Hills Alive

Collaboration of the Arts: Hills Alive!

by Joyce Marcel

The hills are alive with the sound of music. Also acting, painting, dancing, tapas and cooperation.

Four major Southern Vermont arts organizations have reacted to Tropical Storm Irene by saying goodbye to artistic turf wars and banding together for the very first time to present the Hills Alive! festival, July 7th through July 15.

The organizations are The Dorset Theatre Festival in Dorset, the Manchester Music Festival in Manchester, the Southern Vermont Arts Center in Manchester and the Weston Playhouse Theatre Company in Weston. They are using as their model the Massachusetts Berkshires, where world-class arts organizations attract people in the summer from all over the world.

The idea of banding together had a long gestation period. The groups have been talking about cooperating for several years. Last year they tried bundling tickets. Then they thought about having a central box office, but they didn’t have the time or resources to create one. Finally, after Irene, they hit on the festival idea and things started clicking into place.

“There is no way to underestimate the power of the storm,” said Dina Janis, Dorset’s artistic director. “But as we were trying to support each other through that period—and how impressive the state is in terms the way it pulls together and how much progress they’ve made in such a short period of time! This area has everything going for it—a setting that is gorgeous and sophisticated with fine art, fine theater, fine dining. The festival name was a way to describe that we live in this beautiful green hill region, and it’s just very alive with the arts.”

Artists have a natural need to communicate, said Steve Stettler, the producing director of the 75-year-old Weston Playhouse.

“First, there’s that natural need to reach out and touch base and look at possibilities for collaboration with the changes in the economy,” Stettler said. “But we’ve all longed for the chance to be more closely connected. The more the arts can flourish in this area, the better for all of us.”

The Weston Playhouse was hard hit during Irene, when it suffered more than a half million dollars in damages.

“The amount of generous support that came almost immediately was overwhelming,” Stettler said. “From people showing up almost immediately to help us carry things and muck out—at times it was very moving. Then company members and other stars staged a review at an Off-Broadway theater in New York and raised over $30,000 for us. It was inspiring. It not only helped with the budget but it lifted our spirits and told us, ‘You matter.’”

The current recession also helped encourage group cooperation.

“Ten years ago, we were in a period of growth,” said Joseph M. Madeira, the executive director of the Southern Vermont Arts Center. “People were moving here. There was tremendous philanthropy. Now that we’ve hit a recession, with retail moving out of the area and tourism being down, there is a need for us to work together. People an hour away don’t have a clue of the types of arts and entertainment programs we offer here.”

The organizations are pulling out all the stops for the week of the festival. Both theaters will be showing one play on the first weekend and opening a second one on the next.

“We have ‘The Hound of the Baskervilles’ the first week,” Stettler said. “It’s a new retelling of the old Sherlock Holmes novel, but with a comic twist. Three actors are playing all the characters. It was a huge hit in London and it’s just making the rounds here. We’ll also have a children’s musical, ‘You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown.’ It’s an hour-long version with a lower ticket price. The second week we’ll be opening ‘Ella,’ based on the life of the great jazz singer Ella Fitzgerald. It’s been touring the country for about six years, and we’re the first theater to get the rights to do our own production. It gives you a glimpse into her private life and entertains you with all her most famous songs. It’s a fascinating evening in the theater.”

After their main shows, Weston has a cabaret which showcases exciting emerging performers and composers.

The 37-year-old Dorset Theatre will first present the regional premier of the biggest and most successful play on Broadway last year, ‘Good People,’ by David Lindsay-Abaire.

“It’s a great, thought-provoking, heartwarming play set in Boston,” Janis said. “It’s about the haves and have-nots in our society. On that level, it couldn’t be more timely for our country. It’s beautifully written and a great play for actors. Many members of the original Broadway production are in it. The second weekend is a great French farce, ‘Boeing Boeing’ by Marc Camoletti. It’s a very zany farce about an American businessman living in Paris who is juggling three airline stewardess as mistresses. His plans fall apart with the advent of the super-fast planes.”

Dorset also has a regular Friday and Saturday night Tapas Cafe.

The proceeds go to benefit the Bennington Meals on Wheels.

The Southern Vermont Arts Center, founded 50 years ago by artists and housed in a stunning National Trust Georgian mansion, will be mixing painting, photography and music.

“We’re going to anchor the two weekends of the festival with performing arts,” Madeira said. “The first week is ‘Neil Berg’s 100 Years of Broadway,’ a review featuring five of the top leads from some of the big Broadway shows, including ‘Les Miserables’ and ‘Phantom of the Opera.’ The second weekend we’ll have ‘Blues and Brews.’ That’s four breweries displaying their wares for tasting plus great musicians playing.’

The museum will have two special shows. The first, “Legends of Rock & Roll,” is a display of photographs taken by George Kalinsky, who was the official photographer of Madison Square Garden in New York for over 30 years. Now living in Dorset, he donated a collection of his photographs to the art center in 2010 and they’re now being rolled out for the first time.

“We have a photo of the Rolling Stones first performance, and photos of Jimi Hendrix, Elvis Presley, John Lennon’s last performance,” Madeira said. “These are iconic images that are really part of our rock and roll culture.”

The second show, by Connecticut artist Joe Fig, is called “Mining the Past and Present.”

“Based on historical research, he’s created scenes in his paintings of what it would have been like to be in the room in Paris when they were installing all of those Degas and Seurat paintings,” Madeira said. “Fig paints portraits of them doing their work. He’s such a great painter that he’s able to recreate a Seurat painting in his painting and also include in it a portrait of Seurat. We have an artists’ membership of 400, and this is the type of show that explores the artist’s process.”

This will be the first time the arts center has produced performances on two adjacent weekends.

The Manchester Music Festival, founded in 1974, will present a Young Artist concert on Monday at the Burr and Burton Academy in Manchester, plus a Music Under the Stars concert featuring Oren Fader on guitar, Austin Hartman on violin and Yehuda Hanani on cello at the Southern Vermont Arts Center.

As part of the festival’s promotion, Hills Alive! is issuing discount “passports” to the public. Available at many area stores, the passports offer discounts for performances, concerts and museums. For more information, as well as schedules, check out the festival’s Website at Hillsalive.org.

This may be the first annual Hills Alive! Festival, but the organizations plan to expand it year by year.

“It’s our hope to keep this going,” Stettler said. “It’s really a group effort to promote the combined strength that we always knew was there, but we felt wasn’t known or appreciated.”

The festival is such a good idea that it’s a wonder the groups hadn’t combined forces before this.