting an affair and marriage. The play takes its title from one of its two characters’ belief, articulated during a long night when their son has his first sleepover away from the house, that there ought to be that many variations on the word love.

“I actually started to write a continuous action play that would have no breaks, just as a formal exercise,” says Weller. “I found I couldn’t do it. I just got bored, basically.” He ended the scene, then had an inspiration: “What if I start the next scene at a place you’d never have thought the play would reach? I completely startled myself, and I think the audience a little bit, as well. It was a great compositional discipline. And I use it through the whole trilogy.”

Weller was trained as a musician, and eventually studied playwriting with an old-fashioned show doctor, the kind of technician who re-tooled scripts already in the throes of production.

“He was a total craftsman,” Weller recalls, “and he didn’t think about teaching art at all. It was just, ‘Bring them on earlier.’ ‘That phone rang too late.’ That kind of thing.” Naturally, this informs Weller’s classroom philosophy: “Craft is the one thing you can teach,” he declares. “I don’t think you can teach any of the other stuff.”

Though Weller has written consistently both for the stage and for Hollywood, he says he hasn’t strayed from home in Brooklyn much for the past 20 years as he and his wife raised their two sons. “The world’s changed a lot,” he says, adding with a laugh: “Like, they have these machines that dry your swim trunks.”

Show business is different, too, he thinks: “It’s much harder to earn a living. It’s much harder to get a play done. There are many more playwrights around. And there is much less sense of writing for a mainstream audience.”

Which leads Weller—whose current projects include a major musical of “Dr. Zhivago” and another musical about Fleetwood Mac (it will use the band’s songs)—to the matter of how playwrights nowadays handle Hollywood’s call. “If you get that break with a play like ‘Farragut North,’ you ride it quickly,” he says. “Whereas I avoided it. I stayed out of it, and then people came to me and asked me to do stuff.”
* * *
If the festival has a hotshot this year, it is the 31-year-old Willimon, reached in his car in L.A., where “Farragut North” is playing at the Geffen Playhouse. He has already turned his drama (a success in New York last fall) into a screenplay (George Clooney and Leonardo DiCaprio are reportedly involved), yet he is already leery of being pigeonholed as a political playwright.

That may be tough, because Brooklyn-based Willimon has clear expertise and heady connections to the top echelon of national politics. He has worked on campaigns, beginning with Charles Schumer’s 1998 run in New York and including more than four months on the ground in Iowa for Howard Dean. His link through all of this has been good buddy Jay Carson, who has been at or near the top of communications operations for Dean, Tom Daschle, and both Clintons.

“‘Farragut North’ is not about politics,” Willimon spins. “It’s about power, ambition, and hubris, and that could play out in any number of places.”

Still, the play’s dirty tricks feel awfully specific to the hardball of major campaigns. “I’ve witnessed all that,” Willimon acknowledges of the indiscreet affairs and injudicious betrayals that motor his play.

Like Weller, Willimon came a little late to playwriting, starting as a painter but preferring the full storytelling possibilities of drama. He insists he is a theater guy at heart, and currently has commissions to write for both the Manhattan Theatre Club and London’s National Theatre. But he doesn’t see L.A. as an inevitable sellout for writers, and seems confident that he won’t lose his way.
“It’s tough to get work out here,” he says. “And when you can, it’s hard to pass up.”

* * *

Steven Dietz dabbled in Hollywood once, briefly, and his plays have rarely been seen in New York. Yet he is among the most consistently employed dramatists in America, pumping out new work almost yearly and getting productions and commissions across the country. (He’s now working on new scripts for Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theatre and the Guthrie in Minneapolis.)

“I bet there’s 10 of us,” the 51-year-old writer guesses, when asked how many other playwrights are in the same career boat. “I’ve never figured out how to game the system. I’ve just stubbornly stayed at it.”

Like “Farragut North,” “Yankee Tavern” taps into a hot national discussion. The play trots out some of the 9/11 conspiracy theories before ginning up a conspiracy of its own among the characters in a Manhattan watering hole.

“I dove down the internet rabbit hole of all this stuff,” says Dietz, whose “Nina Variations” played the CATF in 2006. “I wholly over-researched the play—research being the thing you do when you’re not getting any writing done.”
The charges Dietz’s characters consider are alarming, and well-vetted. Already picked up by five companies around the country for the 2009–10 theater season, the play premiered recently at Florida Stages, where a young dramaturg fact-checked with a vengeance.
“Every crazy-ass thing I put in there about 9/11, he tracked down,” Dietz says from Seattle (where he and his family return each summer when he finishes teaching at the University of Texas.) “Everything is true.”
For Dietz, who describes himself as “a political animal,” that was critical. He wanted actors facing audiences at post-show discussions to be able to say flatly that the play is accurate. “The minute you can’t say that,” Dietz contends, “the experience of the audience is fundamentally changed.”
He is a little perplexed that the word conspiracy has such a negative spin. Yet he long believed the truth would tumble forth if Watergate’s Deep Throat ever identified himself.
“It didn’t make a bit of difference!” he marvels of Mark Felt’s 2005 disclosure. “The second gunman from the grassy knoll could step forward, and it still would not put an end to the conspiracy theories.”

* * *

Victor Lodato eyes the reporter’s tape recorder suspiciously.

“It always seems so FBI or CIA,” the 40-year-old Arizona resident explains in his gentle way.
That initial wariness leads him right to the notion of “secrets” in “Dear Sara Jane,” and how CATF producing director Ed Herendeen doesn’t want too much revealed.

“Ed is so cute about that,” Lodato smiles. “I told him, ‘What play doesn’t have secrets?’”

The monologue is about a woman unraveling a bit while her husband is away in an unnamed battle (“It feels like Iraq,” Lodato acknowledges). It hearkens back to Lodato’s theatrical beginnings in New York, writing solo shows that he performed himself. He gradually quit the stage and began writing multi-character plays, then moved to Arizona for a quieter writing life.

The topical theme of “Dear Sara Jane” isn’t necessarily typical. Neither “The Bread of Winter” nor “The Woman Who Amuses Herself,” Lodato dramas recently premiered at the Theatre Alliance in Washington, D.C., were issue-driven.

“Like most of my plays,” Lodato says of “Dear Sara Jane,” “it starts with a voice in my head. If I find it compelling I just let it talk until I find the story.” Performed by Joey Parsons, who also has the hefty role of the wife in “Fifty Words,” the play, Lodato says, is about “What it means to be a soldier, that your husband is killing people, and at risk of being killed. Very simple questions.”

Playwriting has been frustrating for Lodato at times. He was prominently featured in a New York Times article several years ago about the hazards of play development. His work was getting notice, grants, awards, workshops—but not many productions.
“I probably went into the novel somewhat because of that,” he says. “Out of frustration.”

The novel is “Matilda Savitch,” due out this September. It may mark a career shift for the longtime playwright, who may even move away from his Tucson base of 18 years. But returning to New York seems out of the question. “Especially if I’m going to write another novel,” he says.
The Big Apple is fun, but distracting. Lodato spent a month in Manhattan before rehearsals started here for “Dear Sara Jane.” He practically sighs as he says, “It was such a great relief to get to Shepherdstown after that.”

The 20th annual Over the Mountain Studio Tour won’t take place until November, but you don’t have to wait until then to see the art or the artists. The tour’s 25 artists and craft-workers preview new work at the War Memorial Building Men’s Club, German Street, Shepherdstown, Friday July 10 through Sunday July 12. The event begins with a wine reception Friday, 5 to 8pm. The show and sale continue Saturday and Sunday, 11am to 6pm.

Artists reparesenting all areas of Jefferson County will exhibit in one location. Their studios and workshops dot the county: Harpers Ferry, Charles Town, Middleway, Leetown, Kearneysville, Shenandoah Junction and Shepherdstown. Sometimes during the tour there isn’t time to visit every artist, so the Over the Mountain Studio Tour summer preview offers an opportunity see all the participating artists in a one-stop visit.

There is no charge for the summer preview. For information, Jefferson County CVB, 866-435-5698 or 304-267-5468; studiotour@studiotourwv.org; or visit www.studiotourwv.org, where you can watch a video of the 2008 tour.

Ricco Features Cawood Metals

Scott Cawood, a metal sculptor, will visit the gallery and discuss the works Sundays through August 2, 11:30am to 4pm.

Said gallery owner Riccardo Accurso, “Scott’s work is totally original and unique, and these ‘meet the artist’ events will be a terrific opportunity to discuss both the ideas behind the sculptures and the techniques that Cawood employs to express those concepts.”

Among the new work Cawood is showing at Ricco is a cityscape of Annapolis, Md., featuring the coastal area of Chesapeake Bay as well as the streets and monuments of the 18th century state capital. For information, 304-876-2243 ellenhof@comcast.net.

CraftWorks Offers Locals Half Price

To celebrate its first year, CraftWorks at Cool Spring has introduced half price classes for the 2009 season. CraftWorks offers daylong and weekend classes in American craft, art, nature studies, writing, photography and sustainable living. The center is located in an 81-acre nature preserve about five minutes south of Charles Town. Under the new special pricing all Eastern Panhandle residents can take one-day classes for only $50 and two-day classes for $95.

The fall season at CraftWorks kicks off with a unique class called Chronicling Family Stories, August 22. West Virginia’s best known chroniclers of community life and folklore, Michael and Carrie Kline, visit Jefferson County for a special concert on the lawn at CraftWorks Friday evening, August 21. On Saturday, they will present a one-day workshop on the art of recording stories of family, friends, and community. Students will learn to document life stories and community experience through the art of deep listening and recording, explore techniques for recording the voices of family and locals, develop interviewing skills, and learn technical details for producing broadcast-quality field recordings.

Jefferson County’s nationally known basket artist, Anne Bowers, will teach a one-day class September 26, Checkerboard Market Basket. Students—even those with no basketry experience—will make a classic market basket (13” long x 8” wide x 12” tall) that combines the traditional market shape with a dyed base and spokes to create a great light/dark effect on the sides of the basket. It’s topped with an oak handle with heavy center grip. A great class for beginners or intermediate basketers.

October 10–11, local green building consultant Jeff Feldman, who writes The Observer’s Small Planet column, will present Hands-on Adventures in Strawbale Building. Learn the basics of strawbale by building a small structure. In this hands-on workshop, learn design basics, techniques for laying up strawbale walls, resizing and beveling bales and baling around door/window openings, and mixing and applying clay and lime plaster to strawbale walls.

Other classes this season feature teaching artists like Rhonda Roebuck, a master of mixed media journal creations; Ann Ruppert, who will teach Harvesting Autumn’s Bounty to Create Striking Floral Arrangements; nature photographers B. Don Johnson and Donna Johnson teaching Capturing Nature’s Beauty in Pictures; and Charlottesville-based Josef Beery presenting The Beauty of the Sharpened Edge, a two-day class in the art of woodblock printing.

The Goose Route Dance Festival is known among modern-dance artists nationwide as an intimate and inspiring dance experience that offers them packed houses and supportive audiences. Some of this season’s performers are returning for a second time, staying with the same families with whom they have kept in touch since their first visits.

As a result of the loyalty Goose Route inspires among dance artists, each year festival organizers are able to select dance artists from a tall pile of applications submitted by high-caliber professionals. “This summer’s artists have extensive performance histories nationally as well as internationally,” said Kitty Clark, executive director of the Goose Route Arts Collaborative, which produces the festival. “They have studied and danced with some of the most notable modern dancers in the country, and they teach in some of best dance degree programs in this country.”
Goose Route transforms the second floor of the War Memorial Building in Shepherdstown into a black box theater. During the first weekend, four dance troupes from New York will join Goose Route Dance Company in performances that include Shaken with a Twist, a light-hearted and quirky duet by James Hansen (Rochester, N.Y.) and Back to Tijuca, by Essner Performance Co-op (New York, N.Y.), which was created in Rio de Janeiro in collaboration with Brazilian dancers and set to a score by the Brazilian composer Barbatugues. The Goose Route Dance Company, with Kitty Clark and Ray Shaw, will show two new works, Voyeurs in My Head and Trace. These performances feature improvisation and highly physical choreography, sprinkled with idiosyncratic gestures and space-eating movements.
During the second weekend, performances include Blueprints of Relentless Nature by DanceTactics (New York), a high-velocity work with a pulsing language of flicks, hesitations, lunging dives, and curious catches. Also that weekend is a delightful and funny dance set to 1950s love songs by one of Washington’s preeminent dance companies, CityDance2. Nu Dance Theater of New York performs Elle d’Elles, a physical dialogue between a puppeteer and a dancer—a mother and a daughter—exploring their relationship via the intimate contact between their bodies and a wedding dress. In Coldness and Lightness, choreographed by Ashley Thorndike to music composed by Peter Swendsen, three powerful dancers slice and propel their way through the landscape.
If you are someone who does not go to modern dance performances because you feel like you “don’t get it,” take heart. You are not alone. Goose Route has organized meet-the-artists discussions after matinee performances to help unravel the “mysteries” of dance-making.
But, says Clark, you don’t need any special qualifications to enjoy the performances. “Don’t worry about ‘getting’ every performance,” she said. “Too often people try to attach a literal story to a dance, when such a story does not necessarily exist—even in the choreographer’s mind. Clark urges you to leave the literal interpretation at home, and just sit back and allow yourself to enjoy the emotional, visual, and visceral aspects of dance presented by skillful and creative dance artists.
One audience that has no trouble “getting” modern dance is kids. Dress rehearsals on Fridays are their time. These free shows provide a fun way to expose children to the moving-art world. No one on stage or in the audience gets upset when children talk loudly, stand on their seats, or start dancing during the performances.
In these performances, kids get to explore dance through an interactive dance scavenger hunt. After introducing their dances and dancers, the choreographers demonstrate one movement to the children and give them an assignment to perform every time the movement is repeated in the dance. Like detectives, the children stare at the performers, and each time they recognize the movement, they jump from their chairs and rub their noses—or whatever was assigned for that movement.
To allow your children ages 5 to 9 let loose with their own creative energy, take them to the free movement class offered by visiting artists, Saturday, July 18 at 9:30am at the War Memorial Building. Movement classes are also offered in Martinsburg and Charles Town.
Dance concerts take place Fridays, July 17 and 24 at 7pm; Saturdays, July 18 and 25 at 3pm and 7 pm; and Sundays, July 19 and 26 at 3pm. Tickets are $12 in advance ($10 for students/seniors): $15 at the door ($12 for student/seniors). For information and tickets contact 304-876 6751 or www.gooseroute.org.