When American composer and lyricist Stephen Sondheim died on November 26, 2021 at the age of 91, the world mourned the passing of a songwriting titan whose music and lyrics set the standard for musical theatre in the 20th century — a legacy that continues to this day.

On the one-year anniversary of his death, New Stages Theatre Company in Peterborough is hosting an evening of story and song to celebrate Sondheim’s life and music and his profound influence on musical theatre.

Written and narrated by Peterborough theatre icon Beth McMaster — known for her Legendary Icon Series profiling iconic entertainers of the 20th century — Sondheim: A Celebration will feature local performers Kate Suhr, Linda Kash, and Geoff Bemrose as well as Shannon McCracken and, fresh off his run of Chicago on the Stratford Festival stage, Henry Firmston.

The show will welcome musical director Benjamin Kersey, who made his debut at Toronto’s Princess of Wales Theatre this past summer with the award-winning production of the smash musical & Juliet.

New Stages founder Randy Read and incoming artistic director Mark Wallace will also take the stage, along with 11-year-old Indigo Chesser, who starred this past summer in 4th Line Theatre’s production of The Great Shadow.

Sondheim: A Celebration takes place at 7:30 p.m. on Friday, November 25th at Market Hall Performing Arts Centre in downtown Peterborough. Tickets are $35 and are available over the phone at 705-775-1503, in person at the Market Hall box office at 140 Charlotte Street (3rd floor) from noon to 5 p.m. Monday to Friday, or online anytime at tickets.markethall.org.

Born into a Jewish family in New York City in 1930, Stephen Sondheim’s interest in musical theatre began when he saw his first Broadway musical at nine years old.

When he was 10, he formed a close friendship with James Hammerstein, son of lyricist and playwright Oscar Hammerstein II who was a neighbour. Sondheim’s parents were getting divorced at the time (he had an unhappy home life) and the elder Hammerstein became his surrogate father, further developing Sondheim’s love of musical theatre.

When Sondheim was 15 years old and a student at George School, a private Quaker preparatory school, he wrote his first musical By George. While it was a success among his peers, Hammerstein called the musical “terrible” and designed an informal course in musical theatre for Sondheim, having him write four musicals over the next six years that were never professionally produced.

Sondheim studied music at Williams College in Massachusetts, writing college shows there, and then went on to study in New York City with the composer Milton Babbitt. At the 1949 opening of South Pacific, Hammerstein’s musical with Richard Rodgers, a 19-year-old Sondheim met Hal Prince, who would later direct many of Sondheim’s own productions. In the early 1950s, Sondheim wrote scripts in Hollywood for the television series Topper before returning to New York City where he wrote incidental music for the play The Girls of Summer (1956).

Sondheim’s career began in earnest when he wrote the lyrics for Leonard Bernstein’s West Side Story in 1957, as well as the lyrics for Gypsy in 1959. He began writing both lyrics and music with A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (1962). His other best-known works are Company (1970), Follies (1971), A Little Night Music (1973), Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (1979), Merrily We Roll Along (1981), Sunday in the Park with George (1984), and Into the Woods (1987).

During his career, Sondheim earned eight Tony Awards (including a Lifetime Achievement Tony in 2008), an Academy Award, eight Grammy Awards, a Laurence Olivier Award, a Pulitzer Prize, a Kennedy Center Honor, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom. He also has a theatre named after him both on Broadway and in the West End of London. Film adaptations of his works include West Side Story (1961 and 2021), A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (1966), Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (2007), and Into the Woods (2014).

For more information about New Stages Theatre Company, its 2022-23 season, and for season subscriptions, visit www.newstages.ca.

kawarthaNOW is proud to be media sponsor of New Stages Theatre Company’s 25th anniversary season.

The City of Peterborough is looking for its next poet laureate for 2023.

Administered by the Electric City Culture Council (EC3) under the guidance of the City of Peterborough’s Arts, Culture and Heritage Advisory Committee (ACHAC), the Peterborough Poet Laureate Program was launched as a pilot in 2021-22, with Curve Lake spoken-word artist Sarah Lewis named as Peterborough’s first-ever poet laureate.

During her tenure, Lewis — an Anishnaabe Kwe (Ojibwe/Cree) spoken-word artist from Curve Lake First Nation — performed or gave workshops at more than 70 events, including four official city occasions. In November 2021, she was featured in the CBC Arts series Poetic License, performing her poem “Warrior Cry” which she had earlier performed at Peterborough city council.

“The arts are one of the key components to what makes a city vibrant and lively,” Lewis says in a media release. “Humans create art, music, and poetry to protest, to disrupt, and to express their love, passions and the things we care about in this life. Not to mention that the arts have played a vital role in all thriving cultures and societies across the globe.”

Peterborough’s city council has approved the Peterborough Poet Laureate as a permanent program, and EC3 is seeking nominations for the 2023 Peterborough Poet Laureate.

An honorary position established to recognize the excellence and outstanding achievements of professional poets living and working in Peterborough and Peterborough County, and to strengthen and enhance our civic identity, the poet laureate acts as an advocate for poetry and spoken word art, for the arts in general. The poet laureate, who receives honorarium of $2,000, must create a present a minimum of four original works to be presented at Peterborough city council meetings and other city events and occasions.

Nominations are being accepted until Tuesday, January 3rd and will be assessed by a panel including peers in the poetry and spoken-word community, local citizens, and a city representative.

Artists must be nominated by someone else; self-nominations will not be accepted. Nominees must be professional, published artists 18 years of age or older who are current residents of the city of Peterborough or Peterborough County, including Curve Lake and Hiawatha First Nations.

Detailed program guidelines and the nomination form are available on the EC3 website at ecthree.org/program/peterborough-poet-laureate-2023-program-guidelines-and-nomination-form/.

EC3 will be hosting a virtual nomination workshop on Zoom at 7 p.m. on Tuesday, November 29th. For those unable to attend the virtual workshop or for those with have accessibility needs, there will also be an in-person workshop at the Peterborough Public Library at a date and time to be announced.

This story has been updated to reflect the extension of the nomination deadline from December 16 to January 3.

Community theatre has been Natalie Dorsett’s thing she can remember but, since she was cast in her first musical at age seven, that particular form of artful expression has been in her wheelhouse.

So it was in 2019 that Dorsett proposed staging the Disney musical Beauty and the Beast to the St. James Players brain trust. The green light given and all was good — until a not-so-funny thing happened on the way to Showplace Performance Centre and the planned fall 2020 run of the Disney classic.

“We were ready to go for 2020 and then we all know what happened,” reflects Dorsett, just hours before the long-anticipated November 11th opening of Beauty and the Beast at the downtown performance venue.

“We were like ‘OK, we’ll wait until all the pandemic stuff is settled down and look at 2021’. Then 2021 hit and we all knew it wasn’t going to happen. So, in January of this year, we kind of stopped planning for it and it became very wait and see. What else could you do?”

Now, with 127 auditions and six months of rehearsals in the rearview mirror, St. James Players’ presentation of Beauty and the Beast has finally taken to the big stage, with upcoming performances November 13 at 2 p.m., November 16 to 18 at 7:30 p.m., and a final matinee performance at 2 p.m. on November 19.

Assigned-seating tickets for the show, sponsored in part by kawarthaNOW, are $35 for adults and $32 for seniors or students and are available online at tickets.showplace.org and at the Showplace box office from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday to Thursday.

With more than 10 years on Broadway, the stage version of Disney’s Beauty and the Beast was adapted from the 1991 Academy Award-winning animated film of the same name. More than 20 million people worldwide have heard the show-stopping musical numbers (with music by Alan Menken and lyrics by Howards Ashman and Tim Rice), including the songs “Belle,” “Gaston,” “Be Our Guest,” and “Beauty and the Beast.”

Beauty and the Beast tells the story of Belle, a beautiful and intelligent young woman who feels out of place in her provincial French village where she is being romantically pursued by local bachelor Gaston. When her father Maurice is imprisoned in a mysterious castle, Belle’s attempt to rescue him leads to her capture by the Beast, a grisly and fearsome monster who was once a young prince but was long ago trapped in his gruesome form by an enchantress.

The only way for the Beast to become human again is if he learns to love and be loved in return. There is a time limit too: once a magical rose loses all of its petals, all hope will be lost and he will stay a Beast forever.

The Beast’s enchanted household — populated by such beloved characters as Mrs. Potts, Lumiere, Cogsworth, Babette, Wardrobe and Chip — watches on anxiously as Belle and the Beast grow to understand and befriend one another. Their feelings for each other grow ever deeper as the clock ticks and petals continue to fall off the enchanted rose. Will they confess their love for one another before it is too late?

Dorsett admits she was torn between proposing Sleeping Beauty or Beauty and the Beast for the next big St. James Players show.

“My husband (Chris) said ‘Well, listen to the music — you always say it’s about the music.’ I pulled up Beauty and the Beast on Spotify and I was sold.”

“Before I proposed it, I made sure I had some key members of my team,” Dorsett adds. “I asked Shelley Moody for hair and makeup. I knew that was so instrumental in creating the vision for Beauty and the Beast. She was on board. Next, I got my choreographer Melissa Earle, and I got my music director Dustin Bowers. I thought ‘OK, I have these three. I can do this.’ Then, luckily, both Wendy Morgan and Debbie Airhart said they would produce for me.”

Beauty and the Beast, says Dorsett, is the perfect story for a pandemic-enduring world.

“It’s Disney. It’s fluff at the end of the day, but it’s also a story about friendship and connection and loving people from the inside out. I think those are messages we need, especially after what we all endured over the last two years. We need that love and that connection and that joy.”

“That’s what musicals do. They take you away to another world. You get to sit and bop your head along and sing along and dance along. It’s not real life and that’s kind of cool for two-and-a-half hours.”

Delighted to be in the Beauty and the Beast mix are Whitney Paget, playing a lead role as Belle, and Tracey Allison as Mrs. Potts. Paget has performed in earlier productions of Cabaret and The Wizard of Oz while Allison appeared in Mamma Mia!, St. James Players’ last production before the pandemic back in the fall of 2019.

“I burst into tears when Natalie called and told me I had the part of Belle,” says Paget. “Beauty and the Beast came out the year I was born, so I have been watching and loving it my whole life. Belle was my favourite princess.”

“It was a dream come true when Natalie offered the role to me,” she adds. “Going into auditions, I knew all the songs because I’ve been singing them for 30 years. I want to portray this beloved character as best as I can and bring to life the animation that everyone has known and loved for three decades.”

For her part, Allison wants to “honour” the character that has been closely associated with the late Angela Lansbury, who voiced Mr. Potts for the movie version and famously sang the title song.

“This is the first time I’ve had a lead (role) since I was a kid,” says Allison. “Getting over my nerves and learning to sing all by myself, I’ve really had to grow a lot. I’m really excited about i — feeling really good. It’s a fun role.”

Not lost on Dorsett and her cast members is they’re friends, a huge tie that binds being their love of theatre and the opportunity to perform.

“Whitney and I did West Side Story together 15 years ago, and Tracey and I met when her daughter was in Mary Poppins and we shared the stage for Mamma Mia!,” says Dorsett.

Allison likewise feels the love.

“This group is so accepting and welcoming and encouraging. Even when you are new, you really feel at home right away. It absolutely is a family. I’m already thinking ‘Oh no, this is going to end soon.'”

When all is said and done, the commitment to the production is all encompassing. Dorsett, for one, doesn’t expect otherwise and frankly wouldn’t want it any other way.

“This is my baby,” she says. “My whole life for the last six months has been about this. Lying in bed at night, I’m like ‘What can I do with this scene? What should this costume look like?’ My husband designed and built the set, so we’re lying in bed talking about that. ‘Where should the stairs go? Do we need a railing here?’ Your whole life becomes about it.”

“But it doesn’t feel like work. Yes, you’re putting in hours and hours at a volunteer pay — a big old fat zero — but it’s worth everything. This will end and we will all be ready to do it again.”

Speaking of which, Dorsett says St. James Players, now marking its 50th year, is planning a spring 2023 show, with audition notices to start popping up soon on social media.

She won’t reveal what show will be, but confirms it will be performed at St. James Church United Church in the newly renovated sanctuary space.

For more information about Beauty and the Beast, including photos and brief bios of all the cast members, visit stjamesplayers.ca.

kawarthaNOW is proud to be the media sponsor of the St. James Players production of Beauty and the Beast.

As a music producer and sound engineer, James McKenty has found himself thinking outside of the box more times than he can count.

But thinking inside the box — the box being a vintage Airstream Argosy trailer — well, that’s a whole different ball game. Still, James adapted quickly and, together with his wife Kellie, is reaping the benefits in the form of In Record Time, a Bell Fibe TV1 series that they co-produced.

At the heart of the five-episode series are performances by Melissa Payne, Devin Cuddy, Ginger St. James, Lotus White, and The Silver Hearts, each given at a ‘secret’ barn location to which invited guests were transported by bus.

James hosted each filmed performance, handled the live sound production, and recorded the audio, the latter process facilitated by his recording-studio-on-wheels parked adjacent to the barn.

The end result was great material with no immediate place for it to land. That changed when Peterborough-based filmmaker Michael Hurcomb broached the idea of Fibe TV1 interest in their work.

“During COVID was when I really partnered up with him,” recalls James of his collaboration with Hurcomb, noting they worked together on livestreaming productions for artists including Blue Rodeo and Natalie MacMaster. “It couldn’t have been more fortuitous to team up with him. I took care of the audio, he took take care of the film and the livestream portion. This opportunity really came out of that relationship.”

VIDEO: “In Record Time” trailer

“He and (producer) Chad Maker had done some shows for Bell,” James says, referring to the earlier Fibe TV1 productions Questionable Taste and Cover2Cover. “They asked ‘Do you have any ideas for what you would do if you had this opportunity?’ We had a lot of footage. We sometimes had eight cameras recording. All this stuff was on a hard drive that I handed to Michael.”

With a commitment from Bell to proceed, Hurcomb took that footage and performed his magic, editing it for five episodes that can now be viewed on demand on Fibe TV1.

“He knew exactly what to do,” says Kellie of Hurcomb. “He was like ‘Yup, I got it.’ He’s so talented. He’s positive and he’s motivated. He’s such a hard worker and that’s really infectious. I think James and Michael are similar in that way, so it was quite serendipitous for them to start working together during COVID.”

Kellie adds the ‘secret’ shows were the result of wanting “to do something different.”

“Guests didn’t know what artists they were coming to see, and didn’t know they were going to be on camera or that it was going to be recorded. We really wanted to create a unique experience outside of going to a festival or going out at night to a show.”

Asked if guests were apprehensive about getting on a bus to be transported to a ‘secret’ location to take in a performance by an undisclosed performer, James laughs — “They didn’t seem to mind if you gave them booze and food.”

But while the production and airing of In Record Time — which is also the name of the McKentys’ mobile recording studio — is the central story here, there’s a back story of note and it involves the Airstream Argosy trailer they purchased in early June 2019 from a farm couple east of Peterborough.

“When James said ‘I want to put a studio in an Airstream,’ I wasn’t shocked at all,” Kellie recalls. “I was like ‘That makes sense … that sounds about right.”

“I was taking my equipment to other people’s homes and halls, recording albums all over Ontario — I was constantly packing the car,” adds James. “We were also, at the same time, doing events. Again, I’d be taking all this recording equipment and film stuff to the events.”

“Kellie said ‘If you had all this is in a trailer, could you just hitch the trailer up and drive it to these places?’ It was like ‘Yeah, we could have the studio in the trailer at any event.'”

Turning the Airstream into a mobile recording studio wasn’t a simple task.

“We took everything out of it — the stove, the shower, the beds,” James says. “It was an empty shell by the time we were done. We had a local guy, Jim Boyle from Imagineers, draw up the plans. We described what we were looking for. He drew it up and ended up doing the retrofit himself.”

Finished in June 2021 (“It looks like a spaceship going down the road,” marvels James), the mobile studio presents two recording options.

“You can record in the trailer — a stripped-down thing with five or six members of a group and more acoustic-like — but buried underneath the seating bench and coming out the side of the trailer, where there used to be a propane hatch, is a 24-channel audio snake that we can run into any building,” James explains. “When we’re doing an album with it, we’re usually running that audio snake into a building. The actual recording happens elsewhere and the trailer is the lounge where you can come and listen back to your recording.”

Airstream, an American brand of travel trailer, dates back to the late 1920s. Easily recognized by the distinctive shape of its rounded and polished aluminum coachwork, the body shape is based on the Bowlus Road Chief, an all-aluminum travel trailer designed and built by Hawley Bowlus, who also oversaw the construction of the famed Spirit of St. Louis single-engine plane that Charles Lindbergh flew solo nonstop from Long Island to Paris in May 1927.

“While we were looking, what we found was a lot of them were musty smelling, or they had been sitting and rodents might have gotten in,” says James. “This one was in good shape right from the get-go — the frame, all the windows, everything was in mint condition — so we snagged it up. We told them (the sellers) what we were going to do with it and they were like ‘You’re going to do what? You’re going to put a recording studio in it?’ We really have to send them some photos of it finished.”

The icing on the cake, however, was James’ discovery of a circa 1930s Presto record-making machine. Back in the day, the mono recording device with its single microphone was used for field recordings.

“I said to Kellie ‘We need that machine’ and she was like ‘Do we?’,” laughs James, adding “As long as it takes a song to be performed, that’s how long it takes to make a (recording).”

Each of the artists featured on In Record Time were gifted with a Presto-created recording — “a memento” of their performance, says James.

Ahead, James and Kellie say there are plans for future shows at the ‘secret’ barn location, which has been “completely retrofitted” since the last go-round. The plan at this point is to film those performances as well.

In the meantime, James is grateful for the opportunities that have come his way over the course of his time as a producer.

“I don’t long for the days when I sat in a van and toured the country for 10 years,” he says, referring to his popular band The Spades with Josh Robichaud and Tommy Street that disbanded in 2013 and reunited in 2018 for a couple of performances.

“I still get that jolt that I got before going on stage — I get that in the studio when people come to record,” James says. “There are elements of it that are kind of like walking a tightrope. You’re setting up and you’re hoping magic is going to happen in the next few hours. I try to be present for the moment and capture it for these people because it’s important to them. It’s their life. It’s their work.”

Kellie, for one, isn’t the least bit surprised by her husband’s success.

“Hard work and passion — he’s the master of both of those things,” she says. “I’ve learned by watching him work, working on projects for hours and hours and hours, and seeing him never give up. That’s really inspiring for me and for our son Noah. Sometimes we just shake our heads and say ‘He’s crazy.’ Deep down, though, it’s very admirable.”