GUILFORD — Guilford Center Stage continues into its second year with spring and fall productions of plays with strong connections to Guilford, continuing its mission to present place-based theater on the stage at Broad Brook Grange.
The new theater project debuted last fall with a production of the comedy, Tourists Accommodated, by Vermont author Dorothy Canfield Fisher, who often visited Guilford.
A pair of one-acts by Guilford playwright Michael Nethercott opens the 2016 season in early June. At the other end of the season, Charles W. Henry, who was born in Guilford in 1850, will be represented by his only known extant play, performed on the stage with the theater curtains that he painted around 1900.
Interestingly, all three plays are set in the period 1911-14, a golden age for touring theater troupes, which traveled throughout the region, performing on stages such as the one in Guilford Center.
The Henry play, “A Battle of Wits,” to be directed by William Stearns in October, is set at the time of the outbreak of World War I.
Nethercott, an award-winning playwright and author of two recently-published mystery novels, has based both of his one-act plays on historical events, which took place months apart in 1911 and 1912.
“The Lace Jury” is based on one of the first all-women juries in the country. “Nocturne Titanica” is a mythological take on the sinking of the Titanic. Nethercott will direct these premiere performances of his work.
Auditions for the plays will take place on Tuesday, Feb. 23 (6-8 p.m.) and Sunday, Feb. 28 (3-5 p.m.) at the Grange in Guilford Center, with more details to be announced shortly.
The Center Stage season will also include a weeklong Theater Camp the third week in August, for 9-13 year olds, co-produced with the Guilford Free Library. The morning sessions will take place on the Center Stage, with mostly-outdoor activities in the afternoons based at the library.