Actors compete; viewers win
Competitions are always nerve-racking for contestants. But just hearing of the pace theater troupes must keep at this weekend's 51st Annual Community Theatre Drama Festival makes the heart race.
"We have very tight time frames," says Marion Desilets, vice president of festivals for the Eastern Massachusetts Association of Community Theatres. "Each group starts with a blank stage. They have 5 minutes to put their set up, 45 minutes to perform, 5 minutes to strike their set off. Should they go over any of these times, they're automatically disqualified."
Oh, and this year "there's extra pressure," Desilets says. "We're holding the festival at Babson College for the first time. The troupes have to do all this in a theater where they haven't worked before."
There's no telling what the Wellesley campus is in for.
"You wouldn't believe some of the sets that have been erected," says Desilets, who lives in Winchester. One group once performed "K2." "They literally erected a mountain scaling over 16 feet high," she says. "They did it in 4 minutes and 28 seconds. That, in and of itself, is its own show."
Just as much polish goes into the acting. Of the 10 Eastern Massachusetts troupes competing this weekend, only two will go on to the regionals in New Hampshire. If all goes well, they then head to the nationals, as have a number of area troupes in the past.
The drama doesn't end with the last act. After each round of performances, expert judges take the stage to critique the shows.
"It's kind of neat to keep your own notes and compare your thoughts with theirs," says Desilets.
This year Spiro Veloudos, artistic director of Lyric Stage in Boston, will judge the finals. "This is a first. I'm very excited to have been able to get him," says Desilets. And surely all 10 contestants are eager to hear what he has to say.
The Community Theatre Drama Festival takes place this weekend at Babson College's Sorenson Center for the Arts in Wellesley. Tickets are $15, finals $18, festival pass $50. Call 781-729-5045 or visit www.emact.org. Directions at www.babson.edu. Schedule: Tomorrow, 6:30 p.m.: Burlington Players "Lies and Legends," Acme Theater "Lonely Planet," Vokes Players "Proof," Curtain Call Theatre "Bob's Date." Saturday, noon: Colonial Chorus Players "Nunsense," Hovey Players "G.R. Point," Lexington Players "Someone Who'll Watch Over Me." Saturday, 7:30 p.m.: Washington Street Players "Eleemosynary," Harvard Community Theatre "Morning Noon and Night in Central Park," Quannapowit Players "The Role of Della." Sunday, 2 p.m.: Final four for best production. Sunday, 7 p.m.: awards ceremony.
WORDS THAT RING TRUE -- Talking to author Andrea Seigel seems just a little unreal. It's somewhat like having a favorite character from a novel hop out of the page so you can chat a while.
Strip away all the masterful trappings of her debut novel, "Like the Red Panda," and Seigel is her riveting, acerbic, hyper-perceptive main character. She is Stella. And Stella/Seigel is coming to Newtonville Books tonight to converse with anyone else who cares to straddle the line between fact and fiction.
Though the characters surrounding Stella are fictional, "Personality-wise, up to 90 percent of Stella is me. The setting is all me. The neighborhood is my neighborhood in Irvine, Calif. The high school is my real high school," says the 24-year-old from her current home in Los Angeles.
But the ennui, cynicism, and tragically destructive mindset that Stella records in a journal during her last two weeks of high school are something more universal. Stella is alienation and disaffection at its most Holden Caulfield-esque. Only, unlike J.D. Salinger's caustic antihero, Stella is a girl.
"I definitely had 'Catcher in the Rye' in mind when I wrote the novel. Not as a pattern for it, but as a counterpoint. I felt that girls didn't have their own antihero and didn't really have their own emotionally complex first-person narrator," says Seigel.
Now they do, but this is not a book just for teens or chick lit fans. Seigel's prose packs literary might into a voice that still rings as true as any 15-year-old gabbing at the mall.
Stella writes of "the streetlamps that light up the night like the whole city's an accident on the freeway." Or how when she first met her withdrawn foster mom, "she opened the door and looked at me with wide eyes like I was a parking ticket."
Critics have been raving about this impressive debut, but Seigel says "Bookselling is such a quiet affair. One day your book just appears in the store, and you don't know who's reading it." Author readings, she says, "make the whole effort a little bit more real."
Seigel reads from "Like the Red Panda" at 7:30 tonight at Newtonville Books, 296 Walnut St., Newton. Attendees may join Seigel afterward at a nearby pub for free appetizers and a free drink. Call 617-244-6619 or visit www.newtonvillebooks.com.
FIELD SCENES -- Most artists don't count insect repellent among the tools of their trade. But for wildlife artist Barry W. Van Dusen, a dab of DEET is as essential as his watercolors and paper.
Van Dusen, whose watercolor and oil paintings are on exhibit at Tower Hill Botanic Garden in Boylston through June 27, says he is one of a small group of American wildlife artists who actually create their work in the field.
"Most of the wildlife art in the United States is generated from photographs. There's a much greater tradition of painting in the field in Europe," says Van Dusen, who lives in Princeton.
Van Dusen, with telescope and binoculars in hand, skirts marshes and traipses through meadows to find the likes of myrtle warblers or kingfishers. When he spots them, he snaps open his folding chair and sets to work in his open-air studio.
Biting insects, wind, rain, mud -- yes, there are trying conditions. But Van Dusen says creating on the spot enlivens his work.
"You're spending more time with the subject than when you work from a photograph. You're creating a piece of artwork that encapsulates a period of time, two hours rather than an eighth of a second," he says.
"There's a certain sense you get from the atmosphere and the changing light. All these things work their way into your work in a more genuine way when you're on location."
When he isn't painting, Van Dusen illustrates birding guides and ornithology books.
"My work is a blend of science and impressionism," he says. "I'm very interested in birds from an ornithological point of view, so I bring that whole understanding to it. But what's really more important to me is conveying the excitement of seeing these birds in the wild."
"Natural Inspirations" runs through June 27 at Tower Hill Botanic Garden, 11 French Drive, Boylston. Meet the artist from 1 to 4 p.m. June 20. Gallery and garden hours are Tuesday through Sunday 10 a.m.-5 p.m.; Wednesday until 8 p.m. Admission is $8, or $5 for seniors and youths, under age 6 admitted free. Half-price Wednesday after 4:30 p.m. Call 508-869-6111 or visit www.towerhillbg.org.
WORLD BOOGIE -- Hold onto your hyphens, Entrain is coming to town.
This energetic, rhythm-driven dance band elicits locomotive-length descriptions like no other. The six-man combo draws on so many styles that it is often described as something like a rock-blues-calypso-ska-zydeco-jazz-funk band. Or as drummer Tom Major likes to say, "We're a funky world-jam-reggae-rock gumbo stew with enough drums to sink a battleship."
In these parts, opportunities abound to see the Martha's Vineyard-based band, whose CDs are distributed by Rounder Records. "We're the amazing gigging machine. We're like a shark; we just keep moving," says Major, who cofounded Entrain in 1983.
The group's natural habitat is outdoor festivals and clubs with big dance floors. So what's Entrain doing at the seated auditorium at the Center for Arts in Natick this weekend?
"When we get into a concert setting, the show changes slightly and it's really refreshing. Any Entrain fans out there who come down will hear some of the songs we don't generally play because they are a little less danceable," says Major.
But the groove remains the same. "We've done these shows without dance floors before, and people just get up and move or they sit in their chairs and move," he says.
"The word entrain means to synchronize rhythms. We kind of take that a step further and try to synchronize the whole show -- the audience, the musicians, the dancers. When we really hit it and the music is just right, it's really something. The whole room becomes one."
Entrain plays at 8 p.m. tomorrow at The Center for Arts in Natick, 14 Summer St., Natick. Tickets are $12 in advance, $14 at the door, $1 discount for seniors and students. Call 508-647-0097 or visit www.natickarts.org.
Send news of your arts-related events to Denise Taylor at WestArts@globe.com.
